MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS
Around my house there is movie that was released recently that we just cannot get enough of. It is Pixar’s, Soul, starring Jamie Fox. I have seen it twice by myself and then I watched it again with Liam.
It is probably the most ambitious animated film I have seen. I have been wanting to talk about it because in a time where we have been asked to stay in our homes, in a year in which so many bodies have been ravaged with COVID-19 and in which so many souls have been lost as the death tolls have been treated like weather reports— you can do a lot worse than sitting back and, for just under two hours watching a movie that attempts to put a laugh to what it is to be alive and what happens when you die.
The movie itself is perhaps somewhat slight, given it’s rather weighty subject matter, and the answers it gives are pretty simplistic but there is this underlying theme that I noticed and that is – the film subtly shows us that life is somewhat of a simulation and that the afterlife is to –and that many souls have a pre-life where they go through simulations to find their spark—or their ambition. It is a requirement before they go to earth.
It is as if you choose what character you want to play in this huge simulation, we call earth life.
Before the recent troubles that we have experienced in the last year — that is, during the previous troubles and the troubles before that there was this popular discussion that was playing off the belief among some tech bigwigs and others that our universe is actually the workings of an elaborate computer program. Reality had become so bizarre, the joke was, it must be the product of glitchy software.
The existential discussion also gave way to dimensional super-position where ghosts are not only proof of life after death but a simultaneous existence in another dimension.
Then there is quantum immortality which is one my favorite theories about what happens when we die – it is all a quantum question where we exist in quantum consciousness that experiences rebirth in different dimensions and possibly different universes.
During the pandemic, it’s less of a dark-humored nerdism and more of a redundancy.
What part of our lives are not simulations now? Is COVID-19 a simulation? Was the Donald Trump experience part of a time traveling superposition where the world ended in 2012 and we are passing through a refiners fire until we reach that moment where we get a glimpse of heaven?
Well with the apocalypse and the possible rapture aside it may be that the whole simulation theory is a product of science wishing to somehow mingle with religion.
This is probably a normal thing when we are somehow gravitating toward a new normal that appears to be a technocracy.
In these long and drawn out lock-downs. many people are spending more time with the TV — which in turn has developed a recent obsession with stories set in simulated realities. These series appeal to anxieties about technology, but also to a deeper fear.
We are suddenly thinking more often about death and death, life after death as well as the possibility of other forms of life, is at the core of these stories.
“Black Mirror’s tales of digitized consciousness have built upon the Plato’s Cave concepts of “The Matrix” and Philip K. Dick. This was the basis for one of my favorite episodes, “San Junipero,” set in a software-generated afterlife. San Junipero, I believe is a hopeful and beautiful love story of how in the future we may have the option of continuing the simulation of this life in a computer generated afterlife – some may say it is cynical as it has no real ties to the spiritual affair of life, death, God and judgement – but it removes the horror of the unknown and guarantees that you will have what you most loved about this life in the afterlife.
It is virtual reality that empowers the old – and gives them a way to cope with the loss of leaving behind those they love.
I had always had an interest in the simulation theory because of Philip K. Dick’s views in Déjà vu and his story. Total Recall.
At a 1977 appearance at the Metz Science Fiction Convention in France, Dick told of his own strange experiences, including recovered memories and déjà vu – and the personal revelation that these experiences were evidence of alternative universes.
“We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed, and some alteration in our reality occurs. We would have the overwhelming impression that we were re-living the present – déjà vu – perhaps in precisely the same way: hearing the same words, saying the same words. I submit that these impressions are valid and significant, and I will even say this: such an impression is a clue, that in some past time-point, a variable was changed – re-programmed as it were – and that because of this, an alternative world branched off.”
I think that perhaps death is yet another glitch in the matrix and so is an appearance of ghosts –or when we experience possible indications that a dead loved one is trying to get our attention. It would stand to reason that there would be this magnetic or electric matrix animating everything as most ghost hunters find that electronic gadgets and digital cameras are now able to pick up ghostly voices and pictures with accuracy.
The known universe is both frugal and precise in its application. It appears to use basic structures in multiple applications in order to create itself. Scientists are now interested in the structures of life and how it all applies on a quantum level and how consciousness has become the obstacle that breeds uncertainty. Especially when science is faced with the question of just what happens to consciousness after death.
Scientists are trying to figure out exactly what consciousness is.
Is it simply a product of the brain, or if the brain itself is a receiver of consciousness? If consciousness is not a product of the brain, it would mean that our physical bodies are not necessary for its continuation; that awareness can exist outside our bodies.
Dr. Richard Alan Miller and I once discussed the existential existence and the quantum after life speculating that perhaps we are simply a packet of information stored at a quantum – or sub-atomic – level.
Reducing the soul to merely a program of ones and zeroes isn’t exactly the Hallmark card version of what we are used to hearing in church. But it very well could be the answer of what our soul might be in a scientific way. Near death experiences might even prove this.
When a person dies temporarily, quantum information is released into the universe, only to return to the body’s cells if the host is brought back to life.
If a person dies, it is possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely.
In 2010, one of the most respected scientists in the world, Robert Lanza, published a book titled Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe.
An expert in regenerative medicine and the scientific director of Advanced Cell Technology Company, Lanza is also very interested in quantum mechanics and astrophysics, an interest that led him on a path to developing his theory of biocentrism: the theory that life and consciousness are fundamental to understanding the nature of our reality, and that consciousness comes prior to the creation of the material universe.
His theory implies that our consciousness does not die with us, but rather moves on, and this suggests that consciousness is not a product of the brain. It is something else entirely, and modern science is only beginning to understand what that might be.
Lanza’s theory implies that if the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies. But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals, then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle.
So it is intriguing to think that our souls are quantum packets of information that are infinite and that when it attaches to our biological host – it animates it. When the body or the host dies the packet of quantum data still exists like a TV or radio signal – if we have the right equipment or even another biological avatar or component – that quantum packet of data can be resurrected in a new body—in a NEW FORM.
This would also explain ghost activity. If we remove all of the paranormal and supernatural aspects of ghostly encounters, we can surmise that a packet of quantum data.
Testimonials from prominent physics researchers from institutions such as Cambridge University, Princeton University, and the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich claim that quantum mechanics predicts some version of “life after death.” They assert that a person may possess a body-soul duality that is an extension of the wave-particle duality of subatomic particles.
Wave-particle duality, a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics, proposes that elementary particles, such as photons and electrons, possess the properties of both particles and waves. These physicists claim that they can possibly extend this theory to the soul-body dichotomy. If there is a quantum code for all things, living and dead, then there is an existence after death.
But beyond the scientific attempts at confirming the simulation of death outside of the simulation of life, we still have to contend with the loss of a loved one and whether or not we can preserve their consciousness or find answers as to where they have gone when they die.
Many people have been seeking out mediums and other experts in parapsychology to give them comfort in dealing with the loss of the loved one. One such person is Mike Anthony – who is the accidental star of a new and very well-done documentary on Netflix about Life After Death,
The series is called, Surviving Death, based on the book of the same name by Leslie Kean. Kean wrote the book and actually appears in the series and speaks about the death of UFO researcher Bud Hopkins.
This series take the approach that when investigating life after death, objectivity isn’t really in the cards. With this particular subject, absolutely everyone is personally invested. Every one has a hidden desire to know what comes next –even if you are a person who believes death is just lights out and that is the final word.
In the series, Mike Anthony is an eager and earnest soul who is out to find out what happened to his father. He explains that he and his father were very close and that his death was a devastating blow to him. So in the middle of the series we see him go from medium to medium with is family in tow to try and figure out where his father has gone and whether or not he has a message for him.
I have to admit that some of his visits to many of the mediums were tedious and quite predictable—you can almost feel his frustration as Mike has words or clues that he wishes the mediums would say to satisfy his curiosity.
There is a disappointing moment where he visits a medium with is family and the person channeling the information from his father could have easily gotten the information of off of Facebook.
It is as if Anthony is continuing a relationship with his father. But he’s also vetting and rating these mediums on their abilities, with a willingness to admit that some are probably hustling and taking advantage of his trust. He puts himself through a heavy rinse-and-repeat cycle of emotions between skeptic and believer and back.
It is a roller coaster ride where I found myself feeling for him –and despising some of the mediums that were obviously cold reading the audience and fooling people into believing that they are a conduit to the other side.
I heard many people deride ,mediums for this reason undefined some are cynical about the possibility of an afterlife and how mediums candy coat death by telling people that everything is okay and yet deep down we don’t want to set ourselves up for the most crushing disappointment.
The series has its moments of new age metaphysical puffery. Something that I have turned off to over the years. I have always had a disdain for mediums and ghost hunters who believe it is their job to banish ghosts to the light.
No one ever thought of that until after the Poltergeist movies where he dwarfish medium tells the little girl Carol Anne to got to the light. I was at a ghost conference and heard a medium say how proud she was that she lead spirits into the light and I asked her if she had to go to the bathroom.
She looked at me and said, undefinedno.undefined
I said then why don’t you go to the bathroom?
She said – I don’t have to.
I said again – you should go to the bathroom.
She then said - what are you doing?
I said you do not have to go to the bathroom and I have been insistent that you do but you seem annoyed – so why do you insist on ghosts or spirits going into the light? There is a reason why they are here in the first place – they may have a message or want to make contact with someone and you demand that they go somewhere that they have avoided for so many years.
If we decide to come back to our bodies, that is our choice – if we decide to hover in the universe that is our choice too.
The concepts of heaven or hell could very well be a religious psy-op to keep control of how our data behaves when it is in its biological host. By saying that I am not declaring it bad – I am saying that perhaps we should open our minds and dispense with tings that we take for granted – or not.
Religions have interpreted it in many ways, but the truth is more than inconvenient – it is immobilizing.
Physical death happens – death of consciousness is a different story.
Death and what happens next is all based on faith.
The proof and the truth be a whole new form of disclosure.
