Continuing with my Reader's Digest look at James E. Beichler's To Die For, which presents his single (operational) field theory, or SOFT ...
Having argued that our universe is five-dimensional and that mind and consciousness (or, as he likes to put it, MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS) exist in the fifth dimension, Beichler looks at what would happen after death in such a scenario. Essentially, the four-dimensional aspects of a sentient being would fall apart, but the fifth-dimensional aspects (mind and consciousness), being separate or at least separable from the material world, would persist.
Some excerpts:
The LIFE complexity or field is irreparably damaged when a living being dies. In the terms of SOFT, the field density pattern of LIFE in the fifth dimension loses coherence, which means that the field structure collapses ...
MIND cannot just dissipate away because it is organized by CONSCIOUSNESS, while CONSCIOUSNESS lends to MIND the coherence that it originally received through LIFE and the chemical reactions in the material body. CONSCIOUSNESS automatically takes over and supplies coherence to the MIND when the material chemical coherence, otherwise supplied by the body before death, ceases. Quite literally, MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS reinforce each other and thereby maintain an internal pattern of stability within the five-dimensional single field ... MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS were only connected to the four-dimensional material world by LIFE, so they need not remain connected to the four-dimensional material world after death ...
After death, the mind is cut off from the input of the five physical senses. This sudden cut-off can lead to disorientation. In some cases, the deceased person (or a person having a near-death experience) will find himself in a black void, which he may find terrifying. Some negative or "hellish" NDEs are of this type. The void, according to Beichler, is a reflection of the fact that the mind has not yet come to terms with its new condition. It is still looking for input through the familiar sensory channels, which no longer operate.
Normally, the mind does make the necessary adjustments. As Beichler explains:
The MIND still expects mental input and will accept input from any source available ... The MIND searches for new sources of memory and these can only come from the CONSCIOUSNESS after death via its five-dimensional conductivity in the single field ...
The mind's success in obtaining new inputs depends on its level of development.
The greater the complexity of CONSCIOUSNESS is, the greater the sensitivity of CONSCIOUSNESS to detecting the whims and fancy of the rest of the universe. This level of complexity first developed during the life of the living person, so how a person lived his or her LIFE, the quality of his or her LIFE, determines the state of being of what survives at death ...
If the person had achieved a higher level of CONSCIOUSNESS, such as enlightenment, then the MIND would already have memories of a five-dimensional experience and would then merge with less difficulty into its new state of being ... However, if the MIND had no memories or even the slightest idea of its five-dimensional existence during life, such that the person had only attained the lowest minimal level of CONSCIOUSNESS before death, the surviving MIND might not accept its new reality and continue expecting input from the Brain and the four-dimensional world. Under these circumstances, the MIND might be 'stuck' in its four-dimensional reality even though is materially cut-off from that reality and not realize that the body is dead. Or the MIND might not accept the death of its host body and experience a total blackness or 'nothingness'. At a slightly higher level of CONSCIOUSNESS, the MIND, not yet realizing its new state of reality, could look to its own internal memories and go through a past-life review, like a body cannibalizing its body fat when no food or nourishment is available. In some cases, the MIND could get stuck in its own memories thinking that they are material reality and suffer through having to endlessly repeat all of its past memories ...
Assuming that the mind does grasp its new context and begins to operate accordingly, it will start to function efficiently in fifth-dimensional space.
The MIND would begin to accept input from the CONSCIOUSNESS and form new memories, a reversal of its learning methods while living. The sixth sense would become permanently active as the primary and only real source of input for the MIND. The MIND would have a sense of entering the 'light', which is just a four-dimensional interpretation of realizing or becoming aware of contact in and with the single field, which is completely filled with electromagnetic waves of every imaginable frequency and wavelength ... The MIND would interpret its conscious contact with all the different frequencies of electromagnetic waves, both visible and invisible when the body lived, as a brilliant 'white' light, beyond anything seen or known during LIFE ...
Many NDErs experience a lifetime of memories in just a few moments while dead. This fact implies that they are not within the normal space-time continuum and are not experiencing time as it flows within that continuum ... With a momentary death, the lack of sensory input from our normal world of four-dimensional sources induces a never before experienced state of quiet and peace in which MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS can function as a single structural unit independent of life and body ...
Of course, since the person in question is not the first person ever to die, there are others who have already been through all this. These others are at home in fifth-dimensional space and can serve as guides to the new arrival.
It would be logical to assume that loved ones who have already died would have undergone a similar process of realizing their own connectivity of thought and CONSCIOUSNESS with the fifth dimension and their own MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS structures have survived within the single field, so they would appear to come out of the light when contact is made by the newly 'arrived' MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS complex. The surviving MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS complex of the NDEr would literally pick out memories within its own MIND pattern with which it was already familiar, such as family members, loved ones or friends and this would in a sense 'call up' the external MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS complexes of those loved ones ...
Near-death experiencers often find themselves profoundly changed by what they've gone through. Beichler argues that the change comes about because of exposure to (or entry into) "the light," which is the mind's way of conceptualizing its experience of five-dimensional reality, in which everyone and everything is connected.
After the NDE the experiencer would judge and make choices against the more complete and truer view of the whole five dimensions of the universe ...
In a sense our individual lives and LIFEs would be shared with others since we are all part of the same single field. Doing any type of harm to another living being would alter that being's internal pattern of MIND that would be communicated back to the individual causing harm by the five-dimensional connection between the two ...
Within this five-dimensional model, love can now be defined as an intimate and purposeful or directed five-dimensional connection with another being or beings ...
The pattern imprinted into the MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS of each person forms the special intimate pattern matching connection that is love ...
Teaching and practicing love and compassion as a precept during LIFE would help a person recognize and accept the 'white light' upon death ...
'Hate' must consist of an internal scrambling of one's own MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS patterns so they would no longer 'align' with the patterns of the person or persons toward whom the 'hate' is directed ...
The person could theoretically create his or her own hell based on their hatred, their scrambled interpretation of the universe and their discontinuity with the single field ...
As evidence, Beichler points to the statements of some NDErs whose experiences appear to have been particularly profound.*
Cherie Sutherland reports Michael's interpretation of his NDE during a surfing accident that alludes directly to this aspect of the phenomenon. "I was looking around and I sort of got this feeling, it's hard to explain, as though I was part of it all. I felt as though I was part of everything around me. I just felt as if everything was in me and I was in everything." Without knowing it, Michael was describing the mutual connectivity that he shares with other material objects in the universe as sympathetic patterns in the single field ...
Olaf described the 'location' of his NDE as a "universe without boundaries," a phrase which certainly would not seem to fit our four-dimensional reality ...
[quoting an NDEr:] "Now, there is a real problem for me as I'm trying to tell you this, because all the words I know are three-dimensional. As I was going through this, I kept thinking, well, when I was taking geometry, they always told me there were only three dimensions, and I always accepted that. But they were wrong. There are more. And of course, our world -- the one we're living in now -- is three-dimensional, but the next one definitely isn't. And that's why it's so hard to tell you this. I have to describe it to you in words that are three-dimensional. That's as close as I can get to it, but it's not really adequate. I can't really give you a complete picture."
The reference to "a universe without boundaries" reminds me of the well-known channeled book, The Unobstructed Universe, by Stewart Edward White. This is one of the more technical books purporting to explain the afterlife, and if I recall correctly, some of its content matches up pretty well with SOFT.
In addition to NDEs, there is a similar phenomenon which Beichler dubs Near-Death-Like Experiences, or NDLEs. In these cases, a person undergoes some of the stages of an NDE without actually being near death. Certain meditative techniques can bring about an NDLE. So can a frightening situation in which the person fully expects to die, even though death is not actually imminent. (A famous example is a collection of NDLEs reported by mountain climbers who fell a great distance but were saved from death by handing in soft snow.)
When the MIND is completely convinced that death is imminent, it can elicit a defense mechanism by which it spontaneously enters a low level NDLE. The MIND starts to shut LIFE down in preparation for what it believes will be an inevitable death ... This chemical process can spontaneously initiate a chemical cascade in the Brain resulting in an abridged form of an NDE ...
Beichler says that paranormal phenomena in general can be easily viewed in terms of SOFT, whether the percipient has an NDE, an NDLE, or some other experience. For instance, take remote viewing. The person sits in a room and describes a location that may be hundreds of miles away. How is this possible? If the mind is limited to four-dimensional spacetime, it seems inexplicable. Burt if the mind occupies a fifth dimension, then it need not be bound by the restrictions of our 4D world. It can range across space (and time). An analogy would be to a Flatland universe in which the inhabitants were aware of only two dimensions of space. If one of the Flatlanders could rise up out of the sheet of paper he lived on and view it from above, he would be able to see all the way to the edges of the paper. He would appear to have a godlike perspective, unbound by physical constraints. But actually he would still be operating in the physical world, only it would be a world of three dimensions (in space), rather than two.
The remote viewer, according to SOFT, is similar to the elevated Flatlander. He is able to see our 4D world from a 5D perspective. The results may seem miraculous or at least anomalous, but they are anomalous only within a 4D context.
NDErs (and mediums, and psychics) often talk about "vibrations" (a term that comes up frequently in The Unobstructed Universe, by the way). Beichler prefers to think in terms of resonances.
The SOFT view of death is further supported by reports that experiencers sense or feel love material effects of the NDE at the cellular level, many times as vibrations. These are not true vibrations in the material sense, but are instead identified as physical field resonances as described by SOFT ...
When energy changes occur in the cell they affect the five-dimensional extensions of the individual elementary particles that constitute the cell by increasing or decreasing their extension into the fifth dimension. These changes entangle within the five-dimensional single field to determine the overall field density variation pattern which is LIFE itself. However, these changes are actually variations in the field density of the single field as a complete continuous whole. As such, these cells act like antennas to pick up changes of field density from other sources in the five-dimensional single field environment of LIFE, MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS ...
What, then, can we expect our existence to be like in this fifth dimension, and what is the point of it all?
The surviving MIND/CONSCIOUSNESS complex is essentially freed from its material bondage in the four-dimensional 'sheet' that is our material world and continues to exist as a free entity in the five-dimensional single field ...
The single field fills the entire universe, so the 'spirit' exists in the same complete universe that the living being occupied, only it is a far more complete universe that the 'spirit' occupies ...
Just as increasing knowledge of the world and a new memories openly resulted in the evolution of CONSCIOUSNESS out of the raw 'stuff' of the MIND, we can assume that increasing knowledge and understanding of the greater five-dimensional universe should precipitate a new and even higher-level complexity corresponding to a sixth dimension of space ...
The very fact to that individual CONSCIOUSNESS is so heavily entwined with the rest of the universe, should alone imply some type of conscious choice in the evolution of LIFE, MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS as well is what lies beyond ...
The existence of a single conscious being in the universe must render the universe itself conscious ...
The goal or purpose of self-realization, the primary property of consciousness, is both imminent in every point of space-time and transcendent beyond the mere collection of all the points in space-time, from the perspective of the universe itself ...
If there is good and evil in the universe, then what is good is that which helps the universe gain true knowledge of itself and that which is evil would be anything that disrupts the search for true knowledge as well as the development, support and dissemination of harmful false knowledge.
Anything that blocks other human beings and sentient beings in their own personal quest for true knowledge is wrong if not outright evil ...
Death also opens the door to the next step in the development of CONSCIOUSNESS. The next step in evolution could not be as effective as possible while the MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS are hampered by their connection to the material world by LIFE ...
If this is true, should we be in a hurry to die? Beichler cautions against this conclusion.
Every person should live as long as possible so that they can learn as much as possible to develop their CONSCIOUSNESS and thereby prepare for what happens to them upon death. Since the 'purpose' of every living being is to seek, learn and disseminate true knowledge, ending the LIFE of oneself or another sentient being amounts to artificially and wrongfully ending a line of unique knowledge and experience in the universe. Taking another person's or sentient being's LIFE is a crime against the universe ...
He also deals with the issue of grieving. He points out that while the deceased person remains in existence, his absence is felt by those left behind, who no longer have contact with him through the physical senses. Often, a grieving person will receive psychic impressions from the deceased (after-death communications), but these may actually exacerbate the person's confusion and pain.
The living person's MIND is still receiving subtle" from the surviving CONSCIOUSNESS of the dead partner via the sixth sense, but receives no corresponding chemical signals via the normal five senses. This mismatching of input signals to the MIND, coming from two different 'directions', causes a 'dissonance' in the MIND from the eyes and inner ear.
Rather than obsessing on the deceased, it is best to think of him as having gone away on a journey. He will not return, but we will join him when the time is right. In the meantime, our mission of raising our own consciousness here in four-dimensional spacetime continues, with the incentive that a higher level of consciousness (which means not only knowledge but also compassion, love, and a sense of oneness with all things) will ease our transition to the next world.
The above is a painfully brief summary of a far more detailed presentation. Is Beichler on to something? I don't know. I can't assess his theory on a technical level. But SOFT does offer certain advantages over competing approaches. For one thing, it resolves the old question of mind-body dualism by positing that the mind is a fifth-dimensional extension of the material body. It also solves the related problem of interactionism, inasmuch as the mind is no less physical than the body.
Moreover, it addresses the issue of methodological naturalism, which is so important to science. Methodological naturalism holds that science should always seek a non-supernatural explanation for any phenomenon. The rationale behind this method is that if we grant that a supernatural explanation is adequate, then we will probably stop looking for a natural explanation. For instance, if we decide that smallpox is a curse sent by the devil, then we may feel we don't need to look any further - and we will never learn that smallpox is caused by a virus, which can be combated with antiviral medicines. Or if we believe thunder is the roaring of the gods, we may not look deeper into the phenomenon and discover that its origin is electrical discharges in the atmosphere.
Methodological naturalism has been so crucial to science that scientists are unlikely to give it up. This is one reason - maybe the chief reason - why mainstream science chooses to ignore or ridicule paranormal phenomena. The stigma of superstition is simply too great to overcome. But if some natural, physical explanation were provided for such phenomena, some of the resistance offered by the scientific community might melt away. Beichler's SOFT may offer such an approach.
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*Art, these are for you!
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