Voices Across the Veil
Philosophy is the grand assessor of life. Its components are ethics, logic, and aesthetics—the Good, the Rational, and the Beautiful. Most humans are well enough equipped to make assessments within these boundaries such that when all is said and done, we can stay within our comfort zones in how we evaluate our own conduct as well as that of humanity in a world of disparate beliefs and standards of conduct. Philosophy helps us to constrain science, religion, and ideologies from exerting undue influences on us amid much uncertainty. That is the hope if not the reality of human life on Earth. We tend to leave unresolved excesses to the wisdom of Karma, a term that encompasses the balancing mechanisms of Providence in whatever form we may imagine Karma or Providence to exist. It is through these layers of evaluation that we try to achieve dissonance reduction as we seek to find mental, emotional, and spiritual peace of mind. Whether we can help to define spiritual reality by other methods is what this essay seeks to bring to the discussion.
If we accept reality as only that which can be defined in terms of length, mass, time (frequency), temperature, luminescence, or amount of substance, then all discussions about the existence of god as ultimate reality are over before they begin. Such a framework circumscribes the conditions which are preferred by most physical scientists. They take the position that evidence must be delineated by and measured within observational boundaries; otherwise, the discussion ventures over into the domain of the unverifiable such as mysticism, the occult, religion, or astrology. Science has no purpose in venturing there, they say, because there is no verifiable “there” there.
Neither you nor I, however, can describe god, or purpose, or life, death, continuity, or love within the observational restrictions set by those scientists. So why should we let their restrictions set the limits of our discussion? If we can think outside of the boundaries of those restrictions (where god and purpose could exist), and if we can gather substantial evidence of a different kind from outside those restrictions, then physical science could be attempting to impose restrictions on a subject that it cannot deal with because its tools are not up to the task of finding reasonable premises or in stating tentative approximations about what the new evidence portends. Perhaps we need to expand the concept of verifiability to include evidence not heretofore considered by scientists.
I am a social scientist and I try to follow the scientific method in circumscribing my subject matter and its limitations. I find little satisfaction in nudging the boundary markers a fraction of a millimeter after a lifetime of work within the narrow focus of science. My curiosity about life goes much deeper than that. Moreover, I am also able to think about life, death, god, and purpose without mixing or confusing the two domains of inquiry.
I readily acknowledge that most (perhaps all) religions are based on the flimsiest of evidence that no examiner of facts could accept. Neither burning bushes, nor gold plates, nor the prayers, scrawlings or the epiphanies, nor the private “pipelines in the sky” of religionists move me in the least to put any credence into their pronouncements or their beliefs. So, let us set all religions aside as too self-serving to be acknowledged as part of this discussion.
What Is the New Evidence? In the past 150 years or so much discussion has accumulated about god and purpose, and how they are connected and related to us. The evidence gathered is not measurable by the seven physical descriptors stated in the opening paragraph. It is told to us by a wide assortment of individuals from different cultures, ages, and education levels who live and have lived in different locales around the world. Their tales are now being collected and put into coherent formats, necessary steps that help us to find and to make sense of experiences and patterns gleaned from them.
Early assessments have emerged from this evidence that point to a spiritual life after bodily death. The evidence comes to us in the form of near death experiences (NDEs) in which thousands (perhaps millions) of different individuals have “crossed over” the veil between life as we know it to an existence entirely different from, and in a place or a state of existence that is quite expansive of life on Earth. It suggests a state of enlightenment and revelation beyond anything we can see or measure in this world. A notable example is that of Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon. He was an atheist who crossed over during an NDE while on the operating table suffering from a rare form of meningitis. He returned a firm believer in an enlightened afterlife. His later studies of his own data revealed that the part of his brain that might have accounted for neural activity as the source of his out-of-body experiences had ‘flatlined” and was unable to function during his NDE.
A second body of evidence comes to us from mediums who seem to have an ability to communicate across the veil. While there are no doubt charlatans who make similar claims, the evidence from well-intentioned and trustworthy mediums also show striking similarities among their accounts much like the NDE accounts. Together, the NDEs and medium disclosures have helped investigators bring together a loose confederation of 15 million spiritists who—at a minimum—are intrigued by the new revelations and cohesiveness of their reports. The balance of this essay tries to summarize some of their revelations.
The pattern that emerges from the two sets of accounts is this: We all have a spirit that survives our bodies’ deaths. Our spirits cross over into a spirit world where we are greeted by our friends, relatives, and others who preceded us in death in a celebratory homecoming. Virtually all report this homecoming as an incredibly happy and glorious event. Afterward, we meet with a council of elder spirits who review the life we just lived with us. They are not judges. They do point out our strengths and our weaknesses and offer counseling about how we can improve. This review takes place from the impact our life had on others—to persons, animals, vegetation, and to the planet in terms of its eco systems. We get to feel as they felt according to our acts toward them. Our souls are bared to us and to the elder spirits.
We then take our place with our spiritual family, those who exist at the same level of enlightenment as we do. We know all the members of our spiritual family because we have been with them many times in the past in the intervals between incarnations. In this setting we become fully re-acclimated to the spirit life where we can recall many prior incarnations and many cross overs from life in the body to life in the spirit. In our former incarnations we were male, female, rich, poor, handsome, ugly, different races, with and without power, depending on our state of enlightenment and what we each resolved to achieve in our next incarnation—which may have taken place on Earth or on any of millions of other habitable planets in the universe.
In each new incarnation we are expected to show intellectual, moral, and spiritual improvements as if we were on a long, inclined trek toward total enlightenment. We must confront many new obstacles, challenges, triumphs and setbacks. We ultimately gather in experiences from many thousands of incarnations while casting aside our shortcomings. We must show more and more improvement in intellectual, moral, and spiritual behaviors as we use our free will and our consciences as our guides. Our knowledge of the afterlife is deliberately suppressed during each new incarnation so that we are as free to make choices as our consciences urge us to make them.
The spirit world according to these reports consists of billions of spirits at many different levels of enlightenment. The richest or the most powerful person on Earth or elsewhere who lives a selfish life of cruelty to others will find that he or she has no power at all in the spirit world. Moreover, he must associate among others who are also at a low level of enlightenment. He could be in for many new incarnations but on the receiving end of the same kind of cruelty that he meted out.
The only perception of god that has emerged in the body of evidence is that we are unable to comprehend god until we have achieved a very high level of enlightenment. The ultimate purpose of every spirit, however, is to grow to perfection and then to be assumed into the glory that is god. This perception suggests that god is part love, part karma, and part justice. As almost an afterthought, there is no such place as hell, and no torture chambers at all wherein wrongdoers must spend any time at all. Our collective acts from our incarnations define our level of enlightenment today.
Assessment. By way of an early assessment of spiritism, this concept of life, death, an afterlife, and reincarnation differs markedly from any religion that I know about. It is kinder, gentler, and more gracious in terms of its ethics, logic, aesthetics, and its justice. In my limited readings about it, there is no hint about the fate of persons such as Adolf Hitler in terms of the number of incarnations, or the severity of each new life he must endure. And that is OK with me. There is also no definition of god, and no suggestion about god’s form, although it is clear that such an entity exists. Noteworthy is that each spirit must submit a plan for a new incarnation before returning to Earth or elsewhere. Each plan must be approved by god. That sounds a lot like management by objectives, the only management approach that ever made sense to me. As a skeptic of long-standing about religion, the afterlife, and other things spiritual, spiritism stands alone with a very impressive set of principles that make a lot of sense.
The library of articles, videos, books, and other communication sources on Spiritism and near-death experiences comprise an extraordinarily large body of evidence in support of this article. The counter argument that there is no evidence in support of a kind, compassionare, and enlightened afterlife--without judgments--is itself without merit.
Suggested Readings and Videos:
1. The Voice Across the Veil by Sue Scudder, Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2018. Available on Amazon.
2. Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander, MD. Simon & Schuster, 2012.
3. God and the Afterlife. Jeffrey Long, MD. and Paul Perry. HarperCollins, 2017.
4. The near-death experience of Peter Anthony.
5. The near-death experience of Dr. Eben Alexander
6. The near-death experience of Dr, Heather Ross
7. http://afterlifedata.com/.
8. http://voicesacrosstheveil.com/.
9. http://afterlifelibrary.com/.
10. The Spirits Book by Allan Kardec, c. 1857
Google "near death experiences" or "spiritism" for thousands of more examples for an expanded perspectve from many highly trained and learned sources.
