The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife

by David Solomon

  Even so, it was a glorious trip. Now it was back home to Olympia.

  Heading Home

  Delynn and I woke up early and drove to Jenny Lake to watch the sun come up. I practiced my Tai Chi form on the banks of a nearby river as the sun brightened the cold morning. Purple and yellow wildflowers everywhere. A fitting finale to a glorious trip.

  We drove back to the hotel to pick up the kids and their friends, repacked them back into the SUV, and headed west. A few hours into the drive, I was talking with Delynn about who might co-author, or ghost write or at least help edit the Chronicles.

  I suddenly had a hunch to call my old friend, writer and much published rogue Egyptologist, John Anthony West. I’d enjoyed two tours to Egypt with him in 1992 and 2009, and funded his and geologist Robert M. Schoch’s Goebekli-Tepi important research project in Turkey in 2011. Perhaps he’d be open to it? But would he have the time to commit to it? Could he take the risk? I might die in the middle of writing the book; in which case, no book.

  So I called. He was not only enthusiastic about the idea, but had just terminated a long-term co-writing job. So he had the time. I hadn’t written anything yet, not a word …but I had a writing partner! That “still small voice” telling me to call John gave me hope. Who knows what might have happened if he didn’t have the time, or had said no? It reassured me. The Chronicles would, indeed, be written. Talk about a “brainstorm?” ~Chronicle 38

  David Solomon

  AFTERWORD:

  The Idea Whose Time Has Come?

  By John Anthony West

  John Anthony West, rogue Egyptologist; guide; author of Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt and The Traveler’s Key to Ancient Egypt: A Guide to the Sacred Places of Ancient Egypt; and recipient of the 1993 News & Documentary Emmy Award for Best Research and a nomination for Best Documentary for the NBC Special The Mystery of the Sphinx, hosted by Charlton Heston.

  “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come,” said novelist, playwright and poet, Victor Hugo (France’s most celebrated 19th Century literary figure.)

  But good Victorian optimist that he was, Hugo failed to notice, “The second strongest thing in the world is the idea whose time has not yet gone.”

  And since, at any given time, all the armies in the world are formally or de facto in the service of the idea whose time has not yet gone, battle lines are drawn.

  Scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

  ~Max Planck, Nobel Prize winning physicist.

  “All truth passes through four stages. First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they oppose you, and then they say that everybody knew it all along. (Adapted from Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher & Mahatma Gandhi, Indian Philosopher and Revolutionary)

  These metaphorical armies are not military, of course, They do not look like “armies”; nor do they call themselves, or even regard themselves, as “armies”. But they are armies nonetheless, and depending upon the nature of the challenging idea, these “armies” band together to protect their paradigm. While virtually every new idea is subject to the Schopenhauer/Gandhi “ignore/ridicule/oppose/accept” sequence, this is a strictly human phenomenon. It has no parallel in nature. Only human beings (as far as we know) dismiss, ridicule, oppose and (ultimately, if everything else is in place) accept.

  To further complicate matters, that ignore-to-accept sequence operates within a grander cycle that is, in fact, cosmic.

  As mathematician / philosopher / orientalist and practicing alchemist, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz pointed out: everything in the universe is organic; the entire universe, in one way or another, is subject to the organic Laws of Manifestation; a cycle we all recognize as Fertilization / Gestation / Birth / Growth / Maturity / Senescence / Death / Renewal.

  For the “idea whose time has come” to actually get there it must be guided through the painful psychological ignore-to-accept sequence while simultaneously developing through the necessary stages of the cosmic organic fertilization-to-rebirth cycle, a tricky process by no means either assured or predictable. Everything has to be in place at just the right time.

  An Autobiographical Note

  Back in 1992, when I first met David Solomon, he was already involved in serious research—research that had no connection at all to NDEs, but considerable connection to my own work on ancient Egypt and the Great Sphinx of Giza. I’d developed a revolutionary theory, inspired by an offhand remark of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz—the genius Alsatian scholar who had reformulated the Sacred Science of the ancients— that the Sphinx had been weathered by water, not wind and sand. If proven correct via hard-nosed geology, this would push back the date the Sphinx was carved many thousands of years.

  This would mean, in turn, that all of very ancient history had to be totally re-written from scratch, and with it, the accepted scholarly/scientific understanding of the origins of advanced civilization would have to be abandoned. Totally. In other words, a lot rested upon that single observation. David, at the time, was delving deep and systematically into ancient history, geology, archeology, anthropology and other disciplines dealing with the pre-historical past, looking for physical evidence that might directly or indirectly support references and prophecies in the Christian Bible, and in virtually all ancient religious traditions and innumerable myths and legends from peoples scattered all over the globe.

  There were too many major themes, and often small and improbable details in common in this vast literature to attribute all of it to coincidence or to some sort of global romanticism where people with no known connections to each other were cooking up similar fanciful tales out of the blue all at the same time: Among these: A Deluge, vanished, high civilizations, sudden global catastrophes, complex but similar pantheons, mythologies and legends. This was a rich field for research. Much work had already been done (by Ignatius Donnelly, Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Giorgio de Santillana/Herta von Dechend…and many others) igniting heated scholarly debates and irreconcilable competing theories in both the academic and religious worlds.

  David was approaching it from a fresh and promising angle (to come to fruition more than twenty years later as The Armageddon Stones, Book III of this trilogy). But back in ’92, with our Egypt trip over, we went our separate ways and lost touch, reconnecting only in 2009 for our second Egypt trip. Much had happened in the intervening years.

  David’s charismatic mentor (and adoptive father), Paul Solomon, had died and David had struck out on his own into the very alien world of business, swiftly finding out, to his surprise, that he had a real talent for it. Enough so that, on this second trip, he wanted to discuss financing us (myself and Dr. Robert Schoch) in our ongoing geological/Egyptological research.

  That welcome news would lead to our week-long 2011 investigation at Goebekli-Tepe, the amazing, perfectly intact and highly sophisticated buried site in Turkey, (discovered 1994) and dated by the late Klaus Schmidt, the German archeologist in charge of the dig, at 10,000 BC or still earlier. For us, this was the “smoking gun.” For never again could the Egyptological / Archeological establishment dismiss our Sphinx theory out of hand on the grounds that it was “impossible” —since there was no civilization capable of producing a Sphinx and its adjacent massive temples at that time. It was all hunter-gatherers back then. (Google up Goebekli-Tepe, if you don’t yet know about it.)

  Some hunter-gatherers!

  As for our “idea” of pushing the age of the Sphinx thousands of years back into the past, even with Goebekli Tepe, perhaps its time had not yet quite come, but we were getting close.

  Meanwhile, despite all his voluminous earlier research, David had abandoned, anyway indefinitely postponed, his plans for writing
The Armageddon Stones. Instead, his indefatigable research fairy had been turned loose on the Near-Death Experience phenomenon, collecting, compiling, analyzing thousands of first hand testimonials, establishing thematic connections and weaving together innumerable disparate threads to produce in the end a coherent tapestry. As he described it, it sounded as though it might be a book of considerable value,

  Except he had no serious intention of writing such a book, though he had toyed with the idea. Up to this point, it had been an all-absorbing “hobby.” And then, with no warning signs apart from some persistent dizziness, came that thunderbolt glioma diagnosis that, barring a certifiable miracle, is a death sentence; its only variable the amount of time allotted to him. Overnight, his “hobby” was transformed into his “mission”: The Dead Saints Chronicles, with himself as author and also as his own ongoing scientific experiment as he wrote the book, I was drafted in as editor and literary consultant.

  In this capacity, I appointed myself ombudsman to the Academic/Scientific Establishment, prepared to monitor and expose the predictable academic/scientific malpractices of its Paradigm Police, and, if possible, neutralize them. I’d been dealing with them in my own field for over forty years and liked to think I knew their ways and wiles as well as anyone.

  A Very Brief Look at the Idea Whose Time Has Not Yet Gone

  For roughly the last 150 years the Western world, and increasingly the Eastern world, has come under the sway of a set of ideas and principles brought together formally, since 1970 in The Humanist Manifesto, under the rubric—Secular Humanism.

  Though presented as something new, Secular Humanism had its precursors in the Skeptics, Cynics and Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome. Essentially what it proposed then and what it proposes now—stripped of its deceptive academic dress is: “What you see, hear, smell, taste and feel is all there is, Buddy. Deal with it.” While there is no formal Secular Humanist Non-Bible written for the unenlightened, if there were, its chapters might be headed:

  The universe is an accident.

  Matter precedes Mind.

  Consciousness is a fortuitous spin-off of Matter.

  Human life, indeed, all life, serves no higher purpose.

  There is no consciousness higher than our own.

  “Progress” ascends in a straight line from primitive hominids to ourselves.

  Religion is delusion.

  “Spiritual” and “sacred” are polite words for superstition.

  Only modern science and the scientific method can reveal the objective Truth.

  Contemporary man represents the most highly evolved level humanity has ever reached.

  Unfortunately, for the Humanists, however, opposition to this dreary catechism is not restricted to the illiterate and the uncredentialed; the ignorant and the superstitious …much as they would like to have the world believe.

  The certainties of science are a delusion They are hedged round with unexplored limitations. Our handling of scientific doctrines is controlled by the diffused metaphysical concepts of our epoch. (italics mine – JAW) Even so, we are continually led into errors of expectation. Also, whenever some new mode of observational experience is obtained the doctrines crumble into a fog of inaccuracies.

  ~Alfred North Whitehead, Adventure in Ideas, 1933, p.198

  Mathematician and Philosopher, Whitehead was one of the most influential thinkers of his time. His severe doubts about relying overmuch upon science as a final arbiter of truth have been expressed and developed by innumerable eminent scientists since the above passage was penned. But this is a huge subject. (Readers who want to go deeper into this ongoing subject should google up renegade Biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s website www.rupertsheldrake.org and surf thoroughly. Also google up Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Brian Josephson and follow his adventures countering the Paradigm Police as they witch hunted him for daring to support parapsychology. Also follow www.thedailygrail.com.

  Not only has their Humanist’s Manifesto been exposed irrevocably as scientifically fraudulent from within by a minority of their own scientific colleagues, its inescapable emotional / psychological / philosophical emptiness has also been noted by their own.

  That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. “Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”

  ~Philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell accepting the inevitability and consequences of the heat death of the Universe.

  While Russell’s ecstatic embrace of nothingness verges on the orgasmic, it is unlikely to win converts for the cause. Some of Russell’s less literary colleagues get right to the point in fewer words.

  The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

  ~Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize Winning Physicist.

  Interesting observation!

  Presumably, Beethoven, when composing his Late Quartets, and Bach his B-Minor Mass, and Monteverdi his Vespers of 1610 did not feel the universe was pointless at all. But they, of course, were merely composers, not Nobel Prize winning physicists. And therefore, evidently, they must have known less about the Universe than Steven Weinberg.

  The systematic denial of purpose is the cornerstone of the scientific method.

  ~Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

  The above represent just a few insiders’ quotes on the inherent and inescapable meaninglessness of our purportedly accidental and unconscious universe. Yet, it is a curious fact that these conclusions are never part of our standard Western education. We are never, ever taught that as we suffer our way through the obligatory tedium of Education. Why not? Very simply, the Secular Humanist’s Paradigm Police (comprised of Establishment Science, Government Mandated Education and the Corporate Owned Media) have hijacked and held hostage the curriculum.

  Briefly, Science develops the doctrine. Education disseminates it. The Media makes it palatable, or at least tries. So if young people are to learn the bleak consequences of the Secular Humanist dogma (for dogma is what it is) getting stuffed down their throats, they are going to have to learn it for themselves.

  And so they do. In droves—though it is true many still do not (google up Skeptics and follow the threads and comments). It is Education, strangely enough, that is the most resistant to change. Thus it is still generally verboten within a school setting to introduce students to anything and everything that in any way contradicts or even questions the Materialist Manifesto, in which only the Secular is sacred: : Astrology, Alternative medicine, Faith Healing, Zero Point Energy, telepathy, the paranormal or parapsychological, anything challenging Darwinian Evolution via Natural selection, UFO’s, Crop Circles, “Nessie & Yeti“, Ghosts, Life after Death, Reincarnation, Lost, advanced Civilizations, Spiritual Transformation through inner work, and the NDE, (To Secular Humanists, little or no distinction is made concerning the importance or potential importance of these subjects. All are derisively dismissed en masse and out-of-hand as “Woo.”)

  Even so, not all is in harmony within the ranks of the Paradigm Police themselves. Cutting edge science includes a handful of acknowledged mystics, and a larger number of closet mystics (if you read and listen carefully) though they do not get major press, prof
essionally they have to be careful and their highly technical work tends to be comprehensible initially only to their own cutting edge peers.

  The Media, however, much less concerned with Paradigm Correctness, is effectively impossible to control. Bluntly, if the media thinks it can make money out of any given subject, no matter how derided or reviled by the Paradigm Police, it will exploit it.

  So it is that just about every one of the anathematized subjects listed above gets promoted (usually irresponsibly, this is true) in proportion to the amount of money it brings in. Since in virtually every instance there is at least suggestive; in some cases, absolutely compelling evidence that legitimizes the subject, there is no way in which this information can still be hidden from the electronically connected segment of the general public—which in effect means everyone…unless you happen to live in North Korea. The internet has changed the rules, and it is no longer possible to keep on moving the goalposts.

  Secular Humanism, that Idea whose time has not yet gone, is rapidly losing ground to paradigm shifting books like The Dead Saints Chronicles. Increasingly buffeted by National Media coverage of NDEs and many other “woo” phenomena, Secular Humanism’s day, if not done, is quickly dimming. All it takes is a metaphorical asteroid strike to “wipe out the dinosaurs.” A new epoch, begins and new life forms arise out of the chaos. It might not be long now...

  If humanity is going to extricate itself from the morass created (not so much by the “advance of learning” and “the development of modern science”—as the Paradigm Police imagine), but rather by the major traditional religious institutions degenerating to the point where they were unable to defend themselves from the shiny barbarism (they call it “Progress”) of the Secular hordes, they will have to regain a sense of their original purpose—which in the words of Schwaller de Lubicz is “The return to the Source.” (In Christianity: salvation).

  As an essential first step, those who understand what is at stake must learn to distinguish between those “woo” subjects that matter and those that don’t. No one is going to do that for us/them.