Posted on 10 February 2025, 8:58

In the January 20 United States presidential inauguration it was stressed, both by President Trump and the clergy members who spoke after him, that there is a need for the country to return to God and to Faith.  One of the clergy was a rabbi who added that we are desperately searching for meaning in our lives. All well and good, no matter what one’s political leaning is, but none of the speakers explained how that return is to take place or what it really means. What exactly is meant by God? What does Faith involve? How are God and Faith to be restored? What kind of “meaning” are we searching for?  I believe we need more than a very murky vision of all that in order to return to it. To begin with, I believe we need new focus, new terminology, and new imagery. 

While pondering on all that, I fantasized that I had returned to the field of public relations, where I started 65 years ago as a Marine Corps public affairs officer, as it is now called, and was asked by a Christian ecumenical council to advise them on how best to have the country return to God and Faith. They had heard of my winning entry for best military PR program in an annual contest sponsored by the American Public Relations Association, and were hoping that my PR experience would carry over to the spiritual. In my whimsical meanderings, I imagined myself as a public relations consultant reporting to the council with the following letter. Subsequent letters were to elaborate on the ideas. However, after this first letter was received, I was informed that my services were no longer needed. I was fired.

Dear Council Members:

Thank you for the opportunity to undertake this most important project. You asked me to offer recommendations on how your participating churches can best bring God and Faith back to the nation. While my recommendations will no doubt raise eyebrows and ruffle feathers, my research, involving much study and many interviews, points to the dire need of revolutionary changes, primarily in the areas of focus, terminology, and imagery.

To begin with, the focus of the churches today appears much the same as it has long been throughout the centuries – worship of God in a manner that resembles the practices of the ancient Egyptians with their deities and godly pharaohs. It is one of praise, petition and thanks. Praise God and He will then provide, protect and reward you with eternal salvation. If you encounter hardships, it is the will of God and you must be patient in awaiting your reward. If the reward doesn’t come in this life, it will definitely come in the next one.

However, many lack that patience and are unable to reconcile this belief with the prevailing materialistic worldview, thus becoming agnostic or atheistic. Moreover, many have apparently assumed that God has the power to stop all wars, wildfires, plane crashes, crimes, homelessness, and other turmoil taking place around the world, and is not doing so. “What good is ‘He’ when prayers of supplication are frequently not answered?” they ask, all the while ignoring the idea that adversity is our best teacher and that free will is not consistent with strict control by a Supreme Being.

Consciousness Survives

My first recommendation may be taken by you to be blasphemous, but such is not the intent, and I am certain that God agrees.  That is, the idea that “consciousness survives death” in a larger life must replace “worship of God” as the primary message, or focus, of the churches. God is simply too abstract and too abstruse for even the most intelligent people to comprehend. As I understand it, the Council of Nicaea, a gathering of 312 bishops representing the Christian faith in Turkey during the year 325 A.D,  understood that when they made Jesus part of the Godhead. They apparently reasoned that it is much easier to picture a human-like figure in that Godhead when praying or giving thanks, than some form of cosmic consciousness. Christians needed a symbol or allegorical being to visualize, not a bunch of atoms vibrating in space. However, such visualization by means of symbols and metaphors was not effectively extended to the larger life. Angels hovering over clouds while strumming harps was about the extent of it. How humdrum and unappealing that appears, especially in today’s world in which Disneyland provides a model world.

While that strategy seemed to work in an uneducated and less technical world, one in which minds were not cluttered with colorful and vibrant images from televisions and computers and therefore more open to spiritual guidance, it no longer works for the masses. Educated people find prayer, meditation, and worship a big turnoff, and for many it suggests an egocentric and wrathful God. The word and the idea of “worship” must be discarded completely if any progress is to be made. 

The ”non-believer” often reacts to the “afterlife” concern by saying he is living for today, not for tomorrow. Carpe Diem! “Seize the Day” is his motto. With a better grasp of the larger life, the “believer” might respond to this by saying he prefers to “live in eternity,” which means living in the past, present, and future all at the same time and thereby better appreciating the moment.  As it is now, my research indicates that most believers, not having more than a one-dimensional image of the larger life, would not understand the meaning of “living in eternity.” 

All that is not to recommend that we should ask God and Jesus to stand down.  Rather, it is to suggest that by moving from the blind faith of religions to true faith, or conviction, we require a better understanding of the idea that consciousness survives death in a larger world. Once we have that understanding, God and Jesus can be better understood and appreciated. In fact, I sense that they are inspiring this letter.

In making “consciousness beyond death” your primary focus, you should objectively examine the overwhelming evidence coming to us from psychical research and near-death studies over the past 170 years, not to mention modern quantum theory. While some church authorities have had little difficulty in reconciling the findings of the researchers in those fields with church dogma and doctrine, the governing bodies of the churches chose to condemn it all as demonic, since a small part of is interpreted as conflicting with teachings of the churches. They refused to recognize that so much of recorded history has been subjected to misinterpretations and mistranslations, often resulting from the biases of the interpreters, as well the inability of the authorities to admit they had been teaching false doctrine. 

We were constantly told that the Spiritualism epidemic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to awaken us to reality of a multi-leveled spirit world, including the drab and dreary levels, what religions have called Hell, not to offer a new religion. It would seem that spirits provided as much evidence as they could and then retreated because they had reached the point of diminishing returns and so many good people were being disparaged.  If the early psychical research and credible mediumistic writings are examined with an objective eye, you will find that the so-called afterlife, i.e., the larger world, is made up of many realms, “many mansions,” as the interpreters have Jesus putting it, not just the dichotomous Heaven and Hell taught by so many of your churches.  The Catholic Church had Purgatory between them, which was to a small extent consistent with the findings of the psychical researchers and Spiritualists, but that state was not well understood and was dismissed by Martin Luther in the Protestant Reformation. The result has been a very black and white afterlife, one not consistent with the many degrees of morality we have in the physical realm. In the end, we are judged as either “righteous” or “wicked” even though nearly all of humanity seems to be at varying degrees between those two absolute states.  Even the Catholic Church has swept Purgatory under the rug and otherwise avoids discussing the after-death realities.

The Larger Life

If your churches come to agree with all I have recommended so far, they will have to give some consideration to other new terminology and verbiage.  Heaven and Hell are too antiquated for those today who see themselves as too “sophisticated” for such folly.  Your educators should replace Heaven and Hell with “the larger life,” “the greater consciousness,” or some such terminology.  Just as the people living at the time of the Council of Nicaea needed imagery they could visualize in their minds, the current generations needs terminology that is more closely aligned with science.  Heaven and Hell simply do not work for educated minds. 

It is much easier for modern minds with various degrees of “mixed morality” to understand equivalent realms in the larger life than to believe that such mixed morality is somehow converted to either total bliss or total torment after death.  Surely, such a judgment system in our physical life would not be sanctioned. To respond to that by saying God’s ways are not always man’s way, as so many defenders of the status quo do,  is simply to invite more rejection and loss of faith.

Consideration should be given to the likelihood that in the last book of the New Testament (Rev. 22: 18-19), John has been misinterpreted in saying that the book of revelation was closed with his words. Certainly, it can be read otherwise and is in conflict with other passages from the Bible, especially that saying to “test the spirits as to whether they are of God” (1 John 4:1).  In 1 Corinthians 12:7-10, we are instructed to “discern” the messages from spirits.  How are we to “test” and “discern” if we don’t listen to what they have to say?  Consider John 16:12-14, which says there is much more to learn and that we will be guided into all truth;  and Joel 2:28-29, which says “your sons and daughters will prophesy” as well as the one telling us to “test them all and hold on to what is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) 

The word “medium” has clearly taken on a negative connotation.  The churches and the Hollywood media have stereotyped mediums as fortune-telling charlatans.  Yes, indications are that some of what was recorded as coming from “spirits” of the dead came from low-level or even devious earthbound spirits, but discernment is apparently a big part of the challenges we came into the physical to learn. If nothing else, the earthbound spirits, as devious as they might be, offer evidence that consciousness survives, even if it means that many don’t initially survive in the blissful Heaven of orthodoxy.  Again, Thessalonians tells us to test them and hold on to what is good.  The renowned physicist and psychical researcher Sir William Barrett preferred the word “sensitive” to mediums, and that word might very well be more acceptable to those who dislike the word “medium.”

As stated above, the psychical research of yesteryear – that which took place between 1850 and 1935 – and the near-death studies that began in 1975 and continues today have produced overwhelming evidence that consciousness continues after death. It is evidence that leads from the blind faith of religion to true faith, or conviction while giving meaning to this life, thereby supporting high moral and ethical standards and giving hopefulness and optimism to those who embrace it.  The opposition of the churches to all of this evidence has significantly obstructed its acceptance and has been a deterrence to the God and Faith you look to restore.  Somehow religion has to find a way to understand and accept the best of all this research while changing its focus and adopting new focus, terminology and imagery. 

I believe that Giambattista Vico, an 18th-century Italian philosopher, hit the nail squarely on the head when he wrote that men first feel necessity, then look for utility, followed by comfort, then pleasure, and finally luxury, after which they finally go mad – when “each man is thinking of his own private interests.”  In that pursuit of pleasure and luxury, there is, according to Vico, a certain social disconnection, which involves moral, intellectual, and spiritual decline.  It seems to me that we have reached that final stage – where people are going mad, when each is thinking of his own private interest.  Some revolutionary action is required, especially by the churches.

Those, dear council members, are my preliminary thoughts.  Please let me know if I should continue with my research and recommendations.
Sincerely,

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Your article on’’ Return to God ‘’ really resonated with me.Mike. As a man who was born and schooled as a Roman Catholic in an Irish Christian Brothers Boarding School for nine years in the fifties I can identify very well with your sentiments. I’m no longer a practising Catholic but the experience was definitely not always pleasant even if the education was memorable . I did write you a week or so ago on your name being referenced in ‘’ The Skeptical Inquirer’ but never heard back on whether you rec’d the email.  Thanks for an excellent article. Andrew

You could have made some money if you simply gave the council what they wanted:

1. Replace the red carpet with blue.
2. Buy new hymnals.
3. Invite a young man to play guitar and a young woman to accompany him on flute.
4. Replace the two windows above the altar with stained-glass.
5. Offer a “contemporary” service at 11:00 AM and a “traditional” service at 9:00 AM.
6. Make sure there are lots of chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, brownies, and other treats after both services.

They would have thought you brilliant and hired you for more ideas.
Gratefully,
Brian Anthony Kraemer

Michael…
Your new blog is an absolute tour de force…I second Amos’s thoughts.
The problem will obviously remain with us as long as “faith-driven” religious leaders (as equally with “faith-driven” scientists/academics) feel that they have the right to totally ignore evidence that is not in concert with their pre-conceived notions. Very early (page 3) in my first book, I addressed the issue…
“The driving mantra of this book is that faith (whether in belief or disbelief) is great—but faith backed by knowledge, to the extent that it’s available to us, is a far better starting point. When the knowledge runs out, pure faith can kick in.”
One can dream…
Don

WOW!!!

Lyle Hendricks

Hi Mike,

Bloody brilliant, Mike ! Such reasoned eloquence. There is only one detail I would question in this blog - that accepting the larger life as a reality gives ‘hopefulness and optimism to those who embrace it’. I accept all the tenets in your argument except this, being concerned that right now the world is going mad through materialism, as you suggest,  yet even though I accept this larger reality I see the earth-as-we-know it is doomed. I’m not going to do anything silly, of course, but going off-planet seems a preferable option to staying to watch Xi, Kim, Putin and Trump and consumption-mania get the better of human decency.
Keith

I never use the term ‘God’ as it is meaningless, unless you believe in an old man with a beard somewhere in the sky who judges people.

Consciousness is fundamental, and it is constantly evolving. Lives on Earth and possibly other planets like it are places where we learn to evolve. 

An unorthodox scientist/engineer, Ron Pearson, described the intelligent ether which created environments in which to experience things and evolve. We may not use his terminology, but it makes sense to me that Consciousness creates environments in which it experiences different thngs, makes mistakes, and hopefully learns from them and evolves.

I am agnostic about ‘God’ as I don’t even know what the word is supposed to convey. There are obviously Spirits which have evolved to a high level, but this rules out the traditional definition of ‘God’ which is not supposed to have evolved.

For me there is just a Universal Consciousness and we are all part of it. It is constantly evolving. There are many realms, but all of us have the opportunity to evolve. There’s no Heaven or Hell, just many Spiritual realms and progress is open to all.

Consciousness is fundamental giving rise to Matter. Rather than ‘God’ I would also use, instead of Universal Consciousness, the term ‘Source’. But we are all part of this Source, some parts more highly evolved than other parts. We also all have a Higher Self or Oversoul with many aspects, each one with a separate individual identity and many have incasrnations. Lessons learnt in these incarnations are shared by all in the Oversoul group.

Mike,
This is a fine essay; your analysis is spot-on. My entire recent book, The Womanpriest, is given over to your theme: that religion, especially Christianity, needs to be updated if it is ever going to attract back well-educated, scientifically literate people. Also, I was especially happy to be reminded of 1 John 4:1 and Corinthians 12: 7-10, which endorse spirit communication. And Vido’s quote, which I had not known, is priceless. It does indeed seem like we are living in a world that is going mad, especially in our own country, which has somehow managed to choose as its leader its two most recent presidents.

Stafford

WOW, Michael, just wow!  This is Michael Tymn at his absolute best! What more can be said? - AOD