The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell You (3 page)

Yes, as much as it seriously risks all credibility, you deserve the full truth: if you want unicorns, you get unicorns.

Forms change, shapes shift, energy exchanges, but even the humblest of today’s greeting cards has the depth and clarity to remind you of what you already know: those recently departed loved ones are in “a better place.” And while you can tease or torture yourself by wondering if this is really true, doesn’t every religion echo that life is eternal? Haven’t scientists proven that matter is not solid, but
organized
energy? “Organized” being the highly operative, fully loaded, bursting-with-implications descriptor in this case. Don’t your nighttime dreams hint at the obvious separation between consciousness and your physical body? And aren’t there enough recorded incidences of the paranormal to give even the most diehard skeptics pause?

Yet in spite of this, in spite of a belief in an afterlife and a loving superintelligence, little in the human adventure can be as debilitating as coming face-to-face with the death of a loved one, which to the physical senses means good-bye—
forever.
Even when saying good-bye to the same person just a day before, perhaps as they drove off to work or went to school, you managed an appreciative, nonchalant smile. For death’s arrival, however, there’s just sheer, total, and absolute devastation.

Only the truth can help you now. Crystal clear, absolute, yes-or-no truth. It exists. More solid and dependable than the Rock of Gibraltar. And while the dead can’t instill it within you, they can reveal it to an open mind and offer tools and stepping-stones to help you own it. Through deductive reasoning, connecting a few safe dots from known science, simplifying, extrapolating, and concluding, you will soon sit upon your rightful throne, living in everlasting peace, untroubled by the monster previously known as death. Knowing that every “good-bye” means a new “hello” and that the bigger the former, the grander the latter.

W
HAT’S
R
EALLY
G
OING
O
N

Let’s first consider the obvious: inanimate objects, like rocks, will never evolve into having personalities, favorite colors, or best friends. Why? Because consciousness is not produced or created by matter. Right? It doesn’t happen in laboratories, and in the history of the world it’s never happened in nature. Sure, there’s consciousness, but to assume it
originated
from, or exists because of, matter has no basis.

So it follows that independence from matter (matter being held and defined by both time and space) would also mean independence of time and space. Meaning that whatever else consciousness might be, it was first a timeless, formless essence. Yes? Easy? Comfy? And this, pretty much without any effort, paints a fairly clear picture: You, the formless and eternal, now temporarily possess a physical body, chemically and organically borrowed from the substances of earth, to channel your nonphysical energy and personality as you negotiate space, travel through time, and experience what has become known as life. Voilà!

“Whoa, fella, way too fast! Besides, why?” you want to interject.

Hold on. We’re building a case that will take all ten chapters to present, including “
why
.”

So, to play a little devil’s advocate: If, as many people today reason, “dead” is
dead
—lights out, all done, forever and ever—wouldn’t that mean everything else under the sun, including the sun, is relatively pointless? Stupid even? And if life is essentially pointless, wouldn’t the basis of life itself be without intelligence (which is actually what “stupid” means)? And if there’s no intelligence, wouldn’t this mean life as you know it is pure happenchance? And that your own existence today is unintentional, random, and, if you’re having a pretty good time, a mighty stroke of
unimaginably
good luck—statistically crushing the odds necessary to win the lottery every weekend in a row for 10,000 lifetimes?

It would.

Whereas, returning to where we left off, if “dead” is not dead and you therefore carry on transformed, again, wouldn’t that positively and absolutely mean that time and space cannot be bedrock reality? That consciousness, originating elsewhere, is similarly free to exist beyond them? Yet as it’s present within the illusions, there must be a reason? And for reason to exist there must be order? For order there must be meaning? All evidencing, once again, yet from a new angle, that an intelligence exists independently of time, space, and matter?

Yes, it would.

Keeping at this, gently seeing the obvious without drawing too many conclusions, drilling down to truth, you’ll also see how to know much more. And you’ll learn that nothing else in all the world is as important to you as understanding exactly what
is
going on. These pages are taking you there.

You
are the reason the sun rises each day, literally.

O
CKHAM’S
R
AZOR

William of Ockham, or William Ockham, was a 14th-century Franciscan friar, scholar, and theologian from Ockham, a town in Surrey, England. He’s famous for absolutely nothing other than being (debatably) credited with devising the simplest of tools to get at the truth of any issue, now known as Ockham’s Razor. A razor being an instrument used to remove what is unwanted: in this case, speculation, lies, and fluff. Paraphrasing, it goes something like this:

Of two or more competing theories, the simpler theory is most likely correct.

Essentially, Bill’s saying that to get to the truth of any matter,
keep it simple
. Don’t connect too many dots. Don’t buy into any premises or go off on any tangents that aren’t necessary to have a sense of peace and confidence or that cloud the clarity you achieved with your initial collection of connected dots.

To illustrate, while time and space most certainly contain an
infinite
number of truths—some known, most unknown, each debatable—there’s one dot that can be connected for which virtually all people would be in agreement, which provides both peace and confidence, and it is:

Dot 1:
Today is a beautiful day.

Yes? Do you agree? If it’s pouring rain wherever you now are, please see the good in it. Now of course you could rightly argue that in some quarters, where there’s suffering and misery, today is anything but beautiful, but wouldn’t such quarters be exceptions? Painful exceptions, yet exceptions nonetheless? Is it not fair to say that taken as a whole, as experienced by the majority of life-forms on this planet, although each life has its challenges, it is still beautiful?

Depending on the time of day wherever you are, it was; it is; it will be.

With this truth about life on earth revealed, does one not now have some degree of traction? Information with which to base decisions, chart courses, and make plans? Knowledge, after all, is power. If today is a beautiful day, as was yesterday and, by deduction, as will be tomorrow, you can choose to enjoy it. Dance life’s dance, go out into the world, find friends, seize each moment, spin, twirl, skip, jump … oh, the power of connecting a dot.

Okay. Now to see what Ockham was getting at, let’s connect some more,
unnecessary
, dots:

Dot 1:
Today is a beautiful day …

Dot 2:
… because this is the calm before the storm.

Hmmm … Well, perhaps
it is.
Perhaps not … Maybe you should rush to batten down the hatches! On the other hand, since you’ve never battened down hatches before and you’ve done just fine, perhaps you can continue on your merry way and hope for the best?

Do you see how by connecting one more
unnecessary
dot, an iffy dot, the legs have been knocked out from under the table and traction’s been lost?

Or let’s connect a different dot:

Dot 1:
Today is a beautiful day …

Dot 2:
… because last night you called Mum and didn’t lose your patience, and therefore God is rewarding you with sunshine and warm breezes.

Huh?! Suddenly
God
is on the scene? Judgment is implied? And,
what?
Others nearby who are enjoying this beautiful day are the unwitting beneficiaries of
your
“good” behavior? What kind of day would they be having if you forgot to call, or worse,
if you lost your patience?!

Again, by connecting just one more dot, the legs have been knocked out from under the table. Yet—and here’s the problem—the philosophical modus operandi of the living today is often that
he or she who connects the most dots is closest to the truth,
or in some circles,
closest to God!
Those who hold to the latter are often terrorists and extremists, based on iffy dots they let other people connect for them.

Letting other people connect your dots means living by other people’s rules. With Ockham’s Razor and by turning within, you can answer your own questions.

W
HERE
Y
OU
C
AME
F
ROM

You’re okay with time and space being relative, right? Different from one person to the next, yes? Therefore, more illusionary than solid? Not what they appear to be? Okay?

Dot 1:
Time and space (and therefore matter) are illusionary.

Well then, if time and space are illusionary like a mirage, mustn’t some realm exist that supports or gives rise to the illusions? Something
closer
to a dependable baseline? Like a desert is to a mirage? Not that you have to understand or know much about such a realm—too many dots—but mustn’t it exist? Perhaps like a dimension that “precedes” or exists independent of the illusions?

Yes, it must.

Dot 2:
There is a realm where neither time nor space exists.

So what one thing do you suppose you might find in a realm or dimension that “precedes” time, space, matter, and yourself?

Whoa! Lots and lots and lots and lots of dots, all seemingly unconnectable. It’s at this point in our quest for truth that we usually become overwhelmed and give up, letting others arrive at answers. But fear not, because there
is
at least one dot we can connect, just
one,
that won’t feel uncomfortable, improbable, or forced.

Awareness. Yes? Some form of awareness, aka intelligence (which you agreed to a few pages ago, as opposed to life being stupid), must have existed pre–time/space/matter. You could call this God if you wanted—it works, same-same—
but please don’t
, at least not yet. That’s what people normally do without even thinking about it. But because to each person God is a vastly different collection of other dots that represent different beliefs, the collections of dots become completely unrecognizable as you go from person to person.

Dot 3:
In the realm or dimension that “precedes” time, space, matter, and yourself, you’d find “awareness,” or call it God (but not yet).

Yes, these are ridiculously simple observations/dots, yet of the most profound and important nature imaginable. It’s crucial that you play along, get on board, and admit the obvious, because
your happiness and the control of your life
hang in the balance. It is perhaps among your greatest responsibilities to understand as much as you can, however simple, about your presence in the cosmos.

Hang on: you’re about to blow the lid off of this Popsicle stand.

What else might we call “intelligence,” “awareness,” or “consciousness”? How about “thought”? Doesn’t “thought” generally equate to or make possible all of these?

Dot 4:
Even pre–time and space, you’d find some variety of
thought!

W
HO
Y
OU
M
UST
B
E

And
mustn’t that mean
that if “where” there was once only intelligence, awareness, or
thought
, there now exist planets, mountains, and people (time, space, and matter) …
What must planets, mountains, and people be made of?

Yes! Golden! That’s right! They must all be made up of thought! Thought that became “things”!

And,
look who’s thinking now …

Okay, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Dot 5:
Thoughts
became
things. Thoughts
become
things: TBT.

Obviously, when we say “things” we also mean circumstances and events, which are actually just moving things. Right?

So, thought is the prime mover of all “things” in time and space. Thought: consciousness, intelligence, and awareness. Or call this trio God. But more—fantastically more: if “where” there was once only intelligence, awareness, or thought (again, God) there now exists, among other things, you …
who must you be?

You
must
be
of
that consciousness, intelligence, and awareness, which similarly and indisputably means you must be
of
God,
by
God,
for
God,
pure God yourself
. Literally the eyes and the ears of the Divine come alive within the illusions of time and space, the dream of life.

You simply can’t
not
be God; what would you be if not
of
that original awareness? Where would you have come from? What would you be made of? As if there could be non-God! There
is
nothing else. All is God. Pebbles, oceans, black holes, you, and all others. Just as you can’t go into the kitchen with corn and tomatoes and return hours later with a chocolate cake, neither can you start an equation with pure awareness-thought-God and suddenly have something that is not some derivation of pure awareness-thought-God.