Hi Kim,

You asked, "Are any souls 'new souls' having an experience on the earth?"

The people from the other side we've heard coming through in Leslie Flint séances describe Earth as the "nursery." Everyone they know on the next plane of life has come from the Earth plane. However, that's the limitation of those who come through to us. We are connecting with people who have been on the Earth plane, but we don't know about other planes. We don't communicate with them.

Now, the "nursery" doesn't mean people are new souls here. It's just their way of communicating that everyone they know on the other side has just come from an Earth school period of life. They also say that we've all had hundreds or thousands of lives and will have many more. So they're saying there are no "new" souls.

That's hard for us to grasp because we're in the realm of beginnings and endings. On the Earth plane, I can say, "I was born on January 6, 1946," and that was my beginning. I'll transition to off of the Earth plane at some date, and that is my ending. And so we ask, "Does the eternal self have a similar beginning and ending?" But we can't ask the same question of the eternal self because outside of the Earth realm, there is no time and there are no beginnings or endings. We can't really understand that, but we know it's true.

And so, no one is a "new soul." We're all eternal selves full of experiences from other incarnations.

You asked, "When waves and particles are mentioned can we think of life as the wave and our physical bodies as particles?"

No, that's not what the concept means. It's difficult to wrap our minds around, but what we see as atoms, subatomic particles, and strings are just what our consciousness perceives as it delves into the physical realm. It's much like a fractal. As we travel closer to or into a fractal, we continually find new contours at increasing depths into infinity. When we look, we will always discover something. If we really were able to look at subatomic particles and found strings of energy, we could look at the strings of energy and we'd find deeper structures. In the same way, as we look out into the universe, we can measure the background radiation from a big bang, but cosmologists are suggesting now that other universes are beyond our universe, banging into existence, so there are many universes. So if we could look outside of our universe, they say, we would see other universes. And if we could see all the universes, outside of that we would see more of something else.

We will see more as we're able to see more. But all of that is just scenery. It isn't the play. Our eternal selves, a small part of which we know as our minds on the Earth plane, are the eternal part of us. The waves and particles are just temporary scenery. They are continually changing as we observe them, and we eventually will leave them behind when we transition off of the Earth plane. We aren't part of the scenery.

Yes, the mind is part of our eternal selves. And experiences are brought to our minds as we grow, learn, and enjoy life. The experiences are independent of the scenery, but we perceive them within the scenery. We look and see on the physical realm, thinking we're seeing the scenery. However, we know that when the body and brain stop functioning, the experiences continue just as they were. They are independent of the physical realm, but we have the impression they come from the physical realm.

That's part of Earth school.

You wrote, "I have a hard time being able to identify reality as actually being real stuff when I know it is all just an experience."

Experience is real stuff. It's all we know. We have the mistaken impression that a physical world exists independent of our experiences, but that's the illusion. The real stuff is only experiences--it isn't real stuff.

Let me explain. The neuroscientists say we perceive a "representational reality." The reason is that even if we didn't think of experiences as coming from outside of the body, we have only experiences, not a knowledge of a physical realm. We'll use sight as an example. Neuroscience tells us that when we look at a rose, billions of photons come into the pupil as the beginning of the "seeing" process. However, the photons had bounced off of the rose we're looking at nanoseconds before they came to the pupil of the eye, so we're not really getting photons from the rose that's there; we're getting them from the rose that was there, just as when we look at the moon, we're seeing it as it was 1.5 seconds ago, not the way it is when we "see" it.

The photons strike the rod and cone cells of the retina and the electromagnetism travels from the retina along the long neurofibers called the optic nerve. Now, is the rose in our optic nerve? No. The rose, if it exists outside of us, is far from the electrical impulses traveling along the optic nerve. We don't know if there was a rose there at all by this point. We just have electrical impulses along the optic nerve.

Then the impulses come to the occipital lobe or optical cortex at the back of the head. There, they stimulate neurochemical development and the neurochemicals influence neurons. Is the rose in the neurochemicals? Is it in the neurons firing? No. The rose was way back in the process, and we're not getting neurochemicals from a rose; we're getting them from electromagnetism that traveled along the optic nerve. Then, neuroscience tells us, there is an experience that we call a "rose," but it's just what the pattern in which the neurochemicals have enabled the neurons to fire. There's no rose there.

And so, we have what's described as a "representational rose." The experience just represents the rose. We can never know whether there is a rose outside of ourselves. We only know the neurons firing.

Thus, we could have the experience of a rose by having the neurons fire without any object outside of ourselves. We wouldn't know the difference. And a hypnotist can tell us the banana we're holding is a rose and we'll actually have the experience of a rose and even smell a rose. The rose is in the mind, not in the world around us.

So even neuroscience is saying that an experience is independent of the physical realm. But we know that from what we know about the mind. When the mind is released from the body, as in a near-death experience, an out-of-body experience, or death, the mind has the experience of seeing things perfectly clearly. The experience is happening independent of eyes, a brain, and a body. The experience exists by itself, meaning it doesn't require a physical world either. It's an experience.

So reality is experiences. That's all we know. But that's enough. We go through life having experiences, and we grow from them, enjoying them. But they're not bound up in waves and particles. They are independent of the scenery that is Earth school. The mind has experiences. That's all we can say about them.

You wrote, "Should I pretend to value this world as much as people I know value it?"

Just have experiences. You'll love some of them and dislike others. Don't become caught up in them. They're just scenery. If you become attached to any experiences, you'll eventually be disappointed because they all go away. Instead, enjoy whatever new experiences come as the Earth school brings new experiences and takes away old ones. Be open and free, without attachment to the scenery. Let whatever comes to your mind come naturally, and adjust to it. Be constantly in a process of becoming. Stay attached to nothing. In a moment, it will be gone.

Love and peace, Craig