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.

Paul,
Many thanks for all your comments, including the last one. However, I question whether it necessarily follows that because departed souls spend much time in adoration and worship that undeparted souls should do the same.  It may be that the departed souls have a better grasp of what they are adoring and worshipping. 
Michael Tymn

Dear Amos, Jon and Michael,

The Patience Worth poem is really quite striking and beautiful (if in its blunt way).  There is something of a mystery, perhaps grounded in the varieties of human temperament and formation, with regard to the matter of faith and conviction.  Conviction can certainly be accompanied by stridency and narrowmindedness, but it can also be something quite quiet, gentle and unobtrusive.  Sometimes – certainly the case for myself – it is won on the back of deep study and intellectual effort, but it can also arise out of a clear intuition or insight or simply ‘be’ as a natural disposition of the individual.  Why one person – intelligent, open to evidence – should find a given line of evidence or argument compelling while another – equally so equipped – should not is something we have no clear answer for, apart from, say, an empty phrase such as ‘differences in temperamental disposition’.  A matter that is rarely recognized is that it takes considerable faith to be a secular materialist, to view that the universe as we find it is merely the consequence of atoms bumping along in the void, creating order, structure, consciousness and meaning ex nihilo.

As to Michael’s claim in his post that “the idea that ‘consciousness survives death’ in a larger life must replace ‘worship of God’ as the primary message,” in response, I am reminded this evening of the remarkable final sentence of Raynor Johnson’s ‘The Decisive Testimony’ (1988) (p.92), a sentence attributed to Frederic Myers, conveyed back from his own advanced discarnate state: “The state of the departed souls is one of endless evolution in wisdom and love. Their loves of earth persist, and most of all those highest loves which seek their outlet in adoration and worship.”

Best,

Paul

I think Patience Worth is writing about faith, Michael. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”. (Hebrews 11:1).  I don’t think one has to be 100 percent sure to have faith, that is, to be completely without doubt, but there is a difference between faith and doubt.
 
Faith has to do with belief, belief that something might be true or IS true while doubt implies that something might not be true or probably is not true.

I know that is a minor difference but I think it is an important one.  How much better it is to go through life with faith that God or an afterlife exists rather than doubt that they exist or maybe that they don’t exist. Faith is living a positive life that everything is going to turn out all right.  While living with doubt is a negative experience that things might not turn out so good.
For me, I would rather live a life of faith; easy to say but sometimes very difficult to do - AOD

Jon and Amos,
I’ve often pondered on the “doubt” question and have many times said I’m a 98.8% believer and 1.2% doubter or skeptic. I’ve often quoted the words of Martin Luther as supposedly communicated to Victor Hugo from the Other Side: 
“Because doubt is the instrument which forges the human spirit.  If the day were to come when the human spirit no longer doubted, the human soul would fly off and leave the plough behind, for it would have acquired wings. The earth would lie fallow.  Now, God is the sower and man is the harvester.  The celestial seed demands that the human ploughshare remain in the furrow of life.”

Also, those of Sir William Barrett:

“It is probable we shall never be able to see behind the veil with the clearness and assurance that Swedenborg claimed to possess, although he warned others off the ground he trod.  There may be, and are, I believe, good reasons for this obscure vision.  If everyone were as certain as they are of day following night, that after the momentary darkness of death they would pass into an endless life of brightness and freedom, such as many spiritualists depict, it is possible few would wish to remain on earth.  May be multitudes of earth-worn and weary souls would resort to some painless and lethal drug that would enable them to enter a realm where they hoped their troubles would be forever ended.  A vain and foolish hope, for the discipline of life on earth is necessary for us all, and none can hope to attain a higher life without the educative experience of trial and conflict.”

If I were to become 100 percent certain as so many are, e.g., born-again Christians and militant atheists, I might become too self-righteous and closed-minded.  To help people who don’t believe that consciousness survives death appreciate the evidence, I have to be able to understand their doubts and the arguments used to overcome those doubts.

In the movie mentioned, it was said that many of the popes and cardinals have doubts, especially near the end of life.  One of my long-time friends from school days became a priest and I know he had doubts, and he was very interested in psychical research.  Another long-time friend from school days also became a priest.  He had no doubts and thought my interest was all demonic.  It’s difficult to put it all in perspective and may be a matter of semantics.

Michael Tymn

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As always, Patience states it beautifully, Amos.
Thanks for sharing.

Who doubts his God is but a lout;
Who piths his wisdom with egotry;
Hath lost his mark.
To doubt is but to cast thee as a stone
Unto the very heart of God.

Who doubts his God
Hath but announced
His own weak limitation;
Hath tied his hand
And fettered of his foot.

To doubt thy God is but to stop
The everlasting flow of mercy;
To die of thirst and lose thee
In the chaos of thyself.

        Patience Worth

Mike,

The question is, doubt about what? In a Christian context, if it’s about the “larger life” beyond death, Jesus reportedly said, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” (Matthew 21:21-22, NIV)

I can understand why a Pope or priest might doubt and “wrestle with God”; after all, their words and decisions affect others, and not always for the better. But if we are talking about just existing beyond physical death, I see no advantage in doubt. Afterlife communicators repeatedly say that the people who initially struggle after death are those who are certain there is nothing, or have a fixed idea (such as a humdrum Heaven or a permanent hell ) that turns out to be incorrect.

I don’t see that there is anything to lose in assuming that you will still exist after death.

I just watched the movie “Conclave,” which has to do with the election of a new pope.  As an opening statement to the College of Cardinals, the Dean of Cardinals said something to the effect of certainty being the enemy of faith and that the new pope should be a man who had some doubts. The other cardinals seemed shocked by the statement.
Michael Tymn
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Michael,
One last shot at the Christian councillors:
Councillors,
My pitch is Return to God – the trip after your lifetime.
Was Christ a man like us?—Ah! let us try
If we then, too, can be men like he!
(The Better Part by Matthew Arnold)
The objective of your push for a Return To God has a large stumbling block called the After Life. Why would a God of Love not wish for an After Life? It’s time to bring the after death communications in to daily church discussions. Is Christ alone in the After Life? Surely not.

Scripts like this one deserve your attention:
Edmund Gurney was giving a script from spirit (reported by the SPR) to the medium Mrs Willett. “Fred (Myers) uses an expression somewhere—a small company of like-minded men. That’s how those men were; and, you know, they never die.
Oh, how I wish I could tell what I know. You know, to ordinary people those men who sat talking there long ago are just historical figures, interesting from a hundred points of view, but dead men. Do you know, there’s nothing dead in greatness, because they can’t be, because all greatness is an emanation from the changeless Absolute. That’s why I know those people as if they were alive to-day. I know them much better than many of the people I live with—especially the older man, the Master. He had disciples, you know, and whenever—What I said about that Matthew Arnold poem was because I wanted to say that what was true of Christ is true of that man I’m speaking about.”
Time to invest in your spiritual future and my pitch,
Bruce

Amos,
Thanks for the link.  I assume the skeptics will say that Fraser had their names beforehand and had his investigator do research to uncover all that information.
Mike

Please, please, somebody explain how Matt Fraser knows all these things!  How can sceptics ignore this?  - AOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z65FD10eOuw&t=2s

I am often puzzled by what I remember and what I don’t remember, or why I remember certain things, seemingly unimportant in the great scheme of things.  I was just browsing through Chris Carter’s latest book, “The Case for the Afterlife,” subtitled “Evidence of Life After Death,” when I came upon an interesting quote.  The quote was that of Pheneas, said to be a high spirit who communicated with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. According to Doyle, Pheneas said that for the sake of future generations a new right understanding of God is necessary. 

“Love, not fear, must reign in each heart,” Pheneas stated. “Humanity must know the kind of existence they will lead in the lower greyer spheres if their lives are selfish and evil in the earth plane.  Knowledge of where a man’s actions are leading him will help and inspire him to live at his highest and what to avoid.  The knowledge of the real and human happiness in the higher worlds ahead will give a man courage in facing sorrows and difficulties on this earth.  The hope and joy of great happiness and the fulfillment of all his heart’s ideals will make life here so much easier to bear, and so much more radiant.”

As I got to the end of that quote in Carter’s book, I noted the footnote that he got it from my book, “The Afterlife Revealed.”  In retrospect, I should have used that quote in my letter to the council members. 

Michael

[I wrote the following on Saturday, July 22, 2006, when I still identified as a Christian. My readers at that time were also Christians. Today, I no longer identify as such and since Jesus also was not a Christian, I am in good company. I hope you find this worthy of consideration.]
To Hell With Hell
I want to share my thoughts about two of humankind’s most beloved and cherished extraterrestrial institutions, heaven and hell.
Before I begin, I must plead ignorance. I don’t really know a thing about heaven or hell. I’ve never been to either as far as I know. If either exists, they will continue to do so regardless of what I believe and if neither exists, they will not be created by anyone’s insistence. For those readers who hold to them dearly, relax. My opinion is no threat to their existence.
Heaven and hell strike me as having similar characteristics to a children’s fairytale. There is a good place and a bad place. We want to go to the good place so we do good things. We don’t want to go to the bad place so we try not to do too many bad things. To a child’s mind, complexities and nuances and shades of color, do not exist. For lack of experience, or perhaps for lack of words, people are good people or bad people, nice or mean, rich or poor. As we grow up, we hopefully realize that life is richer and more complex.
In some of the more traditional Christian versions of heaven, there are streets of gold, huge beautiful buildings, mansions, endless joy and pleasure, no sickness or pain. In one popular hymn, the songwriter says, “I’ve got a mansion just over the hilltop, in that bright land where we’ll never grow old. And someday yonder we will never more wander, but walk on streets that are purest gold.” I don’t like the idea of walking on streets of gold. In fact, I try to not even walk on pavement when I can avoid it. If I have any say in the matter, I’m going to request dirt, old-fashioned dirt where plants grow and animals live.
Heaven is described as a place with no more sea. I like the sea and I find the idea of a heaven without an ocean, and of course without all the plants and animals that live there, dry and lacking something I’ve come to love. I personally have never found a place more relaxing and contemplative than an ocean shore. If there’s a heaven and there’s no sea, I will request one even if everyone thinks I’m stupid for wanting one. Being heaven, I should be able to get one, I would think.
Heaven is described as a place where the saints worship continuously throughout all eternity. They are sometimes described as wearing white robes and playing an instrument such as a harp. I’ve seen fellow Christians speak of this as something they are looking forward to, but I don’t see why. Although I enjoy worshipping God, I don’t do it all the time and I wouldn’t want to. I don’t want to sing for all eternity or worse yet, shout praises forever and ever. Don’t you think it might get a bit boring after a couple thousand years or so? We’re talking about eternity, forever and ever, never stopping. It sounds awful actually. Doing anything continuously without a break sounds monotonous. Part of the joy of life is its complexity, its richness, variety, and opportunities for learning and growing and changing, exploration. Also, I don’t intend on wearing anything in heaven. I don’t like clothes now. I’m not ashamed of my body here. Why would I feel the need to cover up there?
Again, it all just seems childish. Why would a loving God send people to a place to be tormented forever and ever with no hope of escape? What would be the point? As imperfect, self-centered, and angry as I often am, I wouldn’t send anyone to hell. Why would a loving Creator do such a thing? Heaven and hell are unworthy of such a Creator. They are just too simplistic. Anything as beautiful and complex as this universe, and this planet in particular, deserves a noble encore. To follow Niagara Falls or Yosemite National Park or a breaching whale with walking on streets of gold in a white robe while playing a harp would not be an improvement.
I would like to offer an alternative to heaven and hell. Again, I do so with humility knowing that whatever is does not need my approval to be. However, I must hold to the truth as I see it and in good conscience can believe it to be. It seems to me that for most people, heaven and hell serve the function of rewarding good deeds and punishing bad ones. In my perfect universe, to the exact extent that a person gives, he receives. When he raises his hand to attack another, he attacks himself. Whatever he does to another, he does in exact degree to himself, whether it is benevolent or destructive. His developing personality becomes his own reward or punishment. He is building the home in which he must live.
Being a loving, compassionate person is its own reward and being a hateful, bitter, evil person is its own punishment. What could be better or worse than living with one’s own character for eternity, not frozen in time in some eternal location of heaven or hell, but ever growing, changing, developing, responding, choosing to embrace the loving presence of one’s Creator or denying it, moving first this way, then that?
I believe that life continues after our earthly death. I think that if we die as a kind, compassionate person, we begin in the next realm as a kind, compassionate person and if we die a bitter, hateful person, we begin in the next realm as a bitter, hateful person. We lose nothing. We take everything with us because how we respond to each situation has become us.
Is the rest of creation obsessed with what happens after earthly death? Are other animals and plants looking forward to heaven or fearing hell? Which place would be appropriate for the overly zealous male rabbit, mating with every available female or worse yet, another male? Which place would be appropriate for the chimpanzee who hunts down, torments, and finally kills a fellow chimpanzee? I don’t believe that life is about perfection. I believe it’s about love, about growth, revealing the character of the Creator through our daily choices, being conformed to the Creator’s character through whatever circumstances we encounter. Our character, our identity, our experience of trust and gratitude or fear and anger, these become our daily and “eternal” heaven or hell, “places” of our own making and choosing, “places” that can be modified and changed as we grow in love with, or resist the love of, our marvelous Creator.
Dare I say, “To hell with hell?” I resent the notion of hell. I believe that the looming threat of everlasting torment has done little good for human beings, but much harm. It hangs like a cloud over the heads of those who fear it, making death, and thus life, something to be dreaded rather than embraced. When I hike in the mountains each day, I see plants and animals in every stage of life. Death is a noble and necessary stage in one’s life. As far as I know, I didn’t do anything to get myself to this beautiful place and I doubt that I need to do anything to get myself to the next.
Some Christians will quote from the gospel of Matthew where Jesus spoke of “an everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” If there is such a place, according to Jesus it wasn’t created for mankind, but “for the devil and his angels.” So why would God consign people to a place not prepared for them? Did God say one day, “Well, since I’ve already got this place prepared for the devil and his angels, I might as well use of it for people who don’t want to have anything to do with me. I know I didn’t make it for them, but I don’t know where else to put them.” I doubt it.
I trust in a loving Creator who does all things wondrously. I cannot imagine going wrong in trusting such a Creator. In the final analysis, I would rather err on the side of mercy than judgment. I believe I would be doing a disservice to myself and to others by perpetuating a belief that I not only find disturbing, but repugnant. I’m confident that my thoughts regarding the hereafter are grossly inadequate and inaccurate, but if they are even slightly less inaccurate than a traditional view of heaven and hell, then I have been nudged by the Holy Spirit and guided into a deeper truth, a truth with which I can concur and rejoice, and for this, I am grateful.
With love,
Brian Anthony Kraemer

Paul and Stafford,
I would say your quotes from Sir Oliver Lodge align with my own experience. In particular “let us learn by the testimony of experience – either our own or that of others – that those who have been, still are; that they care for us and help us; that they, too, are progressing and learning and working and hoping;”
In my case this is my world of spirit communication. Communication is there for progressing and learning. Sir Oliver was referring to conversations with his friends, Gurney and Myers as well as his son Raymond.
Sir Oliver Lodge wrote “My own time down here is getting short; it matters little: but I dare not go till I have borne this testimony to the grace and truth which emanate from that divine Being—the realisation of whose tender-hearted simplicity and love for man may have been overlaid at times and almost lost amid well-intentioned but inappropriate dogma, but who is accessible as always to the humble and meek.
Intercommunion between the states or grades of existence is not limited to messages from friends and relatives, or to conversation with personalities of our own order of magnitude,—that is only a small and verifiable portion of the whole truth,—intercourse between the states carries with it occasional, and sometimes unconscious, communion with lofty souls who have gone before.
The truth of such continued influence corresponds with the highest of the Revelations vouchsafed to humanity. This truth, when assimilated by man, means an assurance of the reality of prayer, and a certainty of gracious sympathy and fellow-feeling from one who never despised the suffering, the sinful, or the lowly; yea, it means more—it means nothing less than the possibility some day of a glance or a word of approval from the Eternal Christ.”
Raymond, or Life and death p376
Bruce

Dear Michael,
I hadn’t planned to follow up on my earlier post, but just this evening I came across something in my files that let me to the (defunct and superseded) website of the AECES (Association for Evaluation and Communication of Evidence for Survival) (http://www.aeces.info), which led me in turn to the superseding website (also now sadly defunct) of the ASCS (The Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies)(http://www.ascsi.org). In exploring the site via Internet Archive (Wayback Machine), I came across a treasure trove of interviews you had done with both the living and the dead (the latter constructed from their published statements), a trove that is definitely worth sharing with others:
https://shorturl.at/O1skk

In reading through some of them, I came across the following passage in your interview with Stafford Betty that so resonated with my own para in my previous post regarding conceiving of the afterlife as bound up in the larger matter of a dynamic spiritual cosmology that I thought it worth sharing the passage here:
Tymn: “What is the meaning of death, as you teach it? Do you find most students accepting this?”
Betty: “Let me restate the question to read, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ For death, to me, is merely an event in that long continuum I think of as life. What, then, is the meaning of life? My conclusions about the nature of God and the meaning of life sound a lot like those of Sir Oliver Lodge, the great English physicist whose work prefigured Marconi’s. One of the leaders of the Society for Psychical Research in its heyday, he arrived at the following conclusions toward the end of his life: ‘. . let us learn by the testimony of experience – either our own or that of others – that those who have been, still are; that they care for us and help us; that they, too, are progressing and learning and working and hoping; that there are grades of existence, stretching upward and upward to all eternity; and that God Himself, through His agents and messengers, is continually striving and working and planning, so as to bring this creation of His through its preparatory labor and pain, and lead it on to an existence higher and better than anything we have ever known.’ If you’ll pardon the sexist language – Lodge was writing in 1917 – this is a good summary of my religion.”
In other words, the ‘return to God’ of your opening title.
Best,
Paul

David,

Since “insurance” is a dirty word, even with most lawyers, that would have been like pouring salt on the wound.  I heard that more than 10,000 people have contributed some $297,000 to the defense of the guy who murdered the health insurance CEO a few months ago.

Michael Tymn

I wonder what would have happened if you had said to the lawyer for Christ “I’m in the insurance business, the afterlife insurance business.”

Thanks to all for the comments.  I would pass some of the ideas on to the council, but I am certain they want nothing more to do with me. I think one of the council members was the young woman I met at a luncheon for an organization called “Lawyers for Christ,” or something like that,  some 10 years ago.  A lawyer friend invited me as his guest and introduced me to the young woman, who was president of the organization.  My friend mentioned that I had authored a couple of books on spiritual matters.  She asked me what exactly the books were about.  I hesitated in giving an answer, but I decided to go with the truth and say they had to do with psychic phenomena.  I don’t recall if I mentioned the word mediumship or not.  However, I can still visualize her reaction.  After her smile disappeared and her nose curled up, she said, “How can you live with yourself?”  She did a military “about face” and stormed away.
Michael Tymn

Dear Michael,

I can appreciate your approach here, but it is worth reflecting that both Spiritualism as a nascent religious movement and psychical research into survival of bodily death as a scientific effort have both been rejected by secular modernity to an even greater degree than have the Churches and other religious institutions in the West. In this sense, it is hardly clear that infusing the Churches with an emphasis on survival of bodily death will necessarily alter their ongoing decline in contemporary society. Rather, there is something more refractory at the heart of the secular modern outlook that renders it more deeply resistant to such approaches, whether religious, spiritual or indeed scientific. This is not to say that your proposed recommendation would be wholly unsuccessful, for individuals differ and some are shiftable by approaches and arguments that leave others cold.

There is another problem, as shifting the primary message from ‘worship of God’ to ‘consciousness survives death’, as you propose, is, in and of itself, at best a neutral statement. Without saying anything further, ‘consciousness survives death’ could imply any number of possibilities, many of them wholly unappealing, some of them terrifying, such as residing with one’s postmortem consciousness intact in a permanent, inescapable existential void. As a wedge in the door, your shift of emphasis is fine enough and can be quite valuable, but without being taken further beyond this initial statement, it falls quite short. But of course, in taking the further, necessary elucidatory steps beyond this initial statement one very quickly ends up right back at the point you are trying to work around, namely the question of God. In fact, the essence of the matter is right there in the title of your post, ‘The Return to God’.

A clarifying shift of perspective is to recognize that the afterlife is not really about dead people or survival of bodily death at all. That is the normal means of understanding the matter for perfectly good reasons, but what we term the afterlife, the ‘many mansions’ mentioned by Christ and referred to in your post, is really about cosmology. Here, I don’t mean cosmology in the modern scientific sense, which is really an astrophysical cosmography, but cosmology in the traditional sense, which situates, among other things, what we are, where we have come from and where we are going. In this sense, what we call the afterlife, in conjunction with what we call this world, collectively form part of a larger dynamic cosmology in which we are bound up. The dynamism of that cosmology, it’s broad thrust or movement, is precisely the return to God and nothing other than this.

This is evident throughout the posthumous or discarnate literature, the multiple levels – designated so often by their distinct, hierarchical vibrational character – being so many levels of relative proximity to our Divine origin, ground and return. Thus, and to name only one of a plethora of potential sources, the discarnate Myers in ‘The Road to Immortality’ describes the seventh and highest plane of his cosmological outline of progressive return to God as “The spirit and its various souls are now fused and pass into the Supreme Mind, the Imagination of God, wherein resides the conception of the Whole, of universe after universe, of all states of existence, of past, present and future, of all that has been and all that shall be. Herein is continuous and complete consciousness, the true reality.”

As for Heaven and Hell, which you address, you are absolutely right of course that they have a muted or attenuated import in the present day even for religious believers. However, while it is certainly true that the posthumous literature clarifies and gives finer intermediate structure to the fundamental bifurcated religious notion of Heaven and Hell, if read carefully and with attention, this same literature brings home to us the real stakes of the situation in which we find ourselves, both in this life now and in the next life to come, stakes differing in details, but not in fundamental aspect, from traditional religious notions. For we are now sewing the garments we will wear then, just as we are now sowing the fields we will harvest then.

For myself, one of the clarifying understandings I have gained from this literature is the matter in which the surroundings in which one finds oneself – for good or ill – are, in a sense drawn from within one’s self as imaginal projections of one’s state of being. There are a number of quotes from the literature that I could share on this point, but let me limit myself to one, found only recently, that addresses a question Stafford Betty raised some posts back regarding whether the relative darkness of the lower levels and relative illumination of the higher levels, as consistently portrayed across the literature, have their source in the very individuals inhabiting those respective levels: “It is the state of the spirit itself in the spiritual world that makes and merits the lightness or darkness of its surroundings.” [Franchezzo, “A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands”]

Both the Churches and the posthumous literature make clear that what is required of us, given our existential situation, is a complete inversion of values. Strictly speaking, secular modernity has no values. The reason for this is perfectly clear, and in fact given by the rabbi at the beginning of your post: The modern world is a world without meaning. Being without meaning, it is also without values or indeed the possibility of values. It is, as you have commented many times, at its root nihilistic. Of course modern secularism forwards numerous values, but these are all without foundation given its underlying nihilism, even if this lack of foundation goes unrecognized by the majority of its adherents. The ‘values’ that by default and egoic tendency tend to emerge are those of materialist acquisition, resource and status competition, absorption in distraction, triviality and spectacle, etc…

The first inversion of values which follows from a clear-sighted understanding of our situation is to recognize that, if we are to attain felicity and escape wretchedness, we must orient our lives in such a way that, when we inevitably pass from this world, we find ourselves, by our quality of being, in a manner of existence which is not a torment for us. However, as essential as such an inversion is, it falls short of what should be the true inversion of our intent, attention, striving, understanding and love, that being the orientation of our lives toward Reality itself – what men call God – as necessarily flowing from the reality of our situation and of our being.

Perhaps it is fitting to end with a prayer attributed to the remarkable 8th century female Sufi Rābiʼa al-Basri that perfectly encapsulates these two inversions of value and the necessary superiority of the latter:

If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell!
If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you for Yourself alone,
Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.

Best,

Paul

Michael,

Excellent approach. My pitch for the job.

Christian Ecumenical councillors,
The new marketing campaign Return to God and Faith builds on your very successful previous campaigns.
Let me refresh your marketing push.
Old Testament _I am the God of Hell Fire was effective but was replaced by New Testament God of Love (who can forget Paul Corinthians empty bell ad).
The problem was the spin-off churches with their different niche marketing. This created noise on the message. Too many churches selling different pathways Market confusion equals less bums on seats.
One pathway was Spiritualism _Talk to your dead Aunt was interesting campaign. Lots of dead in WWI and WWII so smart move. The Medium was a great seller but as no entry requirement lots of fakes arrived and the brand was tainted.
NDEs have not done much. No traction there. What we need is to promote the Faith in God and Faith. 
So can we pick up anything from the Climate Changers? Nett zero doesn’t sell well. Return to normal is a tough sell. We look for the benefits of keeping faith in God. God Rewards now or in the after life?
Yes, I know that we keep away from selling the after life as we are a bit short of great stories. Miracles in the afterlife don’t work for our focus group. So faith comes from great stories here and now.
I suggest we market Faith – time for a change! (I did play with the idea Make Faith great again but too close to you know who). It is a call to action. Faith by George Michael is the background music.
Faith story 1 Reincarnation stories – God gives you a second chance.
Faith story 2 Finding Certainty (Robert Palmers Johnny and Mary Target niche)
Johnny’s always running around
Trying to find certainty
He needs all the world to confirm
That he ain’t lonely
Mary counts the walls
Knows he tires easily
Johnny thinks the world would be right
If it could buy the truth from him
Mary says he changes his mind
More than a woman

Faith 3 Paranormal Tune in to the after life. Psychic ex-priests (Stainton Moses )
I would like to tie in the churches to these events.
Thanks for your time and hopefully money
Marketing Bruce

Michael - As you have given hypothetical advice to the churches, I’d like to make a few suggestions to sweeten your offer and, perhaps, make it go down a little easier.

You suggested: “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.”

The notion of a transcendent presence that informs all creation, visible and that which is invisible to our physical senses, is a central component of spiritual experience. Simply because comprehending the infinite is infinitely difficult, doesn’t mean that we should not make an effort to commune with The Great Mystery as best we can. There is an old Jewish joke: During Yom Kippur, the rabbi is seized by a sudden wave of guilt, and prostrates himself and cries, “God, I am nothing before you!” The cantor is likewise seized by guilt, and cries, “God, I am nothing before you!” Seeing this, the janitor at the back of the synagogue prostrates himself and cries, “God, I am nothing before you!” And the rabbi nudges the cantor and whispers, “Now look who thinks he’s nothing.” Each of these three characters has a comprehension of the almighty spirit that is next to nothing, yet they still try in their own ways to connect with the Infinite Spirit.

I’ve read most of White Eagle’s teachings and services, and much of Silver Birch, and have been transcribing the bulk of Cora Richmond’s published discourses from scanned books and the wonderful IASOP archive of Spiritualist publications. A common practice in their teachings, and even with Cora’s secular lectures, is to begin with an invocation, to Infinite Jehovah, Father Mother God, Great Spirit, divine and all potent Soul, etc., etc. I haven’t had much personal experience with prayer, and thus these invocations are beautiful, stirring, and mysteriously touching to the agnostic bedrock of my nature. I see them though as, in part, a way of preparing the instrument of the medium to receive the transmission as well as to set an elevated tone for the audience. It is the praise of the lover to the beloved, and opening the heart to let in the light from above.

“Heaven” is a term that has had a lot of encrustations glommed onto it that obscure the simplicity of what heaven is. Jesus gave his disciples a clear and simple definition: The Kingdom of God (heaven) is within you. This matches well the abundant testimony of discarnate spirits who emphatically state that you enter the spirit state at a level that corresponds precisely to your experience of heaven on earth. There is no jumping the line. Heaven is manifest here, in us, under the stresses and strains of material existence. I like Stafford Betty’s description of the Earth as a spiritual gymnasium. We’re building spiritual muscle tone here. We are weaving our garment of glory.

The terms “afterlife” and “hereafter” place heaven in the future, instead of in “eternity”, as you put it. Past and future, are parts of spacetime where our bodies and the rest of the physical universe exist. Eternity transcends spacetime and, to whatever degree we find ourselves in “the now” we touch the illumined hem of eternity.

I don’t think that survival is the essential message of Spiritualism, as much as that we are spiritual beings here and now, and that we can commune with our friends in spirit heart to heart. When a friend upstairs comes to mind out of the blue, I take that, not as a bit of random flotsam bubbling up out of the unconscious, but, as a little tug on the line from spirit, and an opportunity to gratefully appreciate a precious friend who as Shakespeare put it is “hid in death’s dateless night.”

Excellent article Michael, as one who experienced near death your comments support much of what I presented in my book ‘Eternity Revisited: Messages on life from my Near-Death Experience’  White Crow Books. If possible I would like to have a chat some time.
I probably would have been fired also…

Joseph B. Geraci Ph.D.

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