It seems to me that paranormal enthusiasts tend to feel far more comfortable in the dark than hanging out in the sunshine. Delving deeply into others’ pain and eternal torment feels familiar, somehow. We like contacting and connecting with the unhappiness and trauma of non-material beings, because it’s what we are used to; joy, pleasure, and laughter or foreign or unusual states of emotion for the typical “ghost” seeker. We explore abandoned hospitals, sanatoriums, state mental hospitals, and sites of mass murder, mayhem, or tragedy. We are not investigating the happy spirits of a pizza parlor, or the joyous ghosts of a roller rink.
We like to connect with darkness in all of its forms. It’s more “interesting,” dramatic, and emotional. I am willing to bet that most of us are children of abuse or trauma in one form or another, so we seek out what we know so intimately: suffering. We connect so easily to sites where violence was the norm, because we grew up with violence. We know how to recognize the horror of a state mental hospital, because we know illness. Traumatized people seek out those emotions with which we resonate: sadness, anger, resentment, fear, sickness, and rage.
Of course, I am generalizing; not everyone falls into those categories. What I am saying is that the percentage of emotionally wrecked children who are currently paranormal investigators is higher than in the general population.
However, we should think about these dismal relationships that we cultivate in tortured buildings. Is this leading us towards a darker, more depressive emotional state? Yes, of course it is; we know that a particularly harrowing investigation has downer effects for days, to say nothing of what happens when you are oppressed by something that is thrilled to use your mind, body, and spirit for its purposes. Don’t stop exploring the fringes of misery, far from it; just try to balance this spiritual death spiral with some light, some hope, some singing spirits in a soda fountain. Or, simply go and enjoy your life before you end up answering inane questions regarding your presence in a building and making the little lights illuminate. There’s a much brighter light than your flashlight: don’t forget to seek that, too.
Before I dive into this topic, one which, admittedly, terrifies me–please take ten minutes to watch the above video with one of the physicists I follow (and no, I don’t agree with her on many issues, but that’s a topic for another post). I would like to address right away the question of my credentials or lack thereof, because if one has no authority to make broad, universal statements on physics, one should admit it up front. I am a layperson who has read extensively on this topic, but I am not trained in physics, and I most emphatically do not understand the math behind the theories. If you want to know who has influenced my thought the most, there are four scientists whose work I recommend you become acquainted with, if you are looking to alter your sense of reality permanently:
Sabine Hossenfelder (see video above)
Robert Lanza (a biologist who knows his physics)
Julian Barbour (his theory of “Platonia” is fascinating)
Carlo Rovelli (his book The Order of Time is a must read)
I want to keep this as brief as possible, as I have explored these ideas extensively here in soulbank and also at my sister site, the International Society for Paranormal Research (iinternationalspr.com). Here are the basic premises that will allow me to venture an answer to the question posed in the title.
The “relativity of simultaneity” reveals that there is no such moment as “now” that applies to all people everywhere, just as there is no point in space that we all share. Me occupying the space of my couch in Long Beach doesn’t mean that someone else couldn’t occupy an office in the south of France, and my “now” does not have to be shared, either. If my ‘now’ is someone else’s past, or future, then ‘time’ is simply an organizational concept and not an absolute. In fact, for physics, equations involving time variables work forwards and backwards, not privileging one forward direction.
This concept of time as not fundamental nor linear gives rise to the idea that perhaps time as we perceive it is simply how our brains are wired to organize information and events. There is no “time” out there–we create time from perceptual patterns in the brain that are hard-wired for our survival.
The Block Universe is well accepted in mainstream physics. The Block Universe contains all events that we would call “past”, “present”, and “future”, yet they occupy the same space and are not flowing in anything like “time”. Events, timelines, simply exist, and we simply “are” in this space, although we perceive time to be moving us through aging and death into nothingness. That is an illusion of our perception, because nothing can cease to exist in the Block Universe.
The Three Versions of the Block Universe
Although there are different versions of the Block Universe, after years of reading about this, I subscribe to Eternalism, for reasons that I will go into in another post.
If you can accept that we live in this universe, that time is an illusion and a creation of our human animal perception designed to keep us alive in the world, then you can also accept that death is simply another event that we perceive as happening. Now it is true that our bodies appear to suffer the effects of entropy–the Second Law of Thermodynamics is responsible for this, but simply stated, the local conditions of our Universe dictate that energy and information disperses; there is a gradual decline into disorder, from high to low energy. We wrinkle, sag, and fall apart due to entropy, but that does not prove that time exists, only that this law of physics works in this particular way, and we have linked that law with a concept of time passing, but one does not define the other. In fact, eggs might unscramble themselves and ice might form instead of melting, but we would not remember that, for our brains can only store memories if entropy works in one direction and not the other. Entropy might not flow one way at all, but our brains would not allow us to perceive it. We are hard wired to stay alive in a hostile environment, so we must filter and reduce the information that bombards us.
So. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE? I have a theory, of course; in the video above, Dr. Hossenfelder mentions that information–by which I assume she means our consciousness–cannot be destroyed. She goes on to say, however, that the information necessary for us to be consciously aware of ourselves as ourselves becomes “disorganized” and “unretrievable”, which to me sounds like we are not us anymore, and you might as well be non existent. But she is forgetting something: we already exist at every other moment of our lives in the Block Universe. In the Block Universe we are both alive and dead all of the time. We exist in both states right now. That means that nothing changes at all. If we are both alive and dead because it’s all happening, all real, in this moment, AND WE CANNOT PERCEIVE OURSELVES AS NOT EXISTING, then death changes nothing. We continue to perceive ourselves as alive.
If we are already experiencing conscious awareness, if we are, right now, perceiving our lives and our reality as "happening", then that simply cannot change. Consciousness cannot change. Somewhere on our timeline, we are experiencing death. Our awareness appears to change, as we perceive one event following from another, as we perceive cause and effect, weaving one into the other. I believe that it is our awareness that moves through our timeline, creating a narrative of our lives that we understand as ultimate reality, when, in fact, we have multiple narratives, lives, experiences, and emotions that we move through continuously. We are always dying and being born, always living through something we think is a crisis or turning point, not knowing that we have passed through that same event before and are unable to remember it.
In the Block Universe, non-existence is not possible. How does this relate to the paranormal? No system is perfect. There are always glitches. With concentration or altered consciousness, or simply a slight shift in our perceptual apparatus, we can see into someone else’s timeline. Perhaps from 1946, or 2097; we see that person and think that they are from the past or the future, that they are ghost or time traveler; in reality, they exist right now, just like you do, simply out of context. This also explains clairvoyance, mediumship, and pretty much any “supernatural” human ability. If you can find ways to peer into others’ timelines, to access another area of the Block Universe, then you can “see” the future or contact the distant “past”, but you are not moving through time, you are moving through space.
I think that my brain will explode (and yours might too) if I continue to write about this. But I hope that I have answered, at least in part, the question regarding death. It might offer great comfort or not, depending on how you wish to understand reality. I certainly would love to hear from you, as I don’t think that there is any topic more important than this.
The Paranormal Housewives would like to extend their sincere gratitude to Chris Hogan, President of Long Beach Heritage, for allowing us to be the first paranormal team to investigate the Bembridge House. The following are the impressions of three of the team members post investigation
From Erin Potter
When I was driving to the house, I had used my GPS to navigate me there and for some reason I turned a different way than the map had told me to go. I ended up in an alley and stopped behind the house. I did not know anything about the house or who lived there when this happened. I was drawn to the back of the house. When I went back around to the front and parked, I let everyone know that we needed to investigate the back of the house because this weird force made me drive to the back instead of the front.
When I stepped out of my car I instantly felt a TON of energy from all over. Not just the house. But as I got closer to the house and moved around the outside, I could feel the energy coming from inside the house. I tuned out the outside energy so I could focus on the inside. There was so much, it was confusing. As we walked into the house, I could feel her; but not as the most predominant spirit. As soon as I stepped foot into the house, I could feel a man standing behind me over my right shoulder. Occasionally, he would touch me on the shoulder as the investigation went on. I never felt threatened by this spirit. I actually felt like he was protecting me, or maybe even liked me. I’m not sure which.
There were a few times I saw a shadow figure dart quickly in my peripheral vision. But of course, once I turned my head, I could not see anything. I saw this shadow figure in the dining room and the hallway downstairs: in front of the bathroom downstairs.
What’s interesting is that when we first went into the kitchen, I thought it would be a great place to investigate, but it’s like we forgot all about the kitchen. We didn’t even go back to it. LOL! I guess Dorothy really doesn’t like to be in the kitchen.
When Kimberly and I were upstairs in Dorothy’s room, we got a couple of hits on the EMF detector. And then we heard what sounded like the people that were downstairs were moving furniture. It was loud. But when we went down to check, they hadn’t moved anything. When we had come back up to Dorothy’s room with the whole group, we got a lot of EMF activity. Spirit was communicating nicely that second time.
The spirits I felt that night were: A woman … .who I think was Dorothy; and the man who stood behind me the entire time I was there, including when we went outside. There was another man that was upstairs only. Also, I sensed a small child; a little girl. I think Jolene said it was a little boy. It just felt childlike, and she/he liked to play with cars. There were a few others that didn’t really come forward to me, but I could feel them on the outside of our investigation looking in; very curious they were.
I feel like we need to investigate this house again. I don’t think we even scratched the service of the activity. Also I think the more times we go back, the more they will open up to us.
*************
From Kirsten Thorne
Before I ever entered the property, I started to receive impressions regarding Dorothy Bembridge. I share those impressions here, without stating that I am correct, or pretending that said impressions are necessarily accurate. I welcome anyone’s revision or confirmation of the following.
Dorothy was isolated, especially later in her life. I sensed that she might be described as elitist and traditionalist. She could be kind, even sweet, and she was clearly talented as a musician. However, she was also controlling of both her environment and others. She was oblivious to the world outside of her house, and she tended to follow the same paths and routines. She tried to maintain a genteel lifestyle that did not match the reality of her surroundings (and by this, I mean the socio-economic challenges of a Long Beach in decline). She repeated the same routines to keep herself in control of her surroundings, and this may have resulted in a residual haunting of her home (a spirit repeating the same actions over and over in a loop). I got the sense that she might not communicate with uninvited guests in her home.
She valued tradition and formal education over innovation and creativity. Her father had an explosive temper and controlled the household when she was growing up. He frightened her and taught her to keep her authentic emotions under wraps. He taught her that change, transformation, and growth were dangerous. The message: don’t “move on” if you do not have to. Stay safe. Stay here.
For those reasons, there was little communication from Dorothy that night. She was sensed, but her presence was not recorded on our devices. I had the strong feeling that she was keeping us in the parlor and discouraging us from going upstairs. We all felt like we could not leave the parlor. This may have been due to the fact that as guests, that was our appropriate place. However, we learned afterwards that the upstairs fell into disuse after she was unable to navigate the stairs. We were also told that there was a hoarding situation upstairs, rendering it a dangerous place to wander through. Animals entered the house and further degraded the upstairs bedrooms and hallway. I felt that this was another reason that I was discouraged from investigating there. I made the mistake of not listening to this message, and while investigating the brother’s room at the back of the upstairs floor, I was scratched on my back and neck (there are photos to prove this). I felt the scratches the moment that they happened, and Marsha took me back to the bathroom to document them. I have no idea what or who would attack me in such a fashion, but I believe that I was warned not to go upstairs for that reason.
The scratches left me with the sense that something most definitely did not want me there, but the reasons for that are a mystery. After that incident, nobody felt anything at all in the room, as if the psychic energy dissipated afterwards.
EVIDENCE
As far as what we were able to document, we have one anomalous photograph from the backyard that shows two light streaks that roughly correspond to where Dorothy lost her life. I had a professional photographer examine the photograph, and he has no natural explanation for it.
The EVP evidence was faint and perhaps not clear enough to be entirely convincing. I will send along the audio clips via email. There are audible knocks and the occasional disembodied voice.
The “ghost apps” made repeated references to outdoor parties, gardening, enjoyment of the outdoors, and “growing”, in reference to the garden. I have that written evidence documented on the “ghostcom oracle”.
Most of the experiences were personal; the feeling of being touched, dark shadows moving around the house (Ty saw a shadow move across one of the camera lights), and changes in temperature. Jolene clearly saw a figure in white.
* * * * * * * * * * *
From Jolene Heft (notes)
She says the words “senseless”. She cannot stand jealousy–wants people to know her story; there is a loss of a child–”baby” . . .
Quit looking at her passing–know the full story–There are “holes in the story of what happened to her”.
There is a child–boy and girl–running around and playing. He’s mischievous but funny; she’s cute, but timid.
NOTE: Ask about the 100 year old tree. There is someone or something or both buried on the property.
“Esther” Chair. Maroon or crimson velvet–passed down through the generations.
Seb–salvation–tried to protect her. The little girl wants to hold hands. Starting to see more losses–children, babies?
Lots of biscuits to go with tea.
Typhoid–death.
“Ring Around the Rosie”, singing.
Kids are outside around the aviary.
Male–heart attack.
There is a girl hiding in the corner upstairs in the Carriage House.
* * * * * * * * * *
FINAL THOUGHTS
There are a multitude of spirits attempting to communicate in the Bembridge House, and they overlap in time and space. The sheer number of time frames and people made it a confusing environment for mediums and investigators. The energy was palpable, and yet it wasn’t as much interested in direct communication via electronic voice phenomena as providing feelings, sensations, impressions, and a sense of the time period (Jolene received some direct communications, however).
Because so much of what was sensed and recorded was the result of overlap of experiences, the Bembridge House is a difficult site to untangle. It was something like watching several movie scenes at the same time from across 100+ years. There were vast differences in the energy and feelings from one part of the house to the other; the downstairs felt nothing like the upstairs, and the parlor was by far the ‘safest’ emotional space compared to the back of the house. Every room had its own story. We all agree that we need to go back and continue to tease apart the various experiences to come up with a more coherent narrative of what happened in the house over time. There is much, much more to learn from the house and the souls and memories that still occupy it.
Are there demonic spirits involved in tempting the narcissist in your life to destroy you? At first glance, it seems ridiculous, and such an idea requires the belief that demonic spirits exist in the first place. If you peruse the Internet for the connection between evil entities and narcissism, you will find plenty of Christians who advocate for the idea that narcissism is a personality disorder that is a consequence of evil finding ripe opportunities for oppression or possession in those who are running from a chronic feeling of shame and self doubt.
Before we begin a deep dive into this connection, let’s take a look at the dominant characteristics of narcissistic people, whether they have some of the following characteristics or they struggle with a full-blown case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (from the Mayo Clinic):
Symptoms
Symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and how severe they are can vary. People with the disorder can:
Have an unreasonably high sense of self-importance and require constant, excessive admiration.
Feel that they deserve privileges and special treatment.
Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements.
Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are.
Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate.
Believe they are superior to others and can only spend time with or be understood by equally special people.
Be critical of and look down on people they feel are not important.
Expect special favors and expect other people to do what they want without questioning them.
Take advantage of others to get what they want.
Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others.
Be envious of others and believe others envy them.
Behave in an arrogant way, brag a lot and come across as conceited.
Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office.
At the same time, people with narcissistic personality disorder have trouble handling anything they view as criticism. They can:
Become impatient or angry when they don’t receive special recognition or treatment.
Have major problems interacting with others and easily feel slighted.
React with rage or contempt and try to belittle other people to make themselves appear superior.
Have difficulty managing their emotions and behavior.
Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change.
Withdraw from or avoid situations in which they might fail.
Feel depressed and moody because they fall short of perfection
Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, humiliation and fear of being exposed as a failure.
Looking at this list, it’s clear that Satan was the original narcissist, given his envy of God and his lust for power and control. However, the connection to the demonic is even more clear when you consider the EFFECT of narcissists and narcissistic behaviors on someone who is vulnerable to them: typically highly compassionate, empathetic, folks who are often helpers and healers in the world and just want everyone to be happy. The victims of the narcissist can be turned into codependent shadows of themselves as they fruitlessly try to “save” the narcissist from themselves, or please and love them in the vain hope of convincing them that they (the victims) are worthy of kind and loving treatment.
I have decided to write my own list of the effects of narcissists, since during my life I have fallen victim to quite a few. I am not blameless nor was I ever entirely free of narcissistic behaviors myself, but I can say with confidence that I was manipulated, abused, and gaslighted to such an extent, that I have become an expert on narcissistic abuse.
Feelings of despair, depression, and fear that seem to come “out of nowhere”;
Questioning my reality and what is “normal”;
Criticizing myself, judging myself harshly, holding myself to unrealistic standards;
Self hatred: not thin, pretty, successful enough; perfectionism;
Frantically trying to get the narcissist to pay attention to me; to call or text more often, to see me, or to make more of a commitment; feeling that I have done something wrong, yet not able to pinpoint what that might be;
Emotionally confused, numb, feeling that something is “off” or “wrong”, especially as concerns the narcissist, yet not ever receiving a straight answer or reason for ignoring or abusive behavior;
Loss of meaning and faith that everything is alright, that I am safe, and that the Universe is essentially good and working in my favor.
I could go on and on in terms of effects, but you can see by looking at this list that the Devil and his minions are all about inflicting narcissistic abuse. The more chaos, confusion, uncertainty, and self-hatred that they can inflict, the better, for the goal of the “demonic” (whether or not you believe in literal demons) is to break down one’s sense of self and one’s faith in a higher power. You also learn not to trust yourself and to always focus on what someone else might want or need from you, neglecting your own personal and spiritual development in favor of trying to figure out the narcissist. Anxiety and depression ensue, draining your energy for creating a positive and profound connection to others and one’s environment and community.
If you’re a fan of the “ghost shows”, the demonic shows up constantly. Zak Bagans is frequently “oppressed” or affected by such entities, and regardless whether or not you believe that this is “real” or just for entertainment purposes (and there is probably a bit of a mix going on, where some scenes of influence quite authentic and others exaggerated for effect), but the effect on him is rage, a desire to punish or inflict violence on his costars, a need to control where they go and what they do, coupled with loss of control over himself and his emotions. While Zak can “come back to himself”, almost certainly his thousands of hours of investigation into traumatized buildings and people has affected him in precisely the manner a demonic entity would wish. It’s up to you to decide if he became a narcissist, a victim, or some combination of both.
In the world of the paranormal, the whole subject of demonic activity is highly and hotly debated and contested. While it’s easy to fake a possession, (and this happened with a tour guide who made quite a display of her demonic influence, only to shake it off when we weren’t looking) you can’t fake the effects of narcissistic abuse. If there are demons that influence people to follow the tortured path of narcissism, then it’s a rather brilliant way to accomplish their goals: the destruction of one’s soul. The narcissist and their victims both lose themselves to their coping mechanisms: the narcissist manages toxic shame via control and manipulation of others, and the victim manages her confusion and fear by erasing herself, by disappearing. In both cases, the people involved lose any sense of their true identity, purpose, and faith. More souls for Satan. Or, if you prefer, more mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and despair. If narcissists are running our world (and there is plenty of evidence that this is the case), then there would be no concern for the victims of their malignant power plays, only the endless pursuit of their narcissistic supply and grandiose fantasies.
I would love to end with some pity advice on how to protect yourself and rebuild a shattered ego, but that requires another blog entry. All I can say in closing is that you must find a way back to what you love, what might have sparked your passions long ago, and you must, above all, tell the truth: not just about what you observe around you, but about yourself and the damage you are repairing on your way back to the God of your understanding. For the Devil of your understanding wants you to give up, to despair, to give in and let the narcissists win. Do not let that happen, even if you lose people along the way. Better to be alone with God than surrounded by demons in human form.
Dear Readers, (in case any are left)
I apologize for the extensive delay in posting. After I declared that there was no spiritual path, I was not sure how to follow up. After all, the entire point of this blog site was to address issues of a spiritual nature, and Soulbank in many ways WAS an important part of my spiritual path. So why would I declare that all of this was an illusion?
I spent the better part of the last 20 years deeply engaged in questions related to life after death and survival of some form of consciousness, in addition to reading everything that I could get my hands on that was in any way related to paranormal phenomena, mostly what we call spirits or ghosts. What I needed was some kind of direct experience of God, the universe, the Goddess, the cosmos, whatever you wish to call that which transcends human experience and yet somehow produced it. As you all know, I experienced a sudden memory of my death from a heroin overdose as Mary, a foster child who died in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. That memory kicked off a strange series of events in my life. My emotions bubbled to the surface, and I was overwhelmed with traumatic memories from not only Mary’s life, but my current one. I had no idea that the bizarre physical, emotional, and perceptual symptoms were due to a recognized phenomenon: spiritual awakening, or spiritual emergence. It was a total transformation, one that continues on unabated (although not nearly so intense) to this day. I can only describe it as a completely unexpected trip to my subconscious mind, where I met God and assorted spirits and guides. Was it real? It was at least as real as my everyday life. If you wish to call our day-to-day existence an illusion, then I would say it was MORE real than said illusion. It’s very difficult to explain the process to someone who has not experienced it. I was not seeking this out, because I didn’t even know what it was. The process shocked and surprised me precisely because it was utterly unpredictable and was orchestrated by some force far greater than me; it was so awe inspiring and humbling that all I could do was bow down to it and give up.
I still wake up at 3:00 AM feeling like I’m about to crawl out of my skin and overwhelmed with energies that I can barely comprehend. I stretch, jog in place, pray, fall to my knees, and wait for the spiritual episode to run its course. I am something like a conduit now for cosmic energies. I don’t know to what end or for what purpose this is happening to me. It started on June 26th, 2017, and rolls forward.
With that in mind, what I would like to do is revise my statements in the last post. I don’t think that there is no such thing as a spiritual path; I think that most humans cannot understand said path. I certainly do not know why this is happening to me, or where I will go with the cosmic downloads of energy, visions, mood swings, and my new perspectives. All I can say is this: I take more action now for the people I love, and the people I love number far higher than before. I feel intense empathy for the plight of human beings and our planet. I want to do something, no matter how small, to ease our collective sufferings and to celebrate our accomplishments and our innate beauty and promise. I am showing up and ready to work for something better. I want to create small spaces for peace and beauty that perhaps, one day, will grow larger and affect more and more of us.
I have become a beginner and am starting over. The journey begins with the small hope that you are all still out there, that you care, that you want to help me raise the collective vibration; I still love to talk to ghosts and read about where memories are stored in the brain, and figure out how time was created, and whether or not space actually exists; I remain curious, dazzled by life, and ready to research any fascinating topic. The difference is, I no longer feel agonized in the process, because I found out that I’m eternal and the Universe loves me. Even if that statement makes you want to roll your eyes, consider that it might possibly be true. I can’t convince you of that; all I can do is ask that you go find the way–however you choose to do it–to answer the question yourself.
This site is no longer about proving anything to anyone; it’s about creating a community of curious seekers and adventurers who are dedicated to enjoying this human experience. Much love to you all,
Want to hear something scary? There is a growing consensus in the psychiatric community that some cases of mental illness are caused by malignant spirits taking over a mind. Richard Gallagher trained in psychiatry at Yale University and is a practicing psychoanalyst and . . . exorcist. Although the vast majority of those practicing mental health care refuse to believe in the reality of demons affecting one’s mind, Dr. Gallagher is ” . . . pleasantly surprised by the number of psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners nowadays who are open to entertaining such hypotheses. Many believe exactly what I do, though they may be reluctant to speak out.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/?utm_term=.b5895e67d890)
I’ve written before about possession and exorcism, and the insights I gleaned from my meeting with a Catholic priest who is also an exorcist. In that meeting, I received his blessing to assist in such work. I have yet to truly throw myself into this vital, spiritual work, a fact which may explain my current state of mind (I’m wasting my talents, truth be told, as are so many of us who study the ‘paranormal’). However, the topic of this post is slightly different. Many of us–scholars or not, mental health experts or not–agree based on the evidence that demonic possession is a reality for an unfortunate few. What I don’t see discussed as much in academic circles is the reality of possession by non-demonic entities.
Once you admit the possibility that an evil entity, a dark spirit, can and does take over a body, mind and soul, then you must admit that the same phenomena can occur with beings that are not demonic in nature. If it is possible for a demon to possess a living person, then it is possible for any person in spirit to do the exact, same thing via a similar mechanism. Exactly how this happens is unknown to me, but I hypothesize that you must be in a vulnerable state: altered by drugs or alcohol, severely depressed and/or anxious, inviting such contact via ouija boards, channeling, automatic writing or (it must be said) so-called ‘ghost hunting’. If you are a spiritually grounded person with a strong religious practice and belief, you are more protected from the invading spirit; however, those of us who dabble in spirit contact are most definitely at risk. The reality of this possibility is what is at the heart of our gradual decline in time spent investigating the paranormal, which seems to happen to all of us. It isn’t that we don’t believe it after years of spirit contact, it’s that we discover how powerful these connections are, and we realize how much that contact affects us emotionally and spiritually.
Spirits, souls, conscious beings, are in contact with us on a daily basis. Most mediums talk about the ‘veil’ that separates the living and the ‘dead’; this language is reflected in theories of the multiverse and other ‘theories of everything’ that postulate multiple dimensions. Dr. Robert Lanza’s ideas concerning death and multiple dimensions go a step further: not only does consciousness continue in other dimensions, ‘death’ as a concept is meaningless. It essentially doesn’t exist except as a description of a mundane, physical process which has no bearing on the conscious, individual human being. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/is-there-an-afterlife-the-science-of-biocentrism-can-prove-there-is-claims-professor-robert-lanza-8942558.html) Whatever it is that separates multiple dimensions, whether it be vibrating strings or dark matter, the systems of separation are not perfect and break down. Or, more tantalizingly, WE can break them down through mental effort and meditative practice. Once the boundaries of a multiverse are breached, we can’t keep whoever is living there ‘out’ of our reality. Their energy flows through, finds us, penetrates our consciousness and plays out its need for communication or emotion.
In simple terms, our interaction with what we call ‘ghosts’ often results in spirits finding a receptive home to express themselves through us. This explains many mysteries and questions of mine that up to now, seem to have no answer. Boundaries are broken down between dimensions, and our easy classification of ourselves as one being, one spirit, in isolation from all others, disintegrates. We are all interconnected and affect one another in ways both subtle and obvious. Therefore, to provide an example, a haunted house story is not a story of a person who discovers ghosts, but of ghosts who discover a person and the beginning of a relationship where all entities rely on each other’s energy and emotion. When you enter into an emotional relationship with the spirits around you, the ‘haunting’ isn’t about the ‘other,’ it’s about all parties involved. You may not realize that your persistent, depressed mood or your strange reactions to familiar situations have to do with someone else living in you, with someone else sharing your psychic space.
Is that possession? It’s probably more ‘influence’ or even relationship. If you have ever felt an inexplicably strong connection to a house or other place, it is likely that you are experiencing the effects of your intimate interaction with the spirits you’ve come to know quite well there, even if not consciously. Much of this phenomena is experienced in the subconscious mind, where our ego and super ego (to borrow from Freud for a moment) expend much energy repressing, denying and fleeing from the truth of our spiritual attachments and engagements. How much of what we feel, what we do, how we react to other people, how we live our lives, has to do with spiritual relationships of which we are hardly aware? That is a sobering question.
There are things I need to know, but the process of understanding frightens me. I would like to know the identity of the spirits who live with me or interact with me. I would like to separate myself just a little more from their influence. That requires an investigation into other dimensions of reality and that, in turn, requires a professional medium of great talent and respectability. That is more than likely the next step for me. It is not easy for me to trust other people, especially people who interpret in my stead what my reality might be. I have always despised that trait in others: the individual who pretends to know more than you about your own life. However, I do believe that trustworthy mediums exist and can shed light on the spiritual mystery that surrounds us all. Of course, those of us who regularly attend church in the Christian tradition understand that this spirit world is all around us at all times, effecting changes and transitions of which we are barely aware. The church, however, tries hard to manage, limit and interpret our spiritual experiences so that they do not fall outside the accepted boundaries of Scripture. I need more than that.
Think about the ways that your spirit interacts with others, both in the flesh and transcendent. If there are no boundaries to spirit, and we are all spirit, then to speak of ‘containers’ of flesh, vibrating strings, dark matter, conscious and subconscious, is all a waste of time. The categories ‘dead’ and ‘living’ are nonsensical when you’re are speaking of souls and not of matter. Just as the spirit of your nasty boss can harm you, so can the spirit of the guy who drowned himself in your bathtub years before you moved into your house. The charge, then, is to be more aware, more conscious, of who is affecting your heart, mind and soul, and where you need to draw the line on a psychic invasion. It would be wise to start with meditation and prayer. But I don’t plan to end there.
Dr. Alan Hugenot is a medium who is also an engineer and a classically trained physicist. I don’t like long quotes, but if I’m going to reference someone as an authority on something as important as life after death, make sure that your readers know who this person is. Here is his own bio on LinkedIn, but you should read more on your own:
“Dr. Hugenot is a semi-retired, Naval Architect & Marine Engineer, who often works as an expert witness in maritime cases. After surviving a Near-Death experience in 1970 which occurred during a 12 hour coma, he has made a 45 year, scientific study of Consciousness Survival and Evidential Mediumship. The NDE “opened” his consciousness to intuitive communications, and after completing studies with the Morris Pratt Institute (NSAC), and Arthur Findlay College of Psychic Science (SNU), He currently serves as research medium with the Consciousness Research Lab at IONS (Noetic.org) with Dr. Dean Radin, Ph.D and Dr. Arnaud Delorme, Ph.D, and also with Dr. Gary Swartz (University of Arizona). He currently serves on the Board of Directors for both the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS.org) and the Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies (ASCSi.org). He is fascinated with parapsychological science and the physics of consciousness, consciousness survival in an afterlife, mediumship, remote viewing, and out of body experiences. Trained in classical Newtonian physics, but having also experienced the phenomena of consciousness survival and out-of-body consciousness, he realizes that our materialist paradigm is an extremely restricted aperture for viewing the larger reality of the Conscious Universe, yet he also comprehends the skeptic’s perceptive difficulty that, “Consciousness survival can never be observed unless the observer first infers that it could be possible”. He speaks several times each month at various conferences on Death, Consciousness Survival and Mediumship Science in North America at local IONS and IANDS groups and at various Unity and Spiritualist churches. He also holds workshops on Evidential Mediumship. He is available, by prior arrangement, to speak and hold workshops throughout Europe and the British Commonwealth.”
What I like about Dr. Hugenot: He made a decision to become medium via intense study and preparation, discarding the notion that the scientist or the observer must keep herself at a skeptical distance in order to draw conclusions or gather evidence about survival of consciousness. The preponderance of the evidence is in favor of the existence of ‘discarnate entities’ who communicate with us via signs, direct voice, writing, channeling and other means. It is NOT that we don’t have enough evidence to support our beliefs in the afterlife; the issue is that we can’t convince the majority of the scientific community to examine the evidence because they refuse to consider the question. If you refuse, a priori, to study the evidence because it concerns an issue that requires you to abandon materialism, then you cannot convince a skeptic. Oddly enough, this has led to an anti-scientific attitude among the materialists, since they will not consider the results of studies carried out at universities and government agencies that followed scientific protocol. Dr. Hugenot joins the ranks of Dr. Morse, Dr. Stevens, Dr. Mona Schultz, Dr. Parnia and so many others who have found reasonable grounds for accepting the continuation of consciousness. We need to be reminded: science has not proven that consciousness arises from brain function, an assumption upon which materialists rely.
Another fascinating theory that Dr. Hugenot proposes: the ‘near death’ experience is an actual ‘death experience.’ Therefore, the question of reincarnation has been solved: if you return to your body after you died (Dr. Sam Parnia discusses this in depth–he has resuscitated patients who he considered dead–no less dead than those who don’t return to their bodies), you HAVE REINCARNATED. Not, clearly, into another body, but back into the one you had before. That fact alone is enough to upend any thinking person’s world view. Several of us wandering around right now have returned to our bodies after death. We have reincarnated. If we could do it once, why could we not do it again in a different body?
There is much more that you need to hear. Go to his page and listen to the videos. They might just change your life.
Dear Readers: Today, you’re going to hear me boot the nice Kitty to the curb, because the angry Kitty is ready to write today. Forgive her for her lack of fuzziness and warmth. That persona will be back soon. In the meantime, this is what’s going on:
Every now and then, some kind soul will send me hate mail. Hate mail is never fun to receive, but on the other hand, it means that people are reading. Just like there is no bad publicity, there is always cause for a writer to celebrate when someone takes the time to send an email, even if it’s vicious vitriol from an inflamed and angry soul whose sensibilities you’ve offended.
There is a segment of the population who despises all talk of the survival of consciousness–the idea that we are more than meat machines–and the very notion of the human spirit. In part, those people have been hurt by organized religion, and think (falsely) that I am promoting religion or a particular vision/version of God. I understand the backlash; but let me be clear: although I consider myself Christian, I do not write on soulbank with a conversion agenda nor am I an apologist for a particular faith. Atheists are always welcome to debate issues relating to the survival of death of some aspect of human consciousness.
However, there is a trend in my hate mail: people who believe that nothing survives death–no soul, no spirit, no aspect of consciousness–tend to insult me on a personal level. There is a certain pattern to the meanness: first, attack my PhD. Start by telling me how you can’t believe that someone with an advanced degree would spout such drivel, etc. Then, move on to how worthless my degree must be in order for me to question the status quo of materialism. Then, express dismay at the state of higher education to allow someone like me to exist in the world at all. If you are a distant relative of mine, or a friend of a distant relative, your next move it to wring your hands in dismay over my ‘lost promise’.
The hate mail usually goes on to question my psychology: I am somehow traumatized or deficient in some way, suffering from a personality disorder or simply deluded. My mental stability is questioned or my emotional life must be out of whack. This is followed by the materialists’ trump card:
“this is wishful thinking on your part”
Of course, this is an old objection and the excuse for not researching the issue in any depth or at all: since this is just your desire speaking, there is no validity to the question in the first place. Or, there is that other objection that states that this is all fantasy akin to inventing some fantastic creature and attempting to prove it exists. To both of these very typical objections, and by way of some general observations, I offer the following:
There is no reason that people who disagree with me cannot be civil or polite in their responses; the failure to adhere to basic, human courtesy tells me more about how threatened YOU feel by the subject matter than it does about a rigorously defensible point of view;
My education, my writing and my critical thinking skills speak for themselves. If you are disappointed in me or think that I can’t defend a premise, you are free to stop reading soulbank;
Thousands of years of human history have shown us that every culture has believed in a sort of afterlife, and that elaborate preparations for that life are a common feature of those cultures. To say that our entire, collective past is founded upon delusions and wishful thinking makes one the worst kind of colonizer: the kind that believes in her privilege to such an extent that you represent ‘civilization’ and all others are primitive savages with quaint, superstitious beliefs;
Science is moving in the direction of more openness regarding the possible existence of consciousness after clinical death. There is now a considerable chorus of voices representing many disciplines in the sciences who are considering the ‘life after life’ questions with curiosity and receptivity. To anyone who wants a bibliography, just let me know. I have a great many books by doctors, physicists, neuroscientists and others who have dared to consider this question.
There is no need to make a religion out of materialism and defend it to the point of alienating anyone who disagrees with you. If you believe in scientific materialism and will not consider evidence to the contrary, that’s fine–but there is no need to be vindictive, wounding, insulting and condescending in the process. Is this what happens to people who deny the human spirit?
There are many nasty things one can write to me that will have no effect. However, there is one kind of attack that I have difficulty with: those who seek to deny the validity of others’ experiences. People tend to label and insult what they do not understand or have not themselves experienced. So, when someone feels that a possible past life is the best explanation for their anomalous memories, feelings and/or behaviors, to call into question that person’s sanity or to state that they are naive, deluded, unable to think critically or don’t understand their own psychology, is an act of violence.
When a widow says she was visited by her late husband and told some important information that is later verified, to call her crazy, to say she’s unable to distinguish reality from fantasy due to grief, is an act of violence.
When someone comes back after a period of clinical death to say that they had an out of body experience where they had extraordinary powers of perception and understanding and you call them sick, drugged or a victim of a ‘dying brain’, that is an act of violence.
When someone has predicted the future, read someone’s thoughts, communicated with the dead, all under strict controls and evaluated in an academic setting by well trained scientists–to insult the researchers, to belittle the protocols, to question everybody’s ethics, IS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE.
Let me go further. Even if all these people, across all these cultures, all throughout human history, did not have labs, scientists and formal experiments to monitor their experiences, to call those ‘experiencers’ insane, misled, misinformed, deluded, uneducated or victims of their own desires/illusions/fantasies, etc. IS AN ACT OF VIOLENCE.
Whenever we seek to denigrate a human experience that we share with MILLIONS of others, we perpetuate a witch hunt against those who are at odds with our dominant, militant culture of scientific materialism. Whether or not anomalous experiences have been proven for YOU, to YOUR satisfaction, is another issue completely. What I will never understand is why those who profess no belief in anything other than the mechanical/biological workings of the material self behave in ways that are intended to belittle and mock those who see something transcendent and universal behind the forms of the world. To see beyond the material is not to deny the material, or the importance of the disciplines that study it.
If I see beyond this world, it is not due to a sick or infantile brain; it’s comes from a mind that has been either blessed or cursed to perceive pieces of a reality that connect and explain the mysteries of consciousness that lie just beyond the full grasp of any of us, even–or especially–the academics who study the world so ardently.
If you believe, like so many profess to, in the existence of the human soul (or consciousness, if you prefer) as something separate from the material body, then you must also accept that the sharp distinctions we draw between life and death don’t make logical sense. How do you define life? Are you so completely entwined and identified with your body and its chemical processes that you can’t imagine a ‘self’ without them? It’s a bit like saying that your car is you, or your clothes are you; if you leave one and shed the other, are you no longer yourself?
I have written before about what all children know when their pet dies. After ‘death,’ the body has nothing to do with the pet. Everything that made that animal your pet departs at the moment of death. We do ourselves a disservice by asking WHERE the pet ‘went.’ The usual categories upon which we depend to locate a self do not apply here. Only in the material world can one say where you are in space and time. Does that mean that you do not exist after your material body ‘gives up the ghost’? Of course not. You exist, but not as a material entity. Sometimes we can contact the self that exists after physical death, and for centuries, human beings have done so. Contact with the non-material self has happened countless times and will continue to happen.
Why is this so hard to believe? For me, that’s the real mystery. There is abundant evidence dating back thousands of years that all cultures on this planet have engaged in practices designed to contact the departed. Contact with the ‘deceased’ has been empirically studied for 150 years. That’s all the Society for Psychical Research did for many, many years. In any jury on the planet, the case for life after life has been proven time and time and time again. Why, then, is our culture so loath to accept something that any intelligent human being, reviewing the evidence, would be utterly convinced of?
Two reasons:
1) American culture focuses almost exclusively on the material world, because we are a capitalist culture that needs materialism to justify our economic system. If you focus exclusively on making this life comfortable and fun, then you need to buy a lot of stuff to accomplish the American goal of getting rich. YOLO is the supporting doctrine for consumerism. BUY baby, buy a lot, because you only live once!!!
2) Religion. If religion is the exclusive domain of the human spirit, then all expressions of that spirit can be controlled and defined by doctrine, often in the service of an economic and political system that directly benefits from that doctrine (think fundamentalists of any stripe).
OK, so you might think that this is all too pessimistic or too conspiracy-theorist, but it makes sense to me after years of contemplating this topic. If you agree, or if you don’t, write to me!
2015 ended poorly. In fact, without going into great detail, the year left me in a state of near constant anxiety, insecurity, sadness and confusion. When I have fallen into a state of spiritual disrepair, I pray; but I am not satisfied with the way I am praying. Prayer, I should add, has nothing to do with one’s religious affiliation. Prayer is universal and cosmic in nature.
What do I not like about the way I have connected–or not connected–with God? I wasn’t sure until this morning. Sometimes, what you THINK is bothering you is simply a screen or a deflection from what is ACTUALLY bothering you. Praying for a particular outcome does not work. For me, there is no point praying that I won’t die or get sick, because it is our peculiar human destiny–along with everything in the natural, material world–to get sick and die. I might hate that, find it unfair, repugnant, crazy, terrible, and so on, but I can’t change it, and I’m not going to pray for the impossible. When I was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness 18 years ago, I did not pray that God would spare my life. I asked only that the result of the process leave me more spiritually evolved and more healed as a broken human than I was before.
I didn’t die. Once again, I survived. I did grow a tremendous amount in the direction of God, but what really upset me was the reality of what that means. Following God can be terribly painful. It means letting go of the people who have hurt you, giving up homes, family, friends and sometimes, your very life. Most of all, following a universal principle means losing your fear. You are forced to lose your fear to follow God, even the biggest fear of all: your physical death. Did I succeed in losing my fear? HELL NO. However, I did learn a huge lesson: as long as you try to control what happens to you and to other people, you will be miserable and afraid. I can’t control someone else’s path in life, even if that path horrifies me, upsets me or confuses me. I can’t even control what happens to me, much less other people! My job is not to micromanage change, but to accept it and attempt to understand it. Of course, I can take productive and proactive steps to change my circumstances, and one should always move forward on a path towards a goal; but if the path floods or you get lost along the way, what matters is your resilience, your faith and you ability to see God through the obstacles.
I have discovered that it is far better to pray for someone’s continued, spiritual evolution and healing. I can’t know what form that will take. If I pray for one’s spirit instead of one’s body, I have allowed God to decide the form that the healing will take. That is what I am attempting to do for everyone I love: I won’t pray that Uncle Todd stop smoking, but I will pray that he is spiritually transformed to such an extent that he will no longer wish to harm his body, the temple for his soul. This is all we can do, pray for enlightenment, for progress, for deep understanding. The particular way this progress will manifest itself is not our concern or within our power to determine.
When I thought I had only a few years left of life back in my early thirties, I understood it was useless to ask God to spare my life. If I needed to die to evolve in the next life, then so be it. If I was supposed to lose my life at that time in my development, then my job was to accept it as gracefully as possible and find a way to make that time mean something. For in truth, we are ALL on borrowed time and we ALL have to learn this lesson, whether we have only a few months to figure it our, or a few decades. In the end, we have the same task; some of us have to learn it faster than others. None of us escape suffering, and it is now my belief that most of us don’t learn anything at all unless we’re in pain and we figure out how to relieve that pain through considered and thoughtful prayer and meditation.
My particular case is odd, since I was dying at age five from kidney problems. I truly was not expected to survive, and I knew it then. What has been the strangest experience for me in this life is to have survived at all. I think that is why I am often confused about my path, about what I am supposed to do with myself. That is why every year I make resolutions to figure out what my mission is as Kirsten in this life. Death seems oddly more familiar to me, and what I mean by that is not annihilation of consciousness, but that state one is in between lives. I came into the world very strongly connected to my previous life (I have written about this before in previous posts on this site) and remembering a great deal of who I used to be. As a child, I felt that I was ‘going back’ to a place I had been before that was much more familiar than the hospital and my family. I couldn’t explain where that place was or what my role was in it, but I KNEW it. Now, halfway through my life, I still feel that I am not entirely HERE. On a purely animal level, death terrifies me. The physical self is hard wired not to die. On the level of consciousness and identity, death means very little. It’s a gateway to a more understandable world. I was there before, I’ll be there again.
I do believe with all my heart and soul that prayer works and is effective, but not if the prayer is directed towards specific, concrete, ego-driven goals or desires. The prayer must not be grounded in fear of loss. The only prayers that work are those that ask for love and light to do their work in and through us. We must heal our fractured, fearful minds before the real work of transformation can begin.
The Soul Bank: Stories, Research, Essays, (B)Logs 