My Australian colleague Victor Zammit recently received a letter from one of his countrymen, Les Harris, which he answered and forwarded to me for another opinion. Victor’s a retired lawyer, and Les, 77, is a retired engineer. I work closely with engineers while wearing my technical writing hat… but my main interest in recent years has been afterlife research. Here’s the dialog that ensued between Les and me. Please note that this isn’t an interview, per se, but rather set of questions and answers that evolved over the course of multiple emails.

Les Harris:

… When trying to determine whether information is usable or not, we (engineers and lawyers) operate within the range of something that is “beyond reasonable doubt” and something that is reliable based on “the balance of probabilities”.  Anything that falls below that level we have to consider to be dubious at best or dead wrong at worst. In summary, our respective professions require us to apply rigorous thinking to everything we consider. Here, then, are some matters that I find puzzling, ambiguous or anomalous and I would be very interested to have your analysis. First off:

Why are super beings like the Technician unable to deal with evil / malicious entities of seemingly low / ordinary origin?  According to many writers, such entities exist on lower planes but it appears that they must also exist on the plane where Timestream is operating.  It follows that, if such (malicious) entities can interfere with the likes of Salter and a super being like the Technician, this level might not be anything like the “paradise” described by many writers.  In fact, it might be absolutely no different to the Here and Now, where the malicious have very much a free reign to rob, kill and main, with very little prospect of even being caught, let alone face justice for what they do.

Mark Macy:

Why can’t ethereal beings deal with malicious entities? You and I can’t see or hear X-rays… it’s all a matter of vibration. That’s one reason. Another reason is that you and I deal with cockroaches in our homes, but we don’t typically hunt them down in fields and jungles to squash them one by one. Dark, troubled entities have no access to ethereal realms (again, a matter of vibration), so ethereals have no pressing need to deal with them. The dark guys can move in and out of our world because they resonate with dark and troubled thinking of many humans here. As long as we have troubled thinking, we’ll be bothered by troubled spirits. Fact of life… (and resonance).

(Added later) – When I was a member of INIT, the group that received a series of miraculous contacts from the “Timestream spirit group” via telephone, radio, TV, computer, and other devices, we were informed that the Timestream sending station was established at a lower or denser level of spirit, and that apparently was because the vibration at that lower level (what our spirit friends called the “third” human level) was more resonant with the Earth in terms of spiritual vibration (a culmination of thoughts, attitudes, and compulsions)… and without that resonance ITC would not work. They talked of various deceased humans, including George Meek’s wife Jeannette and Swedish EVP pioneer Friedrich Juergenson, having settled in the “fifth human level,” which is more of a paradise, where most troubled human thinking (fear, doubt, animosity…) has fallen away, and the desire to serve others selflessly is pervasive. When Juergenson, for example, communicated with our group, he had to visit Timestream and communicate from the Third level. The sending station was what our spirit friends call a “dispassing point,” which is a place where various vibrational levels can intersect. In at least one contact they described the station as a multi-story building in which finer levels were active on higher floors. The integrity of the station was maintained by the subtler beings such as Technician and The Seven ethereals of which he is one, as long as we INIT members were able to sustain a degree of harmony in our collaboration. Sustaining that harmony was all important to ITC, they told us on many occasions. As the harmony gave way to conflicts of personality and ego in the later years (1998-2000), it was obvious that maintaining the integrity at Timestream became more and more challenging, as the troubled thoughts of INIT members allowed in-roads for troubled spirits into the Timestream station.)

LH: With this planet being gang-raped continuously by the greedy, why are entities like the Technician apparently exclusively concerned with the lack of common purpose (among experimenters)?  Looking at the serious experimenters as a percentage of the population, they probably amount to .0000001%.  One must ask why this miniscule percentage takes precedence over a whole planet on an irreversible downward path?  This not only doesn’t make sense, it makes the Technician / Timestream look as fanatical as any Islamic suicide bomber and as petulant as spoiled two-year-old. Does this truly reflect their priorities?

MM: I believe the ethereals were hoping that if a small group could sustain resonance and good will over a period of time, it would allow an effective communication bridge to remain open (because a fine, light vibration of the group would produce a resonant carrier signal, so to speak, for the ethereal thoughtforms into our world. The information and light that could stream through that bridge might (or might not) make a significant change of thinking here on Earth. If big changes in thinking led to big changes toward good will and cooperation here on Earth, a subtle vibration might be established in which the ethereals could work more closely with humanity at large.

LH: The planet is overpopulated to the point of doing irreversible damage to the whole planet. I do not see any real concern on the part of these super entities for the extinction of entire species on this planet.  They might not care that there won’t be any tigers left in the very near future, but I certainly do.  To me, their concerns seem to be entirely for the esoteric, not for the tigers, gorillas, elephants and thousands of other innocent species of life on this planet.

MM: That’s a legitimate issue that has taken me some time to process. One of the key components of the “Project Sothis” they tried to set up in Atlantis and resume in modern times with our INIT group… involved a “space-time gateway” that presumably would facilitate travel as well as communication between Earth and finer realms of spirit. I had a difficult time seeing how that would alleviate problems posed by unwieldy masses of people on a finite ball of habitable land… unless the intent of The Project was to “beam us up” by the tens of thousands to subtler realms… (which is another definition of dying.)

I recall when Scott Joplin (in spirit) talked by phone to a couple of European woman who spoke English as a third, fourth, or fifth language, he became real frustrated when he couldn’t convey his simple message clearly. They misheard him… missed certain words he was saying out of the excitement of talking to him. They misheard each other. Near the end of the contact he sighed, “Do you folks communicate?” Since his death he obviously became accustomed to clear, effective communication that takes place in the afterlife worlds… and he couldn’t identify anymore with earthly communication, which is riddled with misunderstanding.

I think the same thing is true of their perception of problems on Earth. They no longer see the limits to growth that we live with everyday, so when they offer solutions for us, they are indeed more “spiritually” than materially based. That’s why I’ve spent the past several years shuffling together what I’ve learned from them with what I learned before my ITC involvement, when I was steeped in world affairs. It’s what I tried to encapsulate in my book, The Project—a combined set of worldly and other-worldly solutions for humanity.

LH: Time contradictions:

It is frequently stated that there is no time or concept of time in-beyond, the place/s in which the entities reside.

If this is taken as stated, then no entity in-beyond would have any knowledge of what they did or said two minutes ago because the concept of time does not exist and what they did or said is in a past that does not exist.

If, on the other hand, they do remember what they did or said two minutes ago, then a past exists and time exists.

When we in the Here and Now remember something, we remember that it happened two minutes ago, two days ago, a year ago or twenty years ago.

Our memories are inextricably linked to time and what occurred at an earlier time.

It is therefore a complete contradiction to say that time does not exist in-beyond, in the next levels… call them what you will.

MM: Living beyond time is the hardest issue for me to come to grips with, being (like most other physical humans) steeped in linear time. Through meditation and lots of thinking about the concept of time, I’m slowly starting to understand how timelessness might look. Still, it’s hard to put in words. You might want to check out an earlier blog posting of mine (click to view), which addresses that issue to some degree.

LH: I have… read some Silver Birch.  It is all very inspiring, even if rather repetitive.  I have collected around a hundred pages and I am working my way through it.  So far, I have not encountered anything that is of much relevance to the current state of EVP. In terms of general principles, the (Silver Birch writings) are highly laudable but unrealistic in terms of application to the billions of people now on this planet. I am much heartened by the fact that Silver Birch includes the place of animals in an overall scheme. The biblical statement about man being given dominion over animals has resulted in the enslavement of animals and the killing of animals for fun.  Other higher entities are notably silent on this matter.

MM: One of my favorite sources about afterlife existence—a fun read—is Anthony Borgia’s “Life in the World Unseen.” It gives a wonderful view of the paradise world where most of us seem to awaken after we die.

In terms of animals, The Seven ethereals did address human cruelty to animals in several contacts, including a computer contact that I published on page 10 of Contact! issue 9603 (click to view)… an article called “Cattle Madness and Human Madness.”

LH: I will try to get a copy (of the Borgia book).

(a few days later, after acquiring a copy online and reading it) – –

I found a copy of Borgia on the Internet and have read most of it.  It is written in a narrative idiom that is correct for the time – but displays other aspects that are correct for the time also!  This is clear in several areas that I have read so far.

The first is that the halls of science are peopled exclusively with men; there we no such things as women scientists in his day, hence none in the halls of science of his narrative.

The role of women is also in keeping with his era; Ruth is a pretty little thing who busies herself with tapestry. Yes, she appears to be developing a role in trying to help the souls in the lower realms but tapestry is her big thing.

The matter of raiment gets similar treatment.  Everyone wears clothes, of course; it would be indecent not to do so.  Perhaps this is not a good example, because little has changed much in the last hundred years.  In most ‘civilized’ societies, women’s breasts are classified as indecent or obscene.  Societies in which women seldom cover their breasts are just plain mystified.  But I digress.

I have been catching up with Silver Birch.  The material that I am reading is most illuminating in that it presents the progressive development of argument for and against various concepts.  It is of deep interest to me that what Silver Birch espouses as positive and beneficial are in fact at the core of my own beliefs; what is now being added is the justification for such beliefs.  I look forward to continued reading.

MM: When I read the Borgia book, none of your concerns occurred to me at the time… but you’re right. The social setting in the afterlife paradise as described in the book IS what one would expect in western culture of the 1950s, when the book was first published.

That brought to mind several computer ITC letters that our INIT group received from English explorer Richard Francis Burton, who died and began exploring the spirit worlds and also became one of our spirit friends at Timestream. He reported on a number of spirit-world communities that are characteristic of various cultures here on Earth. In one, he recalls dying and awakening in an Arabian spirit world (he had spent many years among the Arabians during his travels). That spirit-world community is clearly Islamic and Arabian. That report is in Contact! issue 9701 (click to view), p12.

He sent another report about the death and spirit-world awakening of Edith Schoenheid, a friend of some INIT members. She awoke in a Polynesian island community, and Burton tells Edith’s story through the eyes of one of the island inhabitants, a girl named Mootai. That article is in Issue 9601 (click to view), again on p12.

There’s a related article about Burton in Issue 9702 (click to view), again on p12. 

So… our Timestream friends went to great lengths to give us a sense of the varieties of spirit-world communities that are ‘over there’ waiting for us after we leave the Earth… implying that we each migrate to a community compatible with the cultural patterns and attitudes and mores that we developed during our lifetime here.

LH: Do our friends In-Beyond really know the true state of affairs on Planet Earth?

MM: The finer they are in vibration (such as ethereal beings or angels), the more they know about just about everything, including the affairs of our world. They can see inside us—our motivations.

LH: If they do indeed know everything that’s going on here, then this reinforces my view that what they expect from us – all peace and love – is totally unrealistic and is counterproductive to any progress in the communication.

This planet is rife with corruption, materialism on a world scale, religious wars, environmental rape, etc, etc, etc.  Nothing short of death will ever curtail the perpetrators of these evils.  Their death, of course, simply makes way for successors.  If the higher entities know these things but never mention them in any practical context, then it would appear that they don’t care.  If they really don’t know, then they need to be told!

MM: Again, I think the ethereals are not only aware of human nature, but know its roots in our ancient heritage—the destruction of paradise Eden by advanced technologies of its noble human inhabitants, the stranding of Edenite colonists on Earth after the catastrophe, their cross-breeding with savage humans of Earth, and the resulting noble-savage nature of humans today…. We’re a troubled species inhabiting a troubled world, by any measure… and the ethereals are fully aware of that!

LH: What is their purpose in maintaining significant contact with Planet earth?

MM: Mixed purposes, depending on their vibrational level. Departed loved ones sometimes maintain an interest in the lives of their loved ones on Earth. Some lost souls and troubled spirits like to stir things up here. Many ethereal beings would like to see humans individually and humanity at large behave in more noble ways.

LH: Communication ranges from the stamp-collecting (recording single words for no apparent purpose other than the gee-whiz factor) up to the Timestream and ABX Juno level. So far, I do not see any end purpose in the upper end communications.

MM: I believe that they think (and I’m sure they’ll someday correct me if I’m wrong :-)) that humanity is now ready to see the big picture of who and why we are… and with that knowledge we might be able to climb out of the savage rut we’ve gotten into over the millennia.

LH: What do they want us to do?

MM: Again, mixed intentions….

LH: We need to establish the fundamentals, not act on assumptions.

MM: Not sure how to answer that… maybe a spirit-world model?

LH: The matter of Hitler bothers me considerably. Juergenson claims that he bears no responsibility for murdering millions of people because he was “sick”, attributing this to syphilis. This contrasts very sharply with the supposedly high moral considerations so often expressed and proselytised by so many writers who are attempting to explain the mores of the higher levels. It might be possible to claim that his “sickness” was eventually responsible for the murder of millions of Jews just because they were Jews, but history shows a very different picture of his military decisions. Based on his experience of being a corporal foot soldier in WW1, he decided that he was the greatest military commander of all time and took military decisions out of the hands of his professional officers. Of his many colossal military blunders, only one needs to be quoted. Spurning the advice of his entire military, he ordered the Sixth Army to hold Stalingrad “to the last man”.  The majority of the Sixth Army was killed and the few who survived spent the next ten years in prison camps. All due to syphilis? I really don’t think so; try megalomania.

MM: Yes, there’s been a lot of terror and idiocy perpetrated for such reasons as megalomania down through the ages… although I do think that macro conditions are also to blame. Germany had come out of the first world war with devastating economic conditions imposed on them by the Allies (victors or World War I). Post-WWI Germany, like some badly overpopulated nations in Africa today—like individual humans—often do desperate and brutal things when they’re in desperate straits. I’m certainly not trying to justify mass murder and carnage, but I think to remove those things from the planet we need to some serious political, social, and economic engineering of the human species… along with ‘inner work’ needed for individual growth to foster noble values.

LH: Where do the Islamic militants go?  Have they got a special little paradise somewhere?  Are their women still totally subjugated and wearing total body covering while the men strut around unrestricted??  Do the suicide bomb murders get their 72 virgins?  Do the virgins get any say in the matter?  Will they still stone to death any woman “taken in adultery” but not the man, without whom the adultery could not have occurred?  Will they despatch suicide bombers into areas occupied by non-Moslems?  Or, for that matter, areas occupied by Moslems of whose schisms they do not approve?

MM: I remember when I first got involved in ITC and befriended George Meek, his wife Jeannette had died the previous year… and in one letter to George (via computer in Luxembourg) she referred to “that idiot war” that was going on in Gulf at the time, compliments of Saddam Hussein. In another contact she told George that lots of the victims of that war were coming across kicking and screaming and had to be calmed down by Jeannette and other spiritside mission workers, before getting settled in paradise. They were being educated in good will and love. I think that’s true of a lot of people of all cultures who make bad decisions on Earth during their lifetimes, inflicting pain on themselves and others… they are given an opportunity to raise their spiritual vibration to a level of love and good will. If they’re unwilling or unable to do that, then they wind up in denser, darker spirit realms inhabited by other troubled spirits of like disposition.

In terms of sex-and-gender-related morality—Islamic, Christian, secular and everything else—there’s a special problem. Part our savage (terrestrial) nature is the drive to perpetuate the species, so we have a strong sex drive… and it has always caused problems in societies everywhere. Each culture tries to find ways to deal with it. For western cultures it involves covering people up with clothes to help alleviate the sex drive. Islamic cultures just take that a bit further than other cultures by covering more of the female bodies, in hopes of stimulating fewer male hormones. I don’t want to discuss the logic of that way of life, but I would like to say that it’s the human sex drive that creates problems, and however we humans deal with it… the problems will always be there, manifesting as bizarre moral codes.

LH: Why are pictures of Juergenson showing him still to be an old man, and why do pictures of Raudive show him wearing glasses when all are said to be restored / rejuvenated or similar?

MM: In the pictures I’ve seen from the other side, when we’ve received multiple images of the same person, they might look old in one picture, young in another. It seems to have something to do with our expectations of what they look like. (A picture of George Washington would probably look a lot like the guy on the dollar bill.) But the main thing, I think, is that when our departed loved ones descend in vibration from their paradise world to come closer to the Earth in vibration (something they seem to have to do for ITC communications) they begin to take on the appearances they had on Earth. Their light, subtle astral bodies become denser. Their smooth, clear complexions might become scruffier, showing wear, tear, and aging that they’d experienced on Earth.

People who enjoyed wearing ties on Earth, sometimes “wear” ties on their astral bodies as well, even in paradise. The father of Maggy Harsch-Fischbach sent her a computer letter a few months after his death, saying that on one occasion he was in a spirit-world house similar to the one he’d lived in on Earth, and he wanted to wear a nice green sports coat with a tie. He opened the closet and found the exact coat he was envisioning. There wasn’t a tie, however, so he closed and reopened the closet… and there was the tie! He said he didn’t know how such things are accomplished, but that’s just how things are over there. I suspect the same tendency to manifest patterns from life on Earth is responsible for eyeglasses, like those sometimes seen on ITC images of Konstantin Raudive.

LH: Descriptions of the in-beyond or the third level seem to vary considerably.  My gut feeling is that the descriptions by Swejen Salter would be more realistic than most descriptions.

MM: Yes, I definitely agree—both that there are many different descriptions of the other side… and that the descriptions provided to us through ITC systems by Swejen and her team are probably the most reliable, in terms of accuracy.

LH: I haven’t done any experimental recording yet. I have bought a Sony ICD-PX720 and will begin using it soon. If I can’t get beyond the stamp-collecting level, I won’t waste time on it. If two-way communication can’t be established, it is pointless.  Reading will be more productive.

MM: I came to the same conclusion a few years ago. The spirit face photos I was getting with the luminator and a Polaroid camera were kind of like the visual version of EVP. They provided a glimpse into the other side and some good, objective evidence… but they didn’t provide the depth of information exchange I really want to see happen in ITC. I’ve given up experimenting for more than a year now for that very reason. Once I feel conditions are right for another… hm-m-m… miracle bridge (?) like the one we enjoyed with our INIT group from 1995 to 1999, I plan to jump back into experiments with enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, I have little interest in what’s called paranormal investigation (trying to prove what I already know to be true) and ghost-hunting (stirring things up with troubled, confused spirits, sometimes for the sake of a thrill).

Other articles about science and the human spirit:

Science and NDEs  —  Foreign-accent syndrome  —  Measuring maya  —  Asteroids pummeled Earth for 2 billion years  —  Exoplanets and the prospect we’re not alone!  —  Mysteries of Eden  —  Combat killing and the human spirit  —  Aurora theater tragedy  —  News in perspective  —  A life and afterlife debate