(Albuquerque, NM) We have two days left on out adventure and then we will be back to the relative safety of the ranch in the Outback of East Texas.
Since we have been staying many places (and sleeping in many strange beds) the level of “dream activity” has been inconsistent but instructive.
As you know, I have been tinkering with my dream states for a long time. There seem to be “personal best” periods of the year for me – in the March/April period and again in the period just ending.
Sunday, before leaving Payson, Arizona, for example, I had a dandy which I could label as “engineering the afterlife.
The main idea of it is that since time immemorial, a lot of humans have lived and died.
In fact, with a little research (and getting sidetracked by interesting articles like this one) we find that about 107-billion people have ever lived, since the most recent human hardware and software updates of 50,000 years ago.
Because there are 7-billion people alive today, this means the number of dead people – wherever dead people go – is an impressive 100,000,000,000. (100-billion)
So in this dream, my subconscious was telling me “The afterlife – if real – is a pretty big gathering…”
Looking for answers about the afterlife – from an engineering standpoint – is a bit difficult.
While many of the world’s religions allege to know how it all works, the best evidence of how at least the leading-edge of the afterlife seems to come from studies of people who have been through the near-death experience. These are called NDE’s for short.
There is a gob of Wikipedia reference work on that topic over here.
In particular, the part of NDE research that I find most interesting is the 4-18.9% recall level of NDEs.
Two thoughts keep percolating around in my head:
One is that the percentage of people who have recall of NDEs may be roughly the same as the number of people who can recall their dreams when sleeping. A article of a couple of years ago mentioned that some people recall dreams only a couple of times per month while others recall dreams 5+ times per week. It will take more research to see how close the “dream recall” is to the “NDE recall” level, but that is one line of inquiry that seems very useful.
The second thought deals with Monday’s column and how some people (see the comments section) report seeing something going on behind their eyelids…but, as in my experience with it so far, it doesn’t seem to be of any understandable/useful benefit.
Which then gets us to looking (as an engineering problem) at what happens at the moment of death and the timeframe when the body floods itself with DMT. Another Wikipedia extract:
Dr. Rick Strassman, while conducting DMT research in the 1990s at the University of New Mexico, advanced the controversial hypothesis that a massive release of DMT from the pineal gland prior to death or near death was the cause of the near death experience (NDE) phenomenon. Several of his test subjects reported audio or visual hallucinations. His explanation for this was the possible lack of panic involved in the clinical setting and possible dosage differences between those administered and those encountered in actual NDE cases. Several subjects also reported contact with “other beings”, alien like, insectoid or reptilian in nature, in highly advanced technological environments[7] where the subjects were “carried”, “probed”, “tested”, “manipulated”, “dismembered”, “taught”, “loved” and “raped” by these “beings”. Basing his reasoning on his belief that all the enzymatic material needed to produce DMT is found in the pineal gland, and moreover in substantially greater concentrations than in any other part of the body, Strassman has speculated that DMT is made in the pineal gland.
The release of DMT has been associated with “machine elves” in chemically altered states.
Since we are traveling the Southwest for the past 10-days, I picked up a shirt on our travels and it is a pattern based on the Kokopelli image commonly found in native Southwest artworks.
Kokopelli is a fertility deity, usually depicted as a humpbacked flute player (often with feathers or antenna-like protrusions on his head), who has been venerated by some Native American cultures in the Southwestern United States. Like most fertility deities, Kokopelli presides over both childbirth and agriculture. He is also a trickster god and represents the spirit of music.
I mention this is passing because this kind of archetype seems intuitively “right next door” to the Machine Elves reported on DMT.
Ultimately, any study of the Afterlife from an engineering standpoint would not look at population data (like number of followers) because those kind of data are driven by things like wars between belief systems, and such.
On the other hand, a cross-cultural review of concepts gets to be very interesting.
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If there is an afterlife, it occurs to me that 100-billion bits of human essence is a fair bit of human-stuff to keep busy.
Toward this end, it would be a fascinating novel plot to speculate (as science fiction) a gathering of humanity’s best inventive minds with a view toward “re-inventing the afterlife.”
How would you like to be able to draw together quite literally the smartest minds ever?
Tesla, Einstein, Edison, Watt, Oppenheimer, and so forth. And them manage the “engineers” with organizational horsepower like Deming, Taylor, Ford, and implement with Eisenhower, Khan and Patton…
As for project direction, a pretty good set of explorers could be used in “forward recon” – names like Columbus, Byrd, Cousteau, and so forth.
Eternity is a fairly good stretch of time…so what would the best of our essence come up with?
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There have been some reports by researchers in Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP’s) that there is some deliberate broadcasting from beyond death – aimed at electronic voice researchers.
More recently, an article over here at Hidden Truth wonders whether there isn’t something very disturbing to be learned from such engineering efforts.
That may be, but generalization skills can reduce the problem to a number of algorithmic stages. If we are trying to understand how “everything works” a block diagram might look something like this:
This gets to the “What is the business use case of Life?”
Not all arrows are shown in this model: There may be “free passes” to the Happy holding area for great works of good. “Free pass” to the ugly holding area for heinous criminals and such, as well. The Bardo/Purgatory might be like a self-checkout area for the uncommitted, perhaps. Maybe we go there to collect coupons for check-out…but use case modeling helps clarify the issues.
As you can see with a quick look at the above sketch, the main idea is that humans are becoming algorithmic thinkers as we have invented “machine intelligence.” And with the arising of the computer as a thinking tool (golem?) we have a marvelous new set of ways to explore concepts by looking (as the above drawing begins) at various stages of reality as a product flow problem.
The bottom line thought this morning is simply this:
For all of human history, so far, we have relied on individual humans to bring back reports on how “the system of reality” works. We have a collections of “prophet notes” from a bunch of different religions. Some of that makes sense, some doesn’t.
We suspect all product will flow the same and if we can figure it out – answering all flow problems in a statistically valid way, maybe we could all be a little more “on board” than we are today. Great schisms between people’s belief systems are found at the root of many wars, and so forth. It’s a terrible waste of resource. Mightily inefficient, to boot.
The point of my dream t’other night was simply this:
Why wait for the product to come to us (when dead)? We don’t we all to some serious “lifeware development” and lay out what the data suggests and then verify the data using standard statistical and software development tools we can apply to virtually ALL types of products in this portion of “the system?”
A cross-cultural, medically valid, statistically proven to some confidence level…so we can get on with the living happily ever after, until we don’t any more?
Agreement on how the business presently operates and quantification of product flow is how any good implementation team begins.
So “Is we that” or not?
(Short column Thursday because of the holiday…)
be well and write when you break-even,
George george@ure.net
My dreams lately have been the kind that repeat over and over at night.like an eight track tape. Like hey dummy do you get that type.
You chose what to put your faith in.
Choose wisely my friend.
hey george! i’m not sure how much you’re into eastern belief systems, but a book you might like is called ‘Dream Yoga’ by namkai norbu.
http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Yoga-Practice-Natural-Light/dp/1559391618/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448376154&sr=8-1&keywords=dream+yoga
Your column about the afterlife caused me to have a good chuckle. You have been reincarnated many many times and probably have spent some lives on other planets. I’m not comming back to this planet. This time is enough all ready.
Although Dr. Rick Strassman research did show those results, they could not explain the large amount of people who during the death experience, were able to give accurate accounts of the activities occurring around them that were viewed from above the area their bodies were in. These visual records would be impossible for an unconscious person with their eyes closed to have seen.
Bottom line is this: I’ve known many, many folks from different parts of the world where at one time we had promised each other to respond from beyond, whoever went first. More than 100 are dead by now; NONE ever called back :-( not even a crackle in the radio. Think about that for today!
Did they come in dreams? Sometimes they come back in dreams, I’ll explain. A dear friend who I knew for 13 years passed away at 93. She had already written her obituary and wishes before she passed. Her daughter was a Mormon. The daughter did not believe in cremation, the mother wanted to be cremated. The daughter honored her mother’s wishes but didn’t know what to do with the remains, she did not want to fly on an airplane with them. I knew none of this. The night before her celebration of life event, I had a dream. I dreamed she came to see me and took me for a ride on a red motorcycle, I was on the back and there was a small box between us, nestled against my stomach and her back. We came to an intersection where after the stop sign was a country road going out to a beautiful scenic wild country and it was slightly starting to rain. I asked her if she would like me to operate the motorcycle? She looked back at me, popped a wheelie and took off into the beautiful country and then I woke up. I wasn’t sure what to make of that dream. Later that day, the daughter told my husband and I all about her dilemma, what to do with her mother’s ashes? I knew immediately what to do and why I had that dream. We offered to take her and her Mom’s ashes to the beautiful country where I had taken her mother in real life and we scattered her ashes over a waterfall which her mother had looked over at one time in her life. So, yes, I believe the do come back, when they need to, to help, guide, console, communicate, etc.
Oh, P.S. When the daughter was telling us her dilemma, she came out with a big rectangular box, inside it was a small wooden box, just the size and shape I had dreamed about nestled between my tummy and her back while riding on the back of the motorcycle!!!
NDE afterlife.Does it exist…
Well I know I have told this story before but it is by far one of the best examples I can tell that proved to me that this is by far real.
Having worked in Healthcare the better share of my life I can tell you countless stories similar.. and I also have seen the human body going beyond its limits to survive.. this story was a person driving more than a hundred miles an hour dozed at the wheel drunk.. hit a culvert and flipped his car end over end four time almost four hundred yards.. then being ejected another seventy five feet to the pavement where his leg was shoved through his abdomen he hit his head one of the most tragic scenes I have ever seen busted broken and by all reasons should have died… anyway everyone didn’t think he would survive.. but in a little over three months of surgeries and recouping.. he walked out of the hospital not very well but he walked out and is alive today.. then the executive that wasn’t paying attention to where he was sitting.. slipped off the end of his chair tapped his head on the desk and died less than three days later..
what was his will or reason to live or die who knows.. is it predestined another who knows..
then there was the patient.. died.. the medical staff called it.. the floor worker on that floor had never dealt with death before so they called me.. I got there and sure enough I have seen enough of them to know.. that patient was dead in the chair.
Now for the story this person was finicky about their bed. would get up early have the bed made up to the point that you could bounce a quarter off of it.. then sit in their chair.. have coffee and watch the morning news.. daily routine..
when I got to the room the medical staff explained that the other person couldn’t deal with this and asked if I wouldn’t mind while they called the funeral home to come pick up the person.. sure.. so I went around and got things ready for the home to pick up for the patients final journey.. got the towels and wash cloths out basin of warm water etc and picked the patient gingerly up and laid the body on the bed to get cleaned up before rigamortis set in and the funeral home arrived to take them away. as soon as the patient was laid down the patient jumped up and said what do you think your doing.. I of course just about had a coronary.. well I was getting you ready for your journey.. the patient then said.. You Messed up my bed… I then asked.. where were you.. Oh I was up in the corner with the angels and I seen the whole thing.. now get me my coffee and fix my bed.. so I went down to get the coffee and when I was coming back.. the medical staff said.. what are you doing.. I said they have to have their coffee before they can go anywhere. needless to say everyone was shocked and I told everyone if you ever see me taking a nap like that grab some change out of my pocket go have coffee and a doughnut and come back later LOL.. that patient lived another three years to a ripe old age of 103..
stories like this are all over the hospitals and nursing facilities.. so do I believe in an afterlife absolutely.. I think that energy and our consciousness continues on call it heaven or rebirth or karma whatever I believe your energy lives on in many aspects to life….
Thank you, Ken, it is the truth!
Don’t even bother opining about the afterlife until you have read Robert Monroe’s three books, and then the books by two of his explorers, Rosalind NcKnight and Bruce Moen. NDE’ers are just kindergarteners in this realm as well. Monroe developed a team to help people who died but were stuck here around earth because of ignorance or attachments.
What most people simply cannot grasp, is that when afterlife descriptions are simply a different (less dense) 3D experience, this is more of an “other life” than an afterlife. It’s the difference between going to another country as compared to going to another planet in another galaxy with different rules of physics. The true afterlife cannot be described in physical terminology. It can be experienced, or it can be discerned.
By discerned, I mean like the Hindu concept of God. Most Christians see Hindus as godless idol worshippers. The hindu’s all have a belief in deity, but they realize this non-physical conundrum. They have, and often recite the 108 names of God, each of which is a description of an aspect of God, like he who brings the rain, or he who is the protector of the poor. The awareness of these aspects allows the human mind to discern in great depth what God really is. And if you want a degree in Hindu divinity, you consider the 1008 names of God.
This is similar to describing an elephant to someone who has never seen one, using 108 descriptive phrases instead of just one or two. A group of astute literate people who had SEEN an elephant could come up with a pretty good description, one that would certainly instill in a person the ability to recognize and differentiate between an elephant, a rhinoceros or a mammoth. And here is the kicker. As soon as a human formulates their concept of God, THIS IS HOW GOD WILL APPEAR FOR THEM IN THEIR DREAMS AND VISIONS AND DIRECT PHYSICAL EXPERIENCES. This precludes the most common American mystical experience, if it ain’t Jesus, it must be the devil or it must be mental illness, both of which must be hidden and agonized over for years until integrated into the psyche.
But if you can describe your experience in physical terms, it is not the real thing. It’s just more of the same with a little different density, and while it entertains for a while, it is like sitting in a rocking chair, gives you something to do but doesn’t get you very far. The real goal is not to play the game better, it’s figuring out how to leave the game at will and to enter at will any interesting game you find.
The Asatoma, the most prayed prayer in the history of humanity:
Lead me from the unreal to the real,
From darkness into light,
From death to immortality.
Peace, peace, peace
What is real, is that which does not change. In the sea of Samsara, that is what you seek.
I actually believe more in what the Hindu religion believes.. which makes sense.. some see animals as nothing more than an animal yet I see them as feeling beings with the same spirit that humans have..
http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/h_death.asp
for me it is the walk gently on this earth making your path one of respect for all living creatures trying along to way to guide someone else or help someone else along their journey is they stumble help them up.. ( I was watching the steelers and chargers game.. in the game.. the steelers played hard.. knocked down tackled etc.. almost every time.. when the play was done.. they offered the oppositions player a hand up.. they are my new team hat and tee shirt on the way)..then take the story of RATS and their empathy for one another….
there was a study done years ago.. where they starved rats.. then put one rat in a situation where that rat wouldn’t survive without some intervention.. then placed food in the same pen.. the rats didn’t even think about the food.. they went directly to the rat that needed help and worked at it till that rat was loose to enjoy the food as well..
As humans.. reading the news.. daily we see where predominantly this is not ever going to happen with the human race. I think we as a species is more like the carpenter ant.. we will destroy our own habitat for our own desires. we see this in marketing ( our industries outsource jobs where the income to keep the economy running in their own community will eventually be jeopardized by this initial action. to telling our people our workers co workers family and friends that we would rather you die from lack of medical services or starve than to feed you because it is going to cost us..) Karma.. if you think violent thoughts violence could become the path..
After months in China happy to be able to read you again.
This afterlife thing you write here reminds me of Philip José Farmers Riverworld series. With so many dead persons, how to find your fellow-travellers?
We will be dead almost an infinitely longer time than we are alive.
It has always puzzled me as to how may people do not want to even talk about the next life for more than 2 minutes.
At that point, their eyes either cloud over or they change the subject to some sporting event.
” Hay, that reminds me, did you see Tim Brundy throw that 300 yard touchdown strike with .1 second left in the game to jimmy jumper for the td”
We are very strange creatures.
Consider the possibility of recycling (e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism) with a lesser number of ‘being-ness’ or consciousness elements. Hopefully more than 7 billion, give or take a few visitors (dimensional travel).
DMT-a cause of hallucination, or alternatively, a blocker of a usually functioning inhibitor- which keeps us from ‘seeing’ or ‘walking’ into another reality? Is there a commonality between observers to the hallucinations?
Happy dreamtime.
73
Are you high George?
Especially good piece. Thought provoking.