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Paraview Pocket Books, 2004
ISBN: 0743471059
Spirituality/Paranormal
320 pages
Trade paperback, $14.00 |
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Amazon.com $11.20
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Michael Grosso
studied classics and obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from
Columbia University. He has taught philosophy and the
humanities at Kennedy University, City University of New
York, and New Jersey University. He is on the Board of
Directors of the American Philosophical Practitioners
Association, and is working with the Esalen Center of
Theory and Research on a consciousness research project.
His previous books include The Millennium Myth and
Soulmaking.
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IS THERE LIFE AFTER
DEATH? What happens to you after you die?
EXPERIENCING THE NEXT
WORLD NOW
by Michael Grosso, Ph.D.
From the scientific underground
of psychic research a report on what may happen after we
die. Is there really a life after death? We begin with a
tour of the best types of evidence for the survival of
consciousness—critically selected from the annals of
psychical research.
But is third-person evidence enough
to satisfy our need to know?
Despite the reports suggesting life after death—and the
often impressive claims of mediums and other
observers—what’s missing for most of us is personal
experience.
There are ways, however, of changing consciousness and
increasing the probability of first-person experience.
Here is a guidebook for the
adventure that nobody can refuse.
| "This book seriously
probes and ponders what the author perceives as real
evidence for life after death. He surveys the vast
literature of apparitional phenomena, near-death
experiences, the mediums of spiritualism, poltergeist
manifestations, recounting and comparing the out-of-body
experiences described down through history in numerous
examples from the Oglala Sioux warrior and medicine man
Black Elk, the Biblical account of Paul of Tarsus (2 Cor.
12:1-4), or the modern out-of-body talents of psychic
Alex Tanous, successfully tested and verified as genuine
by distinguished researchers with the American Society
of Psychical Research.
"The author also delves
into the subject and evidence of reincarnation and the
global traditions of shamanism and numerous other
spiritual belief systems, and even touches upon ufology
and the potential deeper implications of the
controversial phenomenon that it is dedicated to
studying, for the UFO mystery, Grosso notes, contains
“many earmarks of psychic phenomena” and has “suggestive
overlaps” with a wide variety of “otherworldly
visitations,” ranging from the Virgin Mary appearances,
fairies, demons, elementals, ghosts, etc. He touches
upon how the late Dr. Jung envisioned the classic UFO
shape as a “flying saucer,” a symbol of wholeness, taken
from an ancient Hindu perspective, wherein such a vision
was called a mandala. Jung’s significant ideas pop up in
a number of places throughout this book.
"Grosso traces the
ongoing research into human consciousness not only to
address the evidence of parapsychology and religion
regarding our potential survival of bodily death, but he
also explores the “imaginal” world in which the soul may
be released, and how our lifestyle choices, from active
to contemplative roles of living, may affect the
process, and how diet (and not just from food, but in an
ancient context that includes our work ethic, whether we
take the time to meditate and value quiet in our lives,
abstaining some from distractions in our lifestyles,
which today would commonly be television, radio,
newspapers, and the Internet) may likewise be involved.
Grosso discusses the various traditions that described
ways in which to encourage positive spiritual encounters
with the divine “light.” He notes how the imagination
can be cultivated for this activity, how Jung’s concept
of active imagination touched upon it well. He even
includes a “Light Exercise” if the reader is game.
"Grosso’s Ph.D. is in
philosophy and was obtained from Columbia University. He
is a thorough and credible writer/researcher who
assembles his case carefully and clearly. He weighs out
the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses of the
evidence for an afterlife. He knows the arguments and he
is well versed and familiar with the histories and
sciences surrounding the issues explored herein.
Grosso’s book is a solid piece of scholarly work and
makes a strong case for the evidence of an afterlife."
--
Reviewed by
Brent Raynes
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"A daring new vision of consciousness is currently taking shape,
in which the mind transcends the physical brain and body. This
new picture of the mind holds the promise of survival of bodily
death -- immortality... Dr. Michael Grosso is one of the leading
architects of this new paradigm, as this book shows."
Larry Dossey, M.D. author of Healing Beyond the Body,
Healing Words, and Reinventing Medicine
“Grosso is an original
thinker whose contributions in the field of human
consciousness reflect his deep understanding of the most
pressing spiritual questions of our time. He tackles the
questions about what lies ahead -- and within us -- with
masterful skill. He is a magnificent writer.” -- Caroline
M. Myss, author of Sacred Contracts and Anatomy
of the Spirit
“I can't think of anyone who can handle this challenging
and all-important material any better. Grosso expresses
himself with wonderful clarity, and with humor, and
manages at the same time to maintain a proper attitude of
skepticism.” -- John Cleese
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Life, so-called, is a short episode between two great
mysteries.
C.G. Jung
INTRODUCTION
I must have been about seventeen years old when I woke up one
day and realized I was going to die—not immediately—but sooner
or later. My main thought, after the first wave of terror
passed, was: “No! There’s got to be a way out of this!”
The idea of my future extinction felt grossly unfair, not to
mention, very annoying. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I
walked around, agog, in a kind of trance: streets, storefronts,
people walking back and forth, seemed wobbly, unreal, and for
days things glowed with a sinister light. The more I thought,
the more I protested. And the more I wondered about—everything!
Exactly as Dr. Samuel Johnson famously quipped, the thought of
death concentrated my mind.
The concentration took the form of a nervous eagerness to get to
the bottom of the mystery. Right from the start, I was convinced
my ignorance was bottomless. I felt sure there were depths of
mind, of life, I couldn’t even imagine, no less hope to fathom.
So, in this abrupt and stinging way, the discovery of my
mortality turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It made life
more interesting—more edgy and challenging. In the end, it made
death interesting. Would my death be a meeting with nothingness
or a great opening to the unknown? I felt goaded to explore the
supreme mystery—the miracle of consciousness—which allows the
world to appear to us in all its glory.
This book is the story of what I’ve learned so far. I began my
search haphazardly in the jungle of ideas and strange emotions
we call religion. At seventeen, I wandered into a building in
New York City that housed the Vedanta Society, and was struck by
what I read on the wall: “Truth is one; men call it variously.”
(How tolerant that seemed, how friendly and generous!) I met an
old man in Central Park whose passion was making Russian icons.
He surprised me with a story about an out-of-body experience he
once had, and was fond of saying that he looked forward to death
as “the great adventure.”
I discovered there were beings called mystics and shamans and
yogis who claimed to be familiar with the exotic outback of
human consciousness. I found there were Western scientists who
collected facts about the enigmas of human capacity. And I
should add that there is something fey that runs in my family,
and that I’ve had a few venturings of my own beyond the
enchanted boundary. I’ve seen with my own eyes how strange the
universe can be, and that has made me receptive to the often
stranger stories of others.
I soon found that the present scientific Zeitgeist is
unsympathetic to the idea of life after death; the topic is
decidedly off limits. I hope to show in this book that it’s very
much within the limits of science, for there are facts that
suggest we survive the sea change called death. Most educated
people sidestep these facts—often called the damned, the
excluded. Still, a stubborn if small band of scientifically
minded inquirers continue to collect, sift, and weigh the merits
of the data. I believe that what they have to say has
revolutionary implications for human psychology, and for how we
should view the world and live our lives.
In the course of my quest something gradually changed. The more I
probed the less I found myself thinking about life after death.
A more important result was the growing freedom I began to feel
to live life more fully here and now. I kept bouncing back into
the arms of the present, and I came to see the world with a new
freshness of perception. So, without meaning to sound
paradoxical, this book is as much about present life as it is
about the hereafter.
We will confront stories that point toward a future greater than
most of us can imagine. Still, as I hope to show, good evidence
for the afterlife may not be enough, not quite the thing we most
need, not the soul food we most hunger for. For myself, I want
to experience my life-enhancing truths in my body—now—and not
just deduce them from isolated anomalies or puzzling
observations.
I will begin by presenting evidence, personal testimonials of
Otherworld encounters. But no less important are the practical
implications of this evidence, which we hope to use as the basis
for launching a more direct form of afterlife research. Luckily,
we don’t have to start from scratch. Spiritual seekers and
psychic explorers since ancient times have gathered the fruits
of their wisdom, and much lore exists to guide the curious who
wish to experiment. Great wisdom traditions have been with us
for a long time, have long addressed our metaphysical needs, and
we will draw upon them.
Our problem today is that the sacred stories that inspired
humanity for thousands of years have been challenged by science,
forever changing our mental landscape. It all began when the
Greek philosophers got into the habit of quizzing nature,
raising doubts about everything, and mocking the religion of
Homer. Sacred forms of experience were scorned and disparaged
and eventually a certain kind of science came to dominate our
thinking; the old wisdom traditions were forced to take a back
seat.
Of course, it’s easy to tote up the pluses of Science, which has
freed us from ignorance and superstition, cleared the way to
mastering the forces of nature, extended life and made things
comfortable for the affluent in capitalist societies. On the
other hand, according to the official view, consciousness peeps
out momentarily, a flickering phosphorescence of nerve tissue,
and is destined to vanish forever after death. Materialist
science has torn down the ancient myths, and made the
implausibility of life after death an article of faith.
Frederic Myers, one of the great founders of psychical research,
powerfully felt the disillusionment born of the new scientific
materialism. “It must be remembered,” Myers wrote toward the end
of the 19th century, “that this was the very flood-tide of
materialism, agnosticism, the mechanical theory of the Universe,
the reduction of all spiritual facts to physiological
phenomena.” Myers wrote that he was left with “a dull pain borne
with joyless doggedness, . . . a horror of reality that made the
world spin before one’s eyes—a shock of nightmare-panic amid the
glaring dreariness of day.”
Myers, and the philosopher Henry Sidgwick, were among the
English founders of psychical research, which became, in effect,
an underground tradition in revolt against the “mechanical
theory of the Universe.” Provoked by this rabid materialism, a
small, dedicated group of Cambridge scholars decided in 1882 to
scientifically investigate the question of what happens to us
after death. As the decades unrolled, they amassed quite a bit
of data: reports of ghosts, hauntings, apparitions, mental
mediumship, ecstasy, possession, anomalies of hypnotism and
physical mediumship. English, French, German, Italian, American
and Icelandic investigators scrupulously collected this data,
which, en masse, I believe, may hold the secret to undreamed of
human potential. And yet it languishes, unrecognized,
unconfronted by science.
Psychical research attracted many distinguished scientists,
including some of the great pioneers of modern psychology:
William James, Gustave Flournoy, William McDougall, Sigmund
Freud, and Carl Jung; physicists like William Barrett, William
Crookes and Oliver Lodge (who invented a working radio before
Marconi), astronomer Camille Flammarion, Nobel-prize winning
physiologist Charles Richet, and Alfred Russell Wallace,
co-inventor with Charles Darwin, of the theory of natural
selection. Their achievements in psychical research have
vanished from most history books, and barely left a trace in
academe. One reason I have written this book is to remind the
public that such a body of work exists and why it’s important.
A book should be a partnership, a joint venture on the high seas
of thought. So what I’ve learned, I offer you, the reader, to
use, test out, and make your own for personal experiment. The
plan is to lay the groundwork for attempting to experience the
next world now—an idea whose rationale I hope to clarify as we
proceed. I have a hunch we’re not meant to know all the answers
for sure, but to be kept partly in the dark—always unsatisfied,
always a little hungry. What we do have is a feast of
possibilities: enough, I hope, to egg us on to explore, to open
up to new experiences, perhaps just enough to take the
proverbial sting out of death.
An early Gallup poll showed that 67% of Americans believe in
some form of afterlife. Since then the numbers have gone up. In
May, 2000, the New York Times Sunday Magazine published results
of a poll conducted by Blum & Weprin Associates; 81% said they
believed in life after death. The numbers take a nosedive among
the scientifically trained. This isn’t surprising. More than
once in the past, popular belief has been wrong in matters of
great moment, science right. But will mainline science prove
wrong this time and popular belief on the right track?
Billions of people probably accept some form of afterlife, the
vast majority because it gives hope, mollifies anxiety, and
promises reunion with loved ones. A few dream of high postmortem
adventures, romantic or mystical. Still others disbelieve
because the afterlife idea disturbs them, seems scientifically
impossible, morally dangerous, or just plain stupid. An
infinitesimal few use it to justify barbaric acts of terrorism.
It seems to me time to get to the bottom of this mystery.
We’re in the midst of the greatest period of scientific
discovery, the greatest information explosion in history, yet
most of us know more about our DVDs than we do about the fate of
our souls after death. We need to remedy this absurd disconnect.
We need to know all the facts; and most of all we need more
personal experimentation. Immortality and resurrection are ideas
embedded in our consciousness. Neanderthalers buried their dead
in sleeping postures, as if to symbolize what the prophet Daniel
would later say: "Many of those that sleep in the dust of the
earth shall awake" (Dan. 12:2). The oldest written tale, the
epic of Gilgamesh, is about bereavement and the quest for
immortality. According to Renaissance physician, Marsilio Ficino,
to believe we are immortal is as natural for us as neighing is
for horses.
If it’s so natural, is it psychologically unhealthy to repress
our yearnings for immortality? Are there insidious dangers we
should alert ourselves to? In Plato’s Symposium, the mysterious Diotima, Socrates' counselor on the mysteries of love, declares:
"Think only of the ambition of men and you will wonder at the
senselessness of their ways, unless you consider how they are
stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to
run all risks, greater by far than they would have run for their
children, and to spend money and undergo any sort of toil, and
even to die, for the sake of leaving behind them a name that
shall be eternal." Denying and repressing our afterlife
yearnings may distort our personalities in profoundly perilous
ways. If Diotima is right, it exacerbates the craving for fame,
for self-esteem, and for power and recognition at all costs.
So it might be better to acknowledge our yearnings for
immortality. Knowledge that we actually survive death might
moderate the distortions of personality that Diotima speaks of.
We should be frank about the importance of honoring our deep
soul needs, not only in theory but in practice. The human drama
calls for a bigger theater of time, wider dimensions of reality
to unfold its full potential, and it would be a boon if we could
imagine our lives resuming on other tracks of existence,
pursuing our stories in new and more favorable circumstances. So
let’s look at some of the facts, the evidence, the experiences
that people have that support a greater vision of human destiny.
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