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Kickstarter: Death Makes Life Possible

By Gregon

One thing I’ve found while researching the book I’m working on, is that death (and by association, the ‘afterlife’) is a topic that people don’t like talking about, and to all of our detriment. It is one of the biggest, if not *the* biggest moment in our lives (given that it ends it), and there should be far more open discussion of the event and what it means to each of us. So I’m really enthusiastic about the documentary-in-progress Death Makes Life Possible:

What can we learn from the world’s wisdom traditions that helps us understand death and the worldviews people hold? What can science tell us about Life After Death and potential survival of the personality? What about Reincarnation? Heaven and Hell? Do our loved ones wait to guide us across the void at our time of passage? Do dreams help us prepare for our death and beyond? Is it possible to “defeat death” and remove the fear of death so that we may live more freely and more fully? Death Makes Life Possible explores these ideas and shows how contemplation of death may actually result in the achievement of unlimited peace and joy.

The good news is that you can help bring this documentary into the world, and get yourself a copy of the movie in the process, via their freshly-announced Kickstarter campaign. Here’s the promo:

Featuring a number of our good friends, including Dean Radin, Stu Hameroff, Rupert Sheldrake, Marilyn Schlitz and Deepak Chopra, I’m sure many readers will be interested in backing this project. If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, check it out below…certainly looks like a great feature.

Backing projects such as this helps people create quality content on topics you want to see. So get behind it, rather than enabling the big TV channels and the trash documentaries they are constantly showing.

Greg
Editor
Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife.
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13 Comments

  1. from the Patened-Pandas-Dept.
    [quote=Greg]One thing I’ve found while researching the book I’m working on, is that death (and by association, the ‘afterlife’) is a topic that people don’t like talking about, and to all of our detriment.[/quote]

    I thought that since Australia has so many deadly animals and environments that death to Aussies is a walk in the park (and accounts for some of their wonderful sense of humour)?

    1. Fear of talking about death
      I guess many people fear attracting death into their lives, jinxing themselves, family, and friends. It seems silly, superstitious, but I can understand why people want to avoid death as much as possible. I myself have only seriously started researching in depth about NDEs just this year — and I’ve been a Grail knight for over a decade! NDE/afterlife research is a subject I’ve only ever skimmed, subconsciously making efforts to avoid; I figured I’d find out the hard way eventually, anyway. 😉

      1. One term that tends to get
        One term that tends to get jettisoned after digging into the topic is “after” life. There becomes a more felt sense of a continuum and change of state rather than a termination and new beginning, and transitioned people often still retain a relationship to life in this plane, so there is no clear demarcation between states. It is in flux to say it in a hackneyed but still true manner.

      2. from the Learnin-Aboot-Kulture-Dept.
        Thanks Rick MG

        What are some of the dangerous things around you that you don’t really notice or are a social norm for you?

    2. Paradox
      It’s quite the paradox. People don’t like to think of the inevitable looming on the horizon. Yet at the same time neither do we focus on the NOW; we are always thinking about senseless plans we keep on hold indefinitely because we delude us into thinking we’ve got plenty of time.

      Death is the only cure against the existential Limbo.

  2. death is not the answer
    I disagree with RPJ, but only because so many people, despite the promise of Death, waste their lives away. It should snap people to live in the NOW, but mostly, it don’t. Also, if we all were immortal, the best Way of Life would yet be to live in the NOW – to do every day what it is we most want, viscerally need to do. Sitting about with your thumb up your bum is always a waste of existence, even when that existence is open-ended.

    Someone in the preview mentioned that the concept of an afterlife encourages right behavior (paraphrasing). This is a discussion in Brothers Karamazov, which got me thinking about it, and I disagree. If there is no afterlife, we still ought to make the best of our time here. To create as much happy-joy-health-love as possible still makes sense; misery doesn’t. And yet, how many people Believe in a life of suffering In Order to enjoy a good afterlife? Hell, blow yerself and others up for the sake of a happy eternity! Suffer and the closer thou art to God. No, afterlife or not, death or not, our time here is still pragmatically to be spent in joyful fulfillment, not wasted opportunities or chaotic pain-mongering.

    And lastly, this: It occurred to me as I read the post, and noted my own ambivalence. On the one hand I know there is more to All This than the physical, I know spirit exists beyond space-time, and yet sometimes I shake my head, thinking ‘what the hell, you die, you’re done; it’s obvious.’ What if the right-brain (as it were) literal Mind does die, but the left-brain (as it were) non-literal, non-rational Mind is timeless? Ha! And what if you do indeed die, cease to exist, UNLESS you integrate your mind-spirit via various spiritual practices? Now that’s scary!

    too much coffee, sorry,
    ~a

    1. Many of the people reporting
      Many of the people reporting near death experiences say the first confrontation is usually with light beings who ask them what they have accomplished. If they have a piss poor answer then the get to go back and try again. The people with the piss poor answers who don’t die usually become very energized by the experience to eat up more life with gusto and with altruism. They understand that the only thing of value anywhere is love, and that a life lived without that is a waste.

    2. We disagree in our agreement
      That’s why I said it was a paradox 😉

      It’s like the thought of death made us behave like those scared rabbits frozen in place at the sound of an eagle’s cry —or maybe I’m too influenced by Castañeda 😉

  3. Mediumship Class
    Death is certainly as significant as birth — the “Exit, stage left” after our life performance absolutely inevitable from the moment of our first appearance.

    Do our personalities continue after it?

    I believe so, based primarily on a lifetime of odd experiences. If so, is it possible to become consciously aware of the shades of the departed?

    The whole topic isn’t at all far removed from the explorations of trance states & trance typing I once engaged in, in the company of fellow formerly-solitary Seth readers met on-line, in the early days of Internet adoption, but that was quite some time ago. Most of my fellow explorers have long since moved on to other activities. It’s possible to burn out on the Seth material, too, after years and years of discussion threads concerning the finer points of “you create your own reality,” a phrase Seth originated that was later borrowed by many who rarely, if ever, attributed it to him, and isolated the saying from its proper context, entire books of explanations.

    Additionally, an essential component of the Dead Techie Project, an attempt to “objectify” communication with the dead, is communicating with a dead engineer or engineers interested in communicating with the living and collaborating on the creation of some new technologies.

    Is it possible to consciously sense and communicate with the dead? (In a trance state this can be easily accomplished, but in my case the contact tended to be with other versions of myself who lived and died in other eras, not exactly the same as communicating with a dead techie or engineer who does not share the same greater self, entity, soul, or whatever you wish to call it.)

    If it’s possible to find out, to know, then this must involve trying to do so; thinking or reading about it alone simply won’t suffice. Furthermore, working with a skilled & experienced teacher makes a lot of sense — I taught myself how to meditate, once, and also how to repair old cars (back when they were fairly simple) but sometimes it helps to have a teacher.

    So I signed up for an 8-week beginner’s class in mediumship.

    This has been quite an experience, and I truly look forward to attending each week’s class. I having nothing against working whatsoever, but I have to say that these classes have been much more fun and far more provocative than working, a welcome evening respite from the toils of the day.

    More on this later.

    Bill I.

      1. Chesterfields
        RP Junkie:

        First of all, today was very hot, so when taking my usual walk by the shore (I live on a small peninsula, famous in 1914 or so, but now quiet, the last grand hotel having burned down in 1958) I couldn’t resist entering one of the two presently existing drinking establishments as it is air conditioned while my small apartment, a place I’ve lived in since 1988, is not. I then consumed not 1, not 2, but 3 apple martinis (substituting gin for vodka). I’m posting this while still under the influence.

        Secondly, the teacher of the class is a gorgeous woman, but also a ball-buster — there is no time to think; one must simply do.

        Evidence is not of the scientific variety, instead a kind of validation is obtained. You have the reader (the medium), a sitter, and the spook, in this tradition.

        Class members & the teacher serve in the sitter and medium roles.

        So — one class member, pushed by the teacher into the role of the medium, came to me — (“May I come to you?” she asked — then providing information she obtained, very subjectively. “Yes” I said. She described a dead woman who smoked Chesterfield cigarettes. Now, in my entire life, I’ve only known one single woman — now dead — who smoked Chesterfields. What could I say but “Yes!”)

        There’s no way to prove any of this, but then how many dead women do you know who smoked Chesterfields?

        This kind of validation also applies to me, when I was pushed into the role of medium.

        I’m familiar with the investigations of Wm. James & company and know that there are other possible explanations. Still, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. James always attempted to maintain the role of the “objective observer.”

        This was a major mistake, in my opinion.

        Bill I.

        Addendum:

        o Our eyes are closed when the teacher says: “O.k. — your turn.” We stand, as she takes care that no one topples over, turning and sensing — people tend to feel or sense spooks, get visuals, or both, highly subjective of course.

        I can’t speak for the other class members, but I am in a very expansive state — “high” — when the teacher pushes us to do these things, as the class meditates once or sometimes twice before making attempts. I’ve meditated for years, but there’s something about meditating with this class that is different from my own solitary meditations — after those, I may often fall asleep; sometimes during my meditation. After the first class, I was embarrassingly “high” and realized I should have paid much more attention to what the teacher had said about “grounding” (I’d said to myself: “Yeah — grounding. No big deal, I know how to do that.”)

        I have experimented many times with trance states and know that it’s not wise to drive or operate heavy equipment in such a condition, but most of my experiences have involved inducing a trance by focusing on writing while sitting in front of a computer monitor, at the keyboard, something I knew was possible — many friends & associates learned to do this — but didn’t actually experience until years after enviously watching them do this (this was often done in real-time, on-line), almost accidentally. The altered states associated with the class are related, but different, catching me by surprise (the teacher plays various CDs, too, while my solitary meditations are accomplished in silence). Vivid & healing dreams have been one aftereffect, lasting several days/nights after a class.

        I can connect some of the class experiences with my own long list of unusual experiences from the last 40 years or so, notably what some call a “crown chakra expansion.”

        Ignoring the conceptual frameworks such words fit into, they refer to a highly distinct and entirely subjective experience, one that is, apparently, closely associated with trance states, mediumship, and expansive consciousness. The general ignorance of such experiences is something I find puzzling, as it’s not difficult to induce them, but then a research scientist (I hold that scientism is rapidly becoming the new religion) can only record what “subjects” say they are experiencing or record brainwaves & such on monitoring devices — needless to say, this is completely different from experiencing them. How can anyone even begin to attempt to understand such areas without personally experiencing them?

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