Bigelow Institute essays on life after death in PDF

This came in from my old pal David Haith whos into both the paranormal and UFO phenomena. He mentions the Bigelow contest and the contributions from NIck Cook and Donald Hoffmann. Quoted with David's permission.

Thanks for posting this Dave. Long time since I've visited here. Must look around - good to see familiar names from the old days. There seems to be increasing crossovers between UFOs and life after death. Bizarrely some abductees report seeing dead relatives aboard the craft.

Thanks for posting this Dave. Long time since I've visited here. Must look around - good to see familiar names from the old days. There seems to be increasing crossovers between UFOs and life after death. Bizarrely some abductees report seeing dead relatives aboard the craft.

Good to see you here again Dave.

Here's a bit of speculation (although I suspect I've said something similar in our past conversations) ... what if both are cross-dimensional phenomena? What if the human mind is independent of our present 4D world and can naturally explore others? Except that the mind, being tethered to the brain, is somehow constrained which, perhaps by necessity, limits such exploration?

I'm reminded of the ayahuasca trips described by Graham Hancock and others or the similar experiences (perhaps expressed through a fictional character) in the Carlos Casteneda books. There's a good reason that Dr. Rick Strassman calls DMT the "Spirit Molecule". Perhaps that is one of the ways that the spirit can ble temporarily unthethered from the brain.

I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum that I believe that reality (at large) is subjective while this earthly experience is, probably by design, much more objective. In a subjective reality, what we observe is coloured, if not determined, by our state of mind, our beliefs and desires, etc. That is exactly how the world of the afterlife has been described in accounts that I have read. It is common, apparently, for humans to meet people they recognise as loved ones during the transition from this world to the next. The Richard Metheson story, What Dreams May Come (at least the movie adaption) contains a scene where this is explained and the spirit guide of the recentlly deceased protagonist changes "his" appearance to match a loved one (although I'm not for a moment suggesting that all such encounters invovle such doppelgangers) or a famous charater, etc. Which also suggests that the way we appear to others might be modified by how they "see" us.

If there is to be a paradigm change it may well be due to a better understanding of how the mind becomes untethered in this way. Anyhow, this is probably a subject for another thread so apologies for the diversion.

https://youtu.be/qCVxmjuK1AI

I'm reminded of the ayahuasca trips described by Graham Hancock and others or the similar experiences (perhaps expressed through a fictional character) in the Carlos Casteneda books. There's a good reason that Dr. Rick Strassman calls DMT the "Spirit Molecule". Perhaps that is one of the ways that the spirit can ble temporarily unthethered from the brain.

The Richard Metheson story, What Dreams May Come (at least the movie adaption) contains a scene where this is explained and the spirit guide of the recentlly deceased protagonist changes "his" appearance to match a loved one (although I'm not for a moment suggesting that all such encounters invovle such doppelgangers) or a famous charater, etc. Which also suggests that the way we appear to others might be modified by how they "see" us.

If there is to be a paradigm change it may well be due to a better understanding of how the mind becomes untethered in this way. Anyhow, this is probably a subject for another thread so apologies for the diversion.

Firstly I loved What Dreams May Come - some of the people I recommended it to felt it was too sappy but I thought it was really well done.

Gallimore & Strassman working on the possibility of long term DMT trips, so that a person can actually - in theory - orient themselves in the vision. We'll see if this yields any new insights.

One thing I am not sure of is you mention people seeing dead loved ones among aliens - I was just reading about how people have also seen those known to be dead among the Fairy sightings. And Jacques Vallee has discussed the connection between these two phenomenon in Passport to Magonia.

Has anyone seen the dead in DMT visions? I wanna say it does happen in ayahuasca trips by experienced shamans, but can't recall.

I also noticed that few in the Bigelow essays mentions the testimony by anthropologists about their experience with spirits. I'd think this would suggest, at the least, that consciousness exists outside of what we usually think of as physical bodies.

Firstly I loved What Dreams May Come - some of the people I recommended it to felt it was too sappy but I thought it was really well done.

One thing I am not sure of is you mention people seeing dead loved ones among aliens - I was just reading about how people have also seen those known to be dead among the Fairy sightings. And Jacques Vallee has discussed the connection between these two phenomenon in Passport to Magonia.

I am not sure that I did mention dead loved ones among aliens (although I am quite forgetful so please point to it if I did). Nevertheless, I don't see why that would be so surprising if we are talking about consciousness free of its shackles. That said, I think that there are probably levels which are accessible and others which are not depending upon the evolution of the soul/conscious entity.

I've long though that Fairy sightings were the pre-technolgy era version of UFO and alien sightings. I mentioned this to the author, Patrick Harpur, when I met him and he was of a similar opinion.

I've long though that Fairy sightings were the pre-technolgy era version of UFO and alien sightings. I mentioned this to the author, Patrick Harpur, when I met him and he was of a similar opinion.

I'm open and sympathetic to the view that fairy sightings and alien/UFO encounters are descriptions of the same thing. I wonder though whether one is more 'correct' than the other. That is, are both equally right and equally wrong, in taking something we cannot understand and overlaying it with a packaging or wrapping according to current-era tastes and expectations? I'm tending to the view that since Sputnik in 1957 and even before, since the invention of powered flying machines earlier in the 20th C, mechanical or technological ideas have dominated people's thoughts and expectations, in effect drowning out a possibility of directly perceiving what is 'really' there. Actually we could go back at least as far as Jules Verne (De la terre à la lune, 1865) and H G Wells (The First Men in the Moon, 1901).

I'm not interjecting here with 'authority' (as the NDE know all--I'm certainly not any more knowledgeable than most on here about it) but I don't see where the phenomenon of NDE's intertwines with UFO's, personally. 

I accept that unidentified flying objects exist, some that seem impossible to explain, but whether or not they are indistinguishable from alien 'spacecraft', I don't think there's any persuasive evidence for that. 

Leaving aside the distances to our nearest star (which is nowhere at all relatively in comparison with the universe(s), 4.5 light years=186,000 miles per second for four and a half years, even to entertain the notion of 'spacecraft', some form of propulsion that we cannot even conceive of, must be a reality, surely. 

Unless 'they've' found a short cut through space (black holes etc who knows). I don't rule it out, I just don't see compelling evidence myself. 

The evidence for consciousness being separate and continuing (life after life) is very good though and plentiful. I guess what I'm saying is, why do we have to automatically associate the two as if they belong together or are inseparable ? Maybe Ken Ring was responsible.

I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum that I believe that reality (at large) is subjective while this earthly experience is, probably by design, much more objective. In a subjective reality, what we observe is coloured, if not determined, by our state of mind, our beliefs and desires, etc. That is exactly how the world of the afterlife has been described in accounts that I have read. It is common, apparently, for humans to meet people they recognise as loved ones during the transition from this world to the next. The Richard Metheson story, What Dreams May Come (at least the movie adaption) contains a scene where this is explained and the spirit guide of the recentlly deceased protagonist changes "his" appearance to match a loved one (although I'm not for a moment suggesting that all such encounters invovle such doppelgangers) or a famous charater, etc. Which also suggests that the way we appear to others might be modified by how they "see" us.

What Dreams May Come is a very interesting movie.  Matheson was steeped in the subject matter.

As Matheson's bibliography makes clear, he was reading in many areas from the 18th-century Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg to near-death experiences in studies by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Raymond Moody.

I was interested to see that there's an essay from Dr. Christopher Kerr, the hospice director who conducted a study of end-of-life experiences among his patients. I'm sure that most of us has seen his moving Ted Talk.

However, what interested me was that, whenever I've looked for some indication of what he believes regarding the afterlife, I'm always left with the impression that he doesn't want to talk about that. It is as though his professional credentials would be destroyed should he "come out" as a believer. An example is this interview:

https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/magazine/?p=39493

In short, he avoids the question of the afterlife as follows:




So it was quite surprising to see that he has contributed an essay entitled "Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness". So I took a look at the introduction (I have yet to read the whole essay) and there he states:

As I understand it, Dave, if he doesn't believe that the dying are hallucinating (which he doesn't and he's made that clear) then he does (believe in life after death). But as you say, he won't actually state that publicly for the reasons you've stated.

I am not sure that I did mention dead loved ones among aliens (although I am quite forgetful so please point to it if I did). Nevertheless, I don't see why that would be so surprising if we are talking about consciousness free of its shackles. That said, I think that there are probably levels which are accessible and others which are not depending upon the evolution of the soul/conscious entity.

I've long though that Fairy sightings were the pre-technolgy era version of UFO and alien sightings. I mentioned this to the author, Patrick Harpur, when I met him and he was of a similar opinion.

Ah it might have been in the Cook essay? I'll try to see where I got this from, I definitely recall reading in the last few days off this site...

But yeah I, like others here, suspect at least some of the UFO and fairy phenomena stem from the same source. Why the "technology" in some UFO cases seems more like a dream of technology than anything that could actually be built according to the usual physics we know. 

OTOH some sci-fi has Psi incorporated into technology so maybe we just took a wrong turn somewhere...

I'm not interjecting here with 'authority' (as the NDE know all--I'm certainly not any more knowledgeable than most on here about it) but I don't see where the phenomenon of NDE's intertwines with UFO's, personally...

...The evidence for consciousness being separate and continuing (life after life) is very good though and plentiful. I guess what I'm saying is, why do we have to automatically associate the two as if they belong together or are inseparable ? Maybe Ken Ring was responsible.

It's more that many of these "aliens" may actually be spirits taking on forms in line with the sparked interest in extraterrestrials, in the same way spirit guides take on the form of loved ones during an NDE.

Of course this leaves us with the question of what a "spirit" is...