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Afterlife Evidence

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etymology: a very brief history of the words 'mystery' and 'mystical'

Our English term “mystery” finds root-word origin in the Greek word “mystikos,” literally meaning, “an initiate.”

In the ancient world, many “mystery religions” tantalized its initiates with the prospect of special knowledge of the gods.

The related word “mysticism” offered the sense of “I conceal,” that is, the new member of the mystery religion promised to reveal said special knowledge to no one.

In the New Testament, the Greek word for “mystery” is employed in "twenty-eight passages" but “in a complex manner," with various nuances (Galen Wiley, "A Study Of 'Mystery' In The New Testament”). Essentially, New Testament writers speak of “mystery” to denote “the ancient secret of God now revealed to the church.”

Our modern understanding of “mystery” or “mystical” extends these primal definitions to, “even though secrets may have been revealed, we still don’t understand them.”

definitions of “mystical experience” from philosophy and psychology

It is common for academia to refer to the “mystical experience” as a “non-structured” and “non-sensory awareness” which might “include content of a kind not appropriate to sense-perception.”

Here, discussion of the mystical experience, however, is heavily laced with qualifying terms such as “allegedly” or “purportedly” or “without necessarily accepting the report as accurate.” The mystical experience is judged as little more than cognitive “conditioning by a mystic’s language and culture.” In other words, "they're seeing what they're programmed to see."

Materialistic university philosophers and psychologists effectively categorize the “mystical experience” virtually as a branch of abnormal psychology. It's deemed a quasi-mental disorder, ranging from wishful thinking, possibly hallucination, or even more severe psychoses denoting detachment from reality - that is, a reality based upon an atheistic universe, solely comprised of matter.

definitions of 'mystical experience' which many might relate to

Start asking around, and you will be surprised at the number who might confess to having had a mystical experience. Most won't talk about it in mixed company, lest a frankness invite judgments of imbalance. WWII hero Bob Feland saw it this way.

For these, the mystical experience would include such elements as “a unitive vision”; “a sense of universal oneness”; “a temporary collapse of the dysfunctional ego”; “an eradication of perceptions of separateness”; “finding oneself suffused with love, joy, peace”; “an inner calm, a knowing of abundance”; “a heightened sense of God.”

a woman shares her story of unexpected plunge into the mystical experience

In his book “Man Is A Spirit” (1918), J. Arthur Hill presents many examples of “the scientific evidence for the afterlife.” But, near the end of his writing, he offers something new, the testimony of a Mrs. R. E. Weldon and her mystical experience:

What is the mystical experience (ME) in its essential essence?

Before I comment on Mrs. Weldon’s statements, allow me to speak to “just what is a mystical experience, anyway?”

It’s not a psychic experience. If one receives a message via psychic-mediumship, it’s coming through the medium, not from her. The medium is like a radio receiver and can report only what is given.

It’s not like an out-of-body experience. During the OBE, one becomes detached from the five senses and might astral-travel without a physical body. The term “ecstasy” literally means “standing outside (the body),” and while the ME, metaphorically, could be labeled an “ecstasy” due to attendant joy, the ME is not obliged to associate with the OBE. And if the ME occurs with an OBE, this occurs coincidentally with no necessary connection to the process.

What is really going on with the ME?

A certain image comes to mind. Think of the Hoover Dam:

The Hoover wall spans 726 vertical feet – more than a tenth of a mile high (for comparison, the Empire State Building is 1250 feet tall).

It holds at bay and commands the burgeoning, tumultuous Colorado River.

Imagine the tremendous water-pressure pushing against the wall, trying to break through.

What might all this signify? Any analogy quickly falls apart if extended too far, but this is what I see:

The Hoover wall is the dysfunctional ego, repressing humankind, blocking the "true self".

The Colorado River is the God-consciousness / soul-energies / true-self ever pressing forward to manifest in our lives.

Most people believe that God has gone off somewhere, is reclusive, hard to find. The opposite is true. God constantly presses forward to reveal herself, but it is we who run and hide -- and then self-righteously blame God for not caring.

“God is Light” says the scripture, meaning, it is God’s nature to offer full disclosure, to share “secrets,” make everything plain, all in the open. But most of us will have none of it.

Editor’s note: The ancient mystery religions and the New Testament had this wrong: God has no hidden agenda, purportedly, long sequestered since the beginning. “A Course In Miracles” makes a big point of this: "God has no secrets. He does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey's end, why He did this to you"; in other words, we can know now, if we want to. Word Gems devotes hundreds of pages to this topic and related matters. As a primer, see the article on “the true self”.

For our purposes at hand concerning the ME, the implications are profound and grand. It was God’s intention, “from the beginning,” that humankind should have ready access to divinity. This means that the ME was meant to be a normal part of our journey on planet Earth, not something foreign.

Before we proceed with this aspect of our discussion, let us survey the testimony of Mrs. Weldon.

Editor’s commentary on Mrs. Weldon’s mystical experience

The first thing I notice – among many important items – is that her experience was prompted by, interwoven with, feelings of romantic love; albeit, long repressed due to her life-situation.

There are gradations of the ME. The “river is always pressing against the wall,” so to speak, but, when it breaks through, it does so to different degrees. This means that the mind of God will be revealed variously. Yes, “God is Light,” but the intensity of the luminosity will be different according to the quality of the ME.

I perceive that the highest forms of the ME will be associated with the true love and the eternal Twin-Soul marriage. This is so because these represent ultimate reality more closely than lesser joys. We were “made in the image of God, female and male,” and the heights of accessing “what’s real” will incorporate this fundamental truth. There is good reason why ancient Spirit Guides speak of “Mother-Father God.” In some sense, the essential energies of God reflect this female-male essence, and the closer we draw near to this archetypal pattern of highest reality, the nearer to absolute truth -- which is the mind of God -- we shall be.

Mrs. Weldon refers to what mystics call a ‘total field’ of perception

"I saw Love... I had reached, Reality, I had Found... I seemed to see Life whole"

For 60 years Krishnamurti traveled the world speaking of “truth as a living thing.” The ego, he said, distorts our vision of reality, but, as we begin to see, it comes to us as a “total field” of perception. See K's "valentine's day, 1969" lecture wherein he speaks of "total field."

This needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated but this ancient analogy helps us:

My old college friend, Adrian, recently reminded me of the Sufi parable of the elephant:

There’s a well known Sufi story from the 12th century about a group of blind people trying to figure out what an elephant is. One person would feel the ear and say it’s like a velvet carpet; another would feel the trunk and say no, it’s a hollow pipe; yet another would feel the leg and say it’s a pillar - but no one has the vantage point to see the whole elephant. The totality of experience is never accessible.

No one sees the “whole elephant” – because this would require the entire mind of God – but that smaller part which we might see, when it comes, does so in a non-fragmented way, a “total field” of perception. And during the ME, it will feel to be this way, this unitive sense of all things. A panoramic, high-mountain, view of life infuses one, of the sort which the materialistic mind will never achieve.

Mrs. Weldon qualified her statement with, this did not make her “infallible.” She said, however, that one’s powers of inference are hugely augmented. One begins to easily “sense the energies” in all aspects of life and the world; to see things, and know things, and perceive things, which others cannot attain to. And this is what the apostle Paul meant when he said that the spiritual mind judges and discerns all things.

she perceived, within herself, a transformative power - flooding, purging, pouring in, breaking down barriers, filling, renewing, guiding, urging one in a definite way

"With the Divine depth thus revealed to me the depths of my own soul were in communion. Divine Love, transformed and transforming, was the life-blood of my soul; it seemed to flood my whole being, breaking down barriers and melting hardness, purging and renewing and filling me with more love for my fellow-creatures than I had felt before...

"In the days and weeks that followed ... fresh spiritual knowledge poured in upon me. It seemed to me to be the new birth of which Christ spoke. I had, as it were, been thrust into the spiritual world, and knew by direct sight and experience. It was a new point of view, as if one viewed life from above and within, in a new spirit...

"I came to see that there is in every man a 'Christ seed' from which the real spiritual man is to grow... the main impulse and the guiding and enlightening came from within, and presently it urged me in a definite way..."

For Mrs. Weldon, the Hoover wall had been breached, and the flood-waters came rushing in. Swept away, in good measure, was the dysfunctional ego that had been blocking perceptions of God, love, life, and wisdom.

those closest to you will definitely notice a change

"I had acquired a sense of certainty and of freedom and of power. I felt different, and I saw that my friends noticed a difference...

None of this happens in a hidden corner. We're talking about real, substantive change, an advancement, to one's inner person -- all due to a ratcheting up of one's level of consciousness. People will notice. This is not the kind of elusive, empty-platitude change offered by Big Religion. It is utterly life transformative.

a higher form of love, one cleansed of the ego's sense of separateness

"It seemed that he was part of me..."

Editor's note: As there are joint-NDEs, so are there, in effect, joint-MEs - that is, with one whom you love as your own life.

John-and-Mary love, along with all other interactions in the world, will be perceived as "subject and object" and, with romantics, "lover and beloved."

What's wrong with this? - these are forms of love which the ego taints with "distance," of "you and me," a degree of separateness.

And why is this a problem? The ego will engender a proclivity toward fear, a sense of loss, of not having enough, and myriad similar. All these tend to poison a relationship.

In the ME, however, all barriers which divide people melt away. This is God's mind of oneness - but it's just a slogan until we meet it head-on in the ME.

What I've said here might not sound like much, but, allow me to say, once experienced, it will dazzle you with its potency. I've created a Kairissi-and-Elenchus discussion featuring this concept. I count it as one of the most important insights of my life. See it here:

Kairissi and Elenchus discuss how lovers' perceptions of existential beauty lead them to ultimate intimacy and oneness

reclaiming the missing 2% of certainty about the afterlife

"My own conviction of the undying life of the soul, and so of what we call a future life, is not founded on the sort of evidence required by those who seek for belief in it from communication with the departed. I believe in the fact of this communication, but I arrived otherwise at the conviction."

"... if I was alive he could not be dead."

When the Hoover wall is breached, when the energies of God’s mind come flooding through, when the ego with its sense of “distance” and separation is largely neutered, then, a certainty of the afterlife fills one’s spirit as easily as air fills a room. Total certainty.

No “scientific evidence” is required. And this is the message of ancient Spirit Guides: they long for us to put away the "training wheels" of physical evidence and move on toward developing the insights of one’s spirit-led mind. See the discussion on the “true self” page.

If the ME is meant to be a normal part of life, why have so few experienced it?

Why are so few successful in life in almost any area?

Well, I think we know answer. Very few are willing to invest themselves and resources to engage destiny. However, successful negotiation of the ME is not exactly a function of human effort.

Is it possible to encourage, invite, or facilitate the occurrence of the ME?

The answer is complicated. Generally, we would have to say no. The soul has its own timetable for evolvement and cannot be forced, cajoled, or managed by what we do at the surface of life. Mrs. Weldon commented:

"I found that the experience is not one that anyone can command — it is a gift. I can't command it myself."

All this acknowledged, if one is substantially interested in vitalizing the soul, it may be true that this interest, itself, may reflect the “deeper self” leading one to these purposes. If this is the case, then we can talk about awakening one’s latent soul-energies.

What we are sure of is that “the Colorado River ever presses against the Hoover wall.” This never stops. It is God’s incessant desire to bring all of us to sentience and maturity.

And I think it’s possible to enter the ME with “baby steps.” The WG pages devoted to the “true self,” “surrender and acceptance,” “Krishnamurti’s lectures,” “life-1.minute,” "certainty," "best evidence," "levels of consciousness," and “zen” open the discussion for us.

We can enter a “conscious breathing” program of only 2 or 3 minutes a day, and this will offer noticeable results, over the coming months and years, concerning the decline of the ego in one’s life. We will begin to experience “flashes” of insight, mini-“total field” perceptions. I speak from experience.

And concerning the full-blown ME, of dramatic proportion, of the kind Mrs. Weldon experienced – well, we can’t program that, and it may come to "the sinner" before it comes to "the saint" -- think of Paul's Damascus Road ME, while on his way to do harm to Christians; but, eventually, we’ll all receive the major ME. In my own case, this whole process began totally unexpectedly with the “full monty ME, and all the trimmings,” and this prompted me to employ the "baby steps" conscious-breathing program to recapture the full experience. I was like Robert Conway trying to get back to Shangri-la. In any case, I believe it is the destiny of every human being to share in such.

revelation vs inspiration

Editor's note: Death and the afterlife: Eight evenings of lectures on the Summerland (1862), Andrew Jackson Davis.

From his visions of Summerland, Jackson discussed the existence of untold number of “brotherhoods” (see “The Wedding Song” for more information). Former members of Earth’s religions and philosophies, for centuries or thousands of years, still adhere to the “faith once delivered”. What struck me was that, time and again, it was asserted that these true believers are convinced that one day all inhabitants of Summerland will subscribe to their particular narrow belief system. Party-faithful over there influence Earth-bound counterparts. Jackson describes, along with making a distinction between revelation and inspiration:

“There are persons who still verily believe that [XYZ] is God's exclusive religion. Such spirits hover over their congenial earthly congregations.  Therefore the [members on Earth] do experience real inspirations — not revelations … because revelations open and enlighten the judgment, whilst inspirations excite, vivify, and warm our spirits to action. Many persons are truly inspired who have not common sense. In fact, they may be very highly inspired, and still be very unwise in their externals. On the other hand, when a man has a real revelation — which gently expands and opens the faculties of thought, and which also brings proportion, and depth, and solidity — then inspiration becomes to that man's faculties what sun-heat is to the flowers… It is a cause of growth and of steady fertilization.”

postscript

What is the end of the road of these ‘flashes of insight,’ these ‘total fields’ of perception, these accessings and incorporations of the mind of God?

I don’t think there is an end to this road. I think our potential, as Father Benson has said, knows no upper limit of expansion. I would invite you to read commentary to this regard in the “500 tape-recorded messages from the other side.” Therein, courtesy of Father Benson’s testimony, we’re introduced to an extremely advanced human being, at least 5 billion years old. He’s aware of almost every life-form in the universe. While he's not God, his power is nearly unlimited. He transports himself anywhere in the universe at the speed of thought. -- he is our future.

Each person “made in the image” has this godly potential sequestered in the soul. And, for the next million years, and beyond, we’ll be unpacking it. "Silence your ego and your power will rise."

Kairissi. You know, buddy, I’ve been thinking about the above discussion, and, I have to say, it’s quite overwhelming.

Elenchus. What are you seeing exactly?

K. I don’t know; it’s just that, there’s so much god-life packed into the soul. Where will we be in 5 billion years? What kind of power will we have? It’s all rather mind-boggling.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: "Above all, trust in the slow work of God. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be."

E. It’s interesting. The Earth won’t even be here in 5 billion years. By then, the Sun will have gone super-nova, and the inner planets will be burned to a crisp.

K. If that's true, I should delay replacing the carpet in the living room.

E. Right.

K. The death of the Earth is just part of the natural ebb-and-flow of the cosmos - and we'll be fine on a beach in Summerland. But there’ll be new stars and planets forming to keep Mother-Father God’s family growing. Anyway, none of that really matters when there’s this thing called “eternal life” wrapped up inside you.

E. It is a great feature, for sure.

K. I’m thinking of Mrs. Weldon’s experience. It’s really something. There she is, minding her own business, and the next thing she knows there’s this “life force” deep inside her trying to break free.

E. She called it a “Christ seed.”

K. “Christ seed” or “god embryo” or some incredible power lying dormant within, but then germinating or coming to life and overtaking us.

E. It's like a science-fiction movie where aliens long ago bury something on planet Earth and then at the right time it all rouses itself.

K. It’s pretty wondrous. And coming to mind is what the apostle Paul said about different gifts of the spirit. He said we should seek for what's most important:

New Living Translation: “So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts. But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all.” (I Cor. 12:31)

E. Back then, some of his church members were competing or “showing off” what they could do with the various psychic abilities.

K. They were very immature. And we know that a good psychic is not necessarily a good person.

E. I think Jackson Davis' distinction between revelation and inspiration is very helpful.

K. The common message from a psychic I think would fall under the category of "inspiration."

E. A message from a psychic, by itself, can't change your life - but a revelation can.

K. As stated above, a psychic is just a conduit, the gift comes through and is not of the medium.

E. There are many different kinds of that sort of gift: mental-mediumship, direct-voice, direct-materialization, automatic writing, levitation, healing bodily ailments, transporting oneself instantly over large distances, apporting material objects, suddenly speaking in foreign languages -- 

K. But all these are like “conduits".

E. They can be valuable and serve a good purpose; even so, while Jesus possessed abilities of this nature, he promoted only the "higher" gifts; similarly, they’re not Paul’s “best” or “most important” gifts.

K. No reason to be puffed-up about it – a “pipeline” really isn’t so glamorous.

E. How then would you describe the “best” or “most important” gifts?

K. Though there're different forms, what Mrs. Weldon had takes us in the right direction. The insights and knowledge she became aware of as a result of her mystical experience (ME) were not just coming through her but, in a real sense, were of her.

E. This is an important distinction. While a good psychic is not necessarily a good person, we need to point out that it’s really hard not to be, or become, a good person as consequence of the ME.

K. Look at how many times Mrs. Weldon spoke of her inner transformation. It was like new wine fermenting, threatening to burst the wineskin. She could virtually feel herself expanding into new vistas of consciousness, becoming something new.

E. The 'new birth'! And the apostle Paul, too, his ME changed him a lot in just one day.

K. So, we’re talking about a different order of gift with the ME – it’s not your garden-variety psychic ability.

E. I’m remembering something else just now. In one of the afterlife reports, a Guide spoke of a less-known, less-sensational form of psychic ability. She called it “inspirational mediumship.” Those with this gift “see things” and “know things” about how the universe really works.

K. Elenchus, that’s quite interesting. And, you know what?

E. What?

K. I’m betting that the “inspirational medium” is not a medium at all. I think that gift is mislabeled.

E. Explain this.

K. If the “inspirational medium” were just a “pipeline,” well then, what’s so different about that as opposed to the “mental medium” or the “automatic writer”?

E. I see what you mean. These last two simply relay messages from others in the next world.

K. And if that’s true, then why would we need a separate category for “inspirational medium”? I don’t think it’s mediumship at all. It’s not a “pipeline.” What Mrs. Weldon came to know and see wasn’t being fed to her from some discarnate in Summerland.

E. She was getting it directly from God via her soul-energy connection!

K. And that’s a very big difference. And that’s why the energy-flows she experienced began to change her from the inside out.

E. This is really good. And in “the 500” writing there’s a quotation from someone over there who says that they sometimes learn wisdom from us on the Earth. That could only happen if “the wise” on the Earth are being taught directly from God.

K. Elenchus, I think that the soul-engendered gifts are Paul’s “best” and “most important” gifts.

E. It would have to be that way.

K. And I think we need to somewhat modify our view of the ME. In our materialistic way of thinking, we view the ME as some dramatic, one-time, kind of “fireworks” display of revelation. But it’s not really like that. As Mrs. Weldon would attest, once the “Colorado River breaks through the Hoover wall,” you’re in this whole process in a permanent way. It’s not going anywhere now, and it's there for you every day. The energies released “make a home” in one’s mind, and they’re not leaving. It's an enduring higher level of consciousness.

E. Psychic abilities strengthen and weaken, and can disappear for a while, but the manifestations of the ME, these released soul-energies, don't take a vaction and just build and build in one’s life.

K. Next thing you know, before you can say “I don’t believe in the afterlife,” you’re 5 billion years old and aware of every life-form in the universe - no big deal.

E. Uh-huh. So, summarize this for us, Kriss. What is an “inspirational medium”?

K. It was meant to be an average, normal person, in constant contact with God, living in the daily reality of the ME.

Editor’s note: See the “prayer” article for Paul’s phrase “praying always” which means “remain in constant contact.”

Elenchus: I have a small gift for you, Kriss...

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena [that is, the primacy of consciousness], it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” “If you want to understand the Universe, think of energy, frequency, and vibration.” “My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.” Nikola Tesla

Kairissi. Oh, Elenchus, I love this so much! This is how I want us to live! "My brain is a receiver..." - and our deepest person is linked to God. Now we know how Father Benson's 5 billion year-old friend became all that he is.

'to live in receptivity to the higher self and its remarkable powers'

Lilian Whiting, “The World Beautiful”: “There can be little question that the higher self, one's real self, dwells perpetually in the unseen and in a more direct communion with the Divine forces. To the degree in which we can realize this higher self, establish an identity with it, to that degree can it manifest its powers on this physical plane of life. That is what is sometimes called the subliminal self, whose powers, when unlocked by the hypnotic trance, or by some sudden and supreme occurrence, reveal so marvelous and unsuspected a store of energy or of knowledge or power. To live constantly the life of the spirit instead of the life of the senses is to live in receptivity to this higher self and its remarkable powers.”

While all aspects of truth are related, the following articles are most germane to the subjects of the Dazzling Darkness, the Mystical Experience, and Existential Beauty:

Kairissi and Elenchus discuss how lovers' perceptions of existential beauty lead them to ultimate intimacy and oneness

Touching foreheads, entering a condition of "no you and no me," a quality of sacred silence, the Dazzling Darkness, with no space or separation, an Omega-Point intimacy

The Mystical Experience: 'silence your ego and your power will rise'

Part I, Existential Beauty: Noting a sunrise as messenger of a new day is not the same as discerning the dawn as dreamily enchanting. The sublime awareness allowing for such is untainted by utilitarian concern.

Part II, Existential Beauty: Consonance with the whole: “What is good is in consonance with creation as a whole and therefore also with the world of men. Whenever we see the Good and the True in perfect accord, the Beautiful stands revealed.”

We feel uplifted at the singing note of a bird, a blossoming rose, and with a woman’s grace and loveliness. But can any of these bring about a transformation of heart and mind? Is her mystical allure a basis for authentic love and marriage?

Over the years on WG, we have referred to Twin Soul love as founded upon “soul energies.” However, as Tesla asserted, to know the universe, one must think in terms of “energy, frequency, and vibration.” As such we may be able to further clarify Twins’ affinity as oscillating waves of Consciousness.

plus some extra notes on the Dazzling Darkness in:

Aloneness 1-Minute Essay