Hello Michael,

Referring to the vast amount of evidence we have now about the afterlife, you wrote, “Either it's fraud or there is an active effort to suppress. I am more leaning toward the latter conclusion.”

The effort to suppress what is obviously true is less a conspiracy than a widespread fear people have. Any group, even as large as an entire society, holds certain beliefs in common. That helps us feel the world is safe and predictable. If it weren’t, we would go mad. Abraham Maslow, a third-force psychologist, created a hierarchy of human needs. At the lowest need is survival (air to breath, water to drink, food to eat). But just above that at a very low level is the need for security—the feeling the world we believe is real is in fact real, that it will stay that way, and that those around us agree the world is real. If I start to eat a sandwich and someone next to me grabs it out of my hand and throws it on the ground because it has some component they regard as offensive, that will make me angry and frightened because this person has become violent for reasons I don’t understand. That threatens my feeling of security.

Anyone who has gone to another culture and spent some time knows what “culture shock” is. That’s simply being immersed in a group of people who believe reality to be different than the reality we hold to be true. That results in great discomfort, but it’s entirely in the mind. We feel uncomfortable with the realities of the minds of people in other cultures because we have a reality that is stable and permeates our lives. We need that to feel safe. Their reality is different, so that causes great discomfort.

In the same way, when we talk about the reality of the afterlife, people who have been reared to believe there is no afterlife are threatened. We’re challenging their reality and to feel whole and sane, they have to defend their reality. Since the seventeenth century, the Enlightenment and rise of materialism through a narrow view of science as a belief system has taught us that the reality is that consciousness is in the brain and when the brain dies the person dies. That permeates our society, even among the Christians—they’re scared silly of death. And so this large group of people, society, is unable to reconcile their view with the reality of the afterlife. It threatens their feeling of security and certainty. It would open another realm they are frightened of because it’s so different for them. And since large numbers of other people share the belief that consciousness is in the brain, they feel safe and secure. They'll tend to call those who hold the view their group holds as "right," "sane," or "sensible." Those with other views are "wrong," "crazy," or "frauds."

It isn’t really a conspiracy. It’s just that large groups of people such as an entire society share this view and it’s frightening to them to think there might be another reality. It threatens their security needs.

But they are learning. Society is changing remarkably and rapidly. The evidence is too overwhelming and people see it regularly on the Internet and television. The afterlife is more real than this life, and as more people see the evidence, humankind will change--it's changing now. Don’t be frightened of believing this wonderful truth.

Love and peace, Craig