The significance of Near-Death Experiences:

A while ago I published an article on the spiritual perspective of death1. As part of that article I touched briefly on the subject of Near-Death experiences (NDE’s for short), where an individual has a very close brush with death but lives to tell the tale. In my opinion, these NDE accounts are some of the most significant (perhaps, the most significant) stories that we could ever hear or read about. One might even say that if one was only to ever encounter spirituality from one source, this should be it. Hence, today I wish to offer some thoughts on their significance.

As I said in the aforementioned article, the question of whether life continues after physical death is probably the single most significant question of all. Of course it is important to pay attention to the myriad of issues that relate to life on earth. However, the question of life after death relates not only to the vast expanses of eternity beyond the short physical incarnation, but also to the meaning of life itself.

I would suggest that NDE’s offer tremendous insight and inspiration, both in relation to life on earth and obviously also to what follows afterwards. Hence, let us dig in.

The NDE phenomenon in brief:

Since time immemorial human beings have had various experiences of a supernatural and/or spiritual nature. One prevailing common theme is that we are not merely our physical body, but possess a Soul or Spirit which in-dwells the physical form, but also can exist independent of it. Our current world culture has largely dismissed such beliefs as outdated superstitions, but nevertheless, human beings continue to have experiences that convince them of the reality of such things. I do not intend on making a large scale case for the objective reality of spirituality as a whole here. Rather I will attempt to stay close to the subject at hand (NDE’s). However, it will be unavoidable that a consideration of NDE’s will naturally lead to questions about the fundamental nature of reality.

So, a near-death experience (NDE) is an experience of someone who comes either close to clinical death, or may even have no vital signs at all for a period of time before returning (in which case we may debate whether it is valid to say that such a person actually died and returned to life). Whilst the person may be in a coma, under anaesthesia or have no vital signs, they claim that they were fully conscious and experiencing themselves outside of the body and/or in another dimension of reality altogether.

Many prominent NDE researchers have popularised lists of common features of NDE’s. I’m going to try to avoid simply copying these, and rather go by memory in order to attempt to give my own take on the matter. So, the following are some common features of NDE’s:

– An out of body experience (OBE) in which someone experiences themselves looking down on their body, floating around the ceiling, and/or travelling around earth (or another realm) without the constraints of their physical body.

– A period of transition from the physical realm to another realm. In modern Western culture it is common for people to report travelling through a tunnel towards a light at the end. Other variations that are common both in Western and non-Western cultures are crossing a bridge, travelling through beautiful fields of flowers etc.

– Encountering a transcendental light that emits unspeakable love and peace. This light is usually described as extraordinarily bright – it is often described as being like a million suns – but yet it does not blind or harm. Almost universally this light is described as being pure love, unconditional and without limit, a love that is different to the usual human experience of love. Again, it is almost universal that experiencers feel an insatiable desire to be one with the light. It is common for experiencers to describe both an impersonal (but sentient) light that is everywhere in the after-death realm, and also encounter individualised “beings of light”.

– Encountering deceased friends, relatives, religious figures or more general beings of light on the other side, who act as guides through the NDE.

– Experiencing a “life-review”, in which their entire life is re-lived in a moment in great detail. It is vital to note here that this isn’t merely a quick flash of visual imagery from ones life, but rather described as a complete, no-stone-left-unturned record of every thought, word, intention, feeling and action from birth to the present. What’s more, it is common to hear that in the life review one sees the true intention behind ones actions (that is, free of egoic rationalisations), and also sees, feels and fully experiences the consequences of ones behaviour on others. Hence, as a result this is described by many as being completely life changing, as it completely re-orients their priorities and beliefs about life as a whole.

– Travelling through different dimensions of the afterlife, including witnessing the immense beauty of the physical universe, a deep void, various hells and heavens, and even cosmic, mystical experiences of unity beyond time and space. A significant majority of NDE’s report visits to a heavenly afterlife realm, and many people have claimed to have travelled through numerous levels/layers of heaven, growing in subtlety and radiance as they ascend. There are however significant numbers of people who have reported hellish NDE’s. In some cases the person returns directly from the experience, deeply relieved to be alive. In other cases they cry out for help during the NDE itself and are saved from hell by a being of light.

– Being given visions of possible futures and/or a message for humanity as a whole. Often the person is given a mission to fulfil to help steer humanity in a particular direction.

– Being told that it is not a person’s time to die yet, or being given a choice to stay in heaven or return to Earth. Whilst we do hear of NDE’s where people have suddenly found themselves back in their physical body, it is quite common to hear of people either being given the choice to return to Earth, or simply being told that they have to. Hence, many NDE’s show a continuum from the beginning to the end, with the person fully conscious through all stages.

Common objections to Near Death Experiences:

Whilst it isn’t the intended purpose of this article to give an in-depth response to objections, I would like to give a brief summary of such objections and my responses to them. In general there are two main branches of criticisms of NDE’s. The first branch comes from the presumption of materialism that has become largely conflated and confused with science. The second branch comes from religious groups that object to the spiritual philosophy/theology of the majority of NDE’s.

Materialist objections:

So, starting with materialistic objections (often mischaracterised as “scientific objections” or “scientific explanations”), many people seek to explain away NDE’s as merely hallucinations brought on by a dying brain (being deprived of oxygen), or the side-effects of anaesthetics or pain-killers, or as part of a physical or psychological condition such as temporal-lobe epilepsy or a dissociative response to trauma.

Firstly, I wish to quickly re-state something I touched on in a previous article2, and which I will speak on at length at some point.

The spirit of science is supposed to involve a sincere desire to know what is the truth of a subject, to understand it without bias and to follow the evidence to wherever it naturally leads. The method of science is supposed to be a means to firstly hypothesise, then experiment, open the experiment up for review and finally offer conclusions upon the results.

As as means to do this we have adapted the method of “methodological naturalism”, which naturally presumes natural (physical/material) causes and hence excludes spiritual explanations. As a result, metaphysical naturalism (which is a philosophical view; aka materialism or atheism) came to be conflated with the scientific method. Hence, many people consider the scientific perspective to naturally offer materialistic explanations for spiritual phenomena.

Obviously, if you preclude spiritual explanations as a prior to studying NDE’s, then you cannot claim to be in line with the spirit of science. Rather, if science acts in this way then it is merely pseudo-science, or scientism, a religion of materialism.

So, a truly objective and scientific perspective on NDE’s should consider multiple possibilities and explanations. One of those should be that many (or most) NDE’s are indeed objectively real spiritual experiences, and that they constitute some form of evidence for the reality of spirituality. From here, materialistic explanations can be offered as other competing explanations, and the different explanations can be weighed up against each other. However, to be blunt, this isn’t the way it is generally done today. Rather, it is usually stated (or assumed) that materialism isscience, and hence the two are conflated up front.

Having acknowledged this, the majority of arguments I have seen from materialists bring up the correlation between physiological processes in the body (and the brain in particular) and the subjective mental experience. Almost without exception, I find this correlation being raised with the assumption that the only possible interpretation is that the physiological processes are the cause of the subjective experience itself. That is, when a scientist mentions that electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes can induce an out of body experience (OBE), it is therefore assumed that this establishes that spiritual experiences are always caused by a physical process, and that spiritual experiences are ultimately hallucinations (and are thus unreal), and that the physical processes are the reality.

I have previously argued that causation goes in both directions3; that is from matter to mind (upward causation), and from mind to matter (downward causation), and it is not hard to find examples of both. For example, consuming the drug LSD alters the body’s chemistry and induces an altered state of consciousness (upward causation). However, you can also alter the body’s chemistry and induce altered states simply through applying will power and directing the mind in meditation (downward causation).

So, to re-state, it seems to me that a large percentage of materialist arguments against NDE’s work on the assumption that any evidence showing correspondence between physiology and an internal (mental) state would therefore be evidence that the physical processes were the one and only cause of the experience. That is, I have never really seen any materialist ever take into account the spiritual view of correspondences and bi-directional causation between the physical dimension and the mental and spiritual dimensions.

Again, this is not something I can do justice to here, but I think the above summarises one of the main issues with materialistic objections. Having noted this, I have a few more things to add here today.

Firstly, materialists have made a big thing out of saying that people that have NDE’s cannot say that they died and came back to life, but rather can only say that they came close to death and survived. The reasoning for this is that they define death as a final state of no-return, and hence by their definition it is impossible to come back to life after death.

I personally find this to be largely a game of semantics. Let us remember that materialism is built upon the belief that mind is only an epiphenomenon of matter. Hence, materialism is built upon the belief that consciousness is completely dependent upon biological processes, in particular those inside the brain itself.

A significant percentage of NDE’s occur whilst the person in question can be verified to have no vital signs for a significant period of time. If the materialist explanation were correct, one would expect to see the persons consciousness slipping away progressively into oblivion as the breath, heart beat and brain waves dissipate and completely stop. If the materialist explanation were correct one would expect that NDE’s would be described as fuzzy or hazy, like a hallucination or typical dream.

However, a hallmark of the NDE is the complete opposite. That is, experiencers claim that they were more awake, more aware during their NDE, whilst their body was devoid of the biological processes that materialists claim are essential for consciousness. And importantly, in a significant

percentage of NDE’s the person in question claims a continuity from the beginning of the NDE through to when they came back to their body.

We should also note that there are many people who come close to death and don’t report anything at all. I have seen this claimed as evidence that NDE’s are only hallucinations that happen to some people.

I would respond by pointing out that by definition there is no experience that can disprove NDE’s. If someone blacks out and comes to afterwards, this simply means that for whatever reason they were unconscious and don’t have anything to recall. It doesn’t mean that had they not be revived that they would not have become aware in the spirit at some point. It may also be the case that some Souls remain unconscious in the astral world before reborn on earth4.

Likewise, if someone says that they experienced just a blackness, just a nothingness, then this implies by definition that they were conscious, in which case they did actually have an NDE, only that there wasn’t yet any content to it before they returned (i.e. they were conscious without any perception, sensation or thought). Rather, they were conscious in a void, which we should note is well attested as part of the overall NDE phenomena.

Finally, it is common for NDE’s to begin with a common OBE, such as looking down at one’s body in a hospital bed and travelling around the hospital. There are countless cases where people claim to have seen things whilst out of body that they could not possibly have known if they were simply hallucinating from their fixed position. Without having controlled experiments and interviews done immediately following such experiences it is difficult (if not impossible) to test such claims properly. However, we should note that there are many cases whereby others have claimed to be able to attest to what the NDE’er saw. There have even been attempts to compare NDE’ers recollection of their own resuscitation to a control group (see Michael Sabom5).

Probably the best argument I have seen presented by materialists is that NDE’s frequently contain imagery that corresponds with the upbringing of the individual, both on a personal and collective level. Anyone that has made a sincere attempt to study religion and spirituality as a whole should recognise this fact:

There is no clear defining line between psychological and spiritual experiences; there is no clear defining line between the mind and the spirit.

Rather, the two clearly interact and crossover. I have written a fairly lengthy article specifically on this topic that I plan to publish shortly. For today I will try and give a brief answer.

Essentially, in making this point about NDE’s, materialists are arguing that evidence of the projection of the beliefs, symbols and language of the person (and their wider culture) in NDE’s is evidence of NDE’s being hallucinations, projections of the psyche (which materialists believe is wholly created by and contained within the brain). Without a very deep understanding of spirituality and a philosophical leaning, one could understand this argument, and perhaps be swayed by it.

Certainly a significant percentage (probably the vast majority) of people that hold religious and/or spiritual beliefs fail to recognise the self-validating element of such beliefs. That is, most people are quite literal in their beliefs, and do not consider that the truth of their sacred experiences is on a deeper level. However, there have always been spiritual teachings that have emphasised the deeper realities of spiritual experience, and have recognised the superficiality of outer symbols and language.



It is indeed true that many people have claimed to have met prominent figures from well-known religious traditions in the NDE. I would caution that we shouldn’t necessarily assume that such figures were real historical figures, but rather that the beings in the higher realms take on familiar appearances in order to soothe the mind and put the person at ease.

An excellent example of this is the NDE of Mellen Thomas Benedict6. Prior to his NDE Mellen read extensively on religion and philosophy, in an attempt to prepare himself for what was

coming. When he did inevitably die and enter the astral dimension he met a being of light that showed itself in a variety of forms, corresponding with the various religious traditions Mellen had studied. When Mellen asked the being to show it’s true form, it then showed itself just as light. I believe also in Howard Storm’s NDE the beings of light (he identified them as angels) offered to show themselves to him in human form, to which he declined7.

To properly understand my response to this objection, I must explicitly state the foundation of my worldview:

That is, I believe the true substance of reality is consciousness.

This is the exact opposite of materialism (which states that the true and only substance of reality is matter and its laws). In a spiritual universe, every dimension is made up of consciousness, though the lower dimensions are denser, grosser and appear to be more solid and objective.

As such, an NDE is an experience in the astral dimension (higher than the physical), which is therefore less dense and more subjective. Just as in a dream, the substance of the experience is created and moulded by mind. Contrary to an average dream however, an astral experience is not created wholly by the finite, individual mind of the person having an NDE8, but rather an interaction between themselves, higher beings and God. As such, NDE’s make use of language, forms and symbols that are familiar to human beings as the superficial outward form of the experience itself. However, they are still fundamentally real. In fact, they are more real than earthly, physical experience. They are real experiences, but not wholly objective. They are both objective and subjective.

I understand the above answer may seem quite unfamiliar to some readers. There is perhaps not much more I can do here other than to point out that this is not merely a new view made up in response to this objection (or any other), but rather an ancient view found in many religious and philosophical traditions (such as Advaita Vedanta).

I would also like to refer my readers to a particularly extraordinary book called “The Holographic Universe” by Michael Talbot9, which really addresses this particular issue in depth.

Religious objections:

Another stream of criticisms of NDE’s comes from orthodox religion, most commonly Christianity. Whilst a quick glance at an individual NDE account may appear in line with orthodox Christianity, a more careful examination of the NDE phenomena as a whole makes it clear that whilst the spirituality being offered does overlap with orthodox Christianity in many significant ways, it also diverges in other equally significant ways.

Firstly, the common ground is quite obvious. NDE’s affirm the reality of God and the overwhelming love of God. They affirm that there are both heavenly and hellish experiences in the afterlife, along with a plethora of spiritual beings with divine or demonic natures. They also affirm that we must face the reality of our choices and actions, and see them from a higher perspective.

However, in general and as a whole, NDE’s offer a universal and inclusive spirituality that doesn’t depend on belief in specific doctrines or adherence to a particular dogma. So, NDE’s as a whole do not teach that one is saved through faith in or a relationship with Jesus Christ. Whilst Christian imagery is quite common in Western NDE’s in particular, the theology of the experiences is quite clearly more in alignment with Eastern Spirituality and New Age spirituality.

For this reason, many Christians have argued that the light of the NDE is a false light, and many have quoted passages about Satan masquerading as an angel of light10. In conversations with Christians on this subject I have frequently heard it argued that many of these NDE’s start off beautiful, but get darker and darker as they go on.

I have attempted to verify this claim, and I believe I know where the sources for it are, though I also believe the relevant sources are being misrepresented, as we shall see. I know of at least three particular NDE’s which could be termed “hellish”, which progressively got darker and darker

as they progressed. The three I will briefly summarise today are from Kathy McDaniel11, Guenter Wagner12 and Howard Storm13. The two most relevant here are the last two (Wagner and Storm). 

In the case of Kathy McDaniel she was in a medically induced coma and became conscious. Initially she was in darkness but then started to see a reddish light, which soon became foggy as the experience very quickly became one of pure hell. She was tormented, attacked and violated by demonic beings before eventually she started singing a Christmas carol and a beautiful white light (the True Light) came and infused her with overwhelming love and peace and lifted her out of hell.

It is very clear that the light she experience as saving her from hell matches the description of the light that many (if not most) NDE’ers experience near the beginning of their experience. There is a clear distinction between the faint reddish light she perceives at the start (with no mention of spiritual radiance, peace and love), and the divine light she perceives later that radiates overwhelming peace and love. So, this NDE certainly does not fit the Christian claim.

In fact, Kathy was a Catholic and therefore should have been considered to be saved by Christian theology. From what little I have heard from her it appears that she now accepts that the cause of her hellish experience was a combination of her belief in hell and purgatory, and probably the mental state that accompanied the traumatic conditions which led to her NDE (i.e. being in hospital on the brink of death).

In the case of Guenter Wagner, his NDE is quite unusual. That is, not only does it differ from the beautiful heavenly accounts we are most accustomed to, but it is also quite different from most hellish accounts. There are a number of possibilities for this, and I will discuss them shortly.

Essentially Wagner recounts having had an accident as a child and finding himself out of his body, at which point he was essentially tempted by a malicious spirit to go with him rather than try and get back in his body. He travels through a number of different dimensions where he is told he is not supposed to be there, and he is eventually questioned by a being of light who is extremely hostile towards him and explains that it is at war with other spirits who are trying to invade its world.

This being of light talks of love and religious doctrines and at times radiates peace and love, but at other times threatens to destroy him. Wagner recounts a life review experience in which the being of light taunts and shames him. Again, this is radically at odds from what we experience in essentially all other NDE’s. Finally, as Wagner is about to return to Earth he hears a voice telling him to kill his mother.

So, this is a very strange NDE. It has some of the features of a typical heavenly NDE, but it appears that they are mixed in seamlessly with hellish features. Hence, I could see that at a quick glance someone may use this account to argue that the beings of light in NDE’s are demonic imitators. However, at a closer look this doesn’t stand up.

As I see it, there are three main options to explain this NDE, and we may even possibly consider the possibility that all three are partially true. Firstly, Guenter himself admits to a lifelong struggle with alcoholism, and whilst the NDE occurred to him as a child he only recounted it as an adult. It is certainly possible that his memory and general brain functioning is all over the place as a result of his addiction. Obviously NDE’s are generally given as first-hand testimonies, and as such all have a large degree of subjectivity to them.

In Guenter’s case his NDE wasn’t recounted to others nor recorded till much later in his life. It is possible that he actually experienced a more “normal” NDE with some hellish elements at the start, after which an angelic being of light intervened to assist him. So, perhaps his memory has conflated the two sides and it is now all mixed up?

Secondly, if there is any truth to legends of fallen angels, then perhaps this NDE is an account of an experience with one. This might potentially explain how such a being could still have some of the attributes of the beings of light as commonly found in NDE’s, and yet also display a lower, demonic nature. According to his account the being was fearful of having its dimension invaded

by others with which it is at war. If this is indeed what Wagner experienced and if it does have an objective reality to it, then this sounds like a fallen being lost in a lower-astral dimension, at war with other fallen beings.

A third possibility is that Guenter’s NDE was made up. I generally hesitate to go in this direction, and I wouldn’t favour this possibility. It is always a possibility that someone has simply invented their story for one reason or another. Human beings have displayed the capacity for fraud since time immemorial, and religion has never been exempt from this. In this case Guenter Wagner’s testimony is very much an outlier, in that it is inconsistent. So, fraud must be considered.

Finally, we have the well-known case of Howard Storm. Storm was a keen materialist before his NDE, and he openly mocked religious folk for what he believed was their ignorance, weakness and gullibility. After a medical emergency he left his body and was deeply distressed to find himself unable to communicate with anyone around him. He then heard voices coming from the hallway of the hospital, leading him out of the hospital into a dense fog with a dim light. He soon found himself in a hellish realm surrounded by demonic beings who mocked, attacked and violated him. However, out of his desperation came the thought to pray to God, which culminated in an angelic presence (a being of light) appearing and saving him from hell, and taking him to the perimeter of a heavenly realm.

He was told he was unable to enter due to his soul not currently being suitable, but was given the opportunity to return to earth and make amends for the cruelty he had shown to others, and for the selfish way he had lived his life as a whole. He was bathed in transcendental peace and shown that he was a precious being that was loved, despite all the wrongs he had done.

So, to summarise, none of the above NDE’s began with a radiant, heavenly being of light beaming love. McDaniel’s begin with a faint light in a dense fog. The light being in Guenter Wagner’s NDE displayed both divine and demonic features. If this was a being of light, it was a fallen one. And again in Howard Storms NDE there is a faint light in a dense fog during the hellish part of the NDE. So none of these NDE’s start with a heavenly experience and then get darker and darker as they go. If there are any such accounts out there I haven’t come across them (though I have tried). If anyone comes across any such accounts I would be interested to have a look at them.

Rather, the standard fare for a hellish NDE is that the person experiences hell first, then after calling out for help is saved by a radiant being of light, taken to heaven and given their life-review, then being sent back to Earth to fulfil their mission. Guenter Wagner’s NDE is the closest I have found to the claim by Christians that NDE’s are deceptive. However, as already discussed, there are a number of reasons why his does not fit their claim.

Aside from this, I do know of several books written by Christians who had a previous history with New Age spirituality where they claim to have been tricked by spirits who claimed to be of the light. Some examples would be “The Light That Was Dark” by Warren B Smith and “The Beautiful Side of Evil” by Johanna Michaelsen (I believe there are many other similar books around, such as the more recent one by Doreen Virtue “Deceived No More”). From what I have seen such books generally tell of someone who was involved with New Age spirituality having a mixture of experiences before later converting to Christianity, and taking on the perspective that all of the things they experienced previously were wicked deceptions.

Just a few points I would make in response to all of this. Firstly, orthodox Christianity is not the only spiritual perspective that can explain for challenging or unpleasant spiritual experiences. Rather, what we term New Age spirituality also generally recognises that not everything or everyone in the vast spiritual cosmos is of the light. So, it is not true to assume that examples of hellish NDE’s contradicts a universal spiritual understanding. Likewise, it is not true that examples of deceptive behaviour of lower beings automatically implies the acceptance of a dualistic eschatology.

We might also question the overall idea that there a source of evil that can appear as beautiful light and beam radiant love. Firstly, the commonly quoted passage of Satan appearing as an angel of light from 2nd Corinthians 11:14 was referring to the competition between early Christian preachers, and the different gospels, different Christ’s they were preaching. We know that early

Christianity was not at all uniform, but rather consisted of numerous sects competing for followers. In the case of 2nd Corinthians we see that different teachers were competing for the same audience. There is of course no reason to give this passage an air of authority, as if it were written by God’s hand (see my previous article on the concept of scripture14). Rather, it is just an off the cuff remark by one author (Paul) to attempt to rebut other early Christian preachers competing for his audience.

Author and web-master Kevin Williams15 has given a number of responses to the Christian objections, from his own perspective (he considers himself a “Universalist Christian” – basically a New Ager with a significant investment in the Bible). Whilst I do not personally view the Bible as being authoritative, Williams presents an interesting argument16 from Matthew 12:24-3717, in which the Pharisees accuse Jesus of performing miracles via Beelzebub. Jesus responds that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and that you can measure the roots of a tree by its fruit.

Clearly the fruits of the NDE are radical love and radical accountability. Hence, Williams argues that by the example of Matthew 12:24-37, religious critics are adopting the same argument as the Pharisees, to which he believes his response is that of Jesus. Again, whilst I do not believe in a historical Jesus nor hold the Bible to have spiritual authority, I believe this is simply good logic. Exclusive religious beliefs are maintained by a strict dichotomy between the in-group (the believers) and the others (the heathens/pagans/atheists etc.). In such cases religious experiences, beliefs and practices are differentiated not on the basis of an examination of their details, but rather simply on whether they conform to the ideology of the group.

In my writings I have long been arguing that we should differentiate such things based on their nature, not the race, skin color, language, religion, sect or philosophy of the people in the example. Hence, we should be able to view NDE’s from an unbiased position and assess them for what they are. I believe that when we do this we shall see that they offer great upliftment and inspiration to humanity. I believe that the radiant light experienced in NDE’s is Divine, and this shows itself all through the phenomena.

Whilst I have not personally had a traditional NDE18, I am well familiar with the feeling of overwhelming, all-consuming spiritual peace (called ananda in Sanskrit) and love that is such a common feature of NDE’s. I believe that this spiritual peace is not merely something that is only experienced through NDE’s, but it is common to all deep, authentic spiritual experiences, regardless of culture or faith.

Again, the theology taught by the beings of light in NDE’s is one of radical compassion and radical self-responsibility. It makes absolutely no sense to argue that Satan masquerades as a radiant being of peace and love, teaching a lofty theology. The argument here by Christians rests on the assumption that without salvation from sin through accepting Jesus Christ as one’s personal saviour, that one is lost for eternity. They are arguing that Satan is trying to get people to abandon this idea in favour of a different theology.

One might argue that this is a form of circular-reasoning, as it assumes that orthodox Christianity is true, in order to dismiss evidence of a different theology. I would argue that to consider the spiritual and religious implications of NDE’s properly, one would have to go in with an open mind and consider multiple possibilities. Christians should be able to go in and compare NDE theology vs Christian theology on their own merits, rather than merely discarding NDE theology on the basis that it clashes with elements of Christian theology.

Furthermore, I would actually argue that it makes far more sense to take NDE’s as a primary source for spiritual knowledge, rather than a specific text, creed, teacher or school of thought. The difficulty is of course that (as mentioned before), NDE’s are heavily coloured by the mass consciousness of the human race, which means that they speak through the language of our sacred texts, creeds, well known spiritual leaders and groups.

So, it is true that NDE’s – both individually and collectively – reflect the language, symbols, beliefs and culture of both the people that experience them and the human race as a whole. However, when we view NDE’s as a whole, seeing the forest and not just the individual trees, we see that they communicate a spirituality which is universal and mystical, transcending the countless

differences and points of contention in the worlds religions, but aligning with the highest common grounds between them. One might say therefore that NDE’s correlate well with the ideal of a Perennial Philosophy, a timeless and universal spiritual philosophy that has been known in part to people from all over the globe, throughout recorded history.

I have the intention to devote an entire article to NDE theology in the near future, with the hope to go into much greater detail about the spiritual significance of the phenomena as a whole. In this future article I would also like to go into detail in comparing NDE theology to Christian theology, as I feel this is a very important issue. I believe that NDE theology is the solution to mankind’s religious misunderstandings and disputes. I believe NDE theology has what we need to understand religion correctly, to correct our mistakes and unite us as one family of light.

The meaning and significance of Near Death Experiences:

NDE’s as the solution to our self-created problems:

NDE’s offer direct solutions to the aberrations in human thinking and behaviour, both on an individual and collective level. That is, firstly everything about the experience in a general sense re-orients a persons overall worldview in a positive way. Secondly, in regards to exactly what happens, what is revealed and/or communicated, most NDE’s appear to be specifically tailored to the particular needs of the person in question at the time, and collectively they speak to the primary needs of the human race as a whole. So, NDE’s offer the solutions to our problems, seeking to correct our misunderstandings and put us back on a healthy path.

Furthermore, NDE’s speak not just to individual behaviour but rather to the underlying causes of them. Specifically, NDE’s address the dichotomy between religion and science, seeking to correct both the aberrations of divisive and fear-based religious dogma, and also the materialist assumptions that create all manner of problems in individual lives, as well as the collective experience of the human race and our entire planetary ecosystem.

NDE’s affirm the reality and primacy of Spirituality:

Firstly and foremost, NDE’s show us that we are spiritual beings, that we do not have to fear death, and that our loved ones are never truly gone. NDE’s banish the question of what happens after we die and give certainty to the reality of spirituality. NDE’s give context and meaning to everything that we go through in life, and remind us of the great sacredness of all things. NDE’s teach us what really matters, and shows us the true immensity of creation.

So, NDE’s show us that spirituality is not only objectively real, but that it is primary over physicality. NDE’s do not seek to diminish our physical experience in favour of spiritual escapism, but rather affirm the purpose and value of an earthly existence from a spiritual perspective. NDE’s remind us that the pleasures of the senses and material objects have only a temporary existence, and that relationships, experiences and knowledge live beyond the short earthly incarnation. NDE’s remind us that we should never seek anything at the expense of our Soul.

NDE’s teach Universalism and true unconditional love:

NDE’s show us that real spirituality is not dependent upon mythologies or creeds, of adherence to rules or rituals. Rather, real spirituality is always about Soul growth, about seeking love, joy, strength and wisdom. Probably the most profound of all features of the NDE is the unspeakable, overwhelming and all-consuming peace and love that is found in correspondence with the divine light. It should be obvious to us that everyone truly seeks happiness (although some beings are so hurt that they do so in destructive ways). The NDE reminds us that there is truly only one way to be happy, and that is to truly love.

NDE’s show us that love isn’t merely a word or a light feeling. It isn’t merely a human sentimentality or attachment. Rather, love is the inseparable and essential nature of reality, the core of life itself, emerging from the unity of existence. Again, there is no way to be happy other than to love. If we all seek happiness that doesn’t come and go, without fickleness or fragility, then we must devote ourselves to love that is beyond fickleness or fragility.

In religion and spirituality we often speak of divine love as infinite and unconditional. It is of course easy to miss the true significance of these words, and think that they refer to something completely foreign to us that we cannot relate to. (I’d like to highlight the next sentence, as this is really important):

In truth it simply means that divine love is completely independent of literarily everything.

This doesn’t so much mean that with divine love one must seek to be so compassionate that one overcomes the tendency to give or retract love on the basis of the behaviour of others. Rather, it simply means that behaviour and circumstances are irrelevant to love. This doesn’t mean that behaviour and circumstances are irrelevant as a whole, or that there are no consequences to our actions (and of course, NDE’s teach quite the contrary). Rather, it simply means that consequences, cause and effect are inherently different to the existence of divine love. Hence, NDE’s teach utterly, absolutely radical love.

So, you do not have to prove yourself worthy of divine love, you cannot be removed from it, it cannot be withdrawn from you, it will never run out and it has no limits or conditions. You are loved, always have been and always will be, no matter what. Furthermore, this love is completely fulfilling that having experienced it you naturally want to give your life to it, to be consumed by it, to live entirely in harmony with it. Hence the challenging path of living a spiritual life as a human being begins.

NDE’s teach absolute accountability:

Having established this, we then recognise the other side of divine love being independent of cause and effect. That is, NDE’s teach absolutely radical accountability. NDE’s show us just how responsible we are for what we think, feel, say and do. They show us just how much all of these matter, how our choices affect the lives of individuals and our wider world.

In my personal opinion, one of the key, core problems with humanity as we are is that we generally believe we can hurt others without hurting ourselves. We tend to think we can lie, cheat and steal to get the things we want in life, without consequence. Even when people profess to have strong spiritual and/or religious values, they often explain away their behaviour, seeking to justify to themselves (and others) what they do.

NDE’s show us that we cannot hide from God, or ourself. In the life-review we are spiritually naked19. Our true motives are fully exposed in plain view. The truth of our actions, our words and even our thoughts are seen objectively, without any potential to frame them in our defence.

The life-review shows the full consequence of our choices, both big and small. It shows the impact we have on others, not just in the immediate future but also in the long term. It shows the ripple affect of our choices, meaning that we see just how significant they are.

The life-review reveals that we are fully responsible for our choices, no matter what led us to them. As human beings we often justify our behaviour based on prior experience. Such luxuries are not found in the life-review, as our absolute personal responsibility is revealed.

However, despite all this, and despite the fact that that the life-review can be deeply painful, the beings of light do not judge us, no matter what we did. Their love for us is independent of the consequences of our actions.

So, we see that we can never truly get away with anything. No one ever does. The flip side of this radical accountability is that we generally have no idea how much capacity we truly have to change. We have so much potential for growth, for expansion, for evolution. We really are just at the very beginning.

When most of us hear about growth we usually think about physical fitness, about financial abundance, having the “perfect” relationship, the perfect home, the perfect career, status and respect from others and intellectual growth etc. However, we rarely think about expanding our

capacity for compassion, expanding our state of awareness beyond our ego, expanding into cosmic knowledge, expanding into higher dimensions of reality etc. NDE’s remind us that we are just children beginning our Soul development. We truly have no idea of what we are capable of. This should be seen as the greatest inspiration. This is truly good news.

NDE’s show us where true happiness is found:

So, as a whole, NDE’s correct the problems inherent in religion and materialism. They teach a universal spirituality beyond any sectarianism, showing that we each have the capacity to grow into a pure vessel for the divine light that we all are. They show us that nothing will ever fulfil us like living for the light does. Again, this does not diminish earthly experiences and pursuits, but rather puts them in their correct context. We do not seek happiness and fulfilment in the senses, possessions, experiences and relationships, but rather joyously participate in the world of the senses, objects, experiences and relationships from the happiness and fulfilment in our soul.

NDE’s show the error in materialism and hedonism, and offer the solution:

Hence NDE’s correct the materialistic and hedonistic tendencies that are rampant in human culture. NDE’s show us that a lust for material things can never be satisfied, and can never turn out well.

Finally, NDE’s repeatedly emphasise that humanity as a whole is on a challenging path right now, due largely to many of our mistakes. NDE’s show us multiple possibilities of our future in order to warn us of the consequences of our choices, and to give us the opportunity to make radical changes in how we live.

Whilst NDE’s are well known for containing warnings about challenging times ahead for humanity, they also contain a message of hope, in giving us a glimpse of what is possible when we live truly spiritual lives. Those that return after an NDE often develop psychic/spiritual gifts which add great depth to their life. Can we imagine a world in which a significant percentage of the population was using such gifts in service of the greater good? Again, as with the UFO phenomena20, this reminds us that we – the human race – are really just beginning in our path of evolution, and we cannot even begin to fathom what we are capable of.

So, we are taught that expansion of the heart and mind is the true goal and purpose of life, and that only in living in this way can we find true happiness and success. Peace on both the inside and outside is the result of wisdom and love in action.

In closing:

Again, I would like to encourage anyone interested in this topic to do some serious reading of first-hand NDE reports, and the writings of others who have studied the topic in-depth. These are not merely reports and opinions you read for the purpose of entertainment or gaining intellectual knowledge. These words are life-changing, cutting right to the meaning of life itself.

Again, I do not claim to have personally realised the ideals of which I have touched on here. Only that I am trying in my way to pursue them, and would encourage others to try as well, both for their own personal benefit, and also for the benefit of their family, friends and wider community.

May we all find that light which is true love. Peace




1 https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2021/07/25/a-spiritual-perspective-on-death/

2 https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/science-philosophy-and-the- supernatural-101/

3 In Western philosophy this is called “interactionism”, though I did not derived my views from Western philosophy.

4 This was discussed in “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda, in chapter 43.

5 https://www.amazon.com/Recollections-Death-Investigation-Michael-Sabom/dp/0060148950

6 https://near-death.com/mellen-thomas-benedict/

7 I believe he responded that he hated people, and was so relieved to see them as beautiful light – Unfortunately I don’t have a link however

8 Certainly though, we may also have dreams which are not just projections of our mind.

9 https://www.amazon.com.au/Holographic-Universe-Revolutionary-Theory-Reality/dp/ 0062014102

10 2 Corinthians 11:14

11 https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=YtaS1Zyrxnw&list=UULF4IFgmVjowpy8D7nXmFZL2A&index=20

12 https://near-death.com/guenter-wagner/
13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMfSMaQ1bWc

14 https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/on-interpretations-of-scripture-why- many-religious-conservatives-and-progressives-misread-ancient-texts-and-misunderstand- religion-in-general/

15 Author of “Nothing Better Than Death”: https://www.amazon.com.au/Nothing-Better-Than- Death-Experiences/dp/1097107426 and the website near-death.com

16 https://near-death.com/ndes-are-not-satanic/
17 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 12:24-37&version=NIV 18 Though I may have had one or more “dream NDE’s”.

19 There is an old tradition in seeing human beings standing naked before God. This is usually seen literarily, as in being physically naked. However, I believe the NDE literature clearly shows that the reality of it is figurative.

Having stated that, I believe in Howard Storm’s NDE he saw himself as being naked (i.e. his astral body took the form of a naked human body) as he stood before the angels having his life-review. I think in his case it was just what he needed, to be stripped of pride and taught humility and reverence to God.

20 https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2021/11/03/the-significance-of-the-ufo-phenomena/

Some thoughts on Morality and Altruism:

Every once in a while I come across someone claiming that nobody is truly altruistic, and that people only ever appear to do good with selfish motives. Also, I sometimes come across people (often who are occultists) who claim that there is no good or bad, right or wrong, and that people who seek to follow light are just fooling themselves. Hence, I have wanted to write a few words in response to these claims, as well as make some other points related to them.

The Tao Te Ching and natural morality:

I have read a number of spiritual classics over the years, and one of my favourites is the Tao Te Ching, which has as much to say about politics as it does about religion, and as much about society at large as it does about the individual. I will here quote a passage (Verse 381) which I find quite relevant to conversations about morality:

You can readily recognise,
The highest virtuousness
Because it never places itself on display. You can readily recognise
The lowest virtuousness
Because it is always announcing itself.

The highest virtue
Quietly serves universal needs.
The lowest virtue
Actively strives for personal success.
The highest morality serves common needs. The lowest morality is self-serving.

True benevolence
Acts without intention.
But when rituals go unheeded,
They are enforced with rolled-up sleeves.

Failing the Tao (interpreted here as “the Great Integrity”), We resort to virtuousness.
Failing virtuousness,
We resort to moralising,

Failing moralising, we resort to dogma, The most superficial form
Of faith and loyalty,
And the nourishment for confusion.

Natural persons are attracted,
To substance rather than form,
To the nutritious fruit
Rather than the enticing flower,
To that which dwells deeply within, Rather than to that which clings Superficially to the surface

This passage tells us of four levels of morality, though I will add in a fifth which is below the four (that being the complete denial of all morality).

The lowest level of morality is where people do what they believe to be good out of fear of punishment. We are all well familiar with this level, as they are commonly used in curbing the bad behaviour of children, and it is also common in many religions. Many of us have been threatened

by parents or teachers of what will happen if we continue with bad behaviour, and therefore adjust our behaviour simply out of the desire to avoid an unpleasant outcome.

As we all know, many religions and cultures teach of some form of Divine justice, in which we must answer for our sins. Particularly in Christianity and Islam this is known to have taken quite an extreme form, with the threat of eternal damnation for all the unsaved. Hence, fear is and has always been a fundamental aspect of the orthodox/conservative forms of both of these faiths (though they are not necessarily alone in this regard).

Likewise, many religions and philosophical schools have taught the belief that all our actions have inescapable consequences: Karma. Hence, fear of karmic implications to ones actions is a central part of the worldview of many people in India, China, Tibet and south-east Asia, as well as some ancient Greek philosophical worldviews (and more).

The next level of morality is where people try and do the right thing out of desire for reward. One might say this is the mirror image of the fear of punishment in the first level. This seeking of rewards for good behaviour is again something many of us learn in childhood, and we often see our childish worldview mirrored in our approach to God. Hence, many people pray, offer worship, good deeds, attend a church or temple simply out of the desire for rewards, both in this life and the afterlife.

Hence, one can legitimately point out that in both the first and second level of morality there is selfish motivation for ones good deeds. One cannot claim to be truly altruistic if one is merely seeking to avoid punishment or gain rewards. Hence, some people have seized upon this and claimed that nobody is truly altruistic. However, as is often the case, this claim takes a legitimate point and then takes it too far.

Certainly at these lower levels we find much hypocrisy in the behaviour of those that outwardly espouse moral and ethical ideals. That is, it is amongst those that only do good to avoid punishment or seek reward that we find judgmental and derogative views of other people. The moraliser seeks to make him (or her) self superior to others, seemingly unaware that their true motives are on display for those who are sensitive to see2.

Above this level we find that repeated moral habits make a human being virtuous. That is, it begins to become natural and normal for someone to do good, to consider others, to be kind and to stand up for what their heart tells them is right. A virtuous person notes that there is an inherent logic in striving towards an altruistic live. It is only natural that hurting others hurts oneself, and helping others feels good. And yet, the virtuous person seeks to do good for its own sake. A virtuous person loves goodness.

This is something that can be hard for many people to accept, given the great suffering, injustices and hypocrisy that we see in the human kingdom. There are many people that have unfortunately become either extremely skeptical of this idea, or even openly hostile towards it (in the belief that all claims to natural morality are malicious fraud). However, I for one have come to believe that natural morality is not only possible, but inevitable in the evolution of life.

There comes a point at which someone has accepted the inevitability of the consequences of ones actions, accepting that one cannot hurt another without hurting oneself, and accepting that it is only through caring about others that one can truly succeed. There also come a point in all of our journeys in which we have an authentic taste of spiritual peace and long to live our whole life in harmony with that peace. Thus begins the desire to tear down the imaginary walls we construct in our minds between the sacred and the mundane. Once we have been stung by real divine peace, it is inevitable that we seek to offer our entire life and being to that peace.

There are many such experiences that can bring about this change in ones character. Sometimes it is something extreme such as a Near Death Experience, or extreme suffering from illness, addiction or loss. At other times it simply begins with a profound experience in some form of spiritual community. Whatever the cause, such events can bring about irreversible changes in the psyche that lead one to conclude that nothing else makes sense other than to live a moral life.

There can come a time in which it no longer requires effort or a choice to attempt to live a moral life. Whilst it may sound like a spiritual fantasy to some who have yet to encounter such things in their current earthly life, there comes a time in which the Divine light within us comes to dominate and direct our thinking, feeling and behaviour. At this point and beyond it is only natural that we consider others and offer kindness to others, regardless of the outcome.

From here one simply becomes one with Goodness. Free of ego, one allows the Divinity that they are to express through their body, mind and soul. Hence in the language of the text I quoted before, we live the Tao.

Perhaps an appropriate analogy would be that of romantic love. In a transactional relationship where a man and woman are only together for what they can get out of each other, each will seek to please the other only for what they hope to get back in return. By contrast, if someone is truly in love with someone then they will naturally seek to please them, simply because it is the nature of love. If you are truly in love with someone you just want to be with them, to see them happy, healthy and successful. If you are truly in love it is natural to want to serve another, without seeking a reward from it.

Another expression of love that many humans can relate to is that of a parent to a child (particularly young children). If you truly love your children it is only natural that you wish to help them in whatever way you can, regardless of whether you are acknowledged for it.

Of course, we all know that the lower aspect of the human being (the ego) wrecks havoc in all manner of relationships, from romantic partners to family, from work to society at large. In the ideal of true altruism we find the desire to be permanently free of unnecessary self-(ego)-created suffering, and be one with goodness.

There simply comes a time when one falls in love with goodness. One falls in love with Love.

Of course, it should be mentioned that these levels are not strictly separate, but rather they are essentially regions of a continuum of psychological and spiritual evolution. That is, the attempt to avoid punishment blends into the desire for rewards. There is no clear defining line between them. Likewise, from the desire for reward one progressively grows towards a natural morality.

It should also be mentioned that whilst I have so far discussed morality as a series of choices that one makes as one progresses (or regresses) in life, different people do seem to have natural predispositions towards different stages of this development. That is, there are many people who seem to be born with a deeply ingrown morality and sensitivity to the welfare of others. Likewise, there seem to be some people who don’t seem to care at all about others, and for whom discipline becomes essential to curb the ego’s capacity to create suffering for all.

Materialism and Western Civilisation’s current trajectory:

We may speculate about why some seem to be so naturally moral from birth. However, for the case of those who seem to lack these qualities, it is very helpful for ones family and wider community at large to have strong common values in place.

Prior to the last 50 years or so, Western civilisation was dominated by orthodox Christianity for the better part of 1500 years, and was thus saturated with the common belief of Divine punishment and reward (with the the odd saintly figure thrown in). Whilst there were many problems that came with this (which I have been trying to bring attention to), there were also some advantages. Common religious beliefs in a society provide a means of keeping people lower tendencies in check, and encouraging higher tendencies. Whilst there are many alternatives to orthodox Christianity which can fulfil this role, Western civilisation has now thrown the baby out with the bathwater and seems to be largely favouring materialism.

I have been quite clear that I have never been one to idolise the past (though I have had conversations where I have not been heard on this matter). However, I don’t believe we are necessarily heading in a positive trajectory currently. You might say that in some ways we have moved forward, in other ways backwards, and then also sideways.

What I believe humanity needs is common spiritual values. Obviously I don’t seek to reinstate the authority of the Christian Church, nor any other exclusive ideology. Rather, we need a truly universal spirituality which balances compassion to all with the need for personal responsibility and accountability. I believe this can be achieved by finding the highest common ground in a study of comparative religion, spirituality and philosophy, along with studying modern data from Near Death Experiences amongst other sources.

Before closing I must point out that there is also a level below the first: That being the complete rejection of morality. There are many people today that do not believe in any form of natural or divine justice, and believe they can seek their own gain at the expense of others without consequence.

In many cases this is simply the natural consequence of metaphysical naturalism (materialism); the complete rejection of spirituality, and the belief that reality is completely and absolutely physical. In some other cases there are those who do believe in spirituality, but somehow manage to find a way to convince themselves that they are on God’s side, or that a supernatural Universe is somehow morally neutral (see philosophical Satanism).

It is often those that have no morals that try the hardest to argue that nobody really has morals, or that those who think they do are just fooling themselves. In other cases, there are many people who are deeply hurt (for whatever reason) and now don’t trust anyone who appears (or claims) to be striving to live a good life.

I would respond that there is overwhelming evidence of the consequences of such a view. Our society (and history) is overflowing with examples of people who have sought to satiate the ego through relentless pursuit of pleasure, wealth and power. Every single time it results in tragedy, in avoidable suffering and often early death. Ego can never be satisfied, it is never enough. The nature of craving is that it comes from a feeling of lack and separateness. The more one craves the more desperate one becomes. Substance abuse is the perfect example of this. The more one consumes of a drug in the attempt to get high, the lower ones habitual state becomes, and the less the drug is able to generate an artificial high.

Obviously there are also a myriad of examples of people who outwardly profess a holy life but end up as hypocrites, desperately seeking to satisfy their base urges3. There is a tendency amongst some to attempt to use such examples as justification to give up all ideals, as if everyone who strives to better themselves is a hypocrite. In truth, such examples are reasons why we need ideals, why we need to try harder, and why we should pursue these ideals without judgment of others or showboating.

Reality is not morally neutral. Certainly the consequences for our actions aren’t always immediately apparent, and some people are blinded by their bias to the suffering they unnecessarily create (and also experience). Reality is spiritual in nature, and consequences naturally follow all of our actions. Life is designed to eventually teach us to choose what is good for its own sake, through the inherent logic and coherence of righteousness.

A personal note:

I would like to re-state something here that I have tried to make clear throughout my writings. Obviously in my writings I like to aspire towards high spiritual ideals. I would like to make it explicitly clear that I do not claim to have fully realised such ideals myself. Rather, it is only that I am aware of my desire towards such ideals, and I at least try to grow towards them.

Certainly I do not claim to be better than other people in such ways. Rather, I am painfully aware of my many shortcomings and the great number of significant mistakes I have made in my life. Hence, I am at least trying to evolve, to be more responsible, to attempt to be unbiased and objective, and to offer forgiveness and compassion to all.

The source of true happiness has never changed:

As human beings we cannot be satisfied by simply and only seeking sensory gratification, wealth and power. We are (and always have been) spiritual beings, and it is only in living in alignment with our Soul that we can find real, lasting happiness. There is no happiness without love, no success without kindness, no true wellbeing without compassion.

Everybody seeks happiness, whether they seek it inwardly or outwardly. Whilst there have been many examples of people seeking to live a holy life and failing, the evidence is abundantly clear that shallow materialism and hedonism cannot lead to anything other than failure, suffering and tragedy.

The way to find individual success and happiness is the same as the way to be responsible and is the same way to contribute to a better world. These are not competing desires, but rather different sides of the same light that calls us all.

Peace

1 The Tao Te Ching, Watkins, Translation and commentary by Ralph Alan Dale

2 That is, a tremendous amount of information is communicated via basic body language. The most significant of these is facial expressions, which openly displays much about what someone is thinking and feeling. Beyond this, many of us are sensitive to the higher dimensions of life, and “pick up” on things that we have no physical way of knowing. Of course great discretion and self- analysis is required to use such intuitions wisely, as the ego would love to simply believe everything it thinks is true. Hence, I recommend a balance of intuitive knowing and critical thinking.

3 I have written about Ravi Zacharias, who is an obvious example of this: https:// jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/my-thoughts-regarding-the-scandalous- revelations-about-ravi-zacharias/

You Cannot Please Everyone

You cannot please everyone all the time.  This is a truth so simple we may take it for granted, and perhaps think it is so obvious that it doesn’t need to be said.  However, sometimes we overlook the most obvious things simply for this reasons.

I obviously encourage radical kindness.  That is, I aspire towards high ideals of unconditional love towards all, though I recognise the challenges inherent in realising and applying this ideal in a human life.  However, I also think in many ways we should aspire towards a balance mindset.  Love, kindness and compassion need to be balanced with strength, responsibility, leadership, accountability, honesty and healthy self-control etc.

We might like to think that if only we are really nice to everyone that everyone will like us, and that we will have harmonious relationships and interactions with everyone.  However, life isn’t that simple.

The thing is that we human beings are complex and often fickle creatures.  We generally don’t realise how much of our behaviour is unconscious and conditioned, and how biased and narrow-minded we are.  We don’t realise how little we know, and we often underestimate how much others know.

In our earthly life we encounter a vast mixture of people, who are at different places in their life.  Some people are living in accordance with the highest expression of who they can be right now, and these people are generally easy to get along with and enjoyable to be around.  Many others are struggling with the great challenges of being human and navigating our world.  Some of these people are desperate for help from others, whilst others lash out at others and project their own inner turmoil onto those around them.  And then there are some which are a danger to others and themselves.  In the latter cases, there is often nothing we can do to avoid conflict with these people, and we need to accept the necessity of being strong and doing what is right and necessary in the moment, often for the safety and security of others and ourselves.

There are some cases whereby the only way to get along with someone is to agree with them.  Sometimes this can be largely inconsequential.  At other times remaining silent or agreeing with someone who is wrong can have significant consequences.  Hence, sometimes we have to just accept the conflict that follows from doing what is right.

The human race is a great mixture, largely in the slow process of evolution through the animal and intellectual levels, eventually growing into beings that operate from a spiritual understanding.  You may be the smartest person on the planet, but it must be accepted that there will be many people who will call you stupid if you openly share your knowledge when it is conflicts with their biases and prior assumptions.  You may be the kindest person on the planet, but you will be called weak, bad, dangerous and evil by people that only like those who share their own ideology.  A fully Divine being could appear on Earth and offer transcendental knowledge and love to all, and it would face denial, ridicule and condemnation by many.

Recognising all this however is not a reason not to try.  Rather, we must simply try our best and accept the consequences.  We must try to be kind and strong, compassionate and responsible, forgiving and honest, to listen to others and also show leadership.  We must try our best to share what we believe to be true and also to listen to others to see what we are still yet to learn.  And we must be willing at times to face ridicule and condemnation, as long as we have made the sincere effort to think, speak, write and act with the best of intentions.

Again, to restate, there are many serious issues that we face here on Earth that demand that good people speak up and act.  And yet, to do so means that we will (and do) face opposition.  This is unavoidable at this time, and we must make peace with it.

However, we must at least attempt to do so without viewing our adversaries as enemies.  That is, there are people and groups that we must speak up and act against.  However, we can do this without demonising them and holding contempt against them in our hearts.

It is common for human beings to see themselves as fighting for goodness, and to see any opponents as enemies of all that is good.  People on all sides of disputes (religious, philosophical, scientific, political etc.) do this, and it brings a great ugliness to such conversations.  We need to be able to have serious conversations about things that truly matter without resorting to demonising and dehumanising our opponents.

Even the most sick, deranged and mad human beings are still precious Souls that need compassion.  Even those that harm others themselves still need help.  We can at least attempt to insist upon consequences to actions and justice even whilst holding only compassion for all.  This must be our ideal, and we can grow in our capacity to realise this, one test after another.

So, you cannot please everyone all the time.  But, you can attempt to offer real transcendent love to all, even if it isn’t always recognised, welcomed and received by all.  But first one must discover such love within themselves.  It is all good and well to idealise such things, but to actually bring things into reality they must be experiential.

This is perhaps where I think much social justice fails in its ideals.  Many people speak of compassion and understanding, and yet have not found peace within themselves.  Firstly to find real peace within oneself is a rare find on this planet, and takes real commitment to honour and nurture.  Even more challenging is the capacity to remain centred in clarity and peace in difficult circumstances.  To remain in an inner state of love and strength whilst facing an adversary is a power very few have yet realised (and I do not claim to be amongst them).

Hence, to be able to help others and contribute towards improvement in our world at large, one must commit to a sincere attempt to cleanse oneself of arrogance, bias, bigotry and unforgiveness.  To truly help others we must have in ourselves a great spring of peace that is everflowing, and an intuitive connection to the great intelligence which feeds all life.

To these great ideals we must strive, and meet the demands of our world.

Peace

The significance of the UFO phenomena:

Introduction:

Human folklore is filled with remarkable tales of gods who wield supernatural powers and pass on higher learning to mankind. For those who are inclined to see the world in a purely materialist manner these tales are generally considered mere myth, or one of a variety of natural explanations are given. Certainly there are valid reasons for taking this view, as it is the easiest (and thus most likely) explanation (see Ockham’s Razor1).

One plausible explanation for these tales is that human history hasn’t been a simple straight line or exponential curve always moving in the one direction, but rather that great civilisations have come and gone. Under such a view, survivors of past advanced civilisations could easily have been considered gods to people who either had no past experience with civilisation and culture, or who had been cut off from it.

The UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) phenomena or UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – as many are now terming it) is in many ways a (more) modern equivalent of the ancient tales of gods from other lands wielding supernatural powers and either seeking to educate or enslave humanity. It is hard to trace the precise origin of this phenomena, as relevant accounts can be found back into all regions of history. However, when we talk of UFO phenomena we generally tend to think of modern accounts from the past 100 years or so.

Certainly from the the 20th century and onwards we have an abundance of personal accounts of encounters with strange lights and/or flying craft (not always disk shaped) in the sky appearing to be intelligently guided, and often accompanied by other strange features (missing time and/or various supernatural elements). In some accounts we also hear about encounters with beings that are thought to be not of this planet (and/or dimension). Some of these encounters are inspiring and uplifting, whilst others are highly disturbing in their nature and implications.

When writing on highly contentious subjects it can be really important to show your sources and discuss the raw evidence. However, I’m not going to really do that here today for a couple of reasons. Firstly, whilst I have been interested in the UFO phenomena for a long time, I have not been collecting sources on it as I go. Secondly, the nature of the source material is that a large percentage of it is highly contentious. That is, whilst I am of the opinion that the subject as a whole is legitimate, individual case files on their own are all potentially suspect, and if there was ever a subject where not everyone can be telling the truth, this is it. Thirdly, it would be a huge work to do so.

I will discuss some phenomena in a general sense and give a few examples, but I’m not going to be able to provide links to all my sources today, along with a discussions of the ins and outs of them. This would require a very lengthy and detailed article (or book), which isn’t what I’m setting out to do today.

So, for the benefit of trying to offer something of value that can be (relatively) easily digested on this topic in a blog format, I will not be diving deeply into individual cases today. Rather, I want to give my own opinions about what all this means, and what its implications are.

Some key points:

Unquestionably, everything about the UFO phenomena is a challenge to common assumptions about what is real. Firstly, we have the simple challenges of having to travel incomprehensibly vast distances across space, and the time required to do so. If we think of interstellar travel simply in terms of having to travel very, very fast for a significant period of time, the challenges are immense (I would therefore suggest that if interstellar and/or intergalactic travel is possible, it would involve the bending of space and/or travel through higher dimension of reality). To be able to accelerate to close to the speed of light would involve significant sustained acceleration (which is problematic on multiple levels) and huge risks of damage, and would still take decades to travel to the nearest star (when considering acceleration and deceleration). Not to mention the problems presented by special relativity.

Secondly, if you read some accounts of UFO encounters you will quickly see they almost always contain supernatural features. That is, they don’t simply seem to be encounters with physical craft and beings who have travelled across vast distances to visit us. Rather, there is almost always strange features present such as disturbances of perception of time, loss of memory, the bending or breaking of the laws of physics (as they are currently understood2), or the presence of something explicitly spiritual or supernatural (such as telepathic communication).

As such, UFO encounters have legitimately been categorised by some as a supernatural or occult phenomenon. If we use the term occult here it is not so much to explicitly define these experiences as being dark in nature (although some definitely appear that way, and in some cases may indeed be so3). Rather, the term occult can simply and literarily mean hidden, so the UFO phenomenon involves many things that are hidden to common human understanding.

Perhaps this is a big part of why there has been such intense skepticism and dismissiveness of the phenomena. That is, if we are to accept that these encounters are indeed with an intelligence that is not of this planet and/or dimension, then this naturally has huge implications for religion, science, politics and essentially everything. If this phenomenon is indeed real, and if humans beings at large accept it as such, then this is huge.

Current Government disclosure and a quick summary of military encounters with UFO’s over the past century:

Up until very recently there seems to have been some sort of informal consensus in the general public that only crazy people believe in UFO’s, due to too many hours reading dubious conspiracy theories and/or taking mind-altering substances. Of course this is an over-generalisation, but certainly this is largely true. Government, media, scientific authorities and society as a whole have largely scoffed at belief in UFO’s. In particular, the belief that the UFO’s originate beyond our planet and/or dimension has been (and is still) largely treated with public disdain.

In the last 12 months there has been a lot of conversation about the US Government looking at recent UFO encounters by its military (who have renamed them UAP’s – perhaps seeking to distance themselves from assumptions of an extra-terrestrial/extra-dimensional nature), and it has seemed that perhaps maybe things might change. Certainly I have heard (and seen) a number of sources say that now we actually have real evidence that something is happening that needs to be explained. As someone who has had at least a casual interest in these matters for some time I have to express that recent revelations are nothing new. Rather, military staff – pilots in particular – have been encountering UFO’s since WW2 (and probably before).

It is well attested that back in WW2, Allied, German and Japanese pilots reported seeing strange craft observing them from a distance and at times flying close by, without ever actually directly interfering with them. The Allied pilots at the time assumed that these craft were some secret German technology, though it was later discovered that the Allied pilots weren’t the only ones experiencing the phenomenon4.

From the Cold War there are countless testimonies from pilots and other military staff regarding extremely strange encounters with UFO’s. Of particular note is the intriguing case that a significant amount of UFO encounters have taken place near or at nuclear facilities (testing grounds, weapons storage facilities etc.). There are even credible and well-documented claims that on multiple occasions UFO’s appeared at facilities holding nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, and somehow enabled or disabled the weapons, and even shut down all power to the site. Whilst all manner of stories can be found in the dark corners of the Internet, many of these stories in question have been recorded publicly as told by military staff, interviewed by real journalists. It appears that whatever or whoever is responsible for these craft, they appear to be very interested (or perhaps concerned) in human development of nuclear weapons.

Over the past 12 months the US Government has publicly admitted to incidents where jet pilots have had daily encounters with unidentified craft flying at great speed and displaying extraordinary manoeuvrability (that appears to defy current understandings of physics), as well as radar staff recording these craft doing the seemingly impossible. Likewise they have released footage taken aboard military jets that show them tracking these craft, along with the audio commentary of the astonished pilots. As far as I am aware this footage has been public for some time (it was previously leaked online); it is only that now the Government has openly admitted it is real.

This is not a new phenomena:

If one looks back in history, we find many sources telling of mysterious lights in the sky, often with similar sounding supernatural features. Regarding more ancient sources for UFO encounters, it is very easy to join in the mockery of those who take these things seriously. We have all seen the endless memes at the expense of George Tsoukalos:

In all seriousness though, once we acknowledge that something is happening now, it is only natural that we consider ancient sources as relevant to the subject. Of course, we must exercise some caution about forcing the UFO and alien encounter narrative onto ancient mythology. It is obviously possible to become obsessed with this conclusion and project it into places where it doesn’t belong. Having noted that however, there are certainly cases whereby the “ancient aliens” theory is a nice fit. One obvious example is the Vimana (flying chariot, vehicle or palace of the gods) in ancient Indian religious literature. These accounts most certainly are relevant if we recognise that something real is happening now. When there is strong, credible evidence of something of a controversial nature, there is then valid reasons to consider weaker, less well- attested or less well-defined evidence as well.

Accounts of civilian Alien encounters:

I am personally of the opinion that the evidence for UFO encounters being real is strong and worthy of serious consideration. A significant part of this stems from the fact that much of the data (or evidence) comes from trained professionals, and the various accounts appear to have an overall consistency to them.

We must recognise there that UFO encounters and claimed Alien encounters (and/or abductions) are not necessarily always the same thing. That is, they are two closely related and often overlapping subjects, but either can exist independent of the other.

One notable case is claimed to have occurred in 1994, when school kids in Zimbabwe saw Aliens get out of a flying saucer and telepathically warned them of the dangers of human technological advances5. This case appears to be both a UFO and Alien encounter. Another example was in 1954 at a Soccer match in Tuscany when players and 10,000 spectators were all awestruck at mysterious lights in the sky (and play apparently stopped)6. In this case it may have been a UFO incident witnessed simultaneously by a large number of civilians.

Aside from a number of notable incidents which involve a large number of civilian witnesses, there are many cases where individuals report personal encounters with beings from other planets and/ or dimensions. Whilst military encounters with UFO’s are often quite strange, these individual encounters are probably far more bizarre.

We could perhaps oversimplify these encounters by separating them into two categories; encounters with benevolent and malevolent beings. In some of these encounters the beings are described as coming across with great warmth, expressing deep concern for the direction of human progress. The message is usually some variation of the following:

Human beings are very rapidly developing in a purely materialist way without the necessary corresponding spiritual development. As such, technological advances are putting our future at great risk, as we have the potential to destroy ourselves and the environment we live in.

Obviously, this appears to correspond very closely with the prevalence of UFO encounters at nuclear sites, and the frequent and repeated UFO encounters amongst military staff. Sometimes

the message also appears to correspond with warnings of climate change and other geological disasters (as claimed by Michel Desmarquet7).

In other examples we hear highly disturbing tales of people being abducted against their will, paralysed, induced into a semi-drugged state (by some unknown means) and violated in a variety of ways (probed, forcibly impregnated, implanted with technological devices etc.). The beings encountered in these tales are described as either cold and indifferent to human emotions, or outright malevolent, treating human beings as merely a lower life form (like humans may treat an insect).

It is hard to know what to make of these reports. It is obviously very easy to simply dismiss them all as being fictitious, and viewed individually in isolation I can certainly understand the logic to such a dismissal. However, viewed collectively as a whole, and particularly in light of the reality that a large body of evidence exists for UFO phenomenon from the hands of trained military professionals (amongst others), I think we need to consider that at least some of these tales have some truth to them.

Possible explanations:


There are obviously many different explanations that can be given for the range of phenomenon being covered here. Science as it is currently defined only considers natural (material) explanations. The method of science (methodological naturalism) presupposes only natural explanations. This has been quite fine for dealing with material phenomenon, but it naturally precludes science from being able to investigate subjects that if taken literally would imply something of a spiritual and/or supernatural nature. There is no questioning the fact that modern science has indeed been incredibly successful at achieving rapid development of human understanding and the subsequence technology that has emerged from it. However, if we have defined science not merely as a process of coming up with a hypothesis and then putting it to the test and holding it up to scrutiny, but also as bringing in metaphysical naturalism (materialism/ atheism8) through the back door, then we preclude science from being able to study subjects like UFO and claims of Alien encounters, and also NDE’s (Near Death Experiences) and ESP (Extra- Sensory Perception) etc.

If science as it is currently defined precludes the possibility that UFO/Alien phenomenon are literarily real, then science is unfit for the study of them. I would think it is obvious that to study UFO and/or Alien phenomenon properly, you must go into the study with an open mind and balanced scales, equally open to multiple possibilities and willing to let the evidence lead you towards likely conclusions.

With this established, we should note that obviously there are many organisations and people that are highly resistant to acceptance of any part of UFO/Alien phenomenon as real. Certainly we must consider all possibilities, and indeed natural possibilities are likely in at least some cases. There is no question that there are many ways that even trained professionals can be fooled by some unknown or misunderstood natural phenomena, let alone civilians. There is likewise no doubt that human beings have a virtually endless capacity for fraud and/or madness. There are countless examples for all of these explanations.

Having recognised this however, I would state that some of the natural explanations that are presented for well known UFO encounters are nothing less than ridiculous. That is, it is quite clear that in many cases the natural explanations that are given are presented not because they are the most likely, but rather because the person (or people) presenting them cannot allow for the possibility that there is an extraterrestrial and/or supernatural phenomenon at work.

I have read many accounts from trained professionals of their chaise (in a plane or car) of a UFO in which the report is dismissed as caused by a weather balloon, or a fixed object in the sky (a planet or star) etc. For example the “Gorman dogfight”9, in which USAF pilot George Gorman pursued a UFO for close to an hour. The official USAF dismissed the UFO as a weather balloon. Are we seriously to believe that a USAF pilot wouldn’t know the difference between a weather balloon (which could only be blown about at relatively slow speeds by the wind), and an intelligently guided craft travelling at great speed (far beyond his own capacity), and able to repeatedly out-manoeuvre him?

I must say that in this case the official explanation of the USAF is absurd, and almost assumes that we are simply stupid. This is not a serious explanation, but rather a mere public dismissal of a serious incident without consideration. Of course the USAF might have thought that the public couldn’t handle the truth, or they could have thought it wasn’t in their interests to disclose the nature of the incident to the public. Or the people involved may have blinded by their own personal biases, and thus precluded a serious consideration of the incident.

This is no isolated case (read some other cases10). Rather, this is common when examining matters of a spiritual/supernatural manner. Often it is argued that the possibility of the phenomenon being real is too absurd to actually take seriously. Of course natural explanations must be considered first, as “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. But, as above we find in some cases that naturalistic explanations cannot be taken seriously, because they weren’t the result of serious consideration but rather personal bias (or a deliberate cover-up).

A very legitimate point can be made that advanced technology far beyond the general understanding can be mistaken for magic. Certainly it is fair to assume that some claims of people witnessing a UFO are actually cases of people observing military craft (including top- secret “black projects”, such as the B2 stealth Bomber). It is certainly conceivable that all UFO’s could have a terrestrial origin. In many ways this should be the default conclusion, unless strong evidence otherwise is presented (which I personally think a serious consideration in this case will support).

Certainly the default position of the worlds Governments has been to presume that UFO encounters by its military were encounters with advanced craft from other nations. Perhaps in some cases this may be so, but if you actually read the accounts of pilots and radar staff it is clear that these crafts (the UFO’s) possess technology far beyond any known civilisation on earth at the moment. It doesn’t make sense to imagine that Russia, China, Germany or Britain could possess such technology (and have done so for a considerable amount of time) and yet not also be using such advanced scientific knowledge in other areas of its nation in a way that would make it stand out entirely from the worlds nations.

A plausible alternative is that there exists survivors of earlier advanced civilisations who (for whatever reason) have chosen to remain mostly hidden from the world. Such people could be hiding out in bases within the earth, in inaccessible mountains, or in the depths of the ocean. This possibility cannot be discounted, and seems to me to the most plausible alternative to the extra- terrestrial and/or extra-dimensional origin.

The UFO and Alien phenomenon have been seen as quite challenging by many established religions. For example, orthodox Christianity sees the spiritual world in a dualistic way, in that there are simply only divine and demonic beings. Being raised in a conservative Christian family I was told that aliens were actually demons. Certainly, given the nature of some of the personal accounts one can understand this conclusion is not completely unreasonable.

Many years ago I read a book by Graham Hancock titled “Supernatural”11, which was largely about the use of psychoactive drugs in primitive cultures, and their possible role in bringing about evolution in the human psyche. He cited a work (I can’t recall the author) which argued that UFO and Alien phenomenon were a modern-day manifestation of the fairy lore. Whilst many of us have grown up hearing tales about fairies as merely benign and benevolent elemental spirits, there is much folklore that tells of them abducting and generally messing with people in a very similar way to current tales of Alien abductions.

Again, it is plausible that there is a common cause behind the two phenomenon. Having noted this, of course it should be noted that claims of alien (or fairy) abductions if considered in isolation could all be the result of fraud, mental illness or just considered as nothing more than myth.

However, given that there is tangible evidence for that UFO phenomenon are real, I am inclined to think they are at least worthy of consideration.

What do I think it all means?:

I have written before that I am seeking to differentiate between subjects of which I quite confident (like religion and general spirituality), and others in which I recognise that I simply cannot possibly know enough to reach definitive conclusions. Even in those topics like religion and spirituality where I have put in significant time and effort to compare competing views, there are still huge limitations to what I can possibly know as a single human being. It is more about being confident in which overall views and perspectives to support and which to reject (and why to reject them), then claiming to know everything relevant to these topics. Likewise, it is more about being confident about some very specific sub-topics (like the influence of the Egyptian cult of Osiris and the Greek Mystery religions on Christianity), rather than claiming to know everything about religion and spirituality as a whole.

So, having conceded the need to be cautious about reaching too strong a conclusion without being able to have enough knowledge to justify this confidence, what do I actually think? To start with, I think if ever there was a subject to be cautious about, this is it. Particularly, if ever there was a question to be cautious of, it is:

If Earth is being visited by Aliens, are they good or bad?

So, let’s break it down. Intelligently piloted craft with technology far beyond our own are deliberately making themselves known to the military of major nations. In particular, they seem to be particularly interested in all of our nuclear programs. If these beings piloting these craft were hostile towards any particular nation or towards humanity as a whole, it appears that they would have no trouble defeating or even completely destroying us.

So, it seems unlikely to me that these craft are a military risk to us. If anything, they appear to be peacekeepers, and do indeed appear to be trying to warn us of the great risk we pose to ourselves and to our environment as a whole (though some in the military have – I think falsely – interpreted it the other way round12). Nuclear weapons possess the possibility of not just killing large numbers of people in a single blast (I recall looking into this, and a typical nuclear armed ballistic missile could kill 10 million people in a heartbeat), but given enough of them, there is the capacity to induce nuclear winter, which would essentially destroy the Earth’s environment for all life (and we have come very close on multiple occasions, particularly during the Cold War13).

Never before has humanity had the potential to destroy itself. All our cleverness, all our scientific and technological advances, and we are now clever enough to do literarily the stupidest, most insane and most evil thing within our reach. We can kill not only one person, but essentially everyone and everything.

Everything about the UFO phenomena screams to us that common assumptions about the world are wrong. That is not to say that we abandon everything we think we know about the world and start from scratch. Rather, it simply means that our current understanding is only a fraction of what is truly out there. Our current theories are approximations that are good enough in some instances, but not in others. What we think to be true is only relatively so, not absolutely.

Everything about the UFO phenomena challenges the assumptions of a classical and materialistic worldview. These craft clearly have the capacity to mess with gravity, and it is only reasonable to conclude that they are messing with space and time. Likewise, if we accept that at least some of the Alien encounters are legitimate, then we also must conclude that these beings possess not just highly advanced scientific knowledge, but also capacities that we consider spiritual and/or paranormal.

I must say that it is not that there was never any evidence for these things before the modern UFO phenomena, or that there is not evidence for these things outside of the phenomenon as a whole.

If you are open to the consideration of these things, there is abundant evidence of the great weirdness of our world that can be found in many different fields.

Much of this evidence can be found within Physics, which is supposed to be the hardest of the hard sciences, and probably the most fundamental of all. Starting with special relativity, the idea that space and time are interrelated is already very weird. This in itself overturns the common assumption that time and space are simply the absolute markers of our three dimensional physical experience. The idea that the universe presents a speed limit (that of light), and as you try and approach it mass increases up to infinity is itself incredibly weird. That travelling at such speeds plays with the relative experience of time is even weirder. That anything travelling faster than light would technically be travelling back in time is even stranger still.

When it comes to quantum physics, all the classical materialistic assumptions all get thrown out the window. Matter is no longer solid, but made up almost entirely of empty space. What remains as something (other than space) itself is immaterial, it can disappear and reappear in a different location, and doesn’t need to pass through or around a barrier to go from one side to another (quantum tunnelling). Quantum particles display both particle and wave like natures, depending on how they are being studies (particle wave duality).

The full weirdness of this last phenomena (particle wave duality) isn’t often discussed, as its implications were extremely controversial for leading physicists in the early-mid 20th century, and it has become unpopular to discuss its implications in modern academia. Whilst many leading physicists in the early-mid 20th century took seriously the philosophical implications of particle- wave duality, materialistic assumptions proved to be a barrier to the subject. That is, the science naturally led towards a spiritual or idealist (idealism being the philosophic view that consciousness – rather than matter – is the substance of reality) worldview. In recent times more advanced experiments (see the quantum eraser and especially the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment14) have validated the radical implications of this phenomenon.

Quantum entanglement by itself is mighty weird, but even weirder still is the delayed choice entanglement swapping experiment15, which again shows the immaterial nature of matter and the relative nature of matter, space and time.

Back to the subject at hand, the UFO and Alien phenomenon clearly involves knowledge of such things that repeatedly shows us how little human beings currently understand about our place in the universe. Having recognised this, the possibility that Earth is actually being visited by beings from other planets and/or dimensions is not just reasonable, but highly likely. Whilst journalists, scientists, politicians and your friends and family like to scoff at these things as merely crazy talk, we truly need to take this seriously16.

Consider the implications of humanity coming into communication with beings from other planets and higher dimensions. Consider what this could mean for our future. If we think modern scientific advances have alleviated suffering for humanity, imagine what we could do with the level of scientific knowledge that these beings possess?

Human beings often think of ourselves as being at the pinnacle of a long line of human evolution and/or history. Whether it is our religious or political affiliation, our culture, race or gender or scientific worldview, people everywhere like to think of themselves as the superior ones, unlike the others. Tribalism of all sorts has been the norm throughout recorded history, and still exists today (even amongst those that claim to be against it17.

For humanity to see itself as a whole as simply a small part of a galactic or universal family would truly put our petty tribalism into its correct context. That is, our differences shouldn’t seek to divide us, but rather we should see ourselves/each other as all working together in cooperation, with complementary skills18.

I think this last point on cooperation rather than competition is a key one here. Whilst there is certainly room in life for healthy competition (sports, scientific development, business etc.) this whole hostile competition between nations is probably the most toxic and dangerous in human history. As human history is filled with wars between families, tribes and nations, human beings are often suspicious of others, and think they have to attack preemptively before their opponent attacks them. We also have the undeniable reality of human greed, that believes that it can have more by taking from or dominating others. Likewise, for ideological reasons sometimes leaders believe it is their duty to rule over others. We thus have a situation whereby nations devote massive budgets to their military, stockpiling doomsday weapons, both in fear of others, and at other times with the desire to spread their Empire.

For me, it seems that the UFO phenomenon clearly announces that this must end. That is, we cannot continue to stockpile weapons and devote our resources to military developments at the expense of peaceful scientific advances. Likewise, we cannot continue to lust after the resources of other nations and believe in the false idea that we will have more by conquering others. The opposite is true. How many times in history have the people of a nation suffered due to the lust of its leaders? Even when a nation succeeds in conquering another people, there is a cost to the Soul that is never worth it. How many people we see in the world today thriving materially, but being deprived of true, inner wealth and happiness19.

In my opinion, worldwide disclosure is needed to show people from all nations equally the insanity of our current trajectory. If Western nations were to dissolve their military’s overnight, it is highly likely that Communist China would invade in a heartbeat. Hence we have quite a lot of work to do before we can be ready to join a larger, cosmic family beyond this planet.

In this sense, human beings are still only just at the kindergarten level of cosmic evolution. Sure, we have come a long way from an animal existence; however we have a long, long way to go. These beings that are visiting us clearly have the capacity to help us in ways we cannot possibly even imagine. Perhaps we should listen to these warnings and find a way to work together.

So, the above being so, I can’t finish this without recognising the darker side of UFO and Alien phenomenon. It is certainly true that many of the stories told in this field present humans being harmed in various ways in (and after) the encounter. This brings up very difficult questions about the question of suffering and evil; the great enigma which human beings (and religion/spirituality in particular) struggles to answer.

We know in our human experience that there exists great extremes of the potential for suffering and joy, for bondage and freedom, for injustice and equity, for toiling and thriving and for hatred and love. Certainly human beings have shown this duality in the different ways we live, in the way we treat each other and in the civilisations we create. Clearly if higher (spiritual) beings exist (as I believe they do), then there is a degree of non-interference at the heart of a cosmic code. If a Supreme Being exists (as I believe), then It is not an interfering personal Deity, but something else.

An analogy I have been leaning towards is that when someone buys a computer game they would be disappointed if they mastered it in one night. Likewise, they would be highly disappointed if at the first sign of frustration at the difficulty they were handed all the cheat codes. It seems to me that help is given to us from above in more subtle ways that meet our immediate needs.

It is a valid question as to how far a civilisation can develop in a purely materialistic sense without a corresponding spiritual (or psychological and ethical if you prefer) development? That is, is there a limit to how far we can evolve outwardly without also evolving inwardly? I don’t pretend to know the answer to these questions.

It then should be asked whether perhaps there are many different races of beings from different planets and dimensions that are visiting Earth now? That is, perhaps they aren’t all on the same page morally and ethically? Perhaps there are some that want to work together and help us, whilst others are rogue civilisations that only care about their own interests and will happily interfere with us for their own gain? I do personally suspect the latter; that there is more than one group of beings coming here now, with more than one motivation.

We are however now entering into highly speculative territory. I will leave this conversation with the following opinion:

When entering any exploration beyond the normal confines of material experience, always do so with a pure heart and mind.

Of course, I also suggest living all areas of human life with a pure heart and mind. In the same way that you don’t want to go alone down a dark alley in a seedy part of a big city late at night, you don’t want to go messing with things of a supernatural nature without having the best intentions at heart. There are countless stories of people that have made this mistake and suffered greatly as a consequence.

I will leave this here for today. May our hearts and minds be open to truth, wherever it leads us. Peace.


1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

2 I have long been saying that human beings are far too quick to express certainty on things they barely understand (https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/how-do-we-really- know-what-is-true/ ). We are also far too quick to proclaim some things to be absolutely true when they are only relatively true. Likewise, often our understanding of some facet of reality (or reality as a whole) is ultimately only an approximation, and thus gives us accurate enough results in some situations, but not in others.

3 See Aleister Crowley, Lam and the Zeta Grey Alien phenomena: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ mvpvyn/magickal-stories-lam.

4 There are tales that the Germans had been experimenting with flying disk designs during WW2, though this isn’t something I can find verify in any way. It seems however that the US did indeed build prototypes of a flying disk during the Cold War.

5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TukvVnadRic (See a short clip from Joe Rogan about this), the BBC have covered this as well: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-57749238

6 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407.

7 https://www.amazon.com.au/Abduction-Planet-Also-Available-Under/dp/0646159968

8 We should note that some may believe in supernatural and/or spiritual subjects but do not believe in a single Creative intelligence we call God (or insist upon defining it otherwise, despite having much in common with the general concept of God as seperate from specific sectarian definitions). Hence the term atheism can be misleading. Thus naturalism/materialism are more specific and accurate.

9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorman_dogfight.

10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings

11 https://www.amazon.com.au/Supernatural-Meetings-Ancient-Teachers-Mankind/dp/ 1932857842

12 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15154808/ufo-swarm-us-military-nuclear-weapons-world- war-3/ ,https://www.dnaindia.com/viral/report-aliens-ufos-took-control-of-nuclear-weapons-can- start-world-war-iii-ex-us-air-force-officer-2915293

13 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200807-the-nuclear-mistakes-that-could-have-ended- civilisation

14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser 15 https://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1203/1203.4834v1.pdf

16 Ex-Astronaut Edgar Mitchell claims to have personally witnessed UFO’s over a military base, and to have spoken personally to many people from military bases who verify these stories. Nevertheless, many in the media treat him as a sad, pathetic conspiracy theories: Edgar Mitchell from Apollo 14: https://www.gq.com/story/astronaut-who-walked-on-the-moon-claims-aliens- came-to-earth-to-prevent-nuclear-war and https://www.iflscience.com/space/apollo-astronaut- says-aliens-prevented-nuclear-war-earth/ . I should note that there are many other high-profile people worldwide that have made similar claims: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/20/ worldwide-ufo-cover-up-is-real-claims-former-canadian-defence-minister_n_7100202.html , https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgzg97/israels-former-space-security-chief-says-aliens-have- prevented-nuclear-war

17 Re: The identity politics of the political far-left, which is increasingly becoming mainstream in Western society.

18 https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2021/08/29/we-dont-have-to-be-identical-to-be- equal/

19 Just to be clear, I am not saying that material success is incompatible with inner wealth. Rather, I am just making a point about achieving material success at the expense of ones Soul.

We don’t have to be identical to be equal:

I believe in the equality of the ultimate value of all human beings, and in fact, all things.  That is, in the essence of our being, all things are one and are thus of equal value.  However, it is self-evident that there are tremendous differences in the outward expression of different people, and different things in general.

There are many things that are quite obvious and common sense when considered, but are easily overlooked. Sometimes, the more obvious something is, the more easily it is overlooked.  That is, human beings often reach irrational conclusions on many topics, though the reality can be clearly seen when examined without bias.  In light of this, I state the following:

Recognising the equality of inherent worth of different people does not demand that they be seen as identical.

I doubt anyone reading this would disagree with this statement, and I could excuse some for questioning whether it even needs to be said.  However, there are so many examples whereby the above seems to be missed.

Equality of ultimate value and differences in individual expression:

There are clearly distinctly different levels of equality between different people.  If we were to look at four people in a community, one baker, one school teacher, one police officer and a doctor, you can easily understand how each of these people are equally contributing towards their society, but in different ways.  You could certainly frame a question about the level of specialist knowledge and skills required for the different jobs, but essentially they are all necessary and important^[i].

However, if we compare a brain surgeon to an unemployed drug addict, they are clearly not equal in their individual expressions.  A brain surgeon is contributing enormously to the wellbeing of others in their community, vastly improving the quality of life of many, and actually saving the life of others.  An unemployed drug addict is generally a danger and burden to themselves, their family and friends, and to the wider community.

This should not however mean that we dehumanise those that suffer from substance abuse.  I have been there personally, and whilst I didn’t fall as far as some, I certainly was a shadow of the man I wanted to be.  We can recognise the inherent worth of each human being, whilst simultaneously recognising that some are expressing that inherent worth, whilst others are not.

Someone who struggles with substance abuse and cannot hold down a job (and thus lives on welfare and charity) is not living outwardly in according with their potential, and is not expressing their ultimate value.  Someone who serves the community and saves peoples lives on the other hand is living outwardly according to their potential, and is expressing their inner value in the world at large.

Demonstrating this principle to understand comparative religion:

I first started writing because I wanted to encourage tolerance and understanding between different religions.  However, I soon discovered that many – or even most – of the people arguing for pluralism were also arguing that the worlds religions were all equal and identical, and that it was only human misunderstanding that was making it seem otherwise.

The reality is that this view is untenable, as the facts simply do not support it^[ii].  The truth is that whilst there are indeed largely universal overlapping features of spirituality and religion, the world’s faiths are almost always heavily colored by the culture of their time and place.

This doesn’t just mean that they express the same truths in the vocabulary of their culture.  Rather, it also means that they have many unique features, and different strengths and weaknesses.  Also, it means that they are different mixtures of divine truths and human, egoic projections.

So, we can encourage harmony between people of different faiths without having to ignore all the differences between them.  We can reject the exclusive and hyper-conservative perspectives that see different religions as being on opposite sides of a cosmic battle of good against evil (with eternal consequences), without having to ignore the reality that some faiths are better than others in different ways.  They are not all equal and identical in their expression, and yet each human being is equal in the eyes of God, regardless of what faith (if any) they express.

We can (and should) be able to express criticisms of the beliefs and practices of different faiths without diminishing or dehumanising followers of such faiths.  We have to be able to have constructive debates and give critical examinations of religious groups without resorting to (or being wrongly accused of) religious bigotry or racism (as particular religions are commonly associated with specific racial and cultural groups, criticisms of some religions often get dismissed as racist).

We can do this whilst still seeing the differences between us as ultimately superficial, and seeing the common ground between faiths and people as a whole as being of true importance.

Gender and polarity:

There has been a massive push in Western culture recently to try to realise the ideal of equality between the sexes.  I for one have never been tied to strict traditional gender roles, so in principle I generally applaud this.  However, agreeing with the general value of something isn’t always the same as agreeing with the way something is implemented.

Whilst cultural conditioning can explain some of the differences between men and women, it is quite clear that some of our differences have a biological basis.  That is, whilst men and women are equal in ultimate value as human beings, we are not identical in our expression.  These biological differences are generally more pronounced in a traditional or primitive (this is a heavily loaded word, to be used carefully) way of life.  However, in our modern world they are becoming somewhat less important, and men and women are now able to share many of the same tasks and roles largely equally.

However, the reality is that many, if not most people prefer polarity in their romantic relationships.  That is, heterosexual men generally prefer feminine women, and heterosexual women generally prefer masculine men.  There are certainly many exceptions to this rule, but as a general rule it is almost universally true.  We also see this polarity in many (but not all) homosexual relationships, as it is common for one partner in a same-sex relationship to have more pronounced masculine traits, whilst the other has more pronounced feminine traits.

There is however also a push coming from the far-left (and into the mainstream left) to remove or even reverse natural human gender polarity.  I wish to walk carefully through this ground, as I am not interested in pushing back against any group or persons.  There needs to be freedom for everyone to express themselves naturally without being pressured into cultural norms that aren’t personally always a fit for their individual tendencies.  However, we can allow this without abandoning the natural polarity that many (if not most) people naturally express and enjoy.  We can evolve our understandings of gender without throwing out all features of traditional values that are rooted in biology and natural law.

Men and women are equal in value (as are intersex and transgender people), but we are not identical in our expressions.  Men and women do have distinct differences that should be understood and appreciated as complementary.  This leads me to the following statement, which I feel is worth emphasising:

Seeing unity within diversity should be our aim, rather than artificially enforcing uniformity.

A small percentage (approx. 0.02%^[iii]) of people are born intersex, in which genetic abnormalities can blur the traditional distinctions between males and females.  Again, intersex people have equal value, but they have distinct challenges to experience as human beings.  Likewise, transgender people (those that suffer from gender dysphoria and choose to undergo surgery and hormone treatments to change their appearance to that of the opposite of their biological sex) have equal value to other people.  However, their experience is distinctly different to that of the rest of us.

I have been collecting sources on this subject for the past 9 months or so, in preparation for a series of articles where I will cover specifics relating to transgender issues.  I will state here that we can (and should) treat transgender and intersex people with the respect and dignity that they deserve, but that this doesn’t mean we should bend to all the requests made by far-left activists.  We can see the equality of trans and intersex people^[iv]without rejecting the traditional gender binary.  We can respect the diversity of human personality without throwing out all distinctions of human biology (which is what many radical gender activists are actually trying to do).

Race, skin color, culture and civilisation:

As a final example, I want to also say that we can accept the equality of people of different races, skin colours and cultures as equal in their humanity, whilst recognising the differences in their expression.  I wish to be clear that I reject all ideas of the inherent superiority of anyone based on the colour of their skin or their genetics.  However, this does not mean that we cannot recognise some cultures as being more advanced than others, in different ways.

We need to be able to differentiate between the degree of civilisation in a culture, without resorting to racist ideas about some races and cultures being ultimately smarter or better than others.  I would prefer to say that certain cultures have developed forward momentum at particular times which has brought about rapid evolution, whilst others have stayed largely the same over very long periods of time.

At different points in recorded history this momentum has taken place in different cultures, with people of different skin colours.  Egypt, Sumer, India, Persia, China, Greece, Rome, Britain, the US, etc. have all had momentum in their favour at different times.  Only extreme bias can lead to the conclusion that some races or skin colours are objectively superior to others.  I personally believe in the ideal of a cosmopolitan, multicultural society.  However, such an ideal can only work when we come together under common values and leave traditional tribalism behind.

We need to be able to discuss the reality that some cultures are closer to the animal level and some further along the evolutionary chain, without resorting to a gross and oversimplistic dichotomy about inferior and superior races, or the equally problematic and oversimplistic dichotomy of oppressor and victim.  As I’ve said repeatedly, we need to be able to have important conversations without sacrificing either our intelligence or our decency.

Speak the truth with love, fearlessly.

Peace

---

^[i] Though I recognise that some people might have a particular gripe with one or more of these professions.

^[ii] See the following lengthy article I wrote on religious scriptures: https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/on-interpretations-of-scripture-why-many-religious-conservatives-and-progressives-misread-ancient-texts-and-misunderstand-religion-in-general/

^[iii] A much higher figure is often quoted of 1.7%, but this figure includes people who are very clearly biologically female in every respect, but have genetic abnormalities that make it difficult for them to conceive and/or carry a child to term.  The much lower figure of 0.02% is apparently accurate in referring to intersex people as diverging from otherwise clear human gender distinctions.

^[iv] You may have noticed I didn’t mention “non-binary” people here.  That is because the identification of someone as non-binary does not refer at all to anything biological (or an inverse of their biology, as in the case of transgender people), but rather refers only to personality.  Hence, non-binary is of a different category to issues of gender, as “gender identity” is not synonymous with biological sex as common uses of the term gender are.

It should go without saying that we should treat people that consider themselves non-binary with respect and dignity.  However, this doesn’t mean that we have to concede to all demands made by gender activists, or accept all accusations of bigotry that are often levelled against those that disagree.

Real goodness is a balance of strength and kindness:

For a long time I have been going on about the importance of balance in all areas of life.  Not only are there very few human beings that have achieved real balance in their lives, there are perhaps not enough of us that are even truly aspiring towards it (I don’t personally claim to have achieved balance in my life).

Of course, holding an ideal is all good and well, but realising it amidst the challenges of earthly life is a completely different thing.  If we are to say to ourselves “I wish to be a stronger person”, we don’t suddenly automatically find that our life becomes easier.  Rather, we find that we are constantly challenged by life, and we have to find the bravery to face it in a new way.

It has occurred to me that it is very easy to idealise kindness, at the expense of strength.  I think there are many examples of individuals and groups of people doing just this, and becoming quite unbalanced in the process.  Hence, I would suggest that rather than aspiring towards kindness alone, we should aspire towards goodness (for a lack of a better word^[i]), which can perhaps be defined as a balance of strength and kindness.

Kindness without strength is weakness, and weakness can allow injustice and evil to proliferate.  Alternatively however, strength without kindness is harshness or brutality, which is itself evil.

It should be obvious to most people that human beings are different in many ways to the animals of this planet, and yet we share much in common with them.  I often say that human beings are somewhere between the animals and the angels.  Certainly much of our behaviour comes from biological instincts and egoic^[ii] defense mechanisms, and yet there is another side to us as well.

Life as a whole demonstrates to us a vast plethora of ways in which it can express, and I suspect we are currently only aware of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of this.  We human beings as well have a very wide range at which we can operate, depending upon individual biological factors, the way we are conditioned by our families and society at large, and our personal choices along the way.

Every single one of us is capable of stooping to great lows, and soaring to great highs, and we see this collectively as well.  Groups of people behaving in similar ways sometimes stoop to great depths of cruelty, depravity and degeneracy^[iii].  Likewise however, large groups of people sometimes aspire and encourage each other to great heights of physical, intellectual and spiritual evolution.

Therefore life on earth consists of a duality between the harsh realities and various challenges of a material experience, and the great joys and treasures that can be found here.  Human beings are complex creatures, and often the same person can simultaneously carry great darkness and light within themselves.  Depending on our personal sensitivities and biases we may be more aware of one side of someone than another.

My point in the above is that we cannot simply treat human beings as animals or angels alone.  If we see humanity only in terms of their lower aspect we idealise strength alone, and think only in terms of animal instincts and selfish personal gains.  If we do this we make a great mistake in being closed off to the great beauty in life, and the true treasures of the Soul.

Alternatively, if we only see humanity in terms of their higher aspect, we idealise kindness alone, and think only in terms of unconditional love, peace and creative expressions.  Whilst this can be a wonderful way to live if you are able to live in a bubble, it can lead to a dangerous naivety that isn’t fully suitable to the needs of earthly life.

There is certainly a degree to which it is helpful to direct attention towards higher things, in order to feed that side of ourselves and others.  This however should be different to actually ignoring our earthly responsibilities to be realistic about the challenges we face, and to meet them in appropriate ways.

Earthly life naturally demands of us that we be both strong and kind.  Certainly some situations demand more of one than the other, and different people have different personality traits that make them more suitable for different roles than others. However, as a whole, this is a universal truth that we all must recognise.  We all must seek to balance the realities of what is and what has been, with what can be.  We all must seek to balance the need to stand for justice and a stable and strong society, with the ideals of peace and respect for all.

It seems to me that many of us go way too far in one direction, at the expense of the other.  Sometimes this is an individual leaning, whilst at other times we see it as part of the biases of different cultural, political and religious groups.

There are some that idealises kindness and tolerance alone, and in a strangely ironic way this leads many people to the opposite of these ideals, or it simply allows darkness to proliferate unchecked.  I think we can say that if your only value is tolerance you end up with no values, as it becomes impossible to have reasonable disagreements or constructive debate on anything.

Until recently I wasn’t aware of how bad things had become in this regard.  Those that read news from a variety of sources (i.e. not just mainstream sources on the one side of politics) might have some inkling as to what I refer to here.  I will give direct examples in some upcoming articles on political and social issues.

On the other side, there are some that idealise strength alone, and completely ignore empathy, tolerance and kindness.  Some of these people may achieve a significant degree of outward success, but they live with a gaping hole on the inside as they live in denial of the everlasting part of themselves.  There is something really quite ugly about the absence of empathy for others, and something truly beautiful about real compassion.

Political realism – Politics of the Strong and Weak:

I recently was made aware of a field of political thought known as Political realism.  This isn’t really a field I am personally drawn to investigate, but there was something I came across that I think is relevant.  From a quick glance it appears that Political realism argues that the interaction of world affairs can be explained solely by the self-interest of competing nation-states.

The Greek historian Thucydides tells a tale of the siege of Melos, from the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.  There is a section known as “The Melian Dialogue” just prior to the siege of Melos, in which the Athenians offer the locals of Melos terms for their surrender, which the Melians debate with them back and forth.  The Athenians make it clear that they are not interested in conversations on the morality of their actions.  They simply state: 

“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”^[iv]

Another relevant passage is here quoted from the synopsis on Wikipedia:

“The Melians argue that they will have the assistance of the gods because their position is morally just (they are simply defending themselves against invasion).  The Athenians counter that the gods will not intervene because it is the natural order of things for the strong to dominate the weak.”

There is certainly a great deal of truth in the bleak realism of Thucydides (who has voiced the perspective of the Athenians).  This is indeed how the lower, animal side of life works.  However, there is much more to us than this, and to live solely with such an outlook is to deny one’s own Soul.

The above example demonstrates the “politics of the strong” and the “politics of the weak”.  A person or group in a position of strength will often do what they want because they can.  Likewise, a person or group in a weak position will often cry for mercy on moral grounds.

I have raised this example here because I have seen many examples whereby a person or group of people ask for tolerance whilst on the back foot (in a weak position), and then go on the attack once they are on the front foot (in a strong position).

This is something I will refer back to in many upcoming articles, so I wanted to establish it here as a common human trait that we should be aware of.  It is often oversimplistic to define some people as victims and others as oppressors, as circumstances can change quickly and the roles can reverse (and I intend on citing some clear examples of this in upcoming articles).

Here is one of my main points:

True kindness will express equally regardless of whether one is in a strong or weak position relative to others.

If one is only kind when in a weak position, then it isn’t real kindness, but simply a defense mechanism of the ego.  A person or group of people that are truly good will do what is right according to the needs of the circumstances, and will always uphold their ethical principles rather than merely their egoic self-interests.

A truly great ruler cares about the needs of all.  Real strength is used to defend those that are vulnerable and maintain a prosperous and stable society, where citizens enjoy personal freedoms and are free from the great horrors of war. 

In closing:

One simply cannot live properly on this planet without true strength.  Under philosophical ideals some people have attempted to live a life of absolute pacifism.  Such things are simply not possible for everyone on this planet at this point in time.  For all that aspire to the ideals of peace and freedom for all, we are often compelled to stand up and fight, for such is the nature of this reality.  However, to use this fact as a justification to deny the higher qualities of oneself and others is to miss the true purpose of life itself.

So, I believe we should aspire to be good, to be both realistic about human nature, but also aspire to the loftiest ideals of spirituality and/or philosophy.  May we show kindness and empathy to others, but also not hesitate to stand up, speak up and act when necessary to defend the good of all.  May we accept the reality that some conflict is unavoidable in our world, and may we face up to this reality with strength and confidence.

Speak the truth with love, fearlessly.

Peace

---

^[i] Perhaps the word righteousness could be used.  I think many of us now have an aversion to that word (as it is now seen as a loaded word), for better or for worse.

^[ii] Please note again that I use the word “ego” in the way it is used in Eastern spirituality, and well explained by Eckhart Tolle.  I have written on this before: https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/the-ego-and-its-role-in-ideology/ , https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/ego-identity-and-football/ and https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/ .

^[iii] Another loaded word that many have an aversion to.  I think personally there are appropriate contexts for this word in our vocabulary.

^[iv] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 5.89

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos

A spiritual perspective on death:

Introduction and the progression of my personal perspective:

Death is probably the biggest and most difficult topic for human beings.  No subject terrifies us more as a species, and as individuals.  They say the death of close family members is the single most stressful thing anyone can go through.  Losing a parent can be very painful, even when they have lived a long life and where there was foreknowledge that their life was coming to an end.  In the case of losing a young child I cannot (and do not wish to) imagine the grief.

The question of what happens when and after we die is a great mystery.  As always, there are many different opinions about this subject.  However, this can be a particularly touchy subject, as so much is at stake here.  Ultimately no one can claim absolute certainty about what does or doesn’t happen.  Having conceded this, I have spent quite a lot of time over the past 15 years or so exploring this subject, and I wish to share today my own perspective on death.

To start with, I will say that I certainly can sympathise with the despair that so many feel about death, as for some of my life I felt the same.  When I was 14, a girl from my year level at school took her own life and I was truly devastated.  She wasn’t a close friend, but she was very popular and was nice to everyone.  She would always talk to me when I was around, and I always saw her treat everyone equally.

I believe I didn’t sleep for a couple of nights afterwards, as I was raised to believe that those that took their own lives would suffer eternal torment in hell.  This idea seemed inconceivable in the wake of her suicide, as I couldn’t accept that such a kind soul would be made to suffer, simply for seeking an end to her own suffering.  I raised my thoughts with some leaders from my youth group at church, but was never satisfied with their responses.  This sowed probably the first real seeds of my dissent from my Christian upbringing.

A little later when I was around 20, my best friend (who would have been considered the same by a number of people) took his own life.  Again I was shattered, but probably even deeper than when I was 14.  My friend was a lively, brilliant and very intelligent soul who made people laugh, and also created lots of drama as well.  He also had a darker side to him, in that he suffered deep depression and also suffered as the results of poor choices in life.

At the time this occurred I was not in a good way personally, and I responded by plummeting deeper and deeper into a deep hole of depression.  I was barely functioning as a human being, barely sleeping and internally I was a mess.  At this time I wasn’t sure what I believed in.  I wasn’t going to church and I felt I was no longer a Christian.  However, I hadn’t yet gone through the process of evaluating different ideas and considering evidence for and against different concepts and teachings.  I still felt that there was probably something beyond this life, but I didn’t know what it was.

Losing a close friend at this time truly shattered me.  In many respects, this is a very common human response, to be lost in grief, unwilling to internally accept the finality of the situation.  When I started getting myself together again a few years later I started having a reoccurring dream where my friend came back and explained to me that he wasn’t really dead, but was on holiday in Queensland (I live in Victoria, Australia; Queensland is where we would typically go for a warm, sunny holiday by the beach).  Speaking in the symbolic language of dreams, the meaning of this is quite easy to understand.  His Soul was still alive, and living in an easier, less challenging environment (we could say a “better place”, but I don’t think that quite encapsulates the differences fully).

As I started to get myself back together again, I started to investigate spirituality, religion and philosophy.  I read as much as I could from many different sources, watched videos, attended lectures and tried out different environments, and conversed (and debated) with many different people.  It was quite clear to me that I did (and do) believe in an afterlife.  It was also quite clear to me that I objected to the notion of eternal damnation.  I developed the strong desire to lead towards a separation of spirituality and the harsh, judgmental aspects of some religions.  This then became the beginning of my desire to start writing, to lead and teach.

Through my own experiences and investigations I have reached a point where I have no doubt in the reality of the afterlife.  I have no doubt in the goodness of life, and no doubt that all beings that die will be ok (though perhaps for some it might take some time).  For me it is not a question of faith.  I cannot unsee what I have seen (and do not want to), and cannot unlearn what I have learned (and again, do not wish to).  I do not claim to have exact knowledge of what goes on beyond this physical dimension.  However, there is no question for me that what we can perceive through our physical senses is only a minute fraction of reality, and that there is a great, benevolent intelligence that regulates all of life (that we call God, though we often project our own ideas onto the reality of God).

Since I have come to absolute belief in the afterlife, I have lost a few family members and friends.  My grandmothers have passed on both sides, a young friend took her life and a close family friend of my mothers generation passed in middle age.  In each case I still felt the normal human feelings of sadness and loss.  I cried, but yet there was this great peace.  There was a sense of the deep sacredness of the transition from earthly life to higher, astral life (I will explain this shortly).  It felt like something really special had taken place, and there was a profound presence that is difficult to explain.

The human approach to death:

It is only natural that from a human perspective, death is seen as a great loss.  To our perception we perceive that the life has left the physical body, leaving only flesh and bones behind, absent of the personality we once knew.  Given that human beings develop strong attachments to family and friends, the death of a loved one naturally causes great pain.

There are however differences in the degree to which we suffer after losing someone, and particularly for how long we grieve afterwards.  For some of us, we experience the natural sadness and loss, but can still function and continue with our life and the things we love.  Others however are so utterly devastated that it overshadows everything else, and they are unable to function afterwards (as I explained in the introduction, I have now experienced both sides of this).

The question if anything exists beyond the physical dimension and our physical perceptions (and if so, what) is one of the deepest questions for humanity.  We cannot see with our eyes if there is life before birth, or after death.  Rather, we see a child emerge from its mother, and then we later see the body become cold and lifeless at death.

We hear many opinions from different sources as to how we should understand life and death, and it can be difficult to find a way through the maze of conflicting arguments to a clear understanding.  Ultimately, most of us cannot see for ourselves what (if anything) is on the other side, so we must simply attempt to use reason and examine evidence to determine what we believe in.

However, we human beings are perhaps not always as reasonable as we like to think we are^[i].  We are all greatly conditioned by our upbringing, our culture and unique life experiences, and by our choices along the way.  Whilst we all like to think that we are intelligent and unbiased, the reality is that most of us have not really examined our beliefs in anywhere near enough depth to be really confident in them.  This has significant consequences for human civilisation as a whole, as almost all of us believe strongly in things that are not completely (or even partially) true.

There are probably very few (if any) topics that are perhaps of greater significance than understanding death, and the context it gives to life.  Hence, I would argue that it is worth taking some time to really consider the question of what happens after death, and comparing the different opinions on the subject in some depth.

All of us will one day face death, and many people experience intense fear of the unknown as they experience the decline of their health.  Obviously then, this question of what happens after death has significant implications for the quality of life of us all.  Even further, the question of whether we exist after death has huge ramifications for how we life our life as a whole, even whilst young and in good health.

If there is no continued existence after death then there are no consequences beyond this life for misdeeds.  If there is no life after death then the only thing that matters is getting the most out of one physical life (and some people will believe they can do so at the expense of others).  However, if there is indeed life after death then one will have to potentially live with the choices one makes whilst on earth, even after the body has gone.  Likewise, if there life after death then your earthly existence needs to be seen from a greater context, as part of a longer life cycle or eternal life.

I want to be careful not to imply that all people that reject spirituality are naturally immoral people (I have seen some religious apologists – including one that has recently been publically disgraced – argue this).  Certainly this is not the case.  Nor are spiritual or religious people always more moral.  There are many examples to the contrary.  Certainly however, we can see that many people do reject morality by believing that there are no ultimate implications to their actions.  However, it is also common for religious believers to simply justify their actions and believe that God approves of their behaviour.  There are other cases however where spiritual, religious and/or philosophical beliefs cause an individual to be keenly aware of the choices they make, and the effects of their choices on others.

Certainly in general, rejection of life after death can be connected to rampant materialism (by which I mean pursuing of objects, possessions and experiences in an attempt to feel fulfilled).  Alternatively, belief in life after death can sometimes be connected with extreme aversion for all of the physical experience (both the higher and lower sides), in favour of an aspiration for a purer, heavenly existence.

So, subtlety and balance are required here, as there are many extremes to be avoided.  One could be obsessed with fear of death and thus never really live.  Or alternatively, one can be obsessed with life after death and also never really live.  One can deny the responsibility for their actions by denying anything beyond the physical world.  Alternatively, one can justify and rationalise their behaviour by way of their religious beliefs.

So, as always I wish to encourage a balanced approach to this topic.  Whilst I have my own opinions on the topic, which I will lay out here, I do not wish to make general judgments about groups of people on the basis of their beliefs.  That is, I am not interested in going to war with people that have different opinions to myself.  I believe we can have respectful dialogue and debate without watering down our convictions.  Ultimately I see the common humanity of all people as being primary, and differences of opinion as being secondary (and largely superficial).

I wish to be clear that I don’t believe that human beings are separated into different categories with different eternal fates on the basis of their beliefs (or non-belief) about the afterlife.  Rather, I believe that all beings are ultimately safe and well, regardless of what (if anything) they believe on this subject.  I believe that whilst human beings are tribal and fickle, God is not.  Much of what human beings believe about God is diluted by their own projections, and because there is no clear defining line between spirituality and psychology^[ii], we experience both.  

Fear of death:

It is only natural that in times of danger, human beings experience fear as a healthy instinct to preserve the physical vehicle.  Likewise, this instinct is also found all across the animal kingdom.  However, the psychological fear of death isn’t necessary or healthy.  Fear should never be a self-created (note: ego self) state in which habitual thoughts or deep beliefs create a state of unease.  Such fear is a psychological aberration, and is contrary to the health of the body, mind and soul.

Fear of death can relate both to a disbelief in life after death, and thus fear of annihilation, or it can also relate to fear of divine judgment and wrath, or simply a fear of the unknown.

One way or another, death is the end of the physical life experience, and it is time that human beings come to terms with this in a healthy way.  Our modern Western culture in particular has made death a taboo, and we are now largely in denial about its reality.  I believe it is time we made peace with death as an essential and even healthy part of the life cycle.  In doing so we can free ourselves to truly live.

Whether or not we believe there is life after death, the simple fact that our earthly life will end at some point is enough by itself to create significant discomfort in the minds of many.  For most people, earth is all we know (or perhaps we could say, all we think we know).  That is, many people only ever experience earthly life through their senses, and within the constraints of or time and space.  The main exception is of course dreaming, in that most people are at least partially aware of their nightly adventures.  However, in general most people do not conceive of dreams as “real”^[iii].

It is very hard not to put earthly priorities first whilst incarnated on earth.  In fact, it is only healthy and natural to do so, and in many ways it is also essential, as it is very difficult to prioritise spirituality without neglecting earthly responsibilities.  Balancing the two can seem to be a very challenging task for spiritual aspirants.  Hence, physical death involves everything our life has revolved around being taken away.

For those that either have no specific belief in spirituality and/or religion or have strong beliefs against them, facing death also means facing the belief in annihilation/non-existence.  This is a naturally terrifying thought to have to face.  Therefore, spiritual/religious beliefs and experiences can be a source of great comfort, in diminishing or even completely removing ones fear of annihilation.  However, we should not simply believe in spirituality just because it is comforting, but rather because we have become convinced that it is true.

Likewise however, belief in divine wrath can also induce fear of death.  That is, many people believe that God is wrathful and places strict criteria upon entrance to heaven.  Under such conditions, religious beliefs can be a great hindrance to a fulfilling earthly life, as they can induce a state of perpetual background fear.

I have recently started saying that most spiritual and religious beliefs and concepts are approximations (this is something I have felt for some time, but perhaps is a new way of expressing it).  That is, very few are 100% correct.  Some may be 60% correct and 40% false, others, 70/20, 95/5, or 20/80 etc.  For this reason, a belief, practice or organisation can be a salvation for one person, and repressive to another (depending on their unique circumstances).

My point here is that spiritual and religious beliefs about the afterlife can be both helpful and damaging, and it is quite difficult to keep the wheat whilst getting rid of the chaff.  As always, the ideal of balance is much easier to aspire towards then to realise in practice.

Ideally, a consideration of death should inspire us to eliminate fear of life or death, but live life to the full, with a consideration of the greater context beyond this earthly life.  That is, true spirituality, religion and/or philosophy should inspire us to live without fear, knowing that life goes on beyond this incarnation, and that we will one day be reunited with those we love.  However, it should do so without bringing about superstitious projections of the human ego that paint God as a cosmic tyrant.

The reasons for the change in my view of death:

I have already explained in the introduction that whilst I once felt great anguish over the passing of others, I now feel a great peace in the face of death.  I would like to here give a little more detail as to how and why this transformation took place.

There came a point in my life (around the age of 25) when I developed a great thirst for knowledge and understanding on spiritual matters.  This led me on a quest not only for intellectual understanding, but also personal experience.  Through a combination of both I have come to solid faith in the reality of spirituality.  I could say that I don’t believe that spirituality is real, but I know that it is real.  I feel however that this isn’t so helpful in communication with others that might not necessarily share my beliefs.

Anyways, I came to this faith partly through reading about the common spiritual experiences of many different people from different backgrounds, from reading about serious investigations by researchers into these matters, and also some features of modern science which I (and others) feel support a spiritual worldview.  Primarily though, my personal faith in the reality of spirituality came through personal experience.

Something I have said before and will say again here is that my personal experiences are evidence (or proof) for me of the reality of spirituality.  However, I cannot expect them to be evidence for other people.  The simple fact of the matter is that personal anecdotes are never as convincing for others as they are for ones self.  I cannot expect other people to have faith in my own personal capacity for critical thinking, self-examination and honesty.  Hence, everyone must have their own personal experience to really understand the reality of spirituality.

Having acknowledged this, I have experienced and witnessed countless things that confirm a spiritual worldview.  I have mentioned this before in a number of other articles^[iv], but here is a brief summary of some key points.  In terms of experiences of a supernatural nature, I have seen physical objects virtually levitate in mid-air, I have experienced countless examples of precognition (which began in my dreams as a child and has continued on into adulthood) and I know many people that possess the capacity to know things that can only be explained by consciousness existing outside of the confides of the brain (and these abilities are categorically different to those presented by skeptics, magicians and cold-readers in their attempts to debunk the supernatural).

Far more significant and touching have been true spiritual experiences (which are now a part of daily life) from meditation, prayer and worship, which involve a truly otherworldly peace and love, and direct contact with an intelligence infinitely greater than my own.  Human beings go to great lengths and spend great wealth in the pursuit of temporary pleasures on earth, many of which are dangerous or even destructive to the body and mind.  If only everyone knew that the greatest high of all is completely free, and can only be found exactly right where you are.  God lives within us all (and everything exists within God), and the direct experience of this truth brings joy that surpasses all else.  There really is no comparison.

And of course, the genuine experience of divine contact also brings objective signs that demonstrate explicitly to the devotee that they aren’t merely subjective inner states of emotional ecstasy, but rather direct contact with the true reality, above and beyond their own projections (noting of course, that human beings do typically color these experiences with their own projections, or perhaps we should say our experience of the divine is colored by our mental vocabulary).

As I have now have countless experiences that validate to me both objective reality of spirituality and the inherent goodness of it, I no longer feel a fear about death.  I am still as human as anyone else and believe in taking wise actions to prevent unnecessary loss of life.  Human life has meaning, and belief in higher spiritual worlds doesn’t mean we abandon our physical experience.  However, it means that I now don’t have to simply believe in comforting ideas, but rather have direct experience of their reality.

I mentioned before about the transcendent nature of spiritual peace and love.  A unique feature of this experience is that it is truly universal.  There is a knowing that it is for everyone and everything, and that no one is excluded.  The peace is so all-consuming that you naturally want to share it with everyone (though not everyone is open to receiving it yet).  For this reason I feel that everyone and everything will at some point return to the light.  No one would reject this forever.  Hence, I feel that all beings are ultimately safe, even if many of us unconsciously create our own suffering for some time.

Conceptions of the afterlife, heaven and hell:

We live in a world in which our ideas about the afterlife are largely conditioned by the dominant religion/s of our culture.  As Christianity is the worlds largest faith, when many of us think about an afterlife we think of the conceptions of heaven and hell as expressed by orthodox Christianity^[v].

Whilst there are still some significant differences between the beliefs of different orthodox Christian denominations, most conservative/orthodox Christians believe in one human life and eternity in either heaven or hell.  In this view heaven and hell and essentially worlds apart, and one cannot escape from hell to heaven.

However, there are many, many different beliefs about the afterlife, both from history and current thinking on the subject.  My own beliefs are informed from studying a number of different spiritual and religious perspectives, reading first-hand accounts from Near Death Experiences (NDE’s), other Out of Body experiences (OBE’s) and hypnotherapy (as well as past life regression, hypnotherapists have at times succeeded in regressing patients to the period in-between earthly incarnations), accounts of visions and meditations from mystics and saints, personal experiences in meditation and conversations with others on the same subject, and deep consideration and contemplation of the ins and outs of the topic.

I don’t have the space here to go in-depth to explain exactly why I have reached the conclusions I have on this.  Rather, I will simply explain my views on the subject, and I will make available my reasoning at some later stage (in book form, other articles and also videos).

The first thing that we must all concede is that whilst on earth, none of us can claim absolute certainty on this topic.  All we can do is evaluate the evidence and apply reason as best as we can, and recognise the fallibility of our human perceptions.

So, I believe that reality is essentially spiritual in nature (Spirit being consciousness that is Infinite), and that creation is composed of a number of different dimensions (exactly how many I cannot say) within the single, indivisible and unified whole.  In Yogic traditions it is common to group them into causal (composed only of mind), astral (composed of light and sound vibrations) and physical, though there may be multiple dimensions within the causal and astral planes.

The easiest (and most literal) way to explain this is that when one dreams at night one experiences oneself as a character within the dream, interacting with other characters, amongst various objects and within an overall landscape.  However, literarily everything within the dream is a projection within the one finite mind of the dreamer.  Even the sense of time and space are relative within the dimensionless and timeless space of the mind.  So, in the grander sense, all reality exists within the mind of God, projected within Itself as cosmic dreams, experienced by us as characters within it.

The physical dimension is the furthermost projection of God’s mind, and whilst we appear to exist here for the experience of physicality, we simultaneously retain higher levels of our being that exist in higher, non-physical dimensions.  At physical death we simply shed the outer physical body but retain the causal and astral body (or bodies).

I have come to believe that after death most human beings will temporarily inhabit a place within the astral cosmos, which correspond roughly to their level of spiritual growth.  This might be the equivalent of a human life (or perhaps a little less or more).  I don’t believe that anyone is given an eternal punishment for misdeeds, or damned to cosmic suffering for choosing the wrong faith (if any), or missing out on a unique salvation.  Rather, I suspect that divine justice and grace work in a manner that reflects the fact that they emerge out of an intelligence and love far greater than our own.

By contrast I would argue that the idea of eternal damnation is a barbaric superstition projected from the lower end of human potential.  Many (perhaps even most) human beings can summon greater love than implied by the concept.  By it’s very definition, divine love and justice must be greater than human conceptions, not less than.

An interesting feature of NDE’s is that there are many cases whereby someone was having a nightmarish experience of a lower-astral (hell) dimension, but as they cry out for help, help appears.  Likewise, during the common “life review” feature of NDE’s, when someone witnesses and re-experiences situations from their life in which they created suffering for others, the beings of light (or you might call them angels) do not judge them, but continue to offer them love.

This would imply that any suffering that is experienced after death is self-inflicted, and that higher beings are only ever there to help us, rather than to enforce punishment upon us.  The life review immediately after death is itself a perfect expression of divine justice, in that one simply cannot escape from the reality of the choices one has made.  During this experience there is no capacity to attempt to rationalise or defend ones actions.  Rather, the true motives are clearly visible and there is no escaping from the consequences of ones choices.  

And yet, higher beings will not deviate from love, not for a moment.  That is, justice can occur without coming from anger, hate or desire for revenge.  There can still be consequences for misdeeds, whilst grace and love are never absent.

Hence, there is no reason or need to be fearful of divine wrath after death.  One can expect to have to face the truth of ones human nature and see (and also feel) how one impacted others around them.  However, this is all proportionate to the nature of ones behaviour.  If you at least attempt to live well whilst on earth, there is no need to fear divine retribution.  If you however live at the expense of others on earth, you will at eventually have to come to terms with it.

Having said this, the single most ubiquitous feature of NDE’s and other true spiritual experiences is the presence of an overwhelming divine love, and I consider myself fortunate to be familiar with this love whilst living on earth (as are many spiritual practitioners).  This love is quite simply different to what most human beings experience under that name.  This love is pure and clean, yet overwhelming and all consuming.

To restate what I said before, it is probably this personal experience of divine love that is mostly responsible for me coming to terms with death.  I don’t claim to know all the details about what goes on when the body dies.  But, I know what heaven feels like.  I know it well.  I therefore say that I know where my loved ones are going when they disappear from this world, and more importantly, I have some experience of what it is like there.

It is common to read in NDE’s about someone not wanting to come back to earth after tasting this overwhelming love.  Likewise, I commonly hear people saying after meditation that they didn’t want to come back.  The trick for spiritual practice is to bring that love and peace into ones physical expression, rather than just retreating into it or hiding from life.  I for one am definitely still working on this.

Moving on, I believe that a single earthly life is only a small spec in the grand scheme of eternity.  I accept that one may live many lives on earth in different circumstances, and that in between each earthly experience one returns to the astral dimension.  When one has evolved spiritually one may then move on to higher and higher forms of life, in a myriad of other places.  There is so much evidence of the grand scale of infinity.  I suspect we are really only aware of a fraction of a fraction, of a fraction of a fraction.

Ultimately, death is a blessing:

Whilst to many (if not most) people death is seen as the greatest curse, I would argue that it is actually the greatest blessing.  Human beings have the capacity and tendency to become attached to all manner of false beliefs and unhealthy behaviours whilst on earth, and these cause us great suffering.  At some point it becomes too much and we must drop it all and return to the astral heavens.  In many respects, the astral dimension is closer to home than earth is, and it is a return to an easier, less painful existence for all those that accept the light^[vi].  

On earth we can suffer for many years with physical and psychological ailments.  Death however removesmost^[vii] of these from us in an instant.  In this way it is one of the greatest healers, as it takes away our choice to resist wellbeing.  It is the natural birth right of all beings to live well, and prolonged suffering is unnatural.  This may seem like a naïve idealistic statement based on the reality of suffering that we perceive across the globe.  However it is a spiritual reality that is largely unknown to humanity as of the moment, and its truth is clearly perceived once beyond this world.  Death brings us back into the knowing of this truth, as we drop all that prevented us from living in joy, and once again taste a larger portion of the bliss of the Spirit.

Therefore, death can be a forced healing.  It is a sad reality that most people are their own worst enemies.  Human beings will cling to their suffering and defend their poisons, seemingly fully convinced that it is only others that inflict pain upon them^[viii].  At death however, all our defense mechanisms can collapse and we can allow in the love that was always there for us.

I can’t believe that anybody would want to suffer forever.  Everyone tires of it eventually, as it wears us down and destroys our body and mind.  Just as everyone enjoys the rest of deep sleep, everyone naturally enjoys letting go of their pain, and being restored by unrestricted connection to our divine Source.  Most people come into this life filled with sweetness, joy, optimism and vitality.  By the time we leave, many (or most) of us have been so thoroughly disconnected from our Source (by our own thoughts and actions) that we have forgotten what it feels like to truly feel good.

So, contrary to the common belief that death is the worst thing and the opposite of birth, in a sense it is a rebirth.  We are reborn into connection with God.  We rediscover sweetness, joy and vitality.  We rediscover true love.  In this sense, for many (or even most) people who have been on this planet for some time, death will be the very best thing that ever happened to them.

Implications of an acceptance of death for society and human civilisation as a whole:

It could certainly be said that human civilisation as a whole currently is in denial about the certainty of death, and it’s place in the circle of life.  Much of human behaviour and culture as a whole is based on simply attempting to make the most of physical life, without a greater context.  There are however significant implications to believing in a greater context to life, in that it changes the priorities one has.

I believe it is possible to live life both personally and as a society in way that honours our spiritual nature, and the reality that we only visit this planet for a short while at a time.  It is possible to remember the big picture, and see ourselves as part of something so grand and marvellous that it puts our individual achievements and desires into their correct context.

When human beings begin to do that we will recognise that the end does not justify the means.  There is truly no reward worthy of a misdeed.  How we treat ourselves and others has far more meaning in the long run than material possession and temporary sensory pleasures.  True happiness can only come from living with purpose and integrity, from a healthy self-respect and balance between wise self-control and joyful spontaneity.

When only a fraction of human beings live like this, society as a whole prospers greatly as a result.  If we can imagine large numbers living like this we could perhaps one day experience more than a glimpse of heaven on earth.  Ultimately, there is no peace externally without peace internally.  A fair and just earth can only be created by human beings that are filled with peace and clarity, by whatever legitimate path they walk that connects them.

The inevitability of death and impermanence of earthy treasures:

One way or another, regardless of what we believe, we all have to leave behind the things of this world at some point.  In the end it won’t so much matter how much money you have accrued, or how you are perceived in the eyes of others, or how many amazing experiences you have had.  We will all have to let them go at some point.

That is not to say that earthly things are without value, and there is indeed a sense in which we do take them with us.  We take with us the memory of our earthly life experience, or more specifically, the personal impact that our experiences had on us internally, or the way we experienced them.  That is, whilst you cannot take your money with you when you pass, experiencing financial freedom whilst on earth can positively impact your personal experience on earth.  Hence, we should not seek wealth and possessions for their own sake, but from a spiritual perspective they can be appreciated for the way they can enhance ones life experience.

Likewise, when you leave this world you cannot take your earthly status with you.  However, a productive earthly life that contributes to the good of all will often bring about a degree of status as a secondary effect.  Such a life will also be extremely satisfying to look back upon in later years, and also after leaving this world.  Those that hurt others for their own gains on earth however will feel the strong pains of guilt after death, as they look back on their life without the egoic defense mechanisms that prevented them from facing the reality of their human nature on earth.  However, even for such beings death is still a healing, in that after dropping the egoic defences they can begin to allow the healing of their mind and soul.

If one pursues only shallow pleasures on earth, one will find that these do not carry on beyond earthly life.  However, if one has a balanced approach and seeks to make the most of human existence whilst seeing it from a greater perspective, one’s earthly experiences can be spiritual treasures that enrich the soul beyond the veil of death.

In conclusion:

It is only natural that we experience a sense of loss when our loved ones pass from this world.  Likewise, it is natural that we feel some sense of uncertainty and trepidation about our own mortality.  However, we can honour that human experience whilst feeling a deep sense of peace, and recognising the deep sacredness of death.

Ultimately, there is no reason to fear death, as it ultimately brings about the greatest of healings.  If one is sick in body, mind or soul on earth, death will (in most cases) restore one to wholeness and well-being.

We will all see our loved ones again one day.  I don’t know the how or when, but I feel it deep within me as a truth.  Joyously participate in the dance of life as best you can.  Be kind to others and yourself, and accept the flaws of human nature, whilst doing your best to aspire to and inspire others to higher ideals.

Much love to you all.

Peace.

Final note:  If you found this article worthy of consideration, please consider sharing with others and engaging in discussion about its content.  Thanks

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^[i] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/how-do-we-really-know-what-is-true/

^[ii] This is a central idea/teaching that I think we all could benefit from recognising.  I’ve touched on it before, and will do so in far greater detail in the future.

^[iii] I would explain that dreams are experientially real, just as our waking state life is also experientially real.  The reality in both is consciousness.  The difference is however that in the waking state we are experiencing a common reality shared with other beings, whilst our night-time dreams are (largely) personal realities projected within our own mind (please note above the “largely” in brackets, as I do believe that some elements of somedreams can involve interaction with objective beings and realities beyond our own individual mind).

^[iv] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2021/03/18/my-thoughts-on-free-will/ and also: https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/my-personal-spiritual-journey/

^[v] Please note here that “orthodox” (lower case o) Christianity refers to all denominations that are in the larger sense not considered heterodox (i.e. Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox (capital O), mainstream Protestant denominations (Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Evangelicals etc.)).  I would exclude Mormons and Christian Scientists for example, as they are clearly not Christian in the traditional sense.

^[vi] By “accepting the light”, I simply mean going into the light after death (not rejecting or hiding from it).  This is independent upon what (if any) spiritual and/or religious beliefs one held during earthly life.

^[vii] One may still carry psychological aberrations with them after death, but it would involve rejecting the light that comes to guide us from earth to the astral heavens.

^[viii] I’ve written about this in some length in the following article: https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/

My thoughts on Free Will:

For much of my life I took it for granted that human beings possess free will, the power to make decisions and experience the consequences of them.  When I first encountered arguments against the existence of free will, I almost wasn’t sure what to make of them, as if they couldn’t actually be serious.  It turns out however that there are many people that are extremely serious about their belief that human beings do not possess free will, to the point that some of them cannot understand those of us that do believe in it.

Certainly it is clear to me that most human beings act unconsciously much of the time.  That is, we repeat patterns of behaviour that we have learned through the conditioning of our family, education, culture, religion and general life experiences etc.  As I have grown I have seen more and more how much of human behaviour is unconsciously driven, and how little of it is consciously directed.  Certainly then I will concede that human will isn’t as free as we like to think it is.  However, I consider full rejection of free will to be a completely different matter, along with full rejection of moral responsibility.

Plurality of truth is one of the basic foundations for my overall worldview, and I have been writing on this for well over 10 years now (see the following article for my thoughts on the matter^[i]).  In short, I believe it is essential to make use of both relative and absolute conceptions of truth to make sense of reality and hold a cohesive worldview.  There are many people that profess to hold exclusively to one end alone (and thus reject all relativity or absolutes).  However, there are countless real life examples that demonstrate the necessity of both.

We know that physical matter is not solid, but made up almost entirely of empty space.  It is this fact that allows for much of the modern technology we now take for granted (like Wi-Fi signals passing through walls etc.).  And yet we experience the material world as being solid (aside from liquids, gases and plasmas obviously), and this experience cannot simply be downplayed, denied or rejected.  There is clearly room for both perspectives here, although they could be thought of as contradictory in isolation.  Whilst there are many examples that demand only relative or absolute applications, the complexity of life as a whole naturally demands we use both.

In the case of free will, many different thinkers have argued for a complete rejection of free will on grounds of materialistic interpretations of science (neuroscience in particular), spiritual/religious grounds and complex philosophical grounds.  To be quite frank here, I have never been particularly interested in following these arguments too closely.  I cannot claim to have invested significant periods of time to comparing different sides (though I did purchase and read Sam Harris’s book/article on the topic).  Rather, my thoughts here are my gut feelings, my natural leanings you could say on the subject.

I am writing this today as a friend online recently raised the subject in relation to my article on Ravi Zacharias that I shared^[ii].  Obviously it is very difficult to avoid interspersing different elements of ones overall worldview into a conversation on a specific topic (everyone does it in ordinary conversation).  In this example I obviously do it deliberately, as this is my personal blog and I am openly giving out my thoughts on many topics.

For me personally, belief in the experience of free will is part of the foundation for a coherent perspective on life.  Many people disagree however, hence when discussing any number of other subjects it often occurs that someone will take issue with some of your underlying beliefs about reality, as these have some affect on the direct topic at hand.  Hence, I thought I would publish this here to make my own thoughts on the subject open to all.

Materialistic/scientific reasons for rejecting Free Will:

I have thus far encountered three main arguments for the total rejection of free will.  The first is based on the interpretation of some findings from neuroscience.  Please note I have very deliberately stated the interpretation of here, as I will argue that we need to be very clear on the difference between philosophy and science.

Firstly though, it is relevant here to give a brief summary of some relevant information to understand the complexity of this subject.  I published an article back in July 2015 as an introduction to my views on the subject^[iii], and I will again explain a few snippets here.

It is quite clear that there is some sort of causal relationship between the physiological processes within the brain and our subjective experience of mind.  Certain chemical and electrical reactions correspond with psychological experiences.  The question then is what is the nature of this relationship?

We can quickly summarise by explaining two different types of brain/mind causality: Downward/mental causation and upward/physical causation.  Downward causation here implies consciousness or mind having its own ability to cause changes in the biological processes of the body.  An example would be deliberately choosing a sexual thought, which then sets forth physical reactions in the brain and body.  Upward causation is changes in the biological processes of the body, which then create a change in the subjective experience of mind.  An example would be after drinking several glasses of wine, the alcohol that has been introduced to the bloodstream creates obvious changes in the subjective experience of mind.

I would personally argue that we experience causation to go both ways^[iv].  There are countless examples of both upward and downward causation, so it only makes sense to accept both as being experientially real.  In Western philosophy this is known as “interactionism”^[v].  I would point out though that my own personal views on the topic are not derived from Western philosophy, so my thoughts here do not owe anything to Descartes or other well-known Western philosophers.

It could be said that human beings generally hold an unspoken assumption that mind and matter are two distinctly different things, and this view is known as dualism in the philosophy of mind.  There are however many different views on this matter, and I will briefly discuss two diametrically opposed views, each of which is essentially monistic.

A leading philosophical worldview today is known as metaphysical naturalism, which we can simply call naturalism, materialism or atheism for short (though atheism can be a misleading title^[vi]).  Naturalism states that there is only matter (and perhaps the laws that govern it), and that no such thing as mind or consciousness exists aside from matter.  Naturalism thus perceives intelligence as being an example of emergence, that being something that emerges from the biological processes in the body and brain.  Ultimately, naturalism defines consciousness as an epiphenomena, a secondary effect of matter that only appears to exist as a distinct substance in its own right.

Through the confusion and conflation of methodological naturalism (part of the method of modern science) and metaphysical naturalism (materialism), many people believe that this perspective is the Scientific worldview (as I wrote in my previously cited article on Science and Spirituality).  That is, many scientists, philosophers and lay people believe that materialism is established by Science, similar to Heliocentrism, Plate tectonics and Biological evolution.

A diametrically opposite view (which I personally ascribe to) is known by Western philosophers as monistic idealism (though the view isn’t necessarily Western in origin, having ancient roots in the East).  In this view there is only one substance in reality, and that is Consciousness.  By its nature it is unlimited and infinite (without dimension – beyond space) and eternal (timeless – beyond time), it naturally creates life and is unchanging love and peace.  This perspective views all creation as God’s cosmic dream, comparable in some ways to the personal dreams that exist within individual minds during sleep.  When I sleep at night I perceive myself as a character within my dream, interacting with other characters in a timeline and landscape.  In truth, all of this occurs only within my mind.  My character, the other characters, the landscape, all objects are only consciousness.  Within my mind time and space may bend and warp, and are relative to the space in which they are created (my mind).

Neuroscience and the “readiness potential”:

In 1964 two German scientists discovered that brain activity could be recorded prior to voluntary muscle movement (see the “readiness potential”^[vii]).  This experiment was later expanded upon and repeated over many decades by researchers across the globe.  In the 1980’s an American Neuroscientist by the name of Benjamin Libet did a series of experiments that appeared to show readiness potential before a subject was consciously aware of making a decision.  As a result, some thinkers have argued that the brain makes decisions as a purely physical apparatus, and our experience of a psychological self only thinks (or believes) it does so.  According to this view, the brain makes a decision and then a moment later we believe that we consciously choose what to do so.  Hence, it has been argued that we do not truly make our own decisions, and that our sense of free will is an illusion.

This is an interesting experiment, and if the methodology is sound then we must consider its implications.  My initial exposure with this evidence was presented in a way that made it seem that there was no contrary evidence or arguments.  Hence, there are many scientists and/or philosophers that seem to consider this an open and shut case.  However, there are in fact other scientists and philosophers that dispute the findings of these experiments and the conclusions that are commonly drawn from them.

As I am quite new to this subject myself and I haven’t invested significant time in comparing arguments and counter-arguments back-and-forth, I am going to simply link two articles below in the endnotes^[viii] and give a very quick summary here of their content before moving on.

The first article by Steve Taylor is very short and concise, and mentions a number of criticisms that have been presented against Libet’s original experiment, along with some modified versions of the experiment which have presented potentially contrary findings (such as finding readiness potential when there is no movement, or even before images are presented for the subject to make a decision upon). Also, he also briefly mentions the possibility that decision making originates beyond the conscious level of the mind, and argues that this doesn’t imply that we haven’t made a decision, as the unconscious is still part of ones self^[ix].

The second article by Bahar Gholipour explains an argument that what has been interpreted as readiness potential is simply rising and falling brain activity (or waves of neural activity), and that human beings naturally tend to make decisions at the peaks of these waves.  If this is true then readiness potential would simply be the rising of the neural activity before it peaks, rather than the brain making a decision before becoming consciously aware of it.  In support of this conclusion he cites an experiment on monkeys, which showed correlations between monkeys brain activity prior to data being presented and their later choice.

Furthermore, he cites a new study that included a control condition where the subjects didn’t move and used AI to exclude “brain noise”.  The study apparently only showed evidence of a decision 150 milliseconds before the movement, corresponding with the subjective experience of making a conscious decision, and appearing to refute Libet’s findings.

So, clearly there are scientists that dispute the claim that neuroscience has proven that human beings do not possess free will.  As with any subject being debated, it would be necessary to compare arguments and counterargument from multiple sides to really come to a proper understanding.  For today I am going to leave this here and move on to looking at free will from a more general, philosophical perspective.

As stated before, it is quite obvious that there is a correspondence between the physiology of the body/brain and our “internal” experience.  In all experiences that we have there are corresponding patterns in the brain and body.  Various meditation practices produce consistent changes in the brain, nervous and endocrine systems.  When people pray, scientists can register corresponding changes in electrical activity in the brain.

The same is also true outside of spiritual experiences.  When someone experiences fear or anger there are corresponding changes in the brain and body.  When a person feels love there are reliable responses in the brain that release “feel good” chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine.

Again though, internal experiences can also be stimulated by “hot-wiring” the body’s chemistry, through consummation of medicine/drugs.  To take some examples from the realms of banned substances, consumption of MDMA (Ecstasy) floods the brain with serotonin, creating the subjective experience of euphoria (ecstasy – hence the name) and deep love.  Likewise, consumption of DMT creates radical changes in brain chemistry that creates internal experiences that have some correspondences or overlap with advanced meditative states (ego death, transcendence of time and space, expanded/trans-dimensional sensory perception)^[x].

I don’t feel that one can ultimately answer the question as to whether in reality causality only goes in one direction (upwards from matter, or downwards from spirit) or both directions (as we experience), without turning to a large-scale case for an overall worldview.  It is often the case that the same evidence can be interpreted from multiple perspectives, dependent upon various presumptions and relationship with myriad other fields of study.

It is very difficult to separate individual topics from ones overall worldview.  In theory at least, an overall worldview should be cohesive and able to elegantly explain all the myriad different subjects contained within it. Ideally, there should not be any circular reasoning involved, in which various parts of a worldview cannot stand on their own, but rely upon mutually related presumptions or assumptions.  In practice however, it is very difficult to have the level of understanding and self-awareness required to be fully aware of how much and how little one truly knows about the things we consider to be true (as I recently wrote^[xi]).

This may sound like a bit of a cop out, but it seems to me that to go beyond our immediate experience and perception of bi-directional causality in the mind-body and try and gain a more reliable perspective, it is therefore necessary to undertake a large-scale conversation about science, spirituality and philosophy as a whole.  To restate, there seems to be equal evidence for upward and downward causation, and overwhelming evidence for the experiential reality of both.  I’m not sure if this topic can be resolved simply on it’s own merits.

Certainly though, the trend in current scientific and medical circles is to look to brain chemistry as the cause of internal experiences.  As noted before, it seems to me that metaphysical naturalism came in the back door with methodological naturalism, and it is thus being taken as a philosophical presumption that underlies much interpretation of modern science and medicine.

Different levels of consciousness in the Self:

I have argued that we shouldn’t necessarily presuppose materialism as a philosophical lens that underlies interpretation of scientific data.  Having noted above that there may be reason to reject the findings of Libet’s experiments, let us consider a philosophical response to the standard interpretation of his studies. So, let us assume we do indeed have repeated experiments that show biological processes apparently preceding the internal experience of making a choice.  Given the materialistic lens of many modern scientists and philosophers, the standard interpretation is that the experience of making a choice is an illusion, and that it is in fact the brain that makes decisions before we are aware of it.

I would like to suggest that there is a plausible alternative that maintains the primacy of consciousness, and it is surprising to me that I haven’t seen more mention of it when reading on this subject (I don’t recall Sam Harris mentioning it at all in his book).  This will essentially be the main part of my response on the subject.  It appears self-evident to many of us (myself included) that experientially, there are various layers (or dimensions) to consciousness. That is, whilst I personally espouse a monistic worldview (as an absolute viewpoint), it is clear that in our experience (the relative viewpoint) there are multiple levels to reality.  There may not be strict defining lines between them (so they may be part of a continuum), but certainly the point stands. If this is the case, then some of our decision making will come from beyond the surface level of consciousness (as argued by Steve Taylor), but the deeper levels of us is still us.

Relevant experiences from dreaming:

It seems self-evident to me that there is much to consciousness that is beyond the normal waking state.  Anybody that experiences vivid recollection of their night-time dreams and/or the experience of lucid dreaming should be able to attest to this.  Likewise, anybody with personal experience of altered states of consciousness (whether attained through spiritual practices, consumption of entheogens or near death experiences) should be able to attest that they have experienced vastly expanded states of being that give access to far greater intelligence than available in the “normal” waking state.

I think some examples from my personal experience might be relevant here.  I have always had a very vivid dream life, and I have experienced lucid dreaming throughout most of my life^[xii].  It is common for me to be able to observe a part of my mind thinking the dream into experience.  That is, I experience myself as a part of consciousness that it silently witnessing another part of my consciousness that is thinking, and the thoughts are taking shape as the dream.  I can then choose to interfere and override the other part of my dreaming consciousness and change the course of the dream.  Or, I can simply watch it, without being fully identified with it (as in a “normal” dream, when you experience yourself as a subject or character within a dreamscape and situation).

In a similar manner I have also experienced retaining full consciousness whilst falling asleep, both into dreaming and dreamless sleep.  In the former case it involves having full waking consciousness and being completely aware of the shift in my reality.  In the latter case it has been more like an out of body experience where part of me is watching the other part of me in deep, dreamless sleep.

The main difference between lucid and “regular” dreaming is that in lucid dreaming you have a degree of self-awareness where you realise/remember that you are generally associated with a body/mind that is currently laying asleep on a bed, and that the experience you are currently having is an internal dream.  By comparison, in “regular” dreaming you are completely identified with the character and circumstances within the dream, and you have little to no awareness of your life outside of it.  During lucid dreams I can fly, make objects levitate and manipulate the “reality” of the dreamscape at will, just to name a few features that differentiate them from normal dreams and waking consciousness.

It is also common for me that once asleep I can remember a whole series of other dreams that I have had over many years.  It is as if there is a parallel long-term memory that is activated, that connects my dreams over time.  I have heard people that have experience with psychedelics/entheogens describing a similar phenomenon, whereby they can only remember certain features of the experience whilst in the altered state, and as soon as they revisit it they remember features of previous “trips”.

Another aspect of my personal experiences with dreaming that I think is relevant here is that of precognition.  I’m not sure how old I was when I first became aware that my dreams often foreshadowed circumstances of my waking life.  I seem to recall becoming aware of this in my teens (perhaps earlier), but certainly it became abundantly clear from my mid-20’s and onwards, once I started pursuing a spiritual path.  I often dream of unique circumstances that generally come to pass within a week or so of the initial dream.  Most often they come about the next day (after waking), but occasionally they take a week or two to come to fruition.

Obviously a great deal of critical thinking and self-awareness is required to make these sorts of claims.  It is obviously all too easy to deceive oneself with delusions of grandeur, or to seek patterns in random events.  Hence, I don’t present my own experiences of precognition with the intention of trying to convince anybody else that the phenomenon is real, or that there is anything special about me (there is not, these experiences are very common).  These experiences are evidence for me of the objective reality of spirituality.  Everyone has to have their own experiences to know this for themselves.

So, the reason I mention them here is that they have significant implications for the subject of free will.  Firstly, they validate the view that human consciousness is not limited to the physical body, but rather “flows out” into a deeper intelligence.  In the dream state (and other non-ordinary states of consciousness) many of us can access information that is beyond the scope of our waking mind.

Secondly, and perhaps more disturbingly, it implies that some events are becoming highly probable before they occur in the physical world.  The full implications of this are quite shocking when truly thought through.  About 12 months ago I had quite a vivid dream at the start of a week (Sunday night perhaps) which contained two distinct events.  Both of these came to pass within 30 mins of each other the following Friday.

To accept this particular dream as precognition it required me to accept that many precise details of my day were extremely high in probability (or certain) a full week in advance.  The timing of when I would leave work, exactly what would take place at home and precisely when I would leave to go to the shops were all essential for me to witness the fulfilment of a dream.  Likewise, it also involved the coordination of a number of other people being in a precise location at a precise time.  The full coordination of all these factors is beyond the scope of human intelligence.

To accept that precognition can be a real phenomena implies that the actions of countless individuals can be known well in advance by a cosmic intelligence.  This implies that we aren’t all separate individual beings like we think we are.  Rather, we could perhaps be like trees, joined through our roots in the ground that make up the Forest as a whole, intelligent entity in its own right.  So, the phenomenon implies a higher order that is greater than the individual experience of personal will and choice.

These are just a number of examples from dreaming that I think are relevant here.  There are many other examples that could be given from altered states of consciousness, particularly through meditation and the use of psychedelics that would be highly relevant.  However, I am aware that what I am writing here is intended as a blog post, not a book.  Hence, I will leave out much of what I would like to cover for the sake of readability.

Being the Witness to the Mind:

For most of humanity, our sense of identity is conflated with our body, our mind and our personal life circumstances.  When we feel cold we don’t say, “I feel cold”; rather we tend to say, “I am cold”.  When we experience pain we don’t say, “I am experiencing pain”; rather we say, “I am hurt”.  There is no recognition of space between the phenomena that we are aware of, and ourself, that which is aware (the Self).  Likewise, most of us do not differentiate between our thought processes and our awareness of them.  Hence, we mostly believe that our thoughts are essential to our self.

Through meditation and other spiritual practices (such as self-inquiry), one learns that true identity cannot be found in the content of the mind.  Rather, the true Self is that which perceives the mind, along with all else.  In this way one distinguishes between unconscious and repetitive thinking, and the deeper sense of I that initially perceives it without itself moving.  Over time, after becoming rooted in the deeper Self the mind becomes still by itself, without effort.

Likewise, one can differentiate between instinctive and conditioned mental processes (and their emotional counterparts), and a sense of individual will that possesses higher intelligence and moral integrity.  Psychological and spiritual evolution thus involves cultivating and developing the higher mind, and gradually allowing the lower mind to dissolve into it.

There are many different models of the makeup of the human being in Western and Eastern philosophy (amongst others), that describe different components of our being.  Some very basic models would be body/mind or body/mind/soul.  More complex models split mind into many different components and/or propose many different levels or dimensions to our spiritual nature.

There are many such models in Indian philosophy.  One model that I will mention here is the “’Kosha theory” as found in the Taittiriya Upanishad^[xiii].  This model proposes that human beings are manifest in five “bodies”, the first being our physical body, the second made up of life force energy (prana), the third mind, the fourth a higher intelligence and the fifth a pure spiritual force.  Beyond this it states that the true reality of the human being is the Atman (indwelling Spirit), and that the Atman is ultimately Brahman (the Supreme and ultimate reality).

This model explains that human beings have the potential to function based on automatic conditioning and unconscious instincts, if our higher nature is underdeveloped.  Alternatively however, we also have the potential to develop the higher levels of our being and operate with a clearer sense of purpose and will, using discernment to supersede our conditioning and primal instincts.

Awareness beyond the mind:

Through my spiritual path I have been blessed to experience pure awareness beyond the personal mind.  This is a very different experience to simply quietening the mind, as that requires significant effort and energy.  When you experience pure awareness there is no effort required to be silent.  Rather, silence is simply your nature, and no energy is required to rest in the Self.

This experience isn’t an out of body experience and it isn’t dissociative in any way (as defined by Western psychology).  Rather, it involves a natural and effortless clarity and focus, accompanied by a deep and fulfilling peace (ananda) and heightened intuitive and creative capacity.  From this experience it is clear that mental processes do not constitute your true nature, for they come and go, and yet you remain untouched.  As awareness you witness them arise and then fall, yet you do not come and go with them.  In fact, you may simply choose as awareness not to think at all, unless thought is required for some practical purpose.

It is clear that even what one considers to be their personality is also something that can be witnessed or observed from awareness.  Again, this isn’t a dissociative experience, but it involves absolute clarity and sanity.  The personality has very definite characteristics and it changes over time.  Yet the awareness is pure and without boundary or definitions, and it remains ever the same.

Human consciousness as merely the tip of an iceberg:

There are a number of models of consciousness that present the normal human waking state as merely the tip of the iceberg, in a vast ocean.  In this metaphor, only a small amount of the iceberg is above the surface, whilst the majority is below the surface.  Going further, even the ice is ultimately just water that is frozen, so it is of the same substance as the ocean itself.  Here we can see that the iceberg is ultimately tiny in comparison to the ocean as a whole.

This is certainly the view of Indian spiritual philosophy.  We are largely only aware of a tiny fraction of our total being, with the majority of ourselves being outside of our awareness and perceptual range.  Going further, even the deeper levels of our being are ultimately only a tiny fraction of life as a whole, and we are ultimately made of the same substance as the great ocean of Being.

From my (limited) knowledge of the work of Carl Jung, this was a primary foundation of his theories, particularly relating to the collective unconscious and universal archetypes.  However, It seems that this thinking has fallen out of favour in Western psychology in modern times, as materialism is now a presumption underlying most (if not all) accepted theories.

For those with openness to this way of viewing life, there is much evidence for this.  It is obviously far beyond the scope of this article to really go properly into such evidence though (and this article is already getting quite long).  I have given some examples from my own experience already, and I feel it’s time to move on now.

Galen’s “Basic Argument” – The Soul and its nature:

Another argument that I have seen presented against free will is Galen Strawson’s “Basic Argument”^[xiv].  This argument claims that we do what we do because of our nature, and we cannot help our nature.  Whilst Galen was a strict materialist, it has been argued that this argument would still hold even in the case of a non-physical Soul or Spirit. Before offering a very brief response to this argument, I should make it clear that I have not studied Strawson’s work at all, and really haven’t gone into this field.  Hence, I can only offer a response to the basic summary that has been presented to me.

I should also note that as a whole, I have never really felt the desire to read Western philosophy.  I have always felt (and still do) that the Western mind has been conditioned to be fantastic at many things (science, medicine, art and music etc.), but that the East is where true philosophy has flourished.  I feel that much of (but not all) Western philosophy is essentially mind games, intellectual speculation, or if you can excuse the crude metaphor “mental masturbation”.  By contrast I feel that much of Eastern philosophy is built upon personal experience from a sincere attempt to probe the depth of reality.

Having noted this, I can see no real substance to Strawson’s argument, but rather only circular reasoning and baseless presuppositions.  For me, the response is really quite simple.  The way we are right now (our nature) is a result of a myriad of choices we have made over time.  Whilst we may not be able to help who we are right now, we are certainly at least partially responsible for who we are, as it is a result of the choices we have made throughout our life.  Every small decision we make adds up to the overall trajectory of our life.  Every miniscule choice has an affect on our character.

To give an example that most people can understand, let us imagine that there is a person called Stephen who is unhealthy and out of shape, and wants to do something about it.  Stephen gets home from work at 6pm, and is very tired after a hard day in the office.  Stephen has to make dinner, and feels it would be much easier to sit down in front of the TV then to try and go out for a run or go to the gym.

Stephen gives in and lounges around at home instead of exercising.  The next morning Stephen wakes up and regrets his decision the previous night.  However, he makes excuses for himself and feels that he couldn’t help his nature.  Whilst he has the desire to get fit, his lack of fitness accentuates the tiredness he feels after a long day at work.  There is momentum in his lethargy and lack of self-discipline, and it is hard to beat the current of this momentum.

However, it all starts with one small decision one night to go for that run, regardless of the tiredness.  The first night Stephen may get half way round the block and then be exhausted.  However, if he persists he quickly discovers that as soon as he begins he feels energised and enjoys the run.  He then sleeps much better and wakes up with more energy in the morning.  He then comes home feeling better, and then over time can clearly see the results of his effort.

At the very beginning Stephen did not have the freedom to completely change his nature from someone that did not take care of his health and lacked healthy self-discipline, to the opposite.  However, the small choices he makes every day create momentum that, over time, create significant changes in his life.  Two years later someone could meet Stephen and say he was athletic and highly driven.

We can make the same case for literarily anything.  It could be an addiction to drugs or alcohol, a desire to stand up for oneself, to be kinder to others, to educate oneself and increase ones intelligence, to improve ones financial position or to find a romantic partner etc.  All of these are affected by the nature of a person at a particular time.  Everyone has a degree of freedom to affect the kind of person they are and the kind of life they live.  You cannot change everything about yourself or your life instantly, but you can make one choice after another that directs your personality and life in a very different direction from where it has been.

Obviously all living beings are conditioned by environment, family, biology, and culture etc.  I have written on this many times before^[xv]. Likewise, not everyone experiences the same opportunities from their personal circumstances.  If someone is born into a small village in a poor country with a corrupt government, it is going to be much, much harder for them to develop financial abundance then for someone born into a stable family in a relatively wealthy country, with good education and employment easily available.  However, it is simply not the case that as a whole we cannot help our nature.  We all have the capacity to mould our own nature to meet our ideals.

In terms of Galen Strawson’s argument still applying where there is belief in a non-physical Soul or Spirit, I would state that I often find that materialists often imagine all sorts of made up rules about how spirituality should work.  For example, I have seen materialists argue that if mind is in fact non-physical, it would have no means of interacting with matter.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time investigating spirituality it seems hard for me to understand how someone could actually argue this, as it seems to imply a complete unfamiliarity with the subject.  Many of us that believe that consciousness is non-physical believe that it is primary over matter, and that in-fact, matter is an experiential reality within consciousness.  It seems pretty simple therefore to imagine how consciousness interacts with matter.  In fact, one could argue that evidence of downward causation is difficult (or even impossible) for materialism to explain under their model.  Obviously I don’t have the time here to deal with this little sub-topic.  I raised it merely as it was relevant to Strawson’s argument as it has been presented to me.  The Western mind is certainly brilliant at many things, but it is of course still subject to bias.

It is a valid question for those of us that believe in spirituality, whether human beings possess a non-physical Soul that pre-existed before the birth of the body.  The Abrahamic faiths generally believe that the Soul comes into existence with the conception of the foetus, and then exists after the death of the body^[xvi].  Eastern religions and modern New Age spirituality generally accept the belief in reincarnation, and with it the belief that human beings possess an immortal Soul or Spirit that pre-existed before the current life.  Many variations of this involve the belief that a human may have lived hundreds or even thousands of times before, perhaps in a variety of forms.

Obviously, if a Soul is created at conception of the current life then this would suggest that all beings are somewhat at the mercy of the hand of God, in terms of the starting point of their nature.  That is, under such a model all beings still have the freedom to choose the trajectory of their life, but with vastly different starting positions.  In many ways, this corresponds with our observations about the vast differences in the physical circumstances of people’s lives.  One can certainly see how the Abrahamic model could be used in support of Stawson’s argument.  However, even under such a model one would still have room to choose the best of their own nature, and steer themselves from their starting point.

Alternatively, if we consider the belief in reincarnation, then we could see how the personality (and potentially life circumstances^[xvii]) of an individual could be built upon many lifetimes of choices.  Under this model the nature of a Soul is simply the result of thousands upon thousands of choices, not only in the current life but also over large spans of time.  One can therefore see that in this case Galen Strawson’s argument would be false, as indeed every being is indeed at least significantly responsible for their own nature.

Free Will as empowerment:

It is the nature of ego to defend the way one is and has been, and to resist true spiritual growth.  Whilst ego has an insatiable need for more, true spiritual growth involves the dissolution of the egoic mind.  Hence, from a spiritual perspective we can state that by definition the ego maintains itself through self-limitation, with defensiveness simply part of its nature.

It is an unfortunate truth that most people are their own worst enemy (again, I have written on this before^[xviii]).  That is, our ego creates suffering for ourselves and others around us, and creates resistance that prevents us from living the life our heart truly desires.  Ego will thus naturally gravitate itself towards beliefs that sustain itself.  For this aim, ego can either be attracted to beliefs that are by their nature self-limiting, or can appropriate beliefs from various sources and twist them to its own desire.

As an example, someone recently told me that they cannot forgive other people because of their star sign.  That is, they believe that the month (and hence star sign) in which they were born fixes their personality in such a way that they are unable to forgive people that they perceive have done them wrong^[xix].  Likewise, I recall many years ago hearing someone explain their belief that a Soul will go through a cycle of incarnating into different star signs in a particular order, as if the progression directly related to their level of spiritual growth.  This person believed that you can only be enlightened at the end of the cycle, after incarnating during a specific month/star sign.

I must confess to not know a great deal about astrology.  It seems to me however that whether or not astrology has any degree of truth to it, one could still evolve spiritually and become free, regardless of what month/star sign you were born in.  Even if we assume astrology is indeed correct to state that your personality is partially shaped by your star sign, one could still evolve from your starting point and bring out the best in your potential.

I presume the above examples are misappropriations of astrology, rather than accurate expressions of its doctrines.  There are however certainly no shortages of examples from world history where a belief system was based around disempowerment.  I will give some examples in a moment.

I would therefore argue that belief in free will is empowering, both for ourselves and for others.  To believe that you have the capacity to change and move towards the fulfilment of your dreams is clearly a healthy approach to life.  Likewise, to inspire others to do the same is in their best interests.

Alternatively, when you do not believe you have the capacity to change, you are not even going to try.  When you believe you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control, you perceive the world in a very dismal way, and your experience will appear to validate your belief in lack and limitation.

Just to be clear though, I have written many times before that whilst we should aspire towards high ideals, this should not involve being harsh and judgmental with ourselves or others. Of course human beings need to learn to be kinder to both ourselves and others. However, aspiring towards personal growth and inspiring others to do the same doesn’t have to imply that we project negative judgments upon our current states of being. The two do not necessarily have to go together.

John Calvin and the absurd and abhorrent implication of complete absence of free will:

The Christian theologian John Calvin was one of the main leaders of the Protestant reformation (along with Martin Luther).  Many modern Protestant Christians denominations have built their faith upon the foundation which he (and others) laid.  Whilst Calvin covered many different features of Christian theology in his writings, I wish to quickly mention here one of the main foundations of his theology: Predestination.  Whilst belief in the absolute sovereignty of God and predestination in Christianity didn’t originate with Calvin (Calvin himself acknowledged the influence of Augustine of Hippo), it found in Calvin a new emphasis and was perhaps taken to a new level.

I have been quite clear throughout my writings that I consider the belief in eternal damnation to be the most vile, irrational aberration of human thought in known history.  The very reason why I write is to attempt to separate truth from falsehoods, and in particular separate true spirituality from religious and/or cultural superstitions.  The very idea that the Supreme Being would condemn and/or allow beings to be tortured for eternity is simply abhorrent and makes no sense.

I have also been clear in my writings that true compassion does not necessarily imply a failing a justice.  There can be implications to misdeeds that can be allowed to play out whilst still giving grace and love to all.  There are models of divine justice that accept the reality of the hellish lower astral worlds that some beings inhabit after death, but do not consider these states eternal or mandated by God^[xx].

Obviously I have many points of contention with Christian theology as a whole.  I personally view theological and apologetic works that deal with the doctrine of eternal damnation as a misuse of the human intellect.  A useful analogy might be asking brilliant University students to each write a thesis defending the work of history’s worst tyrants.

Anyways, the traditional Christian doctrine of eternal damnation is already awful enough, even when there is belief in free will.  Put predestination into it and you take it to a whole new level of vileness.  Calvin’s doctrine of double-predestination actually implies that God creates beings with a predetermined destiny to be tortured eternally in hell!  With such a belief in God, one might wonder why they also believe in Satan, as how could one imagine a being more evil than their conception of God?  Prior to Calvin, Augustine of Hippo himself had already argued in defense of the belief that babies that died without being baptised would suffer eternal damnation.  Truly monstrous ideas indeed!  If blasphemy exists, then surely this is it: Ascribing the most heinous ideas to divinity.

Anyways, my point here was to give some extreme examples of the implications of a complete lack of free will^[xxi].  However, even without these extremes it still seems absurd to me. I cannot fathom meaning in a world where one doesn’t have the capacity to choose right from wrong.  For me, I cannot see meaning in existence without at least some experiential degree of free will and relational cause and affect.

Plurality of truth:

I have written many times before about the need to be able to balance out opposing ends of duality^[xxii], and the need to use both relative and absolute conceptions of truth^[xxiii].  As I briefly mentioned in the introduction, I believe that to understand free will you must be able to look at it from both relative and absolute perspectives.

It must be acknowledged that experientially, free will exists, at least to a degree.  We all have the experience of being individuated conscious beings that make decisions and experience the consequences of them.  Certainly, we also have the experience of struggling against our nature and instincts.  A major part of being human seems to be the search for balance between expressing the needs of our body, emotions and mind in healthy ways, and transcending them in favour of the higher potentials of the Spirit.

Also though, there is much evidence from science, philosophy and spirituality that our sense of personhood is largely an illusion, and that there is a grand order to the Cosmos.  In this sense each human being is more like a molecule in a cell, in an organ, in a body, than a separate, finite unit with sole will over its existence.  Many people have had personal spiritual experiences through meditation, ritual, psychedelics or Near Death experiences in which they perceived a grand unity to existence, with their own body, mind and soul as being like a wave in a great ocean.  From this perspective our normal sense of free will starts to break down.

However, for me it is not so much that these experiences of unity completely dissolve free will and moral responsibility.  Rather, they give a greater context to it, and expand its meaning.  To understand free will you need to see both the immediate, immanent reality, and the greater, transcendent reality.  To try and understand the subject with only one end of the stick is to be incomplete, and this creates issues when an incomplete understanding is applied in real life.

I keep coming back to the example/analogy of the relativity of time and space.  We know that time and space are only experienced as being real, and are thus only relatively, not absolutely real.  And yet they are still essential elements of our experience here as human beings on earth.  We simply cannot fathom our existence here in a three (or four with time) dimensional reality without time and space.  When people have experiences that appear to be beyond time and space they have trouble translating them through language, as they are outside our common vocabulary.

For me, the same is true of free will.  It may be that our experience of free will is largely (or even entirely) illusory.  And yet it is an essential element of the experience of being human, and life on earth in a human body makes no sense without it.

I would like to offer a speculation on the spiritual perspective of free will.  It is often argued that if our experience of being finite minds is an illusion and there is only infinite consciousness, then this would naturally imply that our free will was also an illusion.  I would respond by arguing that in this spiritual perspective, the apparent will of the individual is actually the will of God, under disguise and suffering amnesia.  Due to its forgetfulness of its true nature as Spirit, it experiences human will rather than Divine will.  Nevertheless, it is still will.  One could therefore argue that to deny human free will would be to deny Divine will, and therefore to limit the Divine and consider it finite.

Ultimately though, these are merely intellectual speculations.  Mind games.  Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that we experience ourselves largely as individuated beings.  Hence, unless you are experiencing the full, classical conception of enlightenment continuously (permanent union with the Divine, complete non-duality), then you are experiencing reality as bound by time and space, and also experiencing yourself as an individuated being possessing free will.  How many people on the planet can truthfully claim that they are fully enlightened in the classical sense^[xxiv]?

I believe we should live as if we have free will, until or unless we reach a permanent state in which we know ourselves to be extensions of the Divine, at which point such conversations are irrelevant.  The evidence of one who is living without ego should be that they live a life of wisdom and compassion.  Likewise, we should encourage others to live as if they have free will, until they too know themselves to be extensions of the Divine.  We should treat others and ourselves as if we are morally responsible for our actions.  Again, the evidence of one living without ego is that they do not do harm to others (though some may still take offence at them or may fail to recognise them due to their cynicism, ignorance and arrogance).

Mooji has repeatedly stated that no free will is not a good teaching, only a good discovery.  I feel that is a sensible approach to spiritual nullifications of free will.  I have attended satsang with a modern Advaita teacher that was reputed to be enlightened (along with a number of his students), where no free will was emphasised as a main teaching.  Whilst I felt some Presence in the meetings and felt that those present (including the teacher himself) were lovely people, I didn’t feel that they were enlightened.  I personally felt the teaching of no free will to be counterproductive, and I didn’t feel that anyone present was able to understand the implications of what they were teaching.

Moral responsibility:

I would hope that it goes without saying that this is a very troubling idea.  Certainly I have long been arguing that we should show compassion to absolutely everyone, including those that mistreat others and even those that commit crimes against others.  However, I have also always argued that compassion should not necessarily override justice.  That is, we can forgive someone in our hearts and show them kindness as human beings, and yet still demand that justice be served.  Grace should not necessarily cancel out the consequences of misdeeds.

To believe that others have no power to change their behaviour is to do them a great disservice.  How many people have reformed their behaviour and credited a large part of it to the insistence of someone who simply wouldn’t give up on them?  It is common that when you try and help someone with major behavioural problems they will lash out at you in their defensiveness.  However, if you finally get through to them they sometimes finally realise what a great service you did for them.  It is unfortunately par for the course that if you have a heart to help others you have to be able to not take it personally when they react defensively against you.  However, it is all worthwhile when you see someone turn their life around.

I truly believe that quite literally everyone has the capacity to change any and all of their behaviours, though very few realise a fraction of that potential within the current earthly life.  Whilst it certainly seems likely to me that our human conception of free will and individuality are only relatively true, I can see no reason or purpose in rejecting them completely.  I can see nothing positive coming out of the total rejection of free will and moral responsibility.

Human beings need to be inspired to believe in our own capacity to change.  We need to be reminded of our own potential.  Consciousness is by its very nature unlimited.  Anyone that takes the time to explore themselves through a genuine spiritual practice can experience this for themselves.  Knowing this, we can step back from the conditioned patterns of behaviour that keep us stuck in repetitive cycles.  In stepping back we pull the plug out and remove the power source from our ego, taking back our true power.  In doing so we realise that we can become anything we truly desire in our heart, as long as that desire doesn’t come from the conditioning itself.

In this process there is a certain experience of surrender to a greater power and intelligence, and a letting go of the sense of individual will.  And yet we continue to have the experience of individuation and experience the consequences of our choices.

In summary:

It is clear that reality is far vaster and weirder than what we human beings can currently comprehend.  Many of our attempts to define ourselves and life as a whole massively oversimplify the complexities that are inherent in the cosmos.  There is room for us to approach some areas of life with simplicity, and in other ways recognise the incomprehensible complexity of creation.

Human beings should live as if we have free will, as if we are empowered and inspired to create positive change and growth, and as if we are morally responsible for our actions.  However, we should also recognise that our sense of personal doership is only a relative truth, something that appears to be so, and is useful (or even essential), even if it is not absolutely true.  There is much evidence of a deeper order to reality that defies human conceptions of time, space and individuality.

In playing our part and accepting personal responsibility and empowerment with humility, we can align ourselves with a greater power, a greater intelligence and a greater love.  In this way we have the potential to rise above both the unconscious unity with nature of the animals and the conscious division with nature of current human consciousness, and evolve into conscious unity with life as a whole.

If you feel that what is written here is of value in any way, please consider liking, subscribing, commenting and/or sharing.

May all beings be empowered and live in peace.

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^[i] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/to-see-the-big-picture-you-have-to-be-able-to-consider-the-validity-of-many-different-perspectives/

^[ii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/my-thoughts-regarding-the-scandalous-revelations-about-ravi-zacharias/

^[iii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/science-philosophy-and-the-supernatural-101/

^[iv] There are many people that argue simply for physical, upward causation only.  I have heard people argue that as (they believe that) consciousness is epiphenomena of matter, all perceived activity of consciousness is in truth actually the activity of matter.  That is, if you believe that physical processes are the cause of the mental experience of making decisions, then ultimately there is no difference between upward and downward causation, as they are all then upward (from matter).

I obviously don’t have the time and space here to do this topic justice, but obviously we should not allow presumptions to pass as facts.  Otherwise this would simply be circular reasoning.  You can’t assume materialism in order to make an argument for materialism.  You can however suggest natural explanations for evidence that may go against materialism (though one would have to accept the speculative nature of such a line of reasoning).

The opposite however can also be reasoned.  That is, one can also argue that as there is only consciousness, all causation is downward.  There is no physical activity in which consciousness isn’t present, otherwise it wouldn’t be known in any way, and thus could not be discussed.  Assuming that matter is an appearance, experience or epiphenomena within consciousness, thus all material causation is only ever truly downward causation. Again though, the same rules apply. We should not use circular reasoning, regardless of where we sit on these issues.

^[v] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#Int

^[vi] Many people believe in spiritual and/or paranormal phenomena and do not subscribe to the belief in a Supreme Being. Likewise, many simply do not like their belief in the nature of Reality being confused with personal conceptions of God as found in theistic religions such as orthodox Christianity.

^[vii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereitschaftspotential

^[viii] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/ and:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/.

^[ix] My initial response to my first encounter of this case against free will was to argue along the same grounds, well before I had read Steve Taylor’s article.  I will cover this shortly.

^[x] I will point out here that there are different opinions as to whether drug induced states are equal or inferior to altered states of consciousness achieved through other spiritual practices.  I will give my own thoughts on this subject in an upcoming article.

^[xi] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/10/how-do-we-really-know-what-is-true/

^[xii] The only exception was during the 5-6 years (’99-‘05) in which I was smoking marijuana every day.  When I stopped, my (recollection of) dreaming returned.  It was actually quite surprising to me when I first heard in adult life that some people do not remember their dreams.  I actually have a friend who has absolutely zero recollection of his dreams, to the point that he doesn’t have any familiarity with the experience at all.  This was quite shocking to me that my own personal night-time experiences were absolutely foreign to him.

^[xiii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taittiriya_Upanishad#Ananda_Valli.  Also, see the excellent explanation of the five koshas at the following link: https://yogainternational.com/article/view/the-koshas-5-layers-of-being.

^[xiv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galen_Strawson#Free_will

^[xv] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/ for one example.

^[xvi] Though there are some that believe that without salvation there is no afterlife in any form (hence extinguishment).

^[xvii] Just to be clear, there are other alternatives other than the simple (and potentially disturbing) belief that those born into difficult circumstances in this life are suffering the consequences of past mistakes, and that those that are blessed in this life are reaping the rewards of past good deeds.

^[xviii] Again, see the following article (which I have now referenced twice here): https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/

^[xix] Please note that I have deliberately written, “they perceive have done them wrong”, rather than just “have done them wrong”.  There is obviously no question there are many people that cause harm to others.  However, there are also some people who are so caught up in their heads that they cannot see that they are the one creating suffering for everyone (including themselves).

^[xx] I obviously do not have the time here to cover this in detail.  I have hinted on this before in some previous articles and written on it in length in my upcoming book (which has been now overdue for a good 5-10 years).  I will publish an article on death in the coming month/s, which will cover this topic in some depth.

^[xxi] I should mention that some Christians who believe in full predestination also ascribe to a belief in free will.  How on earth they manage to live with this cognitive dissonance is fortunately beyond me.

^[xxii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/faith-and-reason-devotion-and-skepticism-in-spiritual-life/

^[xxiii] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/to-see-the-big-picture-you-have-to-be-able-to-consider-the-validity-of-many-different-perspectives/

^[xxiv] Please note my deliberate emphasis on the classical definition of enlightenment versus modern conceptions of it.  Many people today consider simply being free of uncontrolled mental activity and the turbulent emotions it creates to be enlightenment.  This however is simply a significant but early step in the classical conception. I will write on this at some point.

How do we really know what is true?

How does one properly go about investigating a topic?  Who do we trust to give us reliable information on a topic?  How do we evaluate our existing presumptions about life?  The reality is that we all carry innumerable presumptions, things we believe in with a great deal of confidence (or even absolute confidence), even though we cannot be absolutely certain of their truth.  For so much of humanity, this isn’t even necessarily something that we are conscious of.  That is, there is so much we take for granted that may not necessarily be so.  Many of the things we take to be absolutely true are only relatively so, and many more aren’t even true in any sense.

We are conditioned by our families, by our culture and civilisation, by our teachers, friends and peers, by various media (books, television, Internet etc.), by religion, politics, economics, by various life experiences, by our experiences of gender and race, and even by simply being human (rather than say birds, fish or plants).  To even be aware of the depth of this conditioning is a rare trait in humanity at this time.  Even rarer is the soul who succeeds in both becoming aware of what is beyond their conditioning, and also fully embodying their humanity.  Just because one may become aware of their conditioning to some degree doesn’t by any means imply that it is easy to then transcend this conditioning.  As always, intellectual understanding and experiential realisation can be two completely different matters.

As someone who has invested quite significant amounts of time to comparing competing arguments on a number of topics, I have some appreciation for what is really required to be confident (let alone certain) on a topic of contention.  It is all too easy to be temporarily persuaded by a passionate argument and a carefully selected series of facts (or lies…).  To actually take the time and effort to pit competing arguments against each other to see who comes out on top is extremely time consuming.  You have to really care about something to be willing to do this yourself.

Hence, most of us either rely on trusted experts to direct our opinions, or we simply go with the whims of our personal biases, without awareness of how little we know about a topic.  As I am human like anyone else, I sometimes find myself saying something and then quickly realising that I cannot be confident that it is correct.  I therefore attempt to differentiate between subjects which I have more familiarity (and therefore more confidence in my opinions), and others in which I am still more open, in recognition of how little I truly know.

We human beings are not always as rational as we like to think we are:

I would really love to participate in creating positive change in the world, hence why I write.  When I first started researching and writing on spirituality and religion I quite naively thought that if I could lay out a series of well-thought out and well supported arguments, that most people would happily change their beliefs in accordance with the new evidence and arguments.  Of course, I now know that this simply isn’t the case.

Theoretically of course, all human beings are capable of changing their thoughts, beliefs (which are deeply entrenched thoughts), states of being (mental, emotional and spiritual states) and behaviour.  Realistically though, change is often much more difficult than we expect.  In my last article (on Trauma and the Ego^[i]) I mentioned that even when we are at least partially aware of our own issues, it can feel like we are trying everything without succeeding.

Largely though, most humans are unaware how little they know.  We tend to prefer the confidence of false certainty to the uncertainty of the vast unknown.  Take religion for example.  How many religious believers have really, truly evaluated their sacred beliefs?  How many have truly sought to investigate the facts and compare different opinions to see who has the best explanations?  Even still, I often say: “it isn’t necessarily how much you read, but what you read”.  That is, even with a sincere attempt to come to understand a topic, one still has to encounter the right people, books or schools of thought at the right time.

Also, human beings tend to naturally gravitate to reading sources that validate their unconscious (or even conscious) biases.  Hence, I frequently discover when debating religion that others have never really read outside of their own tradition.  Taking Christianity as an example, most Christians only ever investigate other religions by reading the works of other Christians.  Likewise, they tend to only encounter criticisms of their own faith by reading works of other Christians (called apologists) seeking to refute such claims.

I have recently been re-reading my friend D.N. Boswell’s series of posts on Christmas and parallels in Egyptian religion (“In Winter Shall it Be”^[ii]), along with various articles and videos on the subject by those who do not share our perspective.  It is extraordinary to see how much confidence is expressed by those who really seem to know almost nothing about the topic.  Even more extraordinary is the disparaging way they relate to those they disagree with, seemingly unaware of their own ignorance on the matter.

How much is this also so when it comes to other highly volatile and divisive subjects such as politics?  How many people have truly examined politics in enough detail to be confident of their opinions?  Furthermore, how many of us are truly aware of the depth of our own bias?  There are highly educated people on all sides and they can’t all be equally correct.  Hence, even when we are well versed in relevant facts and arguments, our own ability to translate evidence and reason into conclusions is still limited by our humanity, which naturally includes our own fallibility.

Consensus and alternative views:

There are many subjects in which there exists a common census or mainstream narrative, and other narratives that are considered to be alternative, fringe, conspiracy or crank views.  It is all too easy to make fun of people with alternative perspectives, such as believers in a flat-earth.  The sheer scale of conspiracy that would be required for this to be so is truly staggering.  It is likewise all too easy to get angry with neo-Nazis who deny the holocaust.  In this example we can clearly see that such people are simply motivated by irrational hatred.

However, there are countless examples of subjects in which there is a perspective that does not necessarily deserve to be considered a consensus, and also compelling alternative views that do not necessarily deserve to be dismissed as mere crank.  In giving some examples here I will no doubt find some areas of disagreement with my readers, as it is highly unlikely that anyone reading this will agree with all of my views.

The philosophy of metaphysical naturalism is considered to be a consensus worldview in Western science and medicine (which is really a field of science).  As such, all belief in spirituality and the supernatural is considered by many to be crank.  And yet, many people (such as myself) have had experiences that have convinced us of the reality of spirituality.  Likewise, we also find much evidence outside ourselves that appears to us to support our personal experiences.  As such we have no choice but to hold a perspective that goes against what some consider to be established facts.

On a related sub-topic, many scientists and philosophers have argued that Quantum Mechanics (QM for short) has unavoidable philosophical consequences, which refute the basic presumptions of materialism/metaphysical naturalism, and naturally imply support for a spiritual worldview.  However, whilst this view has been put forth by many prominent names in physics, there is a mainstream consensus that completely disagrees, and considers such things to be crank science or bad philosophy.

Regarding the history of planet earth, there has long been a consensus view that human civilisation has only really appeared in the last 6,000 or so years (therefore beginning around 4,000BCE).  This view points to Sumer, Egypt and India as examples of the earliest human civilisations.  However, there also exists a field of alternative archaeology, in which many have argued that human civilisation goes well back into the last Ice Age, and beyond.

One well-known example in this field is Graham Hancock^[iii].  I first became aware of Graham Hancock when I encountered his book “Underworld”^[iv] in a bookstore, back around 2005 (and this was actually the very discovery that started my thirst for reading).  In this book he argued that there was overwhelming evidence of a worldwide Ice-Age civilisation that largely disappeared in a global cataclysm at the end of the last Ice Age.  Hancock has argued that the end of the last Ice Age was spurred on by meteorites melting large ice sheets, bringing on a sudden rise in sea levels and destroying the cities that were built close to the shoreline.

On the front cover of Underworld was a photo of what is known as the “Yonaguni Monument”, an underwater rock formation that bears almost irrefutable signs of human design.  And yet, the consensus view appears to be that it is a natural formation.  As such, Hancock (along with others) is considered by many to be nothing more than a crank, a pseudo-archaeologist.  I obviously do not have the knowledge to be able to properly evaluate all of Hancock’s claims.  From my own casual observations however, I suspect he is correct about many things that go against the mainstream view, though probably not everything.  As such, I again find myself forced to go against what is considered to be a mainstream perspective and consider views that are commonly ridiculed as being unworthy of serious discussion.

Often all it takes is for someone to imply that a belief or perspective is hilariously stupid or motivated by hate, and such views are rejected without discussion.  Whilst this can be understandable in some cases, it is ultimately a dangerous precedent, as it prevents us from considering information that might shatter illusions that we consider to be truths. Hence, this is a bad habit we suffer from that prevents growth in many significant areas of human understanding.

I couldn’t count the amount of times I have seen people simply laugh off the topic of UFO’s, seemingly unaware of the body of evidence that exists, and the often absurd explanations that are used to reject them.  Likewise, those of us that do not believe in a historical Jesus have become accustomed to being denounced as ignorant and even hateful (Bart Ehrman has compared Mythicism to Holocaust denial^[v]).

My point in all of this is that we cannot always rely upon mainstream consensus to provide us with sensible, well-educated and well-thought-out perspectives on life.  Human bias extends into all fields of study, from laymen to academics.  Whilst formal study has its undeniable benefits, there is also value to being at least partially self-educated, or at the very least, aware of views outside the mainstream.  There are countless laymen (and women) who have made valuable contributions to a field, despite lacking in formal qualifications.

We live in a curious age, whereby anybody can pull out a smartphone and do a quick search on any topic and have instant access to a wide variety of information and views.  Of course the Internet is full of garbage, sources that are simply not worth your time to read.  And yet, the Internet is also a treasure-chest, containing works by many brilliant but otherwise unknown authors (the perfect example being my friend D.N. Boswell).

So, my point here is not to suggest that all views are inherently equal.  Clearly there is a vast difference in the quality of different minds, in their ability to apply reason and provide evidence to support their contentions.  Anybody that has attempted to engage in any form of debating would know that not everybody argues on the same level.  Furthermore, many people seem to be completely unaware of the fact that they are not at the same level as others (see the Dunning-Kruger effect^[vi]).

True wisdom begins with an acknowledgement of our own ignorance:

My point is simply that we need to be more cautious about assuming complete knowledge.  Let us not see human civilisation as standing at the pinnacle of thousands of years of growth, but rather as standing at the foundation of great possibilities.  That is, perhaps we are still at Kindergarten in the grand scheme of things, just starting out as a self-aware species, starting to learn about the grand mysteries of the Cosmos.  We can therefore benefit from humility in the face of the unfathomable richness and complexity of life.

Many great minds have noted that the beginning of wisdom is the recognition of how little we truly know, or even could know.  A human life of a mere 100 years is simply not long enough to gain complete knowledge (by regular means at least^[vii]) of all the workings of the universe.

Perhaps therefore, we could all benefit by having more sympathy for those we disagree with.  Perhaps we can attempt to be more cautious about what we claim to be true.  Perhaps we can find awe in uncertainty, wonder in the continuous unfolding of the mystery of life.  Perhaps we can re-discover joy in becoming childlike, constantly learning more about this marvellous experience we call life.

May all beings find happiness, health and prosperity/contentment.

Peace.

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^[i] https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/trauma-suffering-conditioning-and-the-ego/?fbclid=IwAR24LxbwaVbhJn-yuxitlRvfx6s67_C7ANttsTYcSkjQqt7t0mvncRqqZU4.

^[ii] https://mythodoxy.wordpress.com/2019/12/01/in-winter-shall-it-be/.

^[iii] https://grahamhancock.com.

^[iv] https://www.amazon.com/Underworld-Mysterious-Civilization-Graham-Hancock/dp/1400049512.

^[v] “”There are people out there who don’t think the Holocaust happened, there wasn’t a lone JFK assassin and Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.,” Ehrman says. “Among them are people who don’t think Jesus existed.””

https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/15/living/jesus-debate-man-versus-myth/index.html

^[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect.

^[vii] There are of course many reported experiences of individuals gaining “intuitive knowledge”, either spontaneously or through various practices and methods.  There are even examples of individuals who have been claimed to have had access to almost infinite knowledge through spiritual means (for example Neem Karoli Baba, the master of Ram Dass and Krishna Dass, to name of a few of his well known students).

Trauma, suffering, conditioning and the ego:

For some time I have wanted to write about the way in which trauma often shapes the ego.  However, I have been wanting to express it in the gentlest way possible, in order to try to avoid being misunderstood to be blaming victims for their difficulty in letting go of the past.  Hence, I have waited until finding the words and examples that I feel can articulate what I am wishing to express here.  I have now found some examples that I think show my point quite well, which I will get to shortly.

Today I am going to offer some strong (perhaps even radical) perspectives on human suffering.  Whilst I acknowledge the valid need for us to sometimes spend time and energy exploring suffering, I naturally gravitate towards our potential to overcome it.  I wish to be clear however that this is intended out of compassion.  I am not intending on writing this to judge or look down upon others.  Rather, I have written with the hope that my brothers and sisters can find true lasting peace and freedom from suffering.

Also, I wish to make it clear that I too am on this journey.  I do not make the claim to have arrived finally at a destination from which I am free of suffering.  Like most human beings, I am a complex creature.  I have made much progress in many ways, and do experience largely continuous inner silence and peace, as well as regular deeper experiences of spiritual ecstasy.  And yet, there are many areas of my life in which I have gone round and round in circles, and haven’t yet made the progress I desire.  In fact, there are some areas of my life in which I have repeatedly struggled and suffered, over significant periods of time.

So, I am definitely included amongst those I write about here.  I am just as human as anyone else.  There is a big difference between understanding something intellectually, and integrating it into every facet of life experience.  Often we can believe something on the surface of our consciousness, but our body and subconscious mind hold conflicting beliefs, which can take some time to face.

As a personal example, I myself have long ignored my own needs to examine the content of my own subconscious, and perform what is often called “shadow work”.  I have only now very recently started engaging in this, and have found it deeply liberating.  However, my personal instinct is to make it clear that I don’t believe we should focus too long in examining pain and the past.  Rather, there are ways to quickly find lasting peace and to grow towards transcendent ideals.  Of course each and every individual must find their own balance in acknowledging and loving their own humanity, whilst discovering and integrating their own divinity.

In this article I’m not so much going to go into the actual processes involved, whether that be counselling and shadow work at the personal level, or finding and resting in pure awareness, expanding the consciousness and consciously directing the mind.  Rather, I’m going to talk in general terms about how to see human suffering from a spiritual perspective, whilst being gentle and compassionate towards the human level of personality.  I will however leave some notes and suggested links in the endnotes^[i].

I am going to explain why on one hand it is not the fault of victims that their personality is shaped in a certain way from their traumatic experiences.  Simultaneously however, to live up to our potential, at some point we need to become conscious and make the decision to deliberately direct our lives, or consciously live from a place of peace.  Hence, we can express compassion to those that suffer, and yet also remind each other and ourselves that we have the potential to choose how we define ourselves and how we see the world.  I am not teaching victim blaming, rather quite the opposite: universal compassion.  And yet, we must see and acknowledge the ways in which we all create suffering for ourselves and for others around us.

The link between foster care and homelessness, amongst other social problems:

An excellent example (and analogy) to demonstrate this is of the strong link between children in foster care and homelessness.  A recent study showed that out of homeless youth, around 60% per cent had recently left foster care!^[ii]  I know many people that feel no compassion for the homeless, but rather see them as pathetic, suffering simply through their own power.  This study should blow the waters on such thinking.

Some of this is due to simple logistics, in that foster children often get their funding stopped when they turn 18, whilst most 18 year olds are currently living at home.  Some of this however is also due to the trauma experienced by foster children.  So many of them have been neglected or explicitly abused, physically, psychologically and sexually.  Every one of them is a precious being that deserves love and freedom, and yet most of them have been denied the basics of which so many of us take for granted.

The human psyche often responds in predictable ways to traumatic circumstances.  The fact that so many people that experience childhood trauma have problems with homelessness, unemployment, substance abuse, mental health issues and crime etc. clearly shows that at one level, it is not their fault.  And yet there is another level in which we all posses power to be free and live in joy.

It is not the fault of those that respond to difficult circumstances for not knowing how to move forward, heal their pain and evolve.  Our culture doesn’t excel at teaching these attributes, even in healthy and relatively “normal” households.  Many adults are essentially wounded children walking around in adult bodies, and without realising it they pass on these wounds to the next generation.

A complete understanding of reality often involves harmonizing seemingly opposite views^[iii].   This is done not because of a desire to please everyone (which is impossible) or an unwillingness to take a side, but rather simply because the facts demand it.  Here we can see two different views that are both valid.  That is, on one level it is not the fault of children from foster care if/when they have problems with homelessness, mental health and substance abuse.  Equally though, each of them has the power to change their life, find healing and express their potential.

To truly help those that suffer we need to remember both sides.  That is, when dealing with those that are in deep pain we need to honour their humanity and recognise the depth of their trauma, and affirm that it is not their fault.  Equally though, we have to find a way to inspire them to consider their higher nature and the extraordinary potential that they possess.  Each precious human being living on the street has extraordinary untapped potential to transcend his or her suffering and thrive.  Every single one of them needs unconditional love.  Every single one of them has a natural inherent worth that they may be largely unaware of.  It is my hope that when we see those who do not know their value or have not been valued by others, that we are motivated to make them aware of the value that is their birth right.

I truly believe that there is no psychological pain that cannot be healed.  I wouldn’t be surprised if some people disagree with me there, and I wouldn’t necessarily blame them.   It can certainly feel like you have no choice but to feel (and think) the way you do when you have suffered injustice (and again, I affirm this as being normal for our humanity).  However, I have had the great blessing of experiencing a degree of the underlying Self^[iv] of pure consciousness, and I have to tell people that in the depth of true peace and love, there are no problems.  In the depth of spiritual peace there is truly nothing to forgive.

Of course in our humanity there are countless challenges, and in practical matters there are consequences to misdeeds.  However, in the depth of the Self there is only overflowing love, and this love is fulfilling in a way that cannot be described.  Again, I am not the only person to experience this, and I invite my readers to seek this experience themselves in a way that suits their nature.

Domestic violence and children of alcoholic and/or abusive parents:

Similarly, it is common for victims of domestic violence to find themselves in abusive relationships over and over again, often returning repeatedly to the same abusive relationship^[v].  Likewise, children of alcoholic parents often find themselves in adult relationships with alcoholics or people with other serious issues^[vi].  So, we can see that on one level it is not so much their fault, as the human ego responds in fairly predictable ways to abusive situations.  Human beings unconsciously gravitate to circumstances in which they are familiar, even if those circumstances are deeply unhealthy.

Social workers and police often feel frustration that they see the same people suffering in abusive relationships overs a long period of time.  That is, someone is in an abusive relationship, they seek assistance and get out of it, and yet two years later they are back with the same partner in the same dynamic, or in a new relationship with a very similar dynamic again.  Again though, we need to offer unconditional love and compassion to such people, affirming to them that it is not their fault, and yet simultaneously try and find ways to inspire them to find their own value and potential.

Cultural conditioning and the link between poverty and crime:

We can also see many other subjects in a similar light.  In many parts of the world children are taught by their parents to hate people from other cultural, national, religious or political groups.  In many respects it is therefore not their fault when they grow up to be adults with deeply negative biases and they project these biases onto the world at large.  And yet, we human beings are meant to awaken from our unconscious behaviour and take ownership, healing our past and looking at what is truly healthy for ourselves and for life as a whole.

Can I suggest we even extend this compassion to those that are raised in communities with high degrees of poverty and crime, who themselves turn to crime^[vii].  That is, whilst compassion and upliftment must obviously extend to victims of crime and abuse, we must find love that is great enough to extend to all, even the perpetrators of such things.  Each and every one of them is too a precious being that has gone astray.  A great number of them have also been victims earlier on in life, and a great number of them have lived through deep poverty and a wide divide between rich and poor.

Of course, I am not suggesting that there should be no consequences for misdeeds.  However, the consequences can stand without judgment in our hearts.  Even the worst, sickest beings have the potential for good within them.  I do not believe that anybody is beyond redemption, though I accept that large numbers will not achieve it within their current lifetime.  For some, this level of compassion may seem like too high a standard to aim towards, an unrealistic goal which is beyond the capacity of humanity.  Without meaning to diminish the pain that so many feel, I have to share the indescribable peace I have found, and I know that many others also experience.  When you too discover this peace for yourself, you get a glimpse of our potential.

Unconscious behaviour and conditioning:

In recent times Eckhart Tolle has done a brilliant job of explaining how our conception of self (ego) drives much of our thoughts and behaviour.  Human beings come to define themselves by the things they do, their hobbies, the roles they play and functions they perform, by the color of their skin, their gender, sexuality, religion, political views, sports teams they support etc.  As such, these self-definitions filter our entire perception of life, and influence and motivate our behaviour, often without our awareness of it.

Hence, much of human thinking and behaviour is governed by unconscious beliefs and motivations.  If these beliefs and motivations are to be made conscious, then their dysfunctional nature can be quickly and easily seen.  For example, when someone has identified themself with the role of parenthood (that is, taken it beyond the needs and responsibilities of their position) they often find it hard to let go of their role as the child grows into an adult.  It is common for parents to relate to their children in an adult-child manner, even when the child is fully-grown and independent.  In this case, the parent feels an unconscious need to sustain their identity, and because it is no longer an authentic need, it creates problems with their relationship with their children.

In such relationships there are often unconscious thoughts such as “I know what is best for you, and I will try to make you feel guilty until you realise that I know best and do what I want”, or “You need to be successful, so that I can be successful through you”, or “I need you to need me, because I don’t know who I would be if I wasn’t needed”. When these things are spoken out loud we can clearly see that they are not healthy.  And yet these kind of unconscious thoughts are practically the norm in human relationships.  Just to be clear though, this is only one small example, and I don’t simply wish to pick on parents of adult children (one could just as easily give unhealthy examples from the opposite perspective).

Much human behaviour is driven by unconscious beliefs and feelings of lack, of separation from others (and life itself) and vulnerability.  It is again much easier to see this in other people than in oneself, but ultimately it is far more important to recognise and address it in yourself.  It all starts with becoming aware of your habitual thought processes, becoming aware of your emotional states and repetitive behaviour.  This is not an easy task but it is ultimately an essential one, for without awareness of these things one will continue to suffer unnecessarily throughout their life.  It is common for these issues to get worse and worse throughout our life, and I suspect that much of what we consider inevitable aging is as a result of deepening unconsciousness throughout the years.

The metaphysical Law of Attraction, cognitive bias and body language etc:

In modern spiritual circles we often hear of a concept called “Law of Attraction” (LOA henceforth).  This concept is founded upon the perspective that there is (ultimately) only consciousness, and that all Creation exists as vibration within one eternal Divine Mind^[viii].  The LOA explains that everything that someone experiences in their life is effectively an extension of their thoughts, in that their thoughts create an energetic vibration that has tangible creative power, and draws to them experiences that are in harmony with them.  Hence it is often said in modern spiritual circles that “you create your own reality”.

I don’t want to spend too much time here discussing the ins and outs of this theory, though I plan to go into detail about it at some point.  However, I will state that regardless of your worldview (whether you are an atheist/naturalist, Christian, Buddhist or anything else) there is a certain degree to which some of the fundamentals of the LOA are undeniably true.  Perhaps we can say that any disagreements over the theory of LOA can only reasonably be over the extent to which it operates.  That is, certain fundamentals of LOA can be seen to be true even in a materialist worldview, and thus even if you don’t accept the metaphysical aspects of the theory.

Emotions are largely the bodies felt response to thinking (though they can also be an instinctual response to external circumstances).  That is, a positive thought of love produces an emotion (or feeling) that we identify as being the feeling of love.  When you think fearful thoughts as a response to a life circumstance you experience a corresponding emotional response (that is the feeling of fear).  When you think strong negative thoughts towards someone (like hate) you feel the emotional correspondence of hate.

There are chemical responses in the body that correspond with our emotions.  Positive thoughts create specific responses in the nervous and endocrine systems that feel pleasant and also aid good health, helping to prevent disease and assist the regeneration of cells.  On a psychological level, with practice one can consciously achieve a positive emotional state by consciously directing their thoughts, and feel greater clarity and vitality in the process.

When you are feeling positive there are unavoidable signs in your body language that transmits your mood to others, both consciously and unconsciously.  That is, whilst people can often attempt to disguise their true thoughts and feelings with their words, body language never lies, and we all can sense this.

Many people unconsciously believe that their emotions are effectively beyond their control, and are simply natural and unavoidable responses to what life throws at them.  In truth however, five different people can have five very different mental and emotional responses to the same circumstances.  This shows that psychological conditioning and mental/emotional habits shape the way in which we respond to life.

Whilst much of our individual conditioning occurs originally at a subconscious level, one can learn to recondition themselves in accordance with higher intentions.  That is, one can examine the thought processes (both conscious and unconscious) that generate our emotional responses, and – over a period of time – change them.  Hence, our mental and emotional states are absolutely within our own power; only that a significant amount of self-discipline (and time) is required for most people to attain mastery of their psychological states (I for one am still working on it).

When people identify themselves with traumatic experiences and injustices, this subconscious identification filters through into all of their thoughts, beliefs and emotions.  Through body language, others that they encounter pickup various cues as to the psychological projections of the other, which affects how they respond.  Hence, different people get different responses from the same person, depending on their body language.

Furthermore, through cognitive bias we often misinterpret others behaviour in accordance with our own projections.  That is, even if another does not react to our own negativity, we can often perceive them as hostile towards us when they are in fact being kind.  I have witnessed a number of people who perceive others to be in conflict with them, when in truth it has been almost entirely their own projection.

It is generally very difficult to persuade someone that their perspective on life is wrong, when they perceive themselves to be constantly experiencing evidence of the reality of their perspective.  Once the ego has been conditioned in a particular way, it naturally perceives following experiences in a light that appears to corroborate its pre-existing biases.  For those of us that are open to (or believers in) the possibility that consciousness is the one and only substance of reality, one can see that life actually does give you direct feedback of the content of your thoughts.

Again though, regardless of whether or not you believe in (or are open to) a metaphysical “Law of Attraction”, most of its principles can still be agreed upon by Christians, atheists or anyone else for that matter.  The question is simply upon to what degree and to what extent these principles influence the response of life to ones inner state.

Spiritual growth, Shadow work and balance:

In my opinion true growth should involve both a deepening awareness of ones spiritual nature, and a facing of ones human nature.  One needs to both find the silence of pure awareness, and also shine the light of awareness upon the subconscious to discover what is hiding there and allow it to heal.  There are unfortunately countless examples of people who have developed spiritually, but failed to grow in their humanity.  This can often be quite a dangerous combination, particularly in the case of charismatic leaders.

It is in fact quite possible to have significant degrees of higher spiritual experiences without healing more basic human psychological disturbances.  Hence, I suggest both resting in pure awareness and also deliberately applying the mind, both forward in pursuit of what is wanted and also in complete acceptance of what has been and what is.

I have often said that balance is a concept that human beings are still only beginning to explore.  When we try to move towards worldly success we often neglect our psychological and spiritual lives.  When we pursue a spiritual search we often neglect our worldly needs (this guy, right here…).  When we aspire towards humility we sometimes loose self-confidence and self-esteem.  When we aspire towards confidence and power we often lose humility.

It is difficult to go in two directions at once.  What often happens is that we go in one direction and pull the opposite pole of ourselves out of balance.  What we must therefore aspire to do is expand ourselves in one direction at a time, without pulling other elements of our self and life out of balance at the same time.  Ideally, we want to expand in all directions, recognising the immediate needs of our unique circumstances.

It is vital that spiritual aspirants are conscious of their humanity and the authentic needs and priorities of their physical experience.  Spirituality can bring the experience of transcendent peace and love, and also otherworldly knowledge and intuition.  It is unfortunately common for human beings to mistake the presence of these experiences for evidence of divine perfection, and consider themselves to be above and beyond the flaws of humanity.  There needs to be a balance between finding Divinity, in which all human struggles can be seen in a different context, and also being fully present within our humanity.

If someone only pursues spirituality alone, then one can easily ignore or deny the pressing needs of their family or their self.  This may be the need to face ones own anger, fear or unexpressed desire, the responsibility to care for the greater needs of their children or address financial shortages.

Alternatively, psychological work without a greater spiritual context can be a bottomless pit.  It can be difficult to explore ones own pain without the mind identifying with it, and without the mind becoming addicted to the process.  There has to be some ideal of an end-point or limit, after which the exploration can be dropped and one can move on.  Ultimately though, most human beings do not resolve their issues within their life, and only drop their psychological baggage when the physical vehicle is itself left behind.

Whilst the human experience can be extremely enjoyable, it is also immensely challenging.  The greater the challenge however, the greater the potential for growth.  With the difficulty of being human comes the opportunity to develop wisdom, compassion and strength.  And of course, to those who can align with the flow of life the human experience can be filled with joy, excitement adventure and fulfilment.  

Unconditional compassion, regardless of whether (or not) we can clearly see that someone has created their own suffering:

I would suggest we extend compassion to all that suffer, regardless of whether we can look at someone and see that it is clear that they are the cause of their own suffering.  Lets image two people – Person A and B – in a close relationship of some sort (partners, friends, family, work colleagues etc.).  It is common for Person A to be deeply aware of what is going on under the surface of Person B, and to be able to see clearly a path ahead for them to heal and move forward.  And yet, Person A is often unaware of what is going on under the surface of their own consciousness, and likewise cannot see their own path ahead for healing and life progress.  And yet Person B could look at Person A and easily see what is bubbling just below the surface in their subconscious.

When Person A looks at Person B it appears as if Person B is simply creating their own suffering by perpetuating the past and refusing to accept what is.  The problems that Person B suffers with can appear to be easily resolvable to Person A, and they think they could easily step into their shoes and “fix” their life.  And it often looks as though Person B makes little or no effort to resolve their own problems.  And yet, when it comes to their own issues, Person A feels like they have tried everything and cannot break free (yet Person B feels the same way about Person A’s problems).

It is always easier to see problems and solutions for other people, than for yourself.  This realisation should bring humility, but also compassion equally for others and for ourselves.  This level of compassion can be hard to cultivate simply from the psychological level, but it can also emerge spontaneously with the grace of spiritual awakening.  Equal parts of self effort and divine grace are required for true compassion to flower.

The reality and unreality of psychological suffering:

If we were to say to someone heavily conditioned by suffering “Your suffering is not real, you are now creating suffering for yourself and those around you”, this would likely be perceived as the most offensive thing we could possibly say.  And yet, at some point, this is actually the most compassionate thing we can possibly say.  And also, at some point it becomes necessary to say this for the benefit of those around them.

Of course, suffering is real in the sense that people have the experience of it.  The human psyche does not heal by denial and repression, but rather by love, compassion and understanding, which need to be directed towards it.  The unreality of suffering however can only be seen once you experience pure, naked awareness, at which point even the ego itself is seen as (ultimately) unreal.  Experiences are only fleeting, they come and go; therefore they are only ever relatively true.  For something to be absolutely true it needs to be true always, for everyone and everything, in every circumstance.

In pure naked awareness there is no suffering, no unconscious and uncontrolled thought, and a natural and unfading peace (ananda), which to some can be even considered bliss or ecstasy^[ix].  From this perspective, we directly will thought into existence, which therefore also directly wills emotion, as emotion is the feeling that corresponds with thought.  This naked awareness and peace is unchanging and ever present, even in the most unpleasant circumstances.

At one level it is certainly is natural (in a sense) for people to be attached to their perception of themselves.  This is simply the unspoken assumption, which is ubiquitous in humanity.  This is true of those that perceive themselves as successful and happy, as well as those that perceive themselves as unsuccessful and unhappy.

Traumatic experiences pierce deeply into the consciousness and color the ego’s perception of everything that follows it.  It is thus at the normal human level quite natural that victims of trauma will identify themselves with this trauma.  Again, it is not their fault that at the unconscious level these things leave such a heavy imprint upon them, to the point that in some cases they cannot perceive reality clearly following it.

To a traumatised ego, their trauma is (somehow) precious, in that it is who they think they are.  Again, this is much the same as how someone who identifies themselves strongly with a conservative, orthodox view of a particular religion acts extremely defensively in response to criticisms of their faith of choice.  If someone is to imply that their faith is false they feel personally attacked, as if their very existence depends upon it.

The ego believes it has the right to suffer:

Likewise, it seems that many people consider their suffering to be intrinsic to their very being.  “Don’t I have the right to be upset?”, or “This person doesn’t deserve my forgiveness” are common words and thoughts from those that are deeply attached to their suffering.  It is often the case that trauma victims identify themselves completely with their suffering.  The idea that they can let go of their suffering can even seem offensive, or threatening, as if it would mean that they would become nothing and lose everything precious to them.  Hence, human beings often feel that they deserve to be unhappy, deserve to identify themselves as a victim, identify themselves with the trauma.

This reasoning seems to make sense to the ego, within normal human logic.  And yet, from a deeper perspective it is completely illogical and deeply toxic.  These rationalisations are natural for humanity in its current egoic state, and yet from the deeper perspective they are madness.  Again, I want to make it clear that in using strong language (toxic, madness etc.) to refer to standard human behaviour, I do not mean to harshly judge anybody, particularly those that suffer.  The opposite is my intention; rather this is expressed out of compassion.  This requires the greatest of sensitivity.  Those that suffer from trauma need understanding and compassion.  For a traumatised person to feel that they are being called mad would be the most offensive thing.

I have seen people who are so attached to their suffering that they project it onto everything and everyone.  They seem to attract conflict wherever they go, and often unconsciously create it, whilst simultaneously perceiving themselves as the victim.  You can be minding your own business, but if you are around them they (unconsciously) try to make themselves a victim of you, or they believe they have to dominate you before you dominate them.  Such people cannot see outside their perception and see how much suffering they create.  On one hand you want to make them aware of their personal power, and also make them aware that now they are the ones inflicting the suffering.  However, sometimes it is not appropriate to do so.

And yet, at some point we must call it as it is, out of compassion.  If I failed to do so I would be doing others a disservice by leaving the bar far to low.  I have raised this point in other articles before, and I wish to say a few more things regarding this.  Different people have vastly different needs in regards to where they set the bar.  Some people need to spend time exploring where they are, as well as setting high future standards to move towards.  For such people, trying to immediately achieve super high standards emphasises the discomfort of where they are, and creates a feeling of pressure to repress their current circumstances.  It can also create a feeling of inadequacy for failing to meet unrealistic standards.

Alternatively though, there are others who can quickly meet high standards (dwelling in pure awareness and/or other states of being involving expanded consciousness, and deliberate, conscious, positive projection of mind).  For such people, focusing solely on human psychological norms means setting the bar too low, which as I keep saying, is doing them a disservice.

So, when I talk about raising the bar it is meant in a compassionate sense.  Knowing what we are capable of, it is a disservice not to encourage others to seek their own connection to strength, power, clarity, inspiration, peace, love and joy.  Again though, different people have different needs.  Some need to have the bar raised slowly and progressively.  Others need to be inspired by the lofty heights of the potential to which they can aspire.  Hence, teachers need to be able to discern the needs of their students.  Likewise, students themselves need to be able to discern their own needs, and discern which teacher/s is/are right for them at different times.

Social norms in response to conflict and misfortune:

In the wake of an upsetting event or circumstance, it is not hard to find others around that will validate your anger or pain.  Generally, if you go to share you feelings with others they will add to it with their own stories, which trigger their own feelings.  Obviously it is healthy to express our thoughts and feelings rather than keep them bottled up inside.  No genuine spiritual teacher that I am aware of deliberately teaches repression, and obviously I do not either (though this may happen unwillingly with some teachers/teachings, and certainly there are many repressive religious and spiritual traditions).  However, we need to understand that we can express how we are feeling and thinking about a situation with the intent to look for solutions, and with focus upon how we prefer to think, feel and act.

To give an example, it is very common for both men and women to respond to a partner leaving them by complaining about their ex-partner.  That is, whilst they themselves did not want to leave the relationship, they often respond to the pain by talking (and thinking) repeatedly about all the things that annoyed them in their ex.  I would suggest a healthy response to the pain of separation (being “dumped”) is to acknowledge: “I am feeling pain, I am feeling rejection, I am feeling loss, I am feeling frustration”.  Instead, it is more common for people to respond with “That bastard/bitch, I can’t believe they would do this to me.  After all their crap I put up with.  I can’t believe I tolerated them for so long etc.”.  This is practically the standard human response, and yet it is deeply unhealthy.

The truth is, nobody actually enjoys being upset.  By definition, it feels bad.  And yet…the ego can actually come to enjoy pain, in a strange sort of way.  Anything that creates strong feelings within us can become addictive, even if those strong feelings are unpleasant.  Certainly this is true of thinking, speaking and acting in such ways as to create strong negative emotions.  That is, many people are addicted to unhappiness, anger, fear, pain, jealousy, spite, unforgiveness etc.

Again though, nobody actually enjoys the feeling of these emotions.  Rather, this addiction to negativity is an unconscious phenomenon that slides under the radar of the conscious mind.  It is common for someone to be convinced that everyone around them is causing their unhappiness, unaware that it is they, themselves who is doing so.  In such cases, often the person unconsciously rejects assistance from others (not being aware of their own need for help).  Such people will often reject upliftment being offered freely, preferring instead to (unconsciously) attempt to pull others down instead.  Such people will often prefer others to suffer with them rather than be lifted out of their suffering.  The ego is a strange thing, it often prefers hate to love, pain to pleasure and bondage to freedom.

As such, some people find themselves feeling strong resistance to suggestions that they can be free, and can find happiness.  For many people the idea of psychological and spiritual freedom sounds completely fanciful, unrealistic and unattainable.  In fact, many people immediately become suspicious of anyone preaching love and peace, suspecting them of possessing ulterior motives.  Of course, there are many examples of frauds, narcissists and madmen (and women) in the fields of psychology and spirituality who have somewhat justified this cynicism.  Hence, we have the need for leaders with integrity and honesty.

Everybody has the capacity to live in a very different way to our current norms.  Without exception, everyone has the capacity to find true, lasting peace, love, freedom, strength and self-empowerment.  As someone that is blessed with the experience of overflowing spiritual peace and love, it is only natural that I wish to share this with others.  This peace is not something unique to myself; I am not special to have this within myself.  I lived most of my life without an awareness of this, like most people.  And yet, it was there all along just waiting to be awakened, waiting for me to be made aware of it.  Everyone has this within themselves, and it is my genuine desire for everyone to find their way in.

Western approaches to the mind and closing thoughts:

Again I wish to make it quite clear that I have no formal qualifications on anything I speak on, and this is true regarding psychology, psychotherapy, medicine etc.  I have great admiration for many features of Western science and medicine.  I will openly state however that I feel Western thought to have a long way to go to properly understand consciousness.  Certainly, we have been trained to expect a magic pill to relieve us of our symptoms, without ever really looking beneath the surface to find the cause of our disease.

I feel that Western psychology doesn’t yet acknowledge the full capacity of human beings to achieve inner silence and then consciously direct their mind at will.  Obviously this is a high ideal and far from the normal state of consciousness of most humans.  However, we are capable of living this way, and I would even suggest that we are meant to live this way.  However, we have not been taught to operate like this, but rather have been conditioned by nature and nurture to operate at far less than our capacity.

There is of course a need to meet people where they are, and for many people to gradually, step by step lead them towards this goal.  I do wish to comment though that I feel that the current Western approach tends to set the bar way too low, often going round and round in circles rather than moving forward.  Rather than merely exploring our trauma and emotions, we need to have sight of where we are heading, in leaving behind the past and moving on.

Again however, I am not saying that these concepts are completely foreign to Western psychology; only that currently they are well understated.  Of course, if anyone is suffering from serious depression, anxiety, trauma or other mental health issues I strongly recommend you seek professional assistance.  However, my personal recommendation is for everyone to find a means of exploring consciousness that is suitable for them.  Essentially I am suggesting that whether or not someone is experiencing a degree of mental illness, that we should all consciously practice a form of meditation, and also cultivate and direct our thoughts deliberately.  For those seeking help through formal Western means I suggest also supplementing your treatment with meditative practices.

With growing acceptance of neuroplasticity, things are progressing towards accepting the power of consciousness to rewire the brain and body.  However, Western philosophy is still largely ruled by metaphysical naturalism, which views consciousness as an epiphenomenon.  Furthermore, many Western philosophers do not believe in free will (though of course, they are not the only ones).

I would hope that people of varying religious and philosophical persuasions could accept the ideals to which I speak here.  That is, regardless of what you believe regarding whether or not humans possess a soul, what the nature of consciousness and the mind are, and what the nature of reality is, we can agree on certain features of the human experience and of our potential.

We need to make peace with where we are and show absolute love and acceptance to ourselves and to others.  It is helpful however to have an understanding of what we are capable of, and how we can move forward towards a healthier, more enjoyable life experience for all.

May all beings find love, health, prosperity and freedom.

Peace.

---

^[i] For addressing our human needs and human psychology from a spiritual perspective, I highly recommend Teal Swan (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheSpiritualCatalyst).  Teal Swan cops a lot of unfair flack; there is a certain trend amongst some to be overly cynical towards any successful spiritual teacher.  I recommend you simply watch some of her videos and make up your own mind.  She is brilliant, hyper intelligent, and offers great depth, love and compassion.

She is very good at finding the main points in large, complex topics.  Whilst she does talk about general spiritual development, she also specialises in teaching an integrative approach to personal growth, where she is at pains to emphasise the need to be kind towards ones weaknesses, and validate ones thoughts and emotions.  Her videos on shadow work, integration/fragmentation are excellent, as are most that I have seen.

For realising ones Self as pure awareness, I personally recommend Eckhart Tolle (https://www.youtube.com/user/EckhartTeachings – though personally I prefer to read Tolle rather than listen to him), Mooji (https://www.youtube.com/user/Moojiji) and Rupert Spira (https://www.youtube.com/user/rupertspira).  All three are excellent and effectively teach the same message, but through the vehicle of their own personality and vocabulary.

There are accusations against Mooji that have been highly publicised in the last two years, though as far as I am aware we only have anonymous and/or second and third-hand reports.  I will speak on this at some point in detail; for the time being I would suggest we remember that people are innocent until proven otherwise, and his satsangs and meditations are extraordinary.  There are of course many other teachers in a similar vein with differing qualities.  There are other good ones (Gangaji for an excellent female example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuu1iS63Zl-57fceuzoPzZw); also there are many that I’m not so drawn to personally.

For expansion of consciousness I personally recommend traditional Yogic techniques/practices, or simply any regular meditative practice.  Serious spiritual seekers may adopt a routine of some form of Kundalini Yoga (not necessarily a practice that defines itself as such – simply any combination of powerful, classical Hatha Yoga techniques, such as Kriya Yoga).

I would personally caution that Kundalini Yoga practices are life changing, and once the awakening process has started I don’t think it can be reversed.  Kundalini is a wonderful blessing to a saint, but can bring extraordinary challenges to otherwise everyday people living a more typical modern Western lifestyle.  I don’t want to present the impression that Kundalini Yoga is dangerous.  However, I would recommend that potential practitioners take seriously the traditional recommendations on preliminary work before undertaking practices that are deliberately designed to awaken Kundalini.

The modern practice of Holotropic Breathwork is extraordinarily powerful, and can induce intense experiences in a short period of time.  Again though, this practice can very quickly induce powerful awakening of Shakti, and is not for the faint of heart.

For deliberate, conscious direction of the mind, I have a number of recommendations.  I find the channelled teachings of Esther Hicks (Abraham being the name given to the group consciousness that is claimed to speak through her) to be brilliant on many levels.  I recommend reading one of her books (or listening to the audiobook – here’s one example: https://www.hayhouse.com/money-and-the-law-of-attraction-5) for an in-depth and cohesive approach to applying deliberate positive thinking.

There are many great techniques for the deliberate direction of thought.  Many people find affirmation to be very powerful.  Here’s a playlist on YouTube from a man named Kenneth Soares (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWWG_PHempixZFCsy2w-G90VNddo8UjbG).  Also, mantra repetition and any form of spiritual music involving the cultivation of divine love can be very powerful and beneficial.  I personally love Deva Premal (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4IPMSvBj9G3XbvDx3ior8g), Snatam Kaur (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb0Q10jLbp021EwdBvhK8nA) to name a couple.  I also (believe it or not) really enjoy some modern, evangelical Christian praise and worship (though I do not necessarily like their theology or politics).  An example would be Upperroom (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCrxpO3RnaL-RbPbmB3TQCw).

^[ii] I first heard about this from an episode of Q&A on the ABC (here in Australia), which featured a young man named Corey White, who works as an advocate for foster kids.  His story is nothing short of brutal; hence my highest respect for this man to have come through and attempt to find solutions. https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/abuse-foster-care-and-taxes/10648728  

I also found the following articles: 

https://www.ahuri.edu.au/policy/ahuri-briefs/risk-of-homelessness-for-young-people-exiting-foster-care

Also:  https://www.homelesshub.ca/about-homelessness/legal-justice-issues/foster-care

This last article discusses how out of homeless youth, about 60% had recently been evicted from foster care:  https://junkee.com/youth-homelessness-foster-care/154016

^[iii] I recently published an article on this very point: https://jameshiscoxblogs.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/to-see-the-big-picture-you-have-to-be-able-to-consider-the-validity-of-many-different-perspectives/.

^[iv] Please note my careful wording here.  I do not claim to have had the full experience of Self Realisation.  I consider my own experiences to be merely a taste of what is truly there.  There is no question for me that many people have genuinely experienced far more of this than myself, and my own experiences continue to grow and deepen.

^[v] Here is a link to a domestic violence hotline which states that victims of domestic violence return to their abuser an average of seven times before leaving: https://www.thehotline.org/2017/02/16/supporting-someone-returning-to-abusive-relationship/

^[vi] For some examples, see the following: https://www.verywellmind.com/children-of-alcoholics-and-intimate-relationships-66556  and: https://www.verywellmind.com/common-traits-of-adult-children-of-alcoholics-66557

^[vii] See the following for some examples: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=5508484140a84023a1e2d8b080e14d0a

and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_South_Africa

^[viii] A common view in spirituality, often termed “Monistic Idealism” in modern Western philosophy.

^[ix] There are differing opinions as to whether or not ananda should be considered merely peace or happiness, or whether the terms bliss and ecstasy are appropriate.