Be sure to join Erik, Kim and me tomorrow at 2:00 PM CT on the Joy Ride Radio Show. Many of you submitted questions. Find out if yours was answered by listening HERE during the hour long show. 

Kerry Pobanz sent me this interesting letter. Enjoy! Thanks, Kerry!

Dear Elisa,

When I first e-mailed you several weeks ago, I mentioned that I wanted to get back with you and share some of my appreciation of Erik’s remarkable descriptions, as well as some of the parallel descriptions to Erik’s descriptions of his own dimensional realm of the spirit world. So, I am hoping to do that with this writing. In fact, I would like to address Erik’s descriptions in three key areas—first, Erik’s very intriguing description of his experience of time in the spirit world as one of the “stacking” of time; second, his description of “splitting into infinite selves”; and third, his descriptions of the soul’s/spirit’s ability to choose to participate in multiple, simultaneous incarnations. I have found all of Erik’s metaphysical explanations to be fascinating and, I believe, correct, but these three just-mentioned areas are especially intriguing to me.

Erik’s description of his experience of time as a “vertical”, nonsequential experience (as opposed to the usual earthly experience of time as “horizontal” and sequential)—i.e., time as “standing still” like a vertical stack of plates stacked on one point (pp. 219-220 of your book)—is completely original and brilliant. Many writers have addressed this point that in the spirit world, time does not exist, and that what does exist are “infinite heres” and “eternal nows,” but no one as far as I know has ever been able to characterize this reality in a truly practical/pragmatic way, as Erik succeeds in doing. For example, because all time is, essentially, simultaneous, all knowledge is, essentially, instantaneously accessible— a vertical reality that Erik describes when he explains that in the spirit world, learning is not really like having a new experience—learning is, essentially, a process of remembering in which the stack of plates is instantaneously rearranged, bringing to the fore whatever knowledge/information you might be seeking. In your book, Elisa, you respond to Erik saying, “That is such an awesome way to explain it!”—and I really agree with you! (And, of course, this is why physical incarnation on earth is so significant—because it affords us the true experience of “learning” that is not just a spiritual experience of “remembering” (p. 265 of your book).) In reading the sections where Erik discusses this metaphysical reality, it occurred to me that to say that “time stands still” and gets “stacked”—one “moment” stacked on the previous “moment”—seems to suggest that time in the spirit world has no duration and really doesn’t exist (except as “appearances” or as “changes of state”, according to Emanuel Swedenborg), and that the only things that do exist, from an ontological standpoint, are events (a Whiteheadian concept?). Hence, “moments” don’t possess duration, but exist only as events—all infinitely intertwined in what Erik calls a “big ball of yarn”. With Erik as my inspiration, this would be my speculation.

In any case, Swedenborg makes a strong point that “time” and “space” are, in the last analysis entirely functions of consciousness, which reigns supreme in the spirit world. For instance, Swedenborg further describes that, in the spiritual world, angels function on an everyday basis by essentially deconceptualizing time and space, so that, in effect, time and space have no reality for them whatsoever. In the spirit world, seemingly vast distances can shrink into immediate presences, as Swedenborg explains here:

In the other life there is no space, nor time; thus all are so present that they are close together even if they were at the end of the universe. (Emanuel Swedenborg, The Spiritual Diary, §4016)

 

In the end, Swedenborg’s most complete understanding of the reality of time and space has to do with the deepest and most fundamental aspects of human being—love and wisdom.

 

The reason is that in the spiritual world intervals of space and time are not fixed the way they are in our physical world, but are changeable in response to their states of life. This means that states of life take the place of space and time in the concepts of their thinking. Issues related to states of love are in place of spatial intervals and issues related to states of wisdom are in place of temporal intervals. This is why spiritual thought and the consequent spiritual speech are so different from earthly thought and its speech that they have nothing in common. (Emphasis added) (Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom, §70)

 

Finally, Elisa, in regard to this overall issue of the nature of time and space in the spirit world, I just want to say again that Erik’s descriptions are original, profound and fascinating.

 

Second, in My Life After Death (pp. 149-150), Erik testifies that after enduring a period of serious healing in the afterlife, and as he began to train as a spirit guide to assist people on earth, he learned how to naturally split himself into numerous selves or fully conscious manifestations that could then independently guide many people at the same time in many different locations. I am aware of many reports of how spiritual masters, residing both in the spirit world and on earth, have used this “self-splitting” or “self-multiplication” ability, apparently inherent in the human soul, to appear and communicate with their disciples/adherents. On earth, when a spiritual master utilizes this capability, it is usually referred to as “bilocation” or “multilocation”—understood as the ability to be present in numerous locations at the same time. Wikipedia notes that this is an ancient phenomenon that has been experienced, even practiced by will, by mystics, saints, monks, shamans, etc., and more recently practiced, for instance, by Satya Sai Baba. But I have never come across a description of how this is done, and certainly never a description as brilliantly rendered as the multifaceted description given by Erik, culminating in the following paragraph:

Here’s another analogy: I take my heart consciousness energy and shake it loose like a saltshaker so that all the salt granules are dispersed. This way, I can go to the homes of those [thousands of] blog members, one salt granule at a time. Each granule has my ability to communicate, prank, get information, learn, teach, help, heal, observe, visit my family, and everything else I do—all at the same time. Then when I bring each salt granule back into the saltshaker, it all becomes part of me again. To someone on Earth, that might seem impossible, but you have to remember that both time and energy work and move differently here.

Erik’s descriptions of splitting into multiple selves is particularly evocative of the similar phenomenon depicted in the 2007 movie Next, where Nicholas Cage employs his capacity for psychic imaging to discover the presence of terrorists who have planted an atomic bomb in a matrix of abandoned Los Angeles industrial buildings. He has very little time to find the bomb and disarm it before it explodes. In the interest of saving time, he is portrayed, via special effects, to be able to clearly split off from himself multiple (three or more), diaphanous manifestations of himself, selves who then simultaneously and systematically search the buildings for the terrorists and the bomb. It is clear that each of these manifestations is basically conscious—a unitary expression of his own consciousness—who is sent out to explore in a specific direction and who then quickly returns with the requisite information.

I also find it rather remarkable that Erik’s description of splitting into numerous selves is so clearly echoed/corroborated in No Goodbyes (2015) by Barry Eaton, who records the following report channeled from a close friend in the spirit world:

Judy told us she has advanced to the stage where she is now able to be in hundreds of places at the same time. Part of her activities in the afterlife include working with spirit children in the healing center after they cross over. . . .   (p. 200)

Third, the ways in which both Erik and Seth (the higher-dimensional intelligence channeled by Jane Roberts) characterize the inherent multidimensionality of the soul are stunningly similar to each other and, I think, basically identical. And, both sets of explanations are the only explanations that enable us to understand metaphysically how and why a number of contemporary authors are having the kinds of unusual spiritual experiences they are having—experiences I will describe toward the end of this paper.

So, from pp. 159-166 of your book, Elisa, I can hopefully summarize the basic metaphysical understanding of the soul that Erik offers. I think it is correct to say that Erik understands that all souls originate from a cosmic Source, or from God. Further, each soul is essentially both a part of the whole, as well as the whole itself—i.e., each soul is a holographic reflection of the original Soul/Source. No soul can ever be destroyed. In essence, there are no “new” souls. Finally, while many souls choose to participate in human incarnations, souls may, however, choose incarnations that are not human (though I personally tend to believe this is done rather infrequently)—but in fact may be animal (consider Erik’s soul’s incarnation as a butterfly), vegetable (Seth mentions the possibility that consciousness, in seeking a form of respite, could choose to incarnate as a tree for several hundred years), or even mineral, as well as extraterrestrial—to gain experience/wisdom in their cosmic growth process. Lastly, Erik (p. 133 of his book) also mentions the reality of multiple, simultaneous incarnations (e.g., parallel selves) in his description of how God exists, noting in passing that “all your lives are happening at the same time” (this paragraph is a brilliant and beautiful summation).

Next, I would like to spend several paragraphs giving a concise background and rendering of Seth’s notion of the soul. The extensive channeled teachings of Seth (a seemingly vast, perhaps angelic, intelligence, who otherwise describes himself as an “energy personality essence”) through Jane Roberts from 1964 to 1984, are quite extraordinary. In this regard, Seth seems to be the original teacher of this principle of the inherent multidimensionality of the human soul through his idea of simultaneous, parallel selves, which he refers to as “probable selves” in one context and as “reincarnational selves” in another. Seth seems to be saying that the fact that consciousness is capable of creating/generating simultaneously these different forms of alternative selves is the primary expression of the multidimensionality of the human soul, and it is this reality that Seth specifically terms “The Unknown Reality” (which is also the title of his two-volume work).

The most important element for us to understand here is Seth’s notion of the soul. For Seth, who also calls the soul “the Entity,” the soul is essentially eternal and is a person’s “inner self” or “larger self”. The Entity, or soul, is a person’s “inner identity”. The soul, in other words, is who each of us truly is. Seth says, “Your soul therefore—the soul that you are—the soul that you are part of—that soul is a far more creative and miraculous phenomenon than you previously supposed” (Jane Roberts, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, pp. 75-76). Seth regards a person as only one manifestation of his or her own soul. Because the foremost character of the Entity is its creativity (in its effort, we might suggest, to become a co-creator with God), it is eternally in a state of flux, of learning and becoming—which is to affirm that the soul, by its very nature, is not a closed system—it is eternally a work in progress, and it is indestructible.

How then does the soul continue to learn, experience and grow? It does this through sending out representations/manifestations of itself to explore and investigate, which later return their unique harvest to the soul. But these manifestations are not just symbols or images of the soul. Because the soul is infinitely and powerfully creative, its manifestations are all as fully alive and filled with creative vitality as the soul itself, and these Seth variously refers to, again, as “probable selves,” “reincarnational selves,” “parallel selves,” or as “counterparts,” each with its own unique personality/individuality/identity, and each capable of living through a lifetime of experiences in a multitude of otherdimensional spaces/realms—the vast majority of which are not “physical”. For instance, at one point, Jane Roberts explains:

According to Seth there are many other systems of reality in which we operate, all unknown to the waking ego. Not only are there universal systems composed of matter and antimatter, but there are an infinite variety of realities in between. Apparently there are also “probable realities,” in which we follow paths we may have taken, but did not, in physical life. (Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul , p. 195.)

. . . [E]ach of us has counterparts in other systems of reality; not identical selves or twins, but other selves who are part of our Entity, developing abilities in a different way than we are here. (Jane Roberts, The Seth Material: The Spiritual Teacher That Launched the New Age, pp. 193-194.)

 

The counterparts that Jane mentions here refer to “probable selves” that are essentially thought projections, but whose reality is at least as “real” as our physical reality, if not more real. In effect, I think it is legitimate to imagine these as mental realities, or projections of consciousness, that are fully alive, yet function in the last analysis as proxies for the soul who is trying to learn and develop through them.

In any case, Elisa, it does seem to me that both Erik and Seth are faithfully describing the same reality of multiple, simultaneous incarnations. I have to say that when I read Erik’s book, and then your book, these readings rather blew my mind, primarily because they were such a clear corroboration of Seth’s teachings—not only in regard to the nature of the soul and its development, but in many other areas, which I don’t have time to elaborate on here. (I hope you will undertake to read Seth’s teachings in Jane Roberts’ books.) Until I read your and Erik’s books, I had never come across explanations that were even remotely similar to those of Seth, and then suddenly Erik seemed to be saying almost exactly the same things as Seth—a mind-blower for me.

But even more than that, Erik’s and Seth’s higher-dimensional explications of the after-life, able to fully acknowledge the reality of multiple, simultaneous incarnations, were also the only explanations capable of accounting for the kinds of contemporary spiritual experiences that I will now share with you, in the following section of this paper.

In Secrets of the Light (2008), Dannion Brinkley describes his third major near-death experience (NDE), in which he is shown, and is astonished to discover, that he exists as an indisputably multidimensional being. Consider the following passage from Secrets of the Light:

This same system infused me with the stunning revelation that we live in different dimensions, and that many realities exist beyond this one.

At the same time, I saw so clearly that our mortal, human presence within this earthly plane is in no way diminished by the presence of those other realities. In fact, it was indelibly impressed upon me just how vitally important the work we do on Earth is in the greater scheme of things. In earnest, we need to take to heart this one fact that the evolution of every one of us, along with humankind as a whole, has an unmistakable and mighty impact on the overall development of the entire universe. Each of us is intricately woven into the plan of perfection. Collectively and individually, we are indispensable in the pursuit of that perfection. Although we are all unique in our identities and how we manifest our life force, we remain an inseparable component of the one consciousness—our universal unified field. Like the individual notes in an exquisite melody, each of us is essential to the flow of harmony, to the wholeness and beauty of the universal rhapsody that breathes life into the core of our souls. Even more astonishing for me was the realization that, as multidimensional beings, aspects of us (in our multilayered totality) are doing this powerful work in several places at once. I don’t know about you, but I thought that was some pretty wild and cosmic information to grip!

I always thought one life held quite enough spiritual intrigue for me to handle. Then to discover we coexist, with different aspects of ourselves, in multiple lives on multiple levels of consciousness was a huge leap for me. Nevertheless, I knew it was true. And it helped me to understand why we need so much sleep at night. Think about it—with all the work we’re doing on so many levels, no wonder we feel tired all the time! This bounty of universal truth was the treasure of knowledge I acquired from my visits beyond the veil. (Dannion Brinkley and Kathryn Brinkley, Secrets of the Light: Lessons from Heaven, pp. 72-73)

Whitley Strieber (originally a disciple of Russian mystic philosopher George Gurdjieff), who has spent a good part of his life writing about the visitations from intelligent, nonhuman beings at his forest cabin in upstate New York, is a person of great honesty and critical common sense, continuously trying to come to grips with his numerous transdimensional experiences. In “Whitley’s Journal” (2015) on his website The Unknown Country, he offers a summary of the first of two occurrences when these seemingly otherdimensional visitors entered his house:

The first time, in 2007, I thought that they were a pack of dogs that had somehow gotten in and gone under our bed. There followed a marvelous, mind-bending excursion into an entirely new way of seeing reality. I was living in five different lives at once, perhaps more. It was fabulously mind-opening, deeply disturbing and intellectually radicalizing. In a few seconds, it fundamentally, permanently revised my vision of myself and of what it means to be human. (Whitley Strieber, “Whitley’s Journal” (12/11/2015) on The Unknown Country at http://www.unknowncountry.com/)

However, it is Whitley’s actual, fuller 2007 description of this event that more substantially conveys the stunning reality of his experience, as follows:

Then I was in bed again, and aware that I was asleep, and not only that but I was dreaming about the lives of five different Whitley Striebers unfolding in five parallel universes at the same time, one of which was the one I was in.

While this was happening, the five of them were distinct, and I was inside five different selves at once. There was no confusion, and I wasn’t on the outside looking in. I was in these lives, living them, all at the same time. I wasn’t in the least confused by this. It seemed extraordinary, of course, but also perfectly possible.

In four of these lives, Anne [his wife] was also present, but not in the fifth, and that was a life I very much wanted to leave. In it, I was walking down a path with a small boy, toward a quay where there were a number of men. The quay was on a pellucid bay, its water an exquisite turquoise-green color. It was daytime in this universe, midday. In this universe, Anne had died of her stroke, and I was walking with my grandson, who was about three.

In another, Anne and I lived in my old family home in San Antonio. It was very worn and run-down, and she was bravely trying to clean the kitchen. We were obviously very poor, and clinging to what once had been fine. Here, it was late afternoon.

In a third, we were living together and in an apartment. We were asleep in this universe, and the dogs were under the bed. It was in this universe that the fingers had grasped my hand and were tugging at it.

When I woke up and went to the window, it might well have been in this other universe, which was a close approximation to the one I am living in now. But, to tell the truth, since that night, I don’t feel all that fixed anywhere. I am not sure where I am, only that my life is unfolding.

The fourth universe was the one where the trees were in the living room. They were decorative, and the fashion, I was aware, had been adopted from pictures from another world. What was so exciting here was that TV transmissions from another planet were being picked up and rebroadcast by SETI, and they were a gigantic sensation.

This all ended with the yanking on my hand, the awakening at 4:53 and the observation of the drone outside the window. (Strieber, “Whitley’s Journal” (12/11/2007) on The Unknown Country at http://www.unknowncountry.com/)

Graham Hancock, in his 2015 book The Divine Spark, describes a visionary experience he had while participating in a group specifically organized to share the ingestion of the usually hallucinatory drug Ayahuasca:

This absence of visions, which I experienced as a gulf, a void, seemed to go on for a very long while, but gradually an odd state of mind began to overtake me. I had glimpses of a whole other life that I was living somewhere else, where I was me and yet had a different biography from the one that defines me in this life. I knew different people, did different things, and was living out that parallel life completely oblivious to this one. So it was an odd thing, lying in the darkness in our ceremonial space here in Brazil, under the influence of Ayahuasca but not very much—if at all—carried away by visions, to experience these strange episodes of crossover, of intersection, in which I became aware of both lives simultaneously, with each life seeming like a dream—ephemeral, fleeting, and yet haunting—that I was experiencing in the other. (Graham Hancock, The Divine Spark: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Birth of Civilization, p. 289.)

Jurgen Ziewe discovered as a teenager that he was able to enter dream states and remain fully conscious. Over a period of 40 years, he was able to rigorously train his consciousness in precise maneuvering among and investigation of dream realities, developing his capacity for lucid dreaming to an exceedingly refined level that enabled him to almost spontaneously enter out-of-body [experience] (OBE) states and interact with many people inhabiting different realms/dimensions of the afterlife. For 40 years Ziewe, an artist by trade, also kept exacting journals of his spiritual experiences, until 2012 when he received that he should begin the process of sharing his lucid dreaming explorations with the general public. In Vistas of Infinity (2015), Ziewe tells of an experience in which he discovers that he has numerous, simultaneous lives:

While still in OBE I contemplated the significance of what Consciousness was trying to show me and I found it was twofold. On the one hand, the building represented my lifelong work on myself, my career and family. The murals dated back to my youth when I was writing and illustrating a children’s story, but never finished it. The murals were the different illustrations for the book, each of which had taken me weeks in real life. That was over thirty years ago, hence it had been forgotten and had probably been fading away, so then was simply washed over.

On the other hand, Consciousness made it absolutely clear that I had been working on various other parts of the building over a very long period and I now clearly remembered it. I also started recalling other events with great clarity: paintings I had worked on, exhibitions I had put on, people I had met, old friends I knew well, none of which played any role whatsoever in my physical life. Here, in my OBE state, not just one, but perhaps two or more parallel life spans were rolled out in front of me, to my utter astonishment.

Consciousness was clearly showing me that my physical life was just a small part of many other life experiences and that, at night, possibly in deep dream state, or even parallel to my waking state, I had been busy pursuing one or more alternative existences. With this thought, I sank into a semi-meditative state and I began to remember more and more detail with astonishing clarity; I gained the realization that the life I am leading back in my physical body is only the tip of the iceberg, one of many lives I am leading — or, perhaps better, Consciousness is leading — each one of equal significance. (Jurgen Ziewe, Vistas of Infinity: How to Enjoy Life When You Are Dead — Out of Body Explorations Into Non-Local States of Consciousness and Post-Life Territories, p. 169.)

What seems especially extraordinary about these four testimonies is, first, that these four writers were all shocked to realize that somehow they were actually living in other realities that were seemingly parallel to the reality they were normally conscious of, and that somehow these other dimensionalities were indeed accessible under certain conditions. Both Erik and Seth give us the metaphysical tools that allow us to comprehend apparently multiple, simultaneous incarnations of the same person who is living different lives in other (maybe parallel?) dimensions.

In a way, the last paragraph of Ziewe’s testimony offers what I believe to be some excellent clarification of this phenomenon. Ziewe’s remarkable and extensive investigations of consciousness have enabled him to recognize that multiple, simultaneous incarnations of the “same person” can take place, not because a person has been simultaneously incarnated in numerous, different physical bodies in numerous dimensions, or because a person has been re-incarnated through numerous physical lifetimes on earth, but rather because human consciousness possesses an inherently designed, very natural character of multidimensionality or, that is, a very natural capability for multidimensional projection and/or manifestation. This would be to affirm that while we have a physical incarnation and live through a physical lifetime on the earth, each of us, almost completely unknown to ourselves, is also endowed with an extraordinarily powerful and creative consciousness—the direct expression of the human soul, that is capable of entering, or generating, other nonphysical, though substantial, multidimensional realities. In fact, because our consciousness is so powerful, we need to affirm Ziewe’s final realization that “the life I am leading back in my physical body is only the tip of the iceberg, one of many lives I am leading—or, perhaps better— Consciousness is leading.”

So Elisa, my contention would be that human beings as a race are entering a higher stage of awareness that affords them the capability, under certain conditions, of becoming cognizant of their own natural multidimensionality of consciousness, or their natural multidimensionality of soul. Again, both Erik and Seth appear to support this reality that humans can naturally manifest multiple, simultaneous incarnations, like those testified to by Brinkley, Strieber, Hancock and Ziewe.

Finally, Elisa, I just want to say in closing that I think your “Channeling Erik” website is great and I also have really enjoyed listening to a number of your “Hour of Enlightenment” radio programs. You, and Erik, seem to be rather extraordinary people, and I feel that God and numerous dimensionalities in the spirit world are using you to help educate people on earth about the reality of the spirit world. This is a very great and profound service, and I, for one, thank you from the depth of my heart. Also, Elisa, I really appreciate your sharp intelligence and unassuming, yet feisty nature, always willing to gore the ox of traditional religious piety/adherence. We are entering a new age and we very much need people like yourself who are willing to question and criticize traditionally sacred notions. Catholic and Protestant Christianity, as well as all the other major world religions, will need to dramatically transform themselves to enter into this new age, or otherwise they will simply pass out of existence. Further, as science and religion continue to integrate and modify each other, a new world must emerge—spiritually and scientifically—that enables us to honor the truly extraordinary nature of consciousness and the human soul as rooted in God’s Love.

Sincerely,

Kerry Pobanz