Thursday, February 26, 2015

Flipside in the News... Ed Sheeran Et Al

Just wanted to weigh in on some recent news stories that point to the research in "Flipside" and "It's A Wonderful Afterlife."
(On SALE AT AMAZON)

Let's start with the Brit Awards.  While winning his award, the amazing singer and musician Ed Sheeran said:

"Since I was a little kid I dreamed of people all over the world singing my songs and although I've got a long way to go, this shows that I'm stepping in the right direction." Ed Sheeran



Ed Sheeran, photo: Daily Mail UK

I've asked a number of people "their first conscious thought they'd be doing what they're doing" and often hear of recurring dreams, visions, or "always knew" as if the future lies somewhere under the surface of our reality. 

Not that we're destined, as free will reportedly dictates our path (to accomplish or screw up), but the dreams or visions appear to have little or nothing to do with nature or nurture. Genetics or environment seem to only support the outcome, but its the consciousness of knowing your path that puts one in the "right" direction. (Sheeran quote is buried after Madge's tumble)

I've come across many accounts of people who had profound dreams, recurring dreams or visions of what or who they were to become.  It was also in their behavior in the school yard.  

I asked one FBI agent when she first became conscious of what she might want to do in her life.  She said in preschool, because "I started keeping lists on what people did in school every day. What they wore, what they ate."  (As quoted in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife")

Was she seeing into the future?  Or seeing the path that she'd already chosen for her to be on?  Does it matter?  It does if you're a parent or guardian, and your child says something silly like "When I grow up I'm going to sing music to millions of people."  The answer is, "Cool! Let me get a camera and I want you to say that on camera, because in 20 years, it will be very valuable."

Just like Dave Schultz (the Olympic wrestler, whose story is told in "Foxcatcher") told his father when he was 5 that he "wasn't going to be here very long," but that he had come here to "teach a lesson in love."  (A conversation the father didn't remember until he said it at the eulogy.)  That's a hard pill to swallow - but when you consider the growing mountain of evidence that shows that we don't die - that we are here on stage temporarily, and that those we love have not disappeared, or gone into oblivion, it can be a source of comfort to those who would like to know there is data that backs that up.


Dave Schultz told his dad he wouldn't be here long.
Then, I found this clip, on the anniversary of George Harrison choosing to be on the planet (his birthday), an old friend of mine posted this link to his speaking about death. George says in the clip:

"What happens when you die? That, to me, is the only thing that's of any importance. The rest is just secondary." "If you want to know anything in this life, you just need to knock on the door. Which I found through meditation. It's all within." (At the end a live version of "All Things Must Pass.")  





"What happens when we die, is the most important thing for us to know while we are on the planet."  

Why is that?

Because the answer will inform how you live your life, how you relate to people, how you relate to fear, to stress, to other people behaving badly.  

And finally, a "Near Death Story" with a different outcome:

In the Independent Newspaper in the UK, there's this story about a fellow who "died twice" and both times didn't see or experience anything (consciously) and they use it to report that "nothing happens after we die." No light, no tunnel. Nada. Zip.


Tunnel? Doorway? Different planes of existence? Pixels on a page?  All of the above.

Au contraire.

One person had that experience - an unconscious one - but thousands have had the opposite experience.

We all have different dreams, different experiences of being awake, widely divergent concepts of what being alive is. Or consciousness is. This fella experienced being dead and nothing came to mind. No tunnel of light. Just blankness. 

Never mind thousands have the opposite experience; scientists like Dr. Bruce Greyson at UVA studying cases for decades, Dr. Sam Parnia's published results of the extensive 7 year Aware Study showing consciousness existing outside of dead people, or the 100 cases Mario Beauregard PhD cites in his neuroscience research where people had no blood to the brain for minutes, and yet saw, heard new information from their "out of body" perspective. 


I got pals all over the planet.  These fellas are in Kashmir. Made me a rug.
Some people are actually convinced nothing happens after we die. Sorry to say, it's just not in the data.

Finally, if you want proof of the afterlife, I suggest you watch this clip.  In it, author David Bennett ("Voyage of Purpose") recounts his near death experience where he saw into the future and saw that he would be diagnosed with cancer that would only give him months to live, and then survive it (knowing he would survive it, because he'd already seen that he would). His case has been examined by science: Dr. Greyson at UVA.  I'll let him describe his experience in his own words:



My two cents.

"Flipside" and "It's A Wonderful Afterlife."
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Monday, February 23, 2015

The Flipside of the Oscars

"I'd like to thank the members of the Academy... and everyone who ever left a message on my phone machine....." Congrats to all the winners of the Oscars!


In my film classes, I would start them by asking the students to write their Oscar speech.  It's a very different kettle of fish that you thank when you're starting then when you're ending.. except in some cases.  It's a bit like crossing over - who is going to greet you?  Who will applaud you for your hard work and job well done?  Well... quite a few (according to the research in "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife")
 
Let's examine the awards from the Flipside view of things.  That would be the observation of what was said during the Oscars from a spiritual point of view, or rare evidence that what happened last night on the Oscars wasn't just about glitz and pomp.  Beneath the fancy frocks, some profound spiritual lessons were revealed.


Begin with revelation of the mom who made a film about the suicide of her son.  She said "we should speak about suicide."  (forgetting for a moment NPH "takes balls to wear that dress" comment. It took balls for NPH to come out of the closet, and to do this show.)  Then just a few moments later, a young man gets up for winning the script award for ''The Imitation Game" and talks about suicide.  His own. How he had tried it because he didn't fit in.  Because he felt "weird." And he said "to all you who feel weird look where I am today."  He said it's okay to feel weird.  It's what makes us human.

Coincidence?  

What are the odds that a woman would say moments prior to her accepting the award that "we should talk about suicide" and a few seconds later a man stands up and does EXACTLY THAT?

Then take the song for "Selma."  The set of the Pettis bridge, that iconic bridge that became a focal point for the Dr. Martin Luther King's journey in this lifetime.  It was the bridge you cross to get to vote.  People were gassed and beaten to stop them from crossing the bridge.  Dr. King led the march - and it finally took the national guard to ensure their trip across that bridge.

And then the artist known as Common actually used the metaphor of the bridge to show that it's a bridge that connects us all.  That the bridge from ignorance to enlightenment exists.  That the song that has inspired many people comes from the same source.  The actor who played Dr. King (David O) had tears streaming down his face.  He channeled Dr. King in his performance.  It's pretty unusual for a fellow from England to so accurately find a voice and gestures of someone so foreign to his background.. and yet, he was clearly channeling Dr. King in his performance. Certainly Dr. King enjoyed that performance last night as well.

And John Legend and Common were clearly channeling Dr. King, or the energy behind Dr. King's message of nonviolence change in their song.  And in their speech.  The reason it resonates is that it is spiritual.  It is of the spirit. 


Then the lessons of playing roles of people with issues or problems in our society.  "The Imitation Game" deals with the powerful story of a man who signed up for a lifetime where he could not only solve the enigma code, but also a lifetime where he could demonstrate that being gay should never have been a crime.  I would venture to say that he SUCCEEDED IN HIS ENDEAVOR.


We have the story of a man who signed up to live a life in a wheelchair, using only his mind to wrestle with the most complex problems of the universe.  I would argue that he chose that lifetime because if he had lived his life normally, he never would have gone as far or gotten as deep as he has.  That the lifetime that Stephen Hawking chose, is dramatically proven that he SUCCEEDED IN HIS ENDEAVOR. (And would argue that he can find the theory of everything in examining how it came to be that he chose a lifetime like his own.)

And the actors who played these roles - E Redmayne and B Cumberbatch - are doing exactly the SAME THING that these souls are doing - signing up to play a role, one that is difficult, one that represents deeper truths, deeper spiritual lessons - and they got awards for them at the Oscars.  Because that's what we do when our fellow beings choose difficult lifetimes - when we greet them in the afterlife we APPLAUD THEM just as these people were applauded last night.

CITIZENFOUR is a film about a fellow who made a difficult choice in this life - to go into data collection, and then seeing what he'd seen - to reveal it to the world at great risk to his life and family.  

The soldier Manning did the same kind of revelation - and she credited looking at the planet Earth from outer space - the "PALE BLUE DOT" of Carl Sagan fame's photo - where she observed that everyone on Earth is the same, and doesn't deserve to be tortured or killed without reason.  And decided to speak up about it (and took the consequences).  Chelsea Manning.  The Overview Effect.  In like form, Snowden sees the planet from this bigger perspective - not us versus them, but us versus us.  

Who are we if we use information that's private against fellow human beings?  Crime prevention is one thing, but as he notes in TODAY'S REDDIT SESSION with Glenn and Laura, not a single terrorist act has been affected by the collection of all this private data.  Still - who among us could give up their lives for what they believe in?  Certainly one day he will have the applause and accolades he deserves - whether it be future generations, or directly from his soul group. 

Luana Anders starred in "Board and Care" an oscar winning film. Producer Sarah Pillsbury neglected to thank her. I don't think Luana cared.  But Jack Nicholson mentioned her in his Oscar speech for "As Good As It Gets." She's the inspiration for "Flipside"

The same goes for BIRDMAN, a film about ego, and the variations of what it does to control our lives, to drive us down avenues we wouldn't normally go... the film is variations on that theme - what lengths will we go for love? what lengths will we go for ego? are there metaphors that follow us around in our lifetime? that going on stage is a bit like jumping off the edge of a building? that allowing creativity to soar off the edge of a cliff, not knowing where we will land is worth praising?  that the good that we do reverberates through all those who experience it?  The film examines the "darkside" of EGO, but it's also a film about courage and daring - and when all is lost to actually allow our inner voice to champion who we really are .. even if it means pulling a gun on stage - after all, we're just actors upon the stage, and there is nothing that can happen to us that we can't examine later with the help of our friends and soul group...

 and I would argue that by forcing us into streets we normally wouldn't traverse, the ego does a yeoman's job of getting us to live lives that are beyond what he might have imagined them to be, and that we are all SUCCEEDING IN THAT ENDEAVOR.  Hence we are all Oscar winners when we get to our final bow.

Author with Charles Grodin
After all that's why you've been drawn to this page, this blog, this research. Because you know on some level, that we really don't die.  That we really are here to celebrate life in all its forms.  So please, take a bow for the path and journey you've chosen.

And as Mike Myers would say: "End scene." 


Saturday, February 21, 2015



Dr. Oliver Sacks announced today that he's been told he has months to live, and wrote about it eloquently in The New York Times today.  

"Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life.

On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. But there will be time, too, for some fun (and even some silliness, as well).


I feel a sudden clear focus and perspective. There is no time for anything inessential...."


Dr. Sacks is one of the pre-eminent brain researchers of our time. ("The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat")
I completely understand his desire to keep his mind focused and his life geared to those things that he considers essential. This is his path and journey, and he's following it exactly as he's planned it.
 I don't know if he's familiar with Dr. Greyson's work at the University of Virginia dealing with consciousness ("Is Consciousness Created by the Brain") or neuroscientist Mario Beauregard PhD's research in neuroscience ("Brain Wars") or Dr. Sam Parnia's recent "Aware Study" results of what people experience while having a near death experience, but if he was familiar with this work, he would have a new appreciation for the facts that show our energy, or whatever it is that animates our bodies, our souls, do not die.
 That the transition to the Flipside is more like leaving a stage, walking through a door, or stepping into a pool of water than whatever's been suggested in the past.
He's got an entirely new adventure to experience ahead of him - and it's not one of dissolution of mind, in fact it's entirely the opposite, reconnecting with our higher selves, where most of our energy resides in this other realm, where he experience all of our lifetimes, and see the nature of reality from a place of full consciousness.  Not omniscience, not all knowing, but certainly more knowing than what we experience here.
But I mention him because in his work he's examined cases of people who hear "celestial music" and he concluded that it's either crytomnesia (hearing it from somewhere else) or hallucinatory. 
 I've found numerous cases of people hearing music during their near death experience, or even during a between life hypnotherapy session - and in some cases, it can be proven that they could not have heard the music or been hallucinating it.
In Mario Beauregard's interview in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" he cites cases where people have been blind from birth, who had a near death experience, but were able to describe what people were wearing in the hospital room, or what colors they were wearing, even though they should not have been able to.  In like form there are cases where people are deaf and have had a near death experience, and seen or heard things that they could not in their conscious lives.  
At some point you have to allow for the facts as they're presented to speak for themselves.  There are numerous cases of people who have died, meaning no blood going to the brain, where they see or hear events their conscious mind should not be able to.  In Dr. Greyson's talk "Is Consciousness Created by the Brain" he cites cases where people with alzheimers who should not be able to remember anything, suddenly remember with clarity great detail just prior to their passing.  And after death, the autopsies show that their brains should not have been able to access these memories.  
The point being, that the brain appears to function more like a receptor, or receiver of consciousness.  And that reception is not the creator of the music so to speak, but merely accessing it.
The following is an excerpt from "It's a Wondeful Afterlife: Further Adventures into the Flipside" where I talk a bit about "Celestial Music."
There have been numerous accounts of people hearing these dulcet tones, from Beethoven to other classical composers who heard the music running in their head during their waking hours. 
I've spoken with Stuart Sharp, or at least emailed with Stuart, who is cited below as someone who had an experience with celestial music.  He has a pretty amazing story, where the night before the funeral of his son, he had a vivid dream where he was listening to an awesome symphony.  And one of the people he saw in his vision, a guardian angel of sorts, said to him that he needed to remember what he was hearing because one day he would be performing the symphony in front of people.

And the music haunted him so much that he left his job as a cook in a pub in England, and wound up with only a guitar to his name.  One day he was playing some of the music he had heard out in the street as a busker, and someone from the BBC spoke to him about his tune, and Stuart told him the story... and lo and behold, Stuart eventually composed the music and conducted the London Philharmonic playing the song he'd heard in his head.  
The point is, that it was not a hallucination of music he'd heard previously. Oddly enough, Google makes "crawlers" that "crawl through various music posted on line to find the original authors of various compositions - so if what Stuart had heard had ever been performed by anyone else, it would have shown up in their copyright infringement notice.

I've spoken to many near death experiencers who heard "celestial music" during their near death experience.  In my research, I note that when someone hears "new information" from the afterlife, or spirit world - meaning information they could not have learned while being alive, could not have heard or experienced in their journey or path on this planet, then that experience must point to another paradigm at play.  

If you hear, sense, feel or experience something (music, someone telling you something, someone introducing you to a family member you didn't know you had, as in the case of Dr. Eben Alexander, and Colton Burpo, who both met sisters they didn't know existed - could not have known existed) that is new information from the Flipside... then it is proof that there is a Flipside.

 IPSO ERGO FACTO.




“I contemplate the luminous bodies continually revolving within their orbits, the sun, the stars, and then my spirit rises beyond these constellations, millions of miles, to the Source from which all creation flows and from which new creations flow eternally.”   -- Ludwig Von Beethoven

How does music fit into these visions of the afterlife?
During LBLs and NDEs people often report “hearing” music that’s not of an Earthly nature.  In a number of LBLs I’ve heard people report that music and healing come from “related” places in the universe.   But there are many musicians who claim to hear music when composing.
When we study the great composers, like Beethoven, we find that they spoke often of “hearing celestial music.” Oliver Sacks, the renowned scientist, considers this “hallucinatory music.”  As he notes:
True musical hallucinations are experienced by those who have them as unprecedented and deeply disquieting. There is insufficient awareness among physicians of musical hallucinations, in part because patients are reluctant to report them, fearing that they will be dismissed or seen as ‘crazy’. But musical hallucinations are surprisingly common, affecting at least 2% of those who are losing their hearing, as well as patients with a variety of other conditions. Working with a population of elderly patients (though I have seen it in younger people as well), I am often given vivid descriptions of musical hallucinosis, and I think it is by far the most common form of non-psychotic hallucination. I related two stories of musical hallucination in my 1985 book “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat,” and since then have received hundreds of letters from people with this condition. With musical hallucinations it is common for several voices or instruments to be heard simultaneously, and such experiences are almost always attributed, initially, to an external source. Thus in 1995 I received a vivid letter from June M., a charming and creative woman of 70, telling me of her musical hallucinations:
“…Most of the music I hear is from my past—many of the songs are hymns, some are folk music, some pop up from the forties and fifties, some classical and some show tunes. All the selections are sung by a chorus—there is never a solo performance or any orchestration. This first started last November when I was visiting my sister and brother in law in Cape Hatteras, NC, one night. After turning off the TV and preparing to retire, I started hearing ‘Amazing Grace.’ It was being sung by a choir, over and over again. I checked with my sister to see if they had some church service on TV, but they had Monday night football, or some such. So I went onto the deck overlooking Pamlico Sound. The music followed me. I looked down on the quiet coastline and the few houses with lights and realized that the music couldn't possibly be coming from anywhere in that area. It had to be in my head.”
It was not clear why June M. started to have musical hallucinations, or why she still has them, 11 years later. She has excellent hearing, is not epileptic, has no known medical problems and is intellectually quite intact. With her, as with many other patients, the most searching examination may fail to pinpoint the cause of musical hallucinations…” [1]
There is another possible explanation for the source of her music that Dr. Sach’s hasn’t explored: that it is not created by her mind.
A speaker can sometimes pick up the vibrations from other sound waves and reproduce them, but the sound is not being created by the speaker. Sometimes our radio picks up bursts of short wave radios from police scanners, but it’s not that the announcement is created by our stereo.
In Eben Alexander’s NDE he heard “celestial music.”  “I heard… the richest, most complex, most beautiful piece of music (I’ve) ever heard.” It’s also one of the hallmarks of NDE’s according to Bruce Greyson’s research.
“As a high school student, Burt Bacharach always had trouble getting to school on time: he couldn't sleep at night because he kept hearing music in his head. Throughout his life, Bacharach would never stop hearing music, because for him music would always be about sounds rather than ideas.” [2]
In David Bennett’s interview (“Voyage of Purpose”) he talks about hearing a “canyon of sound” during his NDE.  He gives specific details on what that music sounds like. 
Pete Townshend, legendary member of the band, The Who, heard celestial music as an 11 year old boy. “Townshend tells of hearing the music while on a boat with his Sea Scout troop. “I heard violins, cellos, horns, harps and voices, which increased in number until I could hear the threads of an angelic choir. It was a sublime experience. I have never heard such music since and my personal music ambition has always been to rediscover that sound and relive its effect on me.”[3]
Stuart Sharp heard celestial music when he was a young man. The experience was similar to Townshend’s: he first heard the angelic orchestra in a dream as a boy in 1956. Years later he heard it again after his baby son Ben died at birth. He explains: “In my dream I was back at Ben’s graveside staring down at his tiny white coffin. I heard distant angelic music with choirs, violins, cellos, horns and harps that grew in intensity and I gasped as Ben’s spirit rose slowly through the coffin. I couldn’t bring myself to see him in the mortuary. I didn’t have the courage.”
He was so haunted by the music he quit his job as cook in a Leicestershire country pub, left his wife and two daughters and moved to London and into a homeless shelter. He taught himself to play music after he bought a battered guitar from a second-hand shop which, by an amazing co-incidence, happened to be owned by Townshend’s parents. Eventually Stuart Sharp met someone who was moved by his story and helped him record with the London symphony – the result is an orchestral piece called “Angeli Symphony.”[4]
I’ve found other accounts, just from searching them out on the internet. From the NDE of “Jeanette Mitchell-Meadows”: “When I went for surgery the operation took nine hours. During the operation my spirit left my body, in the time it takes to blink an eye, I was in Heaven and saw the light of Heaven… There were musical notes I have never heard on Earth.  They were so clear and flawless, and the tone was so beautiful.  It is the most wonderful place to be. [5]
Or the account of an NDE from Canadian musician Gilles Bedard: "All day long, I went in and out of a coma… Then I saw myself from the ceiling. I was nine feet higher than my body and I was looking down at the people around me.... My vision expanded and I went into a place like a cosmos where there were twelve people standing in a half-circle. They were all pure white lights and they had no faces. I somehow knew these people although they weren't family or people I could recognize. It was as if they were waiting for me. I asked them what was happening, and they told me, 'You are not going to die. You are going back to Earth. You have something to do.' I asked them what it was, and as soon as I asked it was as if I knew the answer… What I remembered most is the music I heard when I was out of my body. It was fascinating.[6]





ref-[1] “The Power of Music” by Oliver Sacks. Oxford Journals Brain Volume 129.
ref-[2] “Self-Portrait of an Experimental Songwriter” David Galenson, Huffington Post 2-19-14
ref-[3]“Who I am: a Memoir” by Pete Townshend Harper, 2013
ref-[4] “Homeless man turns haunting noises in his head into symphony” The Express May 2, 2013
ref-[5] http://www.bibleprobe.com/mitchell-meadows.htm
ref-[6] Gilles Bedard's Near-Death Experience and Music Research by Kevin Williams  http://www.near-death.com/music.html

excerpt from "It's a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures Into the Flipside" Volume One.  All Rights Reserved. Copyright Richard Martini 2014.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Main Stream Science v Flipside


"Oh please so thoroughly debunked by mainstream science...."

As I note in the Introduction to "It's a Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures into the Flipside"this research is not for everyone.

One fellow wrote that I was deluded by my own fear of the unknown, and had somehow created this fantasy of an afterlife.
Today I got the above note from someone who watched my book talk (posted below) "It's a Wonderful Afterlife."

So here's my reply:

"Ah, finally, someone weighs in from main stream science! 

Hmm. Let's see. How main stream can we get? "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" features Dr. Bruce Greyson, psychiatrist, author of "Irreducible Mind" from University of Virginia discussing "Is Consciousness Created by the Brain" (free on youtube, I suggest you watch it). 

Then we have Gary Schwartz PhD ("Sacred Promise") (Harvard/Yale PhD, now teaching at University of Arizona talking a scientist talking about the science behind his research in consciousness). Then we have neuroscientist  Mario Beauregard PhD ("Brain Wars") from University of Montreal, now teaching University of Az, talking about post materialist science, disproving that NDEs can be assigned to part of the brain. So who is in the main stream? 

 Dr. Eben Alexander's also a Harvard Neurosurgeon, and his near death experience is just one of thousands that are equally powerful and revelatory. Let's start with the definition of skeptic. I'm sure you know what that is - someone who doesn't "believe in the prevailing school of thought" - the prevailing "school of thought" might also be called "main stream." 

But of course, the main stream science is predicated on the belief that the brain is the source of all consciousness. And I'm sorry to inform you, that's just not the case. It's not in the science. It's not in the data. So we can go around and around the circle of what constitutes science - but I defer to Gary Schwartz's definition, as he put it in "Flipside:" 

 "According to the prevailing views of mainstream science, there can be no such thing as the incarnation of consciousness because the brain is the sole creator of consciousness... (however) an emerging body of consciousness research.. when combined with contemporary quantum physics, seriously challenges (that belief). This new evidence requires we consider the idea of the incarnation of consciousness, and by extension, the plausibility (if not probability) of reincarnation.... this is the kind of book where once you have read it, you will no longer be able to see the world in the same way again..." 

 As Gary so aptly points out, 100 years ago, 5 people watched the Wright Bros fly a plane, up to then, an impossible feat. Did any of those 5 imagine that 100 years later flights would be ferrying millions of passengers every day? In like form, 100 years from now, the study of consciousness - and the verification that life doesn't end with death, will be as commonplace as a trip to starbucks for your cappuccino. 

The ability to understand, and converse with those who are no longer on the planet will be as commonplace as using a cellphone. And the insights that they will allow us to access, which will alter the face of the planet on every level, will be as commonplace, and considered to be "main stream" as apple pie, baseball, and instead of posting on youtube, mind mail where I can reply without having to use these lazy fingers. My two cents."

Monday, February 16, 2015

Music in the Afterlife and Flipside Book Talks


Interesting... a number of folks stopped by on Valentine's Day to check out the blog... Wonder why that could be? Looking for a soul mate? Or just a little bit of soul? Well here's two links for y'all... one is to my many book talks - they're all posted on youtube, and if can't get enough of my dulcet tones yakking about the afterlife, they're posted for free. 

Caveat Emptor - well, there's no buyer here, more of a general Caveat - this research isn't for everyone. You're on your path for a reason, and I'm not here to job you off of your path. Or to chase after you and point you in another direction. Or to stand in front of you and wave my arms and say "look over there!" I did an interview on a blog radio spot the other day, (will post a link when it's available) and the interviewer asked "So why is this information important?" 

And I said "Because we don't have the luxury of watching the planet Earth get ruined or destroyed by those who think they only have one life to live. If you don't want to save the planet for your children or your grandchildren, fine, but at the very least consider that it might be true what all these people are saying about returning to Earth in the future. So save the planet if only for your own ability to taste fresh water, clean fresh air, and live in a healthy environment... in a future lifetime."

 For that reason alone, I offer this research.


Then, someone who read "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" found my recommendation for "The Afterlife of Billy Fingers" and as some point, Billy says that the background music that he's heard in the afterlife reminds him of the piece below by Sibelius. 

I interviewed jazz artist Deron Johnson​ about where music comes from. He thought a bit, and said "It's just below the surface" and made a gesture describing water in a pool, and how music lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness. 

In the book "The Afterlife of Billy Fingers" Billy mentions this opus when trying to describe what the background music he hears in the afterlife realm. (I'd prefer to hear Beethoven's 9th myself, or perhaps Muddy Waters) but was just reminded of this particular piece noted below. Sibelius. The Swan of Tuonela. Enjoy. 


Friday, February 6, 2015

Ohio Boy Remembers his Life as a Chicago Girl


Dr Jim Tucker's research from UVA (took over for Ian Stevenson, Tucker's books cite many cases) corroborates these kinds of stories, and second, ignore the "catchwords" like "horrible death" or "ghost in my child." How horrible can it be that he not only didn't die, but chose to return again as thus blue eyed angel in Ohio? How can we call it a "ghost" when it's just a previous remembered life? The research shows we choose each life carefully, with the help and guidance of our loved ones. And if you want to see the research, read "Flipside" or "Its a Wonderful Afterlife." cites the latest studies in consciousness, pointing to how this story could be accurate. It also points to the shallowness of our tribal mentality, us vs them, left vs right, fundamentalist vs liberal - if we choose who we're going to be in the next lifetime, how do we judge a person's choice in this lifetime?



Ohio family convinced son lived another life as a Chicago woman


CHICAGO —  Do you believe in past lives? An Ohio boy’s family says they didn’t, until little Luke started sharing specific details. He spoke about living another life, in Chicago, as a woman who suffered a horrific death.
WJW’s Suzanne Stratford has the story in the video above.

Journey Into Tibet

I spent a few weeks with Robert Thurman in Tibet, documenting his journey there. There are clips avail on youtube, but here is the complete documentary "Journey Into Tibet."

GoodReads