Is There Life after Death?
does our consciousness continue in some form?
Photo by Adam Fuss
At the urging of a few friends, I have entered the Bigelow Institute’s contest for the best paper on the question of whether or not consciousness exists after death. Completed essays (up 25,000 words) are due in August. I agree with the the website: “Despite intriguing evidence, the number of research groups and funding devoted to investigating the survival of human consciousness beyond death is shockingly small in the Western world. Even though all 7.8 billion humans on planet Earth will eventually die, very little high quality research is being conducted on perhaps the most important and fundamental question facing our species.” The institute was founded by Robert Bigelow, a billionaire aerospace entrepreneur. The judges include Jeffrey Kripal, author of wonderful books on the paranormal, and Hal Puthoff, a highly reputed engineer and parapsychologist.
This is a question that has fascinated me for decades and, in fact, inspired the exploration of psychedelic shamanism which led to my first book, Breaking Open the Head. Back in the 1990s, when I started my research, the prevailing assumption among everyone I knew was that consciousness only existed in the physical brain and death was the extinction of everything. I realized that this reductive materialist belief system was inducing the nihilism and cynicism that allowed for ongoing ecological destruction. Through entheogen, I had many experiences that revealed the existence of other levels or dimensions of reality, supporting what many esoteric traditions tell us. We are still at very early stages of learning about and understanding these other dimensions and how they interact with this one.
Personally, I believe that the future existence of humanity on the Earth requires a shift in our underlying paradigm or belief system toward an esoteric or mystical understanding — one that integrates science (as Amit Goswami says, a science within consciousness) rather than rejecting it.
Gaining some coherent knowledge around the “laws” of the other realms, of how reincarnation might function as part of a multidimensional reality, of the ultimate purpose and destiny of the human soul — this is not going to be easy to accomplish, but it is the task at hand. As a technocratic super-state is rapidly wrapping itself around humanity like an anaconda around its prey, it is more crucial than ever that we define a different ideology and counter-myth.
If anyone reading this has knowledge, experience, or insight that might contribute to my essay for Bigelow, please let me know via email. I would be happy to collaborate with other writers and researchers on the project, and I am also seeking for evidence and stories that help to validate or verify the existence of some form of consciousness after death.
Other updates
With the extraordinary assistance of Jordan Albert Byrne, I have just released audio versions of my two short books, Conspiranoia: The Betrayed States of America (which Jordan narrates) and The Occult Control System: UFOs, Aliens, Other Dimensions, and Future Timelines (narrated by me). Please pick them up and let me know what you think.
My four-part online seminar, Breaking Open the Head and the Psychedelic Renaissance, is now available for rent or purchase on Vimeo here. You can also rent / buy individual videos from the series. In the fourth episode, I explore the current race to capitalize on psychedelics, analyzing companies that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, seek copyright over modalities of treatment or new psychedelic molecules. In the video, I critique the direction of this pellmell rush to commodify the psychedelic experience. I am afraid we may soon have a Google or Amazon of psychedelics, funded by Silicon Valley libertarians, exerting monopoly control over how people can access these compounds, with an implicit Brave New World vibe.
You can also rent or buy my recent presentations, Cosmic Thought, Cosmic Memory, Cosmic Dream: An introduction to Rudolf Steiner and ETs, UFOs, Psychedelic Encounters, and the Collective Unconscious. I suspect you will find both to be super-relevant viewing.
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