Chapter Four

“At this point, we may need to consider a shift in perspective. Let’s start by asking ourselves this question: What, exactly, is Mind? Even when we discuss the pineal gland, we are still prone to think of the mind as something that exists within each person–where one mind then sends messages to another mind like a two-way radio. However, what if we’re actually all sharing the same mind, to some degree–and that mind is far more energetic in nature than we’ve been led to believe?

Let’s go back to Backster and really think about what he discovered. If the mind is an energetic field, then bacteria could be sharing the same mind as plants. Plants could share the same mind as eggs. Eggs could share the same mind as animals. And all living things may share the same mind with us. When Backster wanted to burn a leaf, the plant responded. When Backster started watering a plant, it tracked his movements. Backster once told me his plants always “screamed” when one man came into the lab–and this man turned out to mow lawns for a living. When two people meditate together and then go their separate ways, a jolting flash of light in one person’s eyes will create an identical brainwave shock in the other person–25 percent of the time. The Institute of HeartMath showed that when we live together, work together, to have an affinity for each other, we begin synchronizing brainwaves, heartbeat patterns and other vital signs. Dr. William Braud found that a nervous person could have better concentration and an immediate improvement in mental focus–simply by having someone else do the thinking for them at a distance.

Thoughts Occurring Directly in the Source Field

A September 2010 article in Wired magazine featured a discussion between Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on what they called”the hive mind.” A surprising number of human innovations appear in different people’s minds simultaneously–as if we’re all using the same energy field to think with. As new ideas are introduced into that energy field, they suddenly become available to everyone.

Steven Johnson: . . . Calculus, the electrical battery, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio–all these ground-breaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another. . . .
Kevin Kelly: It’s amazing that the myth of the lone genius has persisted for so long, since simultaneous invention has always been the norm, not the exception. Anthropologists have shown that the same inventions tended to crop up in prehistory at roughly similar times, in roughly the same order, among cultures on different continents that couldn’t possibly have contacted one another. . . . Gregor Mendel’s ideas about genetics, for example: He formulated them in 1865, but they were ignored for 35 years because they were too advanced. Nobody could incorporate them. Then, when the collective mind was ready and his idea was only one hop away, three different scientists independently rediscovered within roughly a year of one another. (1)

An article in The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell reveals that this phenomenon is far more prevalent than most people think. As of 1922, fully 148 different major scientific discoveries had been documented as occurring nearly  simultaneously.

This phenomenon of simultaneous discovery–what science historians call “multiples”– turns out to be extremely common. One of the first comprehensive lists of multiples was put together by William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas, in 1992, and they found a hundred and forty-eight major scientific discoveries that fit the multiple pattern. Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution. Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions. Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier. Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France. Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain, and by Joost Burgi in Switzerland. “There were four independent discoveries of sunspots, all in 1611; namely, by Galileo in Italy, Scheiner in Germany, Fabricius in Holland and Harriott in England,” Ogburn and Thomas note, and they continue:

“The law of the conservation of energy, so significant in science and philosophy, was formulated four times independently in 1847, by Joule, Thomson, Colding and Helmholz. They had been anticipated by Robert Mayer in 1842. There seem to have been at least six different inventors of the thermometer and no less than nine claimants of the invention of the telescope. Typewriting machines were invented simultaneously in England and in America by several individuals in these countries. The steamboat is claimed as the “exclusive” discovery of Foulton, Jouffroy, Rumsey, Styevens and Symmington.” (2)

Wilcock has many more pages of experiments and citations documenting this effect. Credo points for mentioning Richard Linklater’s Waking Life!

Remote Viewing: Venturing Directly Into the Field

Wilcock cites David Morehouse’s Psychic Warrior: The True Story of the CIA’s Paranormal Espionage and the works of Joe McMoneagle (Mind Trek, The Ultimate Time Machine with Charles T. Tart, The Stargate Chronicles and Memoirs of a Psychic Spy).

“Jahn and Dunne trained forty-eight ordinary people in an early type of remote viewing, where one person would visit a randomly chosen location from five to six thousand miles away and the viewer would attempt to gain information about what that person was seeing. In 336 rigorous trials, almost two-thirds o the viewers’ observations appeared to be significantly accurate–at odds of a billion to one against chance. When the sender and receiver were bonded emotionally or by familial relationship, their results improved dramatically. (16) A distinguished government panel of skeptical scientists and two Nobel laureates studied twenty-two years of experimental data in remote viewing–and concluded the research was flawless. (17) Another team, headed by noted skeptic Dr. Ray Hyman, concluded the results were much too strong to be written off as random chance or coincidence. (18) Screened rooms were used to prove electromagnetic waves could not be responsible for transferring the information to the viewer’s conscious mind. (19) Remote viewers also were able to see events that had not yet happened in linear time, even when those events were chosen at random–after they had already been correctly viewed in a secure location. (20) (21)

. . .

In 1907, as published in the American Medicine journal, Dr. Duncan MacDougall found that his patients suddenly lost a little over one ounce of weight directly after their physical death. In these studies, the patients were kept on beds within a metallic basin that would catch any bodily fluids. The air they exhaled from their lungs upon death did not weigh anywhere near one ounce–nonetheless, the weight loss remained consistent in every case. (26) In 1975, Dr. Hereward Carrington and associates found that the average person would lose two and a quarter ounces of weight while they were having an out-of-body experience. When they returned to the body, the missing mass immediately returned. (27)

It appears there is an “energetic” component of our bodies that may be withdrawing from each and every cell, and projecting to other locations–either at death, when remote viewing or when having an out-of-body experience. As we sit inside an electrically shielded room, we can create photons in a remote photons in a remote location we are viewing–even if no visible light can get into that area, as we saw in the Chinese experiments. This gives us a compelling insight into how light may actually be appearing inside the pineal gland. A surprisingly high number of people who have out-of-body or near-death experiences see a silver cord that attaches their astral body to their physical body. In the majority of cases the cord appears to be attached to the exact location of the pineal gland, and emerges either from the front or the back of the head. (28) It may very well be that we all have an energetic duplicate of our physical body that is constantly traveling outside ourselves, as in remote viewing, and reporting back what it sees to the pineal gland–through the silver cord. Ecclesiastes 12:6 seems to refer to this energetic cord: “Remember him–before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken.” (29)

Wilcock goes on to discuss NDE research. Scientists who have investigated this phenomena: Dr. Sam Parnia (“… many studies have concluded that being clinically brain dead does not interrupt the continuity of our thinking minds …”), Dr. Pim van Lommel, Dr. Raymond Moody (Life After Life), Dr. Kenneth Ring, Dr. Michael Newton (Journey of Souls and Destiny of Souls). Expounding on Newton’s research:

In the introduction to Journey of Souls, I explained my background as a traditional hypnotherapist and how skeptical I had been about the use of hypnosis for metaphysical regression. In 1947, at age fifteen, I placed my first subject in hypnosis, so I was definitely old school and not a New Ager. Thus, when I unintentionally opened the gateway to the spirit world with a client, I was stunned. . . . After more years of quiet research, I was able to construct a working model of spirit world structure. . . . I also found that it did not matter if a person was an atheist, deeply religious, or believed in any philosophical persuasion in between–once they were in the proper superconscious state of hypnosis, all were consistent in their reports. . . . I built up a high volume of cases. . . . While these years of specialized research into the spirit world rolled on, I worked practically in seclusion. . . . I even stayed out of metaphysical bookstores because I wanted absolute freedom from outside bias. (34)

Newton’s first book, Journey of Souls, is organized sequentially, in terms of time and location, to walk us through all ten stages from initial death to final reincarnation: Death and Departure, The Gateway to the Spirit World, Homecoming, Orientation, Transition, Placement, Life Selection, Choosing a New Body, Preparation and Embarkation, and Rebirth. (35) Dr. Newton also found that souls displayed visible colors that were relative to their level of advancement–falling neatly in line with the spectrum we see in the rainbow.

I found that typically, pure white denotes a younger soul and with advancement soul energy becomes more dense, moving into orange, yellow, green and finally the blue ranges. In addition to these center core auras, there are subtle mixtures of halo colors within every group that relate to the character aspects of each soul. For want of a better system, I have classified soul development as moving from a level I beginner through various learning stages t o that of a master at level VI. These greatly advanced souls are seen as having a deep indigo color. I have no doubt even higher levels exist, but my knowledge of them is restricted because I only receive reports from people who are still incarnating . . . it is my subjects who use “level” to describe where they are on the ladder of learning. . . . While in a superconscious state during deep hypnosis, my subjects tell me that in the spirit world no soul is looked down upon as having less value than any other soul. We are all in a process of transformation to something greater than our current state of enlightenment. . . .

There certainly is structure in the spirit world, but it exists within a sublime matrix of compassion, harmony, ethics and morality far beyond what we practice on Earth. . . . There is a value system here of overwhelming kindness, tolerance, patience and absolute love. . . . Advanced subjects talk about the time of conjunction when they will join the “Most Sacred Ones.” In this sphere of dense purple light there is an all-knowing Presence. (36)

Dr. Linda Backman received training from Dr. Michael Newton and since 1993 has conducted her own research into the “life between lives.” Her work serves as a valuable source of independent, professionally obtained data that corroborates the results Newton gained in his own practice–although she focuses on the more highly advanced souls. One of her main conclusions is that these people often take on very difficult lives as a way of dramatically increasing their own rate of spiritual growth. (37)

Reincarnation

Dr. Ian Stevenson, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, spent more than forty years tracking down over three thousand children who experienced specific, detailed memories of their alleged “past lives.” Many of these children were able to tell Dr. Stevenson what their names used to be, as well as who their alleged friends and family were. They often revealed how and where they died, along with many other astonishingly specific details that could easily be proven or disproven by investigation. Personality and behavior quirks carried over from one apparent lifetime to another, and the children bore a surprising facial resemblance to whomever they said they had been before. (38)

Over and over again, Dr. Stevenson found the names the children gave were correct. The surviving relatives could be tracked down. Their faces looked similar to their suspected past lives, and the specific details all checked out. One Lebanese girl was able to remember the names and precise interrelationships of twenty-five different people she claimed to have known before, without ever having had any contact with them, or anyone who knew them, in her current life. Respected academics like Dr. Jim Tucker, medical director of the Child and Family Psychiatric Clinic at the University of Virginia, have said that “reincarnation is the most likely explanation for the strongest cases.” (39)

Skeptics can and do write off such accounts as anecdotal and unverifiable in nature, but Dr. Ian Stevenson’s forty-plus years of scientific research provided solid proof that reincarnation is real–just as the adherents of Hinduism, Buddhism and even Orthodox Judaism have often believed. The implications are stunning, and absolutely central to our main theme in this book–it means you can look yourself in the eye, standing in front of a mirror, and say “I will always exist,” with a deep inner knowing that this is true. Without the hidden fear of non-existence hanging over your head, you will soon lead a much happier life. If you are willing to try out certain practices, you can have personal experiences that will confirm this greater truth for you–and which may ultimately cause you to wonder if we are all living in a “global lucid dream.”

Works Cited

1 Kelly, Kevin and Steven Johnson, “Where Ideas Come From.” Wired, September 27, 2010. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/mf_kellyjohnson/ (accessed December 2010).

2 Gladwell, Malcolm. “In the Air: Who Says Big Ideas Are Rare?” The New Yorker, May 12, 2008. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all (accessed December 2010)

16 Radin, D. The Conscious Universe: The scientific truth of psychic phenomena. New York: HarperCollins, 1997, p. 105. http://www.boundaryinstitute.org/ or http://www.psiresearch.org. (accessed December 2010)

17 McTaggart, Lynne. The Field: The quest for the secret force of the universe. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 160.

18 Utts, J. (1996) “An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning.” Journal of Scientific Exploration, 10, pp. 3-30.

19 Putoff, H. & Targ, R. (1976, pp. 329-353) “A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: historical perspective and recent research,” Proceedings of the IEEE, 64 (3). Cited in McTaggart, Lynne, The Field, Op. cit.

20 Jahn, R. G., Dunne, B. J. Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.

21 Bisaha, J.J., Dunne, B. J. “Multiple subject and long-distance precognitive remote viewing of geographical locations.” In: Tart, C., Puthoff, H. E., Targ, R., eds. Mind at Large, New York: Praeger, 1979: pp. 107-124.

27 Carrington, Hereward. Laboratory Investigations into Psychic Phenomena. Philadelphia: David McKay company, ca 1940.

28 Williams, Kevin. (2007) The NDE and the Silver Cord. Near-Death.com. http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research12.html (accessed December 2010).

29 Holy Bible. Ecclesiastes 12:6. New International Version. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Eccl.%2012:6-7&version=NIV (accessed December 2010)

34 Newton, Michael. (2000) Destiny of Souls: New Case Studies of Life Between Lives. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, pp. xi-xii. http://www.spiritualregression.org/ (accessed December 2010).

35 Newton, Michael. (1994) Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives. Llewellyn Publications, 1st Edition. http://www.spiritualregression.org/ (accessed December 2010).

36 Newton, Michae. (2000) Op cit., pp. 5-8

37 Backman, Linda. (2009) Bringing Your Soul to Light: Healing Through Past Lives and the Time Between. Llewellyn Publications. http://www.bringingyoursoultolight.com (accessed December 2010).

38 Stevenson, Ian. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation: Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. University of Virginia Press, October 1, 1980.

39 Penman, Danny. ” ‘I died in Jerusalem in 1276,’ says doctor who underwent hypnosis to reveal a former life.” Daily Mail Online, April 25, 2008. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=562154&in_page_id=1770.