Well, it happened. I’ve been watching the comments total for a while, and today we hit the magic number of 50,000.
Fifty. Thousand.
Woohoo! Let the celebrations begin!
Given the frequency of his appearances here, it’s appropriate that comment #50,000 was posted by Art. Here it is:
I made a "D" in political science 101 in college. That pretty much describes my interest in politics over my entire life. I was an Animal Science/Agriculture major in college and when I finally started taking courses in my major my GPA shot up and I actually made the Dean's list for a couple of quarters. I have family who are endlessly fascinated by politics and they shame me into voting but I do it for them, not for me. Me? I could care less. Politics to me is sort of like a pendulum and swings back and forth and is just something I have to put up with? I was born mid 20th century during the Eisenhower administration and since that time have lived and managed to survive under all flavors of politics. People tell me all kinds of stuff about how it's going to affect my life but so far? Not so much. It doesn't seem to be any worse now than it was when I was growing up, especially during the 1960s when people were getting shot and they made us duck under our desks to save us from Atom bombs? Heck I even remember the Cuban missile crisis and how freaked out people were about that? And Vietnam was even more bizarre. The Universe seems to have a never ending smorgasbord of separation for us to experience in this life and I don't expect it to ever be "peace and love" in this life? Like my mom used to say to me sometimes, "life ain't a bowl of cherries you know kiddo!"
I certainly never expected that this humble blog would draw this much commentary when I started it two decades ago. So, for all those, past and present, who contributed to this total:
That’s brilliant. I’ve learned a lot from this blog over the years.
Posted by: Paul | November 27, 2020 at 02:03 PM
Congrats! I don’t post much but I always look to see what’s new here. I have learned a lot from here even though I am still very skeptical.
Posted by: Bernardo Navarro | November 28, 2020 at 09:46 PM
Thanks for mentioning me on your blog Michael. Makes me feel like I'm somebody now. My 15 minutes of fame. {grin}
Posted by: Art | November 29, 2020 at 12:42 AM
Celebrate the moment, Art!
As our fifty thousandth commenter, you win free access to this blog for life!
Posted by: Michael Prescott | November 29, 2020 at 11:53 AM
Congratulations, Michael and Art! :)
Posted by: Matt Rouge | November 29, 2020 at 03:07 PM
You do realise Art that this means that if the server goes down you’re toast?
Posted by: Paul | November 30, 2020 at 05:36 PM
\\"You do realise Art that this means that if the server goes down you’re toast?" - Paul//
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That's okay because I will continue to exist in the original holographic film (heaven) that our universe is projected from. It is the place that many NDE'ers are trying to describe in their NDE descriptions. {smile}
I have read that heaven is a place where nothing exists and everything exists which I think means that before anything exists it first has to be thought of?
Posted by: Art | December 01, 2020 at 12:46 AM
Congratulations Michael!. I really enjoy this your blog as your blog doesn't have agenda. You presents both sides to the view of an afterlife.
Posted by: Leo MacDonald | December 08, 2020 at 05:05 PM
Just watched this fascinating interview with physical medium stewart alexander, courtesy of journalist and author Leslie Keane.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yd54sTJK7r4&t=2347s#menu
Stewart is one of those rare mediums who does not court publicity to any great extent, and in fact, as Leslie points out, it is very unusual for him do give interviews, so well worth checking out.
Towards the end, he touches upon an aspect of the phenomenon which has been discussed on this blog, namely the decline in quality mediumship in recent years, which interestingly he puts down to the decline of the home circle and the hours,years in fact, that are required to develop. This is something we have talked about here, where it's been noted that modern society isn't really conducive to sitting in dark rooms quietly for hours on end. Although we're happy to sit watching mindless tv for the same length of time!
He also refers to alec harris, another genuine medium, and leslie flint.
He also briefly mentions helen duncan, who I know is somewhat more controversial, although again on this blog we've discussed how there's some reasonable grounds for speculating that she was set up in the end, as some of the photo evidence which is used against her has some questionable origins when looked in to.
All in all, well worth checking out. I haven't read his book yet, but I have read Leslie Keane's own experiences sitting with Stewart and she says she's in no doubt about the genuine nature of Stewart's mediumship.
Posted by: Douglas | December 12, 2020 at 09:20 AM
Douglas,
Thanks for sharing, I will have to check it out. I hope this blog of yours Michael goes on for many more years to come. I love it and its very informative. You come across as neutral as it comes to an afterlife and I like that.
Posted by: Leo MacDonald | December 12, 2020 at 09:11 PM
I always say if no one's commenting that must mean they all agree with everything I said.
That is what it means, doesn't it?
Posted by: Anthony McCarthy | December 15, 2020 at 08:23 AM
Hello, Michael
I was hoping you could accommodate a request. I am 72 and promised my wife I would try to show 'proof' of my post mortem existence after I die. In your opinion, what would/could be a way to do this ? I imagine you have seen examples of this as I'm sure your readers have. Photo bombs of the deceased, faxes and phone calls, apparitions, certain sounds and strong communicative dreams come to mind. I imagine post mortem tools and protocol would be unlike anything I've experienced here on Earth. I would have to work with what I've got and who knows what that would be ?
I'm prompted to write this after watching a film called 'The 9th Configuration' with Stacy Keach. In the film, a Saint Christopher's medal left in a random taxi was the proof needed to assure another person of his friend's after death existence. This movie led to a conversation with my wife about this and I figured you would be the perfect go-to person on the subject. My wife thinks this topic is a little odd but said it would be a good thing if proof could be shown.
My own experiences with post mortem existence have been restricted to very strong, out-of-the-normal dreams that have left me with a definite impression of after death existence by the deceased. Parents and friends and co-workers.
Your blog has been bookmarked by me for longer than I remember. Please continue to write and I thank you for even reading this.
Cheers,
richard
Posted by: Richard Rogers | December 16, 2020 at 11:36 AM
Thanks very much for your kind words, Richard!
Definitive proof of that kind is hard to come by. The usual thing is to agree on a very specific message known only to you and your wife. Houdini made this arrangement with his wife. After his death, medium Arthur Ford claimed to have received the message. Houdini's widow at first accepted this claim but later rejected it after becoming convinced that Ford could have guessed the message. Ford's career was a mixture of seemingly authentic readings and readings that were shown to be fraudulent (his notes on his clients were found after his death, proving he had researched their family history), and people continue to debate the incident of the "Houdini code."
Apports like the Saint Christopher medal are rare and, if we can trust mediumistic accounts, hard to produce. Apparitions can always be dismissed as hallucinations or vivid dreams.
One type of message that most people find convincing involves giving information known only to the deceased. For instance, in one famous case, a man dreamed of his dead father telling him to look for a note sewn into an article of clothing. The note, when found, led the family to the dead man's will, hidden in an old Bible.
In another case, the famed clairvoyant and medium Emmaneul Swedenborg was able to locate some items in a secret drawer known to the deceased and not to anyone else.
So one strategy might be to conceal a meaningful object in a location unknown to anyone, including your wife, with the intention of guiding her to it later on. You could tell her of you general intent, without, of course, giving away any details. It is best if the item in question has some emotional meaning to both you and her, since emotional ties seem to persist more than mere intellectual interests. Of course, it must be something that your wife doesn't absolutely need to have, just in case the experiment doesn't work!
There are other possibilities, and you might try more than one thing. Sometimes a simple promise to make yourself known to her if at all possible can be enough to ensure a postmortem appearance of some kind, which would be convincing to her, though not necessarily to others.
Anyway, those are some thoughts. Hopefully you will not need to carry out your plan for many years to come!
Posted by: Michael Prescott | December 16, 2020 at 02:37 PM
Even with the best method of providing evidence, you’d still have to find a decent medium and get the recipient to find them too.
I can’t help thinking that’s such a tall order, most people either fail or don’t bother lol.
Posted by: Paul | December 16, 2020 at 06:13 PM
\\"Definitive proof of that kind is hard to come by." - MP//
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I don't believe we will ever be allowed to know 100% for certain that there is a life after death. All we seem to be allowed are brief glimpses of the afterlife? It is in the "not knowing" that our soul or consciousness learns the things it came here to learn. If this Earth life is a school as I believe it is it is in the "not knowing" that we learn the lessons that we are here to learn. There is a connection between emotion and memory and the more emotional the experience the more powerful and long lasting the memory it creates.
If we knew absolutely 100% for certain that there is a life after death and one day we were going to be reunited forever with our loved ones the death of someone we love would lose a lot of it's emotion. We would know that the separation from our loved ones is temporary and that they'd be waiting for us in heaven. The powerful emotions death evokes would no longer help imprint on our consciousness what it means or how it feels to separate from our loved ones.
The death of a loved one seems to be one of the major tools the Creator of this universe uses to teach us what it means and how it feels to be separate which is probably something that is difficult to learn in heaven due to those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness and lack of separation that so many near death experiencers report experiencing and feeling while on the other side. They say things like "I was one with the universe" or "me and the universe were one" or "I literally felt like I was the Universe" or "I was unique but the tiniest part of the whole."
Emotions make the memories last
https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20050131/emotions-make-memory-last
Posted by: Art | December 17, 2020 at 09:17 AM
Congrats. This has been one of my go to places for intelligent paranormal discussion. I'm in an afterlife Facebook group that takes Leslie Flint very seriously. I'm open minded skeptical about him. I recently downloaded the bio on Stewart Alexander and look forward to it. I hope this blog has a long and prosperous life. Thanks for keeping the conversation going.
Posted by: Steve Snead | December 18, 2020 at 08:29 AM
Thanks, Steve. You’ve been part of this blog for a long time!
Posted by: Michael Prescott | December 18, 2020 at 02:50 PM