Updates

4/26/06
It's been awhile since I wrote an Update--I see that since I started these Updates in March of 2003, they have become fashionable and are now called "blogs"... Sometimes I have just reported what's going on with the project, and sometimes I've mused about related matters, including, occasionally, things in my personal life. This morning I'm going to do a bit of both.

On the face of it, there's not so much to report with what I, perhaps a bit grandiosely, choose to call the "In Another Life" project. Films Media Group is selling Version 2 to universities and libraries--but I don't know the stats yet so I don't know how well it's doing. They should be releasing Version 3--the one I tightened up so as to be more broadcast-worthy--sometime next month. Bolero Publications in Greece now has distribution rights, and is processing a Greek language version there. By contract I have retained the final say on the translation, to be sure that the founders of the two spiritual organizations represented in the film--the Vedanta Society, and the followers of Meher Baba (of which I am one)--are accurately represented. I have two native speakers in the latter group who will double-check the translation. It may sound unnecessary, but there are too many alternate translations for terms like "mind" and "soul," for example, which could change the interviewees' entire meaning. I have to think of these things...

Andrew Stewart of Legacy Films in Canada writes me he is approaching the Canadian military--if it is distributed there, which is probably a long-shot, it will not be a paid gig for me, just exposure. He is also preparing to present it to at least one commercial broadcaster, but before he does, he will arrange a free screening to judge audience reaction. I know it has gotten good reactions from college classes, by the feedback I've gotten from professors. I know that some 13,000 households watched it, unpromoted on a Saturday night, in Denver. And I know that at a recent IARRT (the past-life therapists' professional organization) convention, they showed it twice. These were all Version 1 or 2. But I don't know how a general audience might react. I would predict, however, that some people who can't receive the information or the energy associated with the film, will be bored by the relatively long time that I have people talking on camera, not becoming absorbed, by definition, in what the people are saying. Then there will be people who feel angry or insulted; and, finally, there will be a group who are strongly appreciative. I'll be very curious to get Andrew's report as to percentages.

There have been no requests for radio interviews at all this year, and I haven't attempted to arrange any on my own initiative. Last year seems to have been the year for that. Perhaps it was practice, or perhaps I--and reincarnation--are yesterday's news. Other speakers in this topic area tell me they're not doing much in this regard right now, either. The most recent Gallup Poll has reincarnation belief down from 25% in, I think it was, 1991, to 21% last November, as I recall. It had actually dipped even lower, to 20%. I don't know what's causing that shift. It would seem we are going backwards and my efforts are having no effect at all. There is an article that comes up prominently on the internet under keyword "reincarnation" by a professor named Melton, which torpedoes Edgar Cayce's reincarnation readings, pointing out, devastatingly, that in a sampling of readings, Cayce identified the same historical person for two different subjects on at least two occasions; i.e., that in two readings for two separate people, he said they had each been the "woman at the well" in the Bible. I have not gone back and confirmed this finding, nor has anyone else to my knowledge. If it is true, it proves that Cayce's readings were not always literally accurate. Melton also finds that a geographical and historical distribution of the past lives puts them in places and eras of which the waking Cayce was most familiar. For example, Cayce was very familiar with the Bible--and so a disproportionate number of past lives would be found in the Biblical setting.

This could be caused by a kind of karmic selection--the people who came to Cayce for readings would be people he had past-life connections with, and thus would have a disproportionately high amount of past lives in areas that Cayce, also, had had past lives in. But this explanation is a long-shot and I wouldn't expect it to account for the skewing. As I've pointed out in a rebuttal article, I think this is what some people call "coloring," the influence of Cayce's own subjective filter in "clothing" the images he received psychically with an outward form of things Cayce was most familiar with. In short, even when in trance, Cayce had to receive and interpret the images in a context that was part of his own experience and knowledge. Melton's interpretation would be that it was all imagination, as I infer from his article. My interpretation would be that he was receiving images from people on the other side (who, themselves, may or may not have had access to something like an astral "internet" over there), which images then passed through an additional filter of his own knowledge. So imagine a friend with access to the internet sending you pictures. Firstly, the internet may not always be 100% accurate; then your friend picks and chooses what he thinks is important; and lastly, you interpret the pictures with your own understanding. I think that is something like what's happening when a psychic gives a reading, and accounts for the fact that their results are too accurate for chance, but still not entirely accurate.

Anyway, all that to speculate that perhaps Melton's article has had an impact--though I can't imagine it has had a four-point spread impact as reflected in the Gallup Poll! One poll indicates that most of these people who reported belief in reincarnation have gone over to the "undecided" category. This may indicate a healthy movement of people who once accepted it as a belief, but are now questioning more deeply whether it could actually be a true belief. This is a subtle point but an important one. People can decide to believe anything--just like we decide not to eat chocolate as our New Year's resolution. But it doesn't go very deep, and come the holidays, that same person is eating chocolate... Entertaining as a fanciful notion "I believe in reincarnation, I want to come back as a seagull" is a very different thing from, say, reading Carol Bowman's book "Return From Heaven" and realizing that it is an actual phenomenon. The Gallup Poll doesn't distinguish between people who hold reincarnation as an adopted belief, and those who are convinced from the evidence or from personal experience that it is actual.

Last night I saw Eric Johnson perform here in Atlanta, opening, this time, for Joe Satriani. Actually I rushed to buy the ticket before I knew that was the case, but I would have bought it anyway just for the chance to see Eric perform. You may have seen in the "News" section of this website that I am thinking Eric could be the reincarnation of Handel, who wrote "The Messiah". I really have no idea if that speculation is right, of course. I've resisted saying anything about it for some months--it just keeps coming to me, and finally I threw caution to the wind and presented it. From my impressions last night, I still think it could be correct. One website about Handel has quotes about him taken from various notables of the time. One of them, who was critical of him, spoke of Handel's violin playing as being unremarkable except for his "dexterity". This remark was very interesting to me--because it shows that Handel not only played violin, but probably played it quite well. The negative reaction was (as is often the case with "In Another Life") probably more a reaction against Handel's spiritual energy, or perhaps an expression of prejudice against an experimental style--than against the music itself, which history has confirmed was brilliant. In short, while this fellow was laughing at Handel, now, in hindsight, anyone reading his comments, in the light of history, would laugh at him. And this is how it always goes when anyone tries to present genuine spirituality to the world.

Now, I'm going to try to be gentle with this, because discernment is important, but it must be done compassionately. Although Eric is currently playing electric (after going through a phase of playing all-acoustic gigs), and is trying to please the rock guitarist crowd, still, in his performance last night, there were flashes of his spirituality--magnificent, triumphant, lyrical, tender--the same range that one finds in "The Messiah", but now exploring the full repertoire offered by the electric rock genre, modern technology, and several centuries' worth of advances in music theory. If anyone attends or has attended on my recommendation, I hope they experienced some of it.

Then, Joe Satriani took the stage, and it was like an object lesson in isolating what I'm talking about here. Joe is a fantastically good guitarist, with full and confident mastery over his instrument. When he first started, I got an intuitive flash of a sitar master (I never know if these impressions are accurate or not). Joe is a showman and my impression, not being a guitarist, is that he throws in every special technique in the book to please the crowd. It wasn't a dark energy--it was a fun energy, really, and at times he could be lyrical. But it was by-and-large a worldly, bluesy energy, and it was mostly about Joe. That wasn't just my impression--at one point he played with a guitar that had a big picture of himself on the face. And it was all in fun, you know--I suppose he was creating a bigger-than-life persona--but the point is, the intangible "thing" I'm trying to describe about Eric's music simply wasn't there. It was like a scientific experiment, lifting out that one intangible variable so you could see more clearly what it had been.

What I am coming to understand is that spirituality is simply invisible to worldly people. It is as though--and others have used this analogy--it is as though there is a sense, like sight or hearing, that most of the population simply doesn't have, and so anything that requires this "sense" to perceive it, doesn't exist for them. For me, the spiritual energy, the spirituality in Eric's music, was tangible, as though I could reach out and touch it. For perhaps the largest portion of that audience, it simply wasn't there. To them he was a very good guitarist, and some of his music was great and some of it was, well, a bit boring or uninteresting. To them, Joe's music was a lot better.

To the people who could sense the spirituality in Eric's music, there was no comparison. Joe was brilliant, and fun, and you couldn't help but like him despite his focus on himself--but after awhile it got tiring and overstimulating.

Now. All that to say this, and my apologies to Joe and Eric, because I'm sure Eric holds Joe in high regard and I don't want to say anything to offend either of them. But there's a point to all this. How can you present real spirituality to the world? It rejects you--partly because it really, actually can't perceive it. There's nothing there as far as most people are concerned. Nothing very remarkable in Handel's violin playing, the critic said, though he did have to admire his dexterity. Do we believe that today? What of Handel's foray into non-Christian themes? We don't hear much about that--I ran across one reference. So most people only hear that one work, "The Messiah," around Christmas time, and Handel is thus identified with mainstream religion. But the man himself, if the one source I found is accurate, was a Mason...in which case Handel probably accepted and understood reincarnation. Would Eric be allowed to play in a church? Maybe, maybe not... The irony, if my guess is correct, is that Handel became identified with organized religion, although he may have been deeper and broader in his spiritual understanding; while Eric Johnson is becoming identified with secular rock (with a brief foray into acoustic work that almost lost him his fan base), though his spiritual understanding is clearly deeper and broader. There is really no place in the world for the true mystic--if he wants to be successful in the world, the world will attempt to force him into this camp or that camp, though really-speaking he belongs in neither.

Anyway, enough of that. This is why Jesus used the phrase, which no doubt predated his Advent and was a common saying at the time, "those who have ears to hear, let them hear."

Now, recently I dropped from a fairly steady website hit rate of 120/day, to as low as 60/day. It's gradually struggling its way back up to 90/day. I do know that when I change the home page (and as I write this, I'm thinking--nobody's reading down this far!), the site temporarily falls off the search engine map. But this time the search engine rankings came back--bottom of the first page on Google, #7 on Yahoo, and #2 on MSN--but the hits didn't didn't come back, and I'm wondering why. Did I offend some large site that had formerly been linking to me?

One of the offensive things I wrote recently, was to comment that the Wiccan creed, "Do as you will and harm no-one" is a paradox. If you do as you (personally, selfishly) will, you will invariably start harming people, sooner or later. That is built into the very fabric of creation, and it is because our personal, small "self" is an illusion, a temporary construct that is necessary during the long stage of reincarnation before realizing God. As I look at it, I am wondering if the original meaning of that creed wasn't the same as you find in Hinduism, to be true to one's own dharma, one's path, one's "calling" as they would say in Christianity. So that the original saying might have gone something like, "Follow your own path, and harm no-one." THIS, now, sounds like a creed one could live by, fearlessly and righteously, that would lead one to Truth. And while we are on the subject of Truth, the same principle applies to the idea that I have my truth, and you have your truth, and "it's all good." That's a distortion, as well, I would say. The original idea is, "I have my approach to the (one, supersensible) Truth, and you have your approach to the Truth, and each approach is valid." Note the difference...one will get you in trouble, the other will take you towards Enlightenment.

This points up the fact that once I made the commitment to present what I believed and had discerned to be true about reincarnation, I put myself in a position to be demonstrating discernment itself. Sometimes I defend myself, sometimes I just "put it out there." I constantly walk the razor's edge in terms of discerning but not judging (i.e., not being judgemental). Sometimes I slip off that edge. Did I walk it in my discussion above about the concert? Discernment is important--compassion is important.

What's not important to me is being "politically correct". Being all-inclusive and accepting of every idea that comes across the board is, currently, politically correct. "It's all good" people say these days. No, it's not all good. Nor are people all good--neither from person to person, nor inside each person. All people are really the Self, the atman, the soul, and in this deeper sense all are spiritually perfect. But as egos, as personalities, as incarnations, they show varying degrees. All ideas ultimately can be traced back to God. But as ideas, some are admixtures of truth and falsehood. I keep going back to the analogy of food and restaurants--you really don't want to be eating at a restaurant that got a health inspection rating of 50, in the name of political correctness, do you? So by the same token, do you want to be absorbing into the network of your conscious and unconscious understanding of spiritual realities, teachings from people who are guessing, or who themselves have an imperfect understanding? (This doesn't even take into consideration the outright frauds whose main purpose is to exploit people.)*

There is the judgemental attitude; and there is the "anything goes" attitude. Neither of these are what I'm talking about when I discuss spiritual discernment. People who are judgemental see no merit in the "anything goes" philosophy; people who have reacted against judgementalism and adopted the "anything goes" philosophy, see no merit in the judgemental position. The discerning person sees merit in both positions, but also sees the drawbacks in each position.

So, interestingly, to the judgemental person, the discerning person will appear to be too open-minded; while, to the "anything goes" person, the discerning person will appear to be judgemental.

And this is precisely the problem I'm having in getting "In Another Life" distributed. The Christians think it is too much involved in the occult or even "of the devil". The materialists, of course, think it is nonsense and imagination, and are equally judgemental about it in their own way (materialism being a belief system). On the other hand, the New Age people see it as judgemental, I would guess. At least, they probably feel that way about what's chosen to be presented in this website. How dare I suggest that some teachings are more authentic than others? Why don't I present certain well-known teachers? Why won't I link to certain websites by request? And so-on.

At the bottom of the home page, you may have noticed that, below the icon for the live video cam of the beach, I've added one with live sharks, at the Monterey Bay aquarium. Only after I put that on there, did it occur to me, this probably wasn't the wisest juxtaposition. I, myself, really don't like to swim in the ocean, because I know those things are out there. So maybe subconsciously I was expressing my own reservations about swimming at the beach! It wasn't meant to be sadistic, certainly. Every time I change the home page I drop drastically in the search engine rankings, so I'm reluctant to make another change so soon after the last one. Actually, the Monterey Bay aquarium website is fantastic--I highly recommend exploring it.

In the meantime, I got to thinking about this juxtaposition, and I think it has some deeper meaning. The ocean symbolizes the infinitude of God. Sharks symbolize the powerful thoughts that lurk in the unconscious. In our physical world, the ocean is not God--it is salty, undrinkable water that is subject to terrible storms. It can and often does kill people. Likewise, in our physical world, sharks are obviously not deep thoughts. They are killing machines which can, and sometimes do, kill people.

So the outward physical symbol is not the same as the inner reality. If you look at these things as the outward form, they clash. We want to relax at the beach--but there are the sharks to consider. It is a jolting thought, and poor taste on my part.

But if we use the symbol to look for the spiritual reality behind it, we see that they do not clash at all. The Ocean of God only "kills" you in the sense that you have to leave your false self behind in order to plunge into it. The "sharks" of deep thought only kill you in the sense that they slay your limited and limiting beliefs and opinions.

So if you dive into the Ocean of God, deep and powerful truths will attack and devour your ignorant assumptions, and ultimately it will mean the death of your false self.

Now, because for some 30 years I have been a follower of a God-Realized Being--and this would be true of anyone who is a follower of such a Being--there is enough of that "Ocean" coming through here that this same function occurs, to some extent, in my project and on this website. For people who are not ready to approach that ocean, and who are afraid of those "sharks," this may be an uncomfortable place.

If someone is ready for real spirituality, one can find in this website signposts that will take you to the "Beach". I've designed it so there is lots one can benefit from without following those signposts, per se, just like one can enjoy Eric Johnson's music without discerning the spiritual messages he's embedded in it. Still, I think, because that energy is there, it may impress some people with its thoroughness; it will bore some, and some it will repell. Some, on the other hand, will recognize something it in that goes beyond the thing itself, and perhaps even try to track that down.

Best regards,

Stephen S., Producer

*It may be all necessary in the larger scheme of things, but that's a different matter entirely. There may be some degree of the Truth reflected in all things, but that is also another matter. On this point, Sri Ramakrishna said, "All are God--but shun the 'tiger-God'." To continue the restaurant analogy, if I get sick by eating at a restaurant with a filthy kitchen, that may have been a necessary learning experience, and filthy kitchens may be necessary in the larger scheme of things to help us appreciate values like cleanliness and professionalism by way of contrasting example. But once I've learned my lesson, you bet I'll check the inspection ratings and start eating at cleaner restaurants. Same thing will happen if I just start eating berries out in the wild without studying the subject carefully--and the same thing will happen, on a mental level, if I start absorbing any teaching I run across. As regards restaurants, berries and mystical teachings, it is not "all good," and if one uses this philosophy to artificially disable one's intuitive sense of discernment, life will step in and demonstrate what was good and what wasn't. Wherever this originally came from, teachings like "it's all good" become popular because they allow people to feel spiritual, while yet keeping their worldly desires and attachments at the same time. The genuine teachings are not so popular because they require renunciation.

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