text: 43. DEATH IS A RETURN - AsIfThinkingMatters.com
  We instinctually fear death because survival is programmed into us. It's also an unknown, an unknown to which some religions have attached the horror of eternal hell.
  Death is not a mystery. Nor does life beyond death have anything to do with belief and faith. As with all the Big Questions, truth is derived by following the SOLVER principles: Self-responsibility, Open-mindedness, Long view thinking, Virtuous intent, Evidence, and Reason.
  Although not an absolute proof in itself, the idea of immortality is predominant in virtually every culture and has been as far back in time as records were made. Ideas that stand the test of time should be given serious attention. However, although people may say they believe in life beyond death, most can't do so with intellectual pride or confidence. That's because physical existence is all about beginnings and ends, not eternity.
  As we have explored, there is a reality beyond this material world. Evidence and logic prove it. As the actor, Robert Duvall said in a eulogy at the grave of a fallen cowboy in one of his films, "Birth til death. We travel between the eternities."
  As we now survey the proofs of immortality, try not to be dismissive if you don't agree with a particular point. Keep in mind that truth doesn't depend upon the veracity of any one assertion examined separately but on the vast improbability of many reasonable assertions from a variety of fields agreeing on the same falsehood.
  In the previous chapters, evolution was shown to violate a host of natural laws. It is thus a false hypothesis. By contrast, intelligent creation comports perfectly with proven natural laws. As created beings with free will and conscience, it makes most sense that experience on Earth is for the purpose of betterment that would not end with physical existence.
  Einstein's famous equation shows energy and matter don't disappear; they just change places. The immortality of energy/matter, that of which our physicality is composed, suggests our immortality as well.
  Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Since we are comprised of energy, this law, like E=Mc², serves as a metaphor for human immortality.
  4.Timeless Mind Underlies Reality
  Recall that our body atoms are nothing in the material sense. Way down under our material atomic bodies is a quantum reality that is best likened to mind and thought.
  Einstein wrote in his book, The World As I See It, that the universe "reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
  Since mind does not have any of the physical constraints of the material world and is timeless, we, being mind, are also timeless.
  5. Near Death Experiences (NDE)
  More compelling than physics is experiential testimony.
  People who are revived after being clinically dead often report a conscious journey outside the body. By clinical death, I mean the heart has stopped, and the brain shows no electrical activity. Many are not only dead, but under anesthesia at the same time. This proves that any reported consciousness is not from the brain.
  About one in twenty Americans claim to have had an NDE. There are NDE accounts recorded throughout history and in many cultures.
  Thousands of cases have been scientifically studied. For example, a prospective clinical study in the Lancet medical journal (12-15-2001), reported that 62 out of 344 patients who were clinically dead after cardiac arrest had a conscious out of body experience. Most of these, adults and children, described core events of enhanced consciousness, going through a tunnel and into light, life review, telepathic ability, meeting dead friends and family, a sense that it is more real than physical life, a sense of all-embracing love and acceptance, and feeling like they had returned to their true home.
  People blind since birth reported seeing themselves lying in state and described things they have never seen.
  No physical causes such as anoxia, drugs, prior beliefs, resuscitation efforts, or release of endorphins explain the experiences or the transformations. (Naysayers, of course, abound. All of them have either a predisposing religious or atheistic bias. To see some of their arguments and NDE rebuttals, internet search Dr. Jeffry Long [radiation oncologist], or Dr. Pim van Lommel [cardiologist].)
  6. Out of Body Experiences (OBE)
  Some people can enter a trance-like state and then travel with a non-material body into other dimensions. Blind people with no light perception can accurately describe what they see in both the physical and nonphysical worlds during an OBE. One person described a five-digit number on a piece of paper that could only have been seen if she were floating in an out of body state. In a random survey, 339 out of 420 people claimed to have had an OBE. After a heart attack, 26 of 32 patients reported an OBE and gave accurate descriptions of events in the hospital which occurred while they were unconscious.
  Of all societies studied, 437 of them (89%) have some tradition of OBEs. Skulls of children have been found with trepanned holes; a practice used to attempt to facilitate OBEs, astral sorties, and mediumship. Aldous Huxley, Goethe, D. H. Lawrence, Strindberg, and Jack London all reported OBE experiences.
  OBE abilities can be learned, and there are many teachers and opportunities.
  LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), ayahuasca and other DMT (dimethyl tryptamine) and monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) carriers, ketamine, mescaline, THC cannabinoids, ibogaine, and other synthetic and natural compounds can induce OBEs. People use drugs for OBEs because it is easier (but not safer) than training the mind to leave the body on its own.
  7. Reincarnation and Pre-Birth Memories
  Reincarnation was integral to Egyptian culture thousands of years BC. Greek philosophers debated it, and it is a tenet of Jewish Kabbalism, and, as previously discussed, was a doctrine of early Christianity until purged by pagan Roman demigods and their clergy. Today, millions of people around the world subscribe to the belief.
  Granted, popularity and religious dogma do not constitute proofs. However, ideas that reach as far back as history can be explored, and that persist through millennia certainly can intimate an underlying truth.
  But we no longer need to rely on evidence that can be easily dismissed. Reincarnation has now been the subject of serious modern scientific research. The results, although seemingly fantastic, are compelling.
  For example, Dr. Ian Stevenson held an endowed professorship at the University of Virginia. (Dr. Jim Tucker has continued his work at the same University). He traveled the world for almost 40 years investigating more than two thousand cases of children who recall previous lives. (That number has increased to over 2,500 with the continuing work of Dr. Tucker.) His voluminous and scholarly scientific works with photographs and documentation give firsthand accounts of children who, from the time they are first able to speak, beg to be taken "home," pine for parents, husbands, and mistresses in a prior life, and know details of another life there is no way for them to have learned in their present life. Some children, once they learn to speak, even describe thoughts of the mother during gestation and memory as far back as conception.
  For example, at two, little Daniel said he was a 25-year-old mechanic who died in a car crash. He named the mechanic's hometown and the driver of the car. When the family of the mechanic heard of the little boy's claims, they visited him unannounced. The little boy instantly recognized them and named his "past life" sister.
  From the time she was a toddler, Suzy doted on an elderly man she claimed was her husband in a previous life. The man, his wife, and family, could not deny the private details Suzy mysteriously knew about him.
  When Preeti began to speak, she begged to be taken to her "real" family. She named her previous mother and father and the distant town where they lived. When she was taken to the home, Preeti immediately named her previous brothers and sisters.
  A little suburban Virginia boy insisted he owned a farm in a previous life. He described the farm, cows, and shed. Once, while out driving in the car with his family, he cried out that his farm was just around the bend. When they got there every detail of the farm was just as he had described.
  Christian, at the age of two, became obsessed with baseball, insisting on wearing baseball uniforms and sleeping with baseballs. He then told his mom he was Lou Gehrig before becoming her baby. Go to cathy-byrd.com/coast-to-coast to listen to this compelling story.
  The internet is replete with documented cases of reincarnation.
  Hypnotists and psychiatrists help subjects regress to past lives and be cured of emotional problems not alleviated by any other means. Some people suffer suppressed carry-over memories of traumas and relationships from previous lives. Healing results once these events are recalled. Scars and birthmarks have also been explained by such things as gunshots and knife wounds in past lives.
  ​9. Xenoglossy
  Some people, including children, have an inexplicable accent, speak foreign languages and even ancient tongues no longer are spoken anywhere in the world. They explain that it's the language and culture from when they lived in another place, in another life, in another body. (Search xenoglossy on Youtube; also reincarnationexperiment.org)
  Countless people have witnessed apparitions of humans. Sense-presence is a phenomenon whereby a recently passed person is seen, heard, or sensed by another. About 50% of people have experienced this. At Gettysburg, there are ghost tours where numerous sightings have occurred, and voices of the dead have been recorded.
  11. Unexplained Abilities
  Henry Ford said, "I believe that we . . . will come back again . . . and we can utilize the experience we collect in one life in the next. Genius is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more." Children are thus born with extraordinary skills, such as in math, music, memory, and language, present in a past life.
  ​12. Family Dissimilarities
  Remarkable differences exist among family members. Although genetically of the same mold, siblings have disparate and distinct personalities and life objectives. Regression to previous lives explains present life individuality. Who we are is not just nature and nurture; it's other as well.
  13. We Don't Change
  If you introspect, the inner you is the same no matter how far back you remember. The physical body matures, ages and returns to dust following the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The otherworldly nonmaterial you remains, following (in principle) the First Law of Thermodynamics—things don't disappear.
  14. Dream Realities
  A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming and may have some control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment. In those special dreams, as well as in ordinary ones all of us have, an alternate reality can be as real as physical life. We experience a material world, living creatures, communication, feelings, and senses—even some extraordinary abilities like flying (my favorite). If in a dream, while the body is "dead" in sleep, a nonmaterial reality can exist in which you are a part, why couldn't consciousness survive similarly after the body dies? We are, as Prospero remarked, "such stuff as dreams are made of."
  15. After Death Communication
  After I had dismissed evolution and human-made religions, I discovered the ability of mediums to speak to the dead. This opened my mind to the spiritual and fit perfectly with what I was learning about quantum physics.
  In after death communication (ADC), the dead reveal details that prove they are who they claim to be. For example, a psychic medium speaks to a dead child, and the child tells the medium about a toy hidden in a special place. The parents check and find the toy exactly where described. Thousands of other remarkable examples abound in the literature. Television programs featuring psychics also provide remarkable evidence.
  In near death experiences (NDE), out of body experiences (OBE) and after death communication (ADC) via mediums and psychics, the dead describe that they are alive and fully conscious in another dimension. Induction into a state where ADCs can take place reportedly can occur in 98% of those who try. Consider just one of the many websites that offer lessons in this area: induced-adc.com. Allan L. Botkin, Psy.D. says there, "We can very rapidly, reliably, and easily induce an IADC® (induced after death communication) in nearly all people interested in having the experience."
  Many after death communications are accurate as to historical detail. People who died in the early 1700s described three-pronged forks, those who died later in the century described four prongs. Clothing, footwear, and foods described were also consistent with the time. These are only a few examples. A study of past-life accounts yields countless others. (Yes there are charlatans in this field as in all others. They do not invalidate those who actually do communicate with the dead.)
  Regardless of age, location, time or belief system, virtually all who say they have communicated with the dead describe common features about dying and life thereafter. (See following chapters.)
  Medium communication with the discarnate has been, and is, the subject of rigorous scientific study. Research conducted at Windbridge.org has been published in a journal subject to rigorous peer review. One study by Julie Beischel, Ph.D., proves, through quintuple blinded studies and careful statistical methodology (P = .001 [less than .05 is significant]), that mediums can communicate with the dead. This work, worthy of a Nobel Prize, is essentially ignored by mainstream scientific and medical materialists. This study, in itself, should remove any remaining nails in the coffins people think they are destined for.
  Such revelations are nothing new. For example, Wallace (1823-1913), the co-founder of evolution with Darwin, came to an unlikely and astounding conclusion. After personal experiments and examining reports from other scientists that the universe is populated with a hierarchy of nonmaterial spirit beings, he remarked:
  "All my preconceptions, all my knowledge, all my belief in the supremacy of science and of natural law were against the possibility of such phenomena. And even when one by one, the facts were forced upon me without possibility of escape from them, still, as Sir David Brewster declared after being at first astonished by the phenomena he saw with Mr. Home, 'spirit was the last thing I could give in to' . . . for twenty-five years I had been an utter skeptic as to the existence of any preter-human or super-human intelligences, and that I never for a moment contemplated the possibility that the marvels related by spiritualists could be literally true. If I have now changed my opinion it is simply by the force of evidence. It is from no dread of annihilation that I have gone into this subject; it is from no inordinate longing for eternal existence that I have come to believe in facts . . ."
  The Swedish "Leonardo da Vinci" of his era, Swedenborg (born 1688), developed out of body travel skills. Although tainted by Biblical presuppositions, he filled twenty volumes with the results of these travels.
  The inner us—the moral, questioning, creative, volitional part— fits best with the idea that we are nonmaterial creatures who occupy biological bodies in order to develop the ethical character that comes with choice.
  It makes more sense that a lifetime's worth of learning from trying to obey conscience—an inherent drive implanted within—is retained rather than to have it all vanish at the moment of death.
  ​If you send your television to the junkyard and it is smashed to smithereens, the broadcast transmissions it used to receive do not cease to exist. Similarly, our conscious essence, a nonmaterial waveform/energy/consciousness, would not cease to exist just because the brain/body tuner was junked—died.
  ​It would seem that if previous lives are to learn from, then we should be able to recall them. However, we may have had many, even hundreds of such lives. Carrying those memories would make this life impossible. We could be terrified by some memories, regretful of our missteps, or heartsick missing those we have loved.
  The important memories, the ones that can forge us into better people, may not be vividly in mind but are embedded within conscience to help guide our lives.
  The above evidence and logic combined with the previous chapters outlining the nonmaterial, holistic, and timeless nature of reality, and the eternal mind underlying the universe, points to one inevitable conclusion: Death is a change rather than an end; a comma, not a period in our life's story.
  We are not material beings suffering from spiritual illusions, but rather spirit beings suffering from a material illusion.