By Stephen Ellis - Again, for those of you who read parts 1,through 4 and commented on them, “Thank you”. I’m not certain as to “how” so many of you have obtained my e-mail address (stebrel@aol.com), but there is no secret about it and I do appreciate the comments. Most of all, I have to thank Lon Strickler and his paranormal news (“Phantoms and Monsters”) for allowing me to set forth the material about living again after we die.
When I was about ten years old, my family and I lived in an apartment on the west side of Manhattan. In those day, all the tall buildings in Manhattan had elevators that were not “automatic”. They were operated by what was known as an “elevator man”. One elevator man in my building was a Black man named Joseph. I mention that he was Black, but in those days, in Manhattan, people were not segregated by the color of their skin. As an “aside” prejudice is something that you have to be taught. People are not born with prejudices.
I had been going to a religious school (three times a week after school) and in one class the teacher explained that when you die…that’s the end of everything. There is no Heaven and there is no Hell. So, when I got home, asked Joseph if he knew what was going to happen when he died. His response was one I will never forget:
He said, “I’m betting everything I have that I’m going to live again. Maybe in Heaven...maybe not. But the way I look at it, I’m betting on a sure winner...because if I lose my bet, I’ll never know that I lost.”
Think about it: His logic was absolutely perfect! You might as well believe that you’re going to live again after your body dies because if you don’t live again...you’ll never know it.
Perhaps, because I am still working as a Referee for the Superior Court, my training is to see-through nonsense and deal with facts and sound logic. When “facts” are difficult (or impossible) to uncover, we have to resort to sound logic and empirical evidence. It is “facts” that support my writings.
Almost invariably, when I lecture on the subject of “living again”, some people feel that I am being anti-religious. This is not at all true. In fact, some of my research is very supportive of many religious beliefs.
Great religions, such as Christianity, Zoroastrians, Shintu, Muslims, etc. all seem to accept the belief in an “immortal soul” or “spirit”. They have different names for it, but whatever specific religions choose to call it, essentially it is the same thing and serves the same purpose: that life will continue after death.
Inasmuch as even the most skeptical of scientists will admit and acknowledge that there is an invisible electro-magnetic “aura” around each living person that does not appear to die when the body dies, I simply choose to call the consciousness that does not die, our “aura”.
I do believe that allowing our religious beliefs to consume our consciousness is a mistake because it tends to block-out the freedom of thought that distinguishes the human mind from all others. We should all realize that our religious preferences are “beliefs”. To me, whether it agrees with my thinking or not, it’s fine to have a set of religious beliefs that you want to follow and adhere to…but I feel it is a mistake to allow those beliefs to become so controlling that they block out free thought.
It has often been said that more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason: The Christian Crusades, The Hindu Wars, The Holocaust, Isis, etc.
Do our religious beliefs, while alive, have any effect of what happens when our body dies?
Of course, I do not know…or do not remember, but there is some pretty strong empirical evidence that when our bodies die, and we enter the afterlife, we have some “choices” to make”
In the next part, we will explore the choices we will probably have to face.
If you are interested in the subject, I suggest you read my book, “Explaining the Unexplained”. You can download a Kindle of it for about $3.00. Hard and soft-cover copies are available at Barnes & Nobel and at Amazon.
Explaining the Unexplained
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