A New Science of the Afterlife: Space, Time, and the Consciousness Code
()
About this ebook
• Explores 15 promising avenues of post-materialist scientific investigation currently underway
• Provides a succinct account of the experience of transition to the “next life” and what one might expect when one arrives there
• Explains how materialism has prevented us from realizing a deeper understanding of the nature of space, time, life, death, and consciousness
Sharing his more than three decades of research into the afterlife and paranormal phenomena, award-winning documentary filmmaker Daniel Drasin shows that the continuity of human consciousness beyond the physical body and after death constitutes a legitimate area of scientific inquiry and that it can be objectively demonstrated.
Drasin begins by revealing how our belief in materialism—through its effects on our social norms, taboos, and even language—has deeply constrained our civilization’s understanding of the nature of space, time, life, death, and consciousness. However, as Drasin explains, our deeply ingrained cultural habits tied to materialism have begun to change. He explores 15 promising post-materialist scientific investigations currently underway, focusing in depth on three examples that offer the most objectively irrefutable evidence for the survival of consciousness, including electronic audio and visual communications from the other side, the groundbreaking five-year Scole Experiment in physical mediumship, and the profoundly evidential reincarnation case of James Leininger.
Looking at how language frames our perceptions about life and death, the author presents thought experiments and simple exercises to help us see through materialist ideology and perceive a broader landscape of reality. He provides a succinct account of the experience of transition to the “next life” and explores what the afterlife is made of, where it’s located, how it works, and what it’s for.
Drasin shows how, by thinking and speaking about death and the survival of consciousness in new ways, we can facilitate a clearer, more relaxed, comfortable, and rational conversation about what awaits us all sooner or later on the other side of life.
Daniel Drasin
Daniel Drasin is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and has been a photographer and media producer for more than six decades. Since the early 1990s, as featured in his documentary Calling Earth, Drasin has been actively investigating the field of afterlife communication through traditional mental and physical mediumship as well as modern electronics. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Related to A New Science of the Afterlife
Related ebooks
Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist's Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cosmic Hologram: In-formation at the Center of Creation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cosmic Conversations: Dialogues on the Nature of the Universe and the Search for Reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret Science of the Soul: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science & Spirit Together Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Quantum Akashic Field: A Guide to Out-of-Body Experiences for the Astral Traveler Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Field Updated Ed: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Experiencing the Next World Now Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Immutable Laws of the Akashic Field: Universal Truths for a Better Life and a Better World Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Future Memory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From Science to God: A Physicists Journey into the Mystery of Consciousness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God Theory: Universes, Zero-Point Fields, and What's Behind It All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Is There Life After Death?: The Extraordinary Science of What Happens When We Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Secret of Death: Our Divided Souls and the Afterlife Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Quantum Being: A Self-Sustaining and Magnificent Human Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Immortal Mind: Science and the Continuity of Consciousness beyond the Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Luminous Landscape of the Afterlife: Jordan's Message to the Living on What to Expect after Death Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist's Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter, and Self Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Kissed a Ghost (and I Liked It): A Jersey Girl's Reality Show . . . with Dead People Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Physics of God: How the Deepest Theories of Science Explain Religion and How the Deepest Truths of Religion Explain Science Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCatching the Ascension Wave: Everything You Need to Know about the Coming Great Awakening Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEncircled by the Light Fantastic: A Deeper Journey into the Light With Orbs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
New Age & Spirituality For You
Don't Believe Everything You Think: Why Your Thinking Is The Beginning & End Of Suffering Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mere Christianity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Screwtape Letters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Grief Observed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mastery of Self: A Toltec Guide to Personal Freedom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Four Loves Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As A Man Thinketh: Three Perspectives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Course in Miracles: Text, Workbook for Students, Manual for Teachers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret History of the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How to Pray: Reflections and Essays Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As a Man Thinketh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Three Questions: How to Discover and Master the Power Within You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Reflections on the Psalms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Abolition of Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A New Science of the Afterlife
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
A New Science of the Afterlife - Daniel Drasin
Introduction
Why Now?
If you are curious about the possibility of an afterlife but believe that science rules it out, this book may provide some food for thought, some helpful guidance, and perhaps a few surprises. I’ve written it partly to provide a welcoming space and safe haven for those who, for social or professional reasons, may be reluctant to reveal their interest in such things.
I confess that I’ve long resisted writing this book. Writing is a tough grind, and my attention span has never won any major awards. (As many a prominent writer has put it, I hate writing, but I love having written!
) I’ve also spent most of my professional life behind a camera, so this book is a sort of coming-out party for me.
But why now? What has pushed me over the edge?
To begin with, writing this book has been an opportunity to explore my own long-standing passion for this subject matter and to dig deeply into my own motivation for wanting to share it. I’ve found researching and exploring the evidence for an afterlife to be fascinating, challenging, mind-stretching, and illuminating in its own right. This pilgrimage has covered a lot of territory and led me to a deeper understanding and appreciation of my own life and the lives of others.
Having recently celebrated my eightieth birthday, I feel it’s timely to share what I believe I’ve learned about the journey we’ll all sooner or later make to the other side. If this book illuminates or eases that transition for even one reader, or if a handful of readers can say Hey, I never thought about it that way!
I feel it will have been well worth the effort.
Finally, considering the state of our world, it seems especially timely to reexamine our culture’s dark-and-spooky view of death. Does it perhaps underlie a fear-based view of life that can distort our self-awareness, relationships, ethics, economics, and politics?
Have we overbuilt a civilization to protect ourselves from a fearful superstition of our own making and, in doing so, brought about more of what we’ve feared most? If so, could a fresh view of what we call death
transform our view of life for the better? Could it help us avoid, mitigate, or even reverse the kinds of systemic breakdowns that are already causing widespread species extinction and threatening the foundations of our civilization? If such breakdowns continue despite all efforts to forestall them, could it lead us to a more balanced and peaceful acceptance of the inevitable?
So What Are We Talking About Here?
What is death, anyway? Is it like the archaic notion of sailing off the edge of a two-dimensional, flat Earth into oblivion? Or is there an unacknowledged dimension in which we can travel safely over the horizon into a new world? Can we discover that new world for ourselves by bringing curiosity, courage, and scientific integrity to the task?
That, I believe, is true science: to follow the data wherever they lead.
JACQUES VALLÉE, COMPUTER SCIENTIST, AUTHOR, AND PIONEERING ANOMALIES RESEARCHER
As both an intellectual and experiential explorer, I’ve spent the past three decades investigating the possibility that many of our culture’s beliefs and assumptions about life, death, and reality may be as archaic and misguided as those prescientific notions that the Earth was flat and at the center of the universe.
Before the year 1500, the Western world took it for granted that our Earth was indeed poised at the center of things and that the Sun and planets all revolved around us. After all, what could have been more obvious? But there were a few little problems with this assumption. For one thing, the motions of the planets made little sense: sometimes they stopped in their tracks, turned around, and moved backward!*1 How could this be?
Then along came Copernicus and Galileo, who, against formidable social and institutional odds, offered us a simple shift of perspective: Earth and the planets in fact revolve around the Sun! Who’d’a thunk it? Now many baffling things, including those bizarre planetary motions, fell elegantly into place and actually made sense! (Never mind that the Church Fathers of Galileo’s time famously refused to look through his telescope. The cat was out of the bag!)
Today we face a similar predicament, in which a broad spectrum of human experiences and robustly documented phenomena seem to make no sense in light of our currently dominant theories and beliefs. But rather than looking through the telescope
—bringing our curiosity and our best investigative tools and talents to bear—the overwhelming response of our most influential social, scientific, and academic institutions has been to resist and deny these reports. As a result, many who attest to them in good faith are ridiculed, ostracized, or punished, as if we still lived in a dark age determined to defend itself, at all costs, against an encroaching enlightenment. (I, myself, am no stranger to this sort of harsh judgment and carefully avoid discussing such matters with certain personal friends and professional colleagues.)
Let’s recall that the Copernican Shift of the Renaissance demanded little more of us than to step back and take a better mental snapshot of our celestial home, now that we knew where to stand and what to look for.
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
ANSEL ADAMS, LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER
So could an equally simple shift of perspective today open up refreshingly new vistas of who we are, what we’re doing here, and what happens when we inevitably pass from this embodied life? I firmly believe such a readjustment is possible, at least for those who can embrace it with curiosity, courage, keen intuition, and clear, open minds.
Many of us are being called to this new vision by myriad influences: by the works of courageous writers, scientists, philosophers, and doctors; by those who have been resuscitated from clinical death; and by psychically talented individuals and electronic experimenters apparently in touch with those who have gone before us across the threshold. For some it’s the result of undeniable personal experiences or compelling scientific curiosity. For others it’s simply a powerful inner calling that cannot be silenced.
To what, exactly, are we being called? Simply to consider the possibility that what we take to be the whole of reality is embedded in a more comprehensive matrix. Some have described this as a Greater Reality,
in which an afterlife exists as obviously and naturally as our physical life exists in our familiar physical universe. Its substance, however, is not said to lie in physicality as we know it but in the seemingly ephemeral realm of consciousness.
So what is this thing we’re calling consciousness
? From this unfolding perspective it appears to be an irreducible field of something that possesses remarkable properties, notably the capacity for experience, volition, and purpose. Perhaps we need a new word for it, because it seems to be a deeper, broader, richer something than what we normally think of as consciousness, just as our spherical Earth is quite different from the flat one that was naively imagined by our dimensionally challenged ancestors.
So Who Am I to Consider Such a Radical View of Reality, Life, and Death?
For most of my adult life I’ve been a documentary filmmaker and media producer. I’ve traveled widely, have had a lifelong engagement with the sciences and the arts, and enjoy considering new, unfamiliar, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary perspectives. As a generalist I feel I have a good vantage point for seeing big-picture connections among things that narrowly focused specialists, for all of their priceless gifts, can sometimes tend to overlook.
Thanks to some interesting experiences I’ve been blessed with throughout my life, I’ve long suspected that reality as currently interpreted by our senses, sciences, and society isn’t the whole picture. This came into better focus as I began to connect with others who had had similar experiences and suspicions. Virtually all were sane, productive individuals who didn’t seem at all misguided, weak-minded, credulous, or superstitious. Some were brilliant visionaries. Some were teachers, doctors, journalists, and businessfolk. Some were working scientists.
What were we seeing and suspecting in common? Simply that the familiar physical universe we take to be the whole of reality may in fact be only the tip of an iceberg—the visible surface of a deeper, richer, more colorful realm that’s made of different stuff and plays by a more lively and creative set of rules.
This Greater Reality
is said to be where our awareness—in other words, our self, soul, being or essence—resides between and beyond our space-and-time-bound physical lives. Though this reality may be heavily masked by our powerful physical senses and habits of mind, we may get tantalizing glimpses of it when our awareness is dilated or redirected during lucid dreams, meditation, sensory-deprivation sessions, psychedelic journeys, near-death experiences, or quiet moments under the night sky.
The main purpose of this book is to explore how we might better recognize, demystify, appreciate, and befriend that Greater Reality while still living fruitfully in the physical world.
Where Am I Coming From?
While I am not a credentialed scientist, I will be quoting and paraphrasing more than a few accomplished scientists, artists, philosophers, and academics. My goal is not to create yet another chapter-and-verse belief system; it is simply to present for your consideration a vision of reality that goes hand in glove with some astonishing