Crossing the Threshold
Realms of Consciousness beyond Physical Death
We find ourselves in a time of accelerating global turbulence. With never-ending pandemics and catastrophic weather events, people are frightened for the future. Much of this collective fear is a byproduct of the underlying nihilism of the postmodern worldview. According to scientific materialism, consciousness is entirely produced by the brain, hence death equals oblivion. Even though it is inherently meaningless, this one life is all we have.
At this juncture, the question of an afterlife is worth reconsidering, even for hardcore skeptics and scientists. The astonishing truth is that many forms of evidence amassed over the last 150 years support the validity of some form of continuity of consciousness — personality, individuality, or essence — after physical death.
As I explored in past books, we are evolving toward a new worldview that reconnects science and mysticism. Whether it takes years or decades, this paradigm shift could be as significant as the one sparked by Copernicus and Galileo, who removed the Earth — and with it, Man — from the center of the Cosmos. The new paradigm restores humanity’s centrality, dignity, and importance, but in a different way. A new understanding that integrates the psychic, supernatural, and sacred within a scientific framework has the capacity to infuse people’s lives with the meaning that materialism and nihilism robbed from them.
Once commonly understood and accepted, this new worldview will bring great benefit. It will give people greater contentment, along with a sense of purpose. When we see our personal lives as part of a greater continuum — an evolution of human, planetary, and even cosmic consciousness, in which we, as individuals, undergo cycles of reincarnation — our priorities as a species will change. Overcoming obsolete forms of competition while facing an ecological emergency, we might rapidly evolve into a symbiotic species, partnering with the Earth’s living systems. When we recognize legitimate prospects for an afterlife and for reincarnation, our approach toward life as well as death changes in beneficial ways. Hence, I believe that exploring the ideas and evidence presented in this course can be very helpful and valuable for all of us, now.
Crossing the Threshold: Realms of Consciousness beyond Physical Death
4 live 3-hour Seminars
Sundays, starting Sept 5, 2021
Noon EST / 9 am PST / 6 pm CET
In this month-long seminar, we explore arguments for and against any kind of afterlife, survey the evidence for the continuity of consciousness and personality after death, and reach a coherent understanding of the new scientific and philosophical paradigm destined to transform our world for the better. Certificates of completion available. Sign up here.
Tickets are $200. Half price for paying subscribers.
This week: 25% off for early signups. Use the code EARLYBIRD at checkout.
Subjects to be explored include:
Science and the Afterlife
Near-Death Experience
Mediumship
nn-DMT and 5-meo-DMT
The Simulation Hypothesis
String Theory
Spontaneous past-life recall in early childhood
Hypnotic regression
Reincarnation
Apparitions of the dead
Indo-Tibetan death meditation and the Rainbow Body
Indigenous and aboriginal beliefs and practices
Synchronicity
Initiation
ESP and “Super Psi”
As human beings, we know life is fragile, transitory, and brief. Each of us confronts the inevitable fact of our own mortality, along with the death, eventually, of everyone we know and love. Ancient civilizations, as well as indigenous cultures around the world, believed in the existence of a soul or spirt that continues after death. Modern civilization forcefully rejected all such beliefs as unscientific and atavistic.
Today there are good reasons to reconsider the possibility of an afterlife. Various forms of evidence support reincarnation and the continuity of consciousness after death. Science and the afterlife are no longer opposites, but can be brought together in a new synthesis.
According to scientific materialism, consciousness entirely depends on the physical brain. Therefore, death means total oblivion. A nihilistic ideology, materialism intensified our alienation from nature and led to consumerism, which unleashed a global ecological mega-crisis. But reductive materialism is, itself, obsolete.
In the 20th Century, the basic postulates of scientific materialism were shown to be incorrect. According to quantum physics, there is no independent physical world separate from how we perceive it. Consciousness, not matter, is the fundamental reality. Space and time are not real but “tools of our animal understanding” (Robert Lanza). The modern world still hasn’t integrated this new understanding of the nature of reality, which is akin to the principles of Eastern mysticism as well as Western esotericism.
At the same time, over the last two centuries, researchers have collected a great deal of evidence that strongly suggests the continuity of consciousness, of human personality, after physical death — the existence of some kind of afterlife. The modern world has also encountered Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, where monks have explored reincarnation as well as subtle forms of consciousness that can continue without the body for over a millennia. Produced by many plants and also by our bodies, nn-DMT and 5-meo-DMT are two chemicals that induce dramatic out-of-body experiences when smoked or injected. Used by indigenous shamans for thousands of years, DMT may be not so much a drug but a technology for exploring other dimensions of reality, which seem to be inhabited by a vast “ecology of souls” (Terence McKenna).
As part of this seminar, we will explore ideas from writers and thinkers including Brian Greene (The Elegant Universe), Amit Goswami (Physics of the Soul), Namkai Norbu (The Tibetan Yoga of Dream and Sleep), Chris Carter (Science and the Afterlife), Edward Francis and Emily Kelly (Irreducible Mind), Rudolf Steiner (Outline of Esoteric Science), Frederic Myers (The Survival of the Human Personality After Bodily Death), William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience), George Hansen (The Trickster and the Paranormal), Jeffrey Kripal (Authors of the Impossible), James Matlock (Signs of Reincarnation), Ian Stevenson (Reincarnation and Biology), Terence McKenna (The Archaic Revival), Eben Alexander (Proof of Heaven), Gary Schwartz (The Afterlife Experiments), Brian Weiss (Many Lives, Many Masters), F David Peat (Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Mind and Matter), Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe), Niels Bohr, John Archibald Wheeler, Carl Jung, Robert Lanza (Biocentrism), Patrick Harpur (The Philosopher’s Secret Fire), and more.
Week One: From Scientific Materialism to Monistic Idealism
Sept 5, Noon EST
Scientific materialism derived from the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm that postulated an independent physical world, where consciousness, through the random evolution of species, developed as an accidental byproduct of increasing biological complexity. However, through experiment, quantum physics discovered that consciousness, not matter, is the basis of reality. A definable world only comes into being when an observer makes an observation. What we experience as physical reality emerges from the infinite source field or plenum of consciousness. The new paradigm — explored by diverse thinkers including Amit Goswami, Robert Lanza, Rudolf Steiner, Edgar Mitchell, and more — can be called “monistic idealism.”
For physicist Amit Goswami: “The consciousness of the subject in a subject-object experience is the same consciousness that is the ground of all being. Therefore, consciousness is unitive. There is only one subject-consciousness, and we are that consciousness.” According to Robert Lanza: “Some may imagine that there are two worlds, one “out there” and a separate one being cognized inside the skull. But the “two worlds” model is a myth. Nothing is perceived except the perceptions themselves, and nothing exists outside of consciousness.” James Matlock notes: “There is only one substance and that is consciousness.” This is the same viewpoint as Eastern mysticism.
Monistic idealism — the new world revealed by quantum physics — allows us to make scientific hypotheses about the workings of reincarnation, the subtle bodies and energy systems, and, potentially, the existence of an afterlife. Once this is generally understood and accepted, it will be possible to supersede scientific materialism and establish a new coherent worldview which allows for psychic phenomena, reincarnation, and the afterlife. As we integrate such subjects into an expanded scientific worldview, they will be made a focus for further investigation. As we supersede scientific materialism and embrace monistic idealism, our priorities as a species will also change radically.
Week Two: Evidence for the Afterlife
Sept 12, Noon EST
We can never know with absolute certainty what is true. As William James noted, "A concrete test of what is really true has never been agreed on.” The existence of an afterlife will never be proved in the same way a mathematical theorem can be demonstrated. However, the evidence for the existence of an afterlife becomes, by logical deduction and inference, quite substantial when we turn our attention to the amassed evidence.
There are many testimonies on Near Death Experience (NDE), where patients whose brains have no measurable activity describe leaving their body and recount a variety of well-documented experiences (entering a tunnel of light, meeting guides and relatives, and so on). Mediumship is also a fascinating if controversial phenomenon. There are many well-documented cases of mediums taking on the personality of a deceased person and evincing their specialized knowledge and skills. In one demonstration, a living chess grandmaster played a game against a deceased one, via a medium, who possessed his old skill and playing style. Through mediums, spirits have also descibed their experience in the afterlife in great detail. Thousands of children around the world spontaneously recall their past lives with specific details. Professor Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia visited hundreds of these cases, often bringing the children back to the place and family they remembered, where they were recognized. The children often had birth marks related to their past lives. Apparitions of the dead are also well-documented, as are telephone calls received from the dead, via the bizarre phenomenon of Instrumental Trans-Communication (ITC). We will review a range of arguments made against the evidence by skeptics and scientific materialists, along with refutations of their arguments.
Week Three: The Subliminal and Supraliminal Self
Sept 19, Noon EST
In the late 19th Century, a group of socially prominent, highly educated and articulate scientists and thinkers focused their attention on psychic phenomena and the continuity of consciousness after death. In England and the US, they performed experiments and studied all types of inexplicable cases. The most influential was Frederic Myers, co-founder of The Society for Psychical Research and close friend of the philosopher William James.
Myers’ 1200-page opus, The Survival of the Human Personality after Bodily Death, was published posthumously, in 1903. In that book, Myers developed a theory of the human personality, divided into subliminal and supraliminal consciousness, which explained the evidence he found for the continuity of consciousness after death. His theories are currently having a second wave of popularity, as Edward and Emily Kelley explored in their impressive compendium, Irreducible Mind. In this session, we will review ideas from Myers, James, and other members of the Society, relating them to current perspectives on consciousness, reincarnation, and other topics we can explore as part of a “science within consciousness.”
Week Four: The Afterlife in Eastern and Western Esotericism
Sept 26, Noon EST
We explore models and schemas of the afterlife and reincarnation found in Vedanta and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, formalized in The Bardo Thodol or The Tibetan Book of the Dead. We consider ideas from Namkai Norbu and The Dalai Lama on “subtle” and “very subtle consciousness.” We look at recent cases of monks whose bodies did not decay after death, or whose bodies apparently shrank to a tiny size, signifying attainment of the Rainbow Body.
We compare Eastern and Western ideas on reincarnation. We explore the ideas of Rudolf Steiner (1865 - 1925), a visionary who founded Anthroposophy and Waldorf Schools. Steiner said that the mission of his life was to bring the knowledge of reincarnation back to the West and described the process in great detail in a series of books, Karmic Relationships. We also consider contemporary thinkers such as Patrick Harpur and Rupert Sheldrake, who integrate principles of Western esotericism into a contemporary scientific framework.
We then review what can be gleaned from hypnotic regression to the between-life state: Mediums claimed to contact the disincarnate spirits of figures like Bertrand Russell and Frederic Myers, who gave long discourses on the afterlife, even considering it from the scientific perspective. If there is an afterlife, where is it? Is it in a parallel dimension or universe? We explore the two forms of DMT and String Theory to help anchor a new paradigm and provide the basis for future investigation.
