Like Whitton, NDE researchers have also uncovered evidence that our lives are planned beforehand, at least to some extent, and we each play a role in the creation of this plan. This is apparent in several aspects of the experience. Frequently after arriving in the world of light, NDEers are told that "it is not their time yet." As Ring points out, this remark clearly implies the existence of some kind of "life plan.” It is also clear that NDEers play a role in the formulation of these destinies, for they are often given the choice whether to return or stay. There are even instances of NDEers being told that it is their time and still being allowed to return. Moody cites a case in which a man started to cry when he realized he was dead because he was afraid his wife wouldn't be able to raise their nephew without him. On hearing this the being told him that since he wasn't asking for himself he would be allowed to return. In another case a woman argued that she hadn't danced enough yet. Her remark caused the being of light to give a hearty laugh and she, too, was given permission to return to physical life.
That our future is at least partially sketched out is also evident in a phenomenon Ring calls the "personal flashforward." On occasion, during the vision of knowledge, NDEers are shown glimpses of their own future. In one particularly striking case a child NDEer was told various specifics about his future, including the fact that he would be married at age twenty-eight and would have two children. He was even shown his adult self and his future children sitting in a room of the house he would eventually be living in, and as he gazed at the room he noticed something very strange on the wall, something that his mind could not grasp. Decades later and after each of these predictions had come to pass, he found himself in the very scene he had witnessed as a child and realized that the strange object on the wall was a "forced-air heater," a kind of heater that had not yet been invented at the time of his NDE.
In another equally astonishing personal flashforward a female NDEer was shown a photograph of Moody, told his full name, and told that when the time was right she would tell him about her experience. The year was 1971 and Moody had not yet published Life after Life, so his name and picture meant nothing to the woman. However, the time became "right" four years later when Moody and his family unwittingly moved to the very street on which the woman lived. That Halloween Moody's son was out trick-or-treating and knocked on the woman's door. After hearing the boy's name, the woman told him to tell his father she had to talk to him, and when Moody obliged she related her remarkable story.
Some NDEs even support Loye's proposal that several holographic parallel universes, or time tracks, exist. On occasion NDEers are shown personal flashforwards and told that the future they have witnessed will come to pass only if they continue on their current path. In one unique instance an NDEer was shown a completely different history of the earth, a history that would have developed if "certain events" had not taken place around the time of the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras three thousand years ago. The vision revealed that if these events, the precise nature of which the woman does not disclose, had failed to take place, we would now be living in a world of peace and harmony marked "by the absence of religious wars and of a Christ figure.” Such experiences suggest that the laws of time and space operative in a holographic universe may be very strange indeed.
Even NDEers who do not experience direct evidence of the role they play in their own destiny often come back with a firm understanding of the holographic interconnectedness of all things. As a sixty-two-year-old businessman who had an NDE during a cardiac arrest puts it "One thing I learned was that we are all part of one big, living universe. If we think we can hurt another person or another living thing without hurting ourselves we are sadly mistaken. I look at a forest or a flower or a bird now, and say, 'That is me, part of me.' We are connected with all things and if we send love along those connections, then we are happy.”
My law is the law of cause and effect, not the law of We’ll See. There is nothing you can’t have if you choose it. Even before you ask, I will have given it to you. [...]
The process of prayer becomes much easier when, rather than having to believe that God will always say “yes” to every request, one understands intuitively, that the request itself is not necessary. Then the prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving. It is not a request at all but a statement of gratitude for what is so.
There is only one way for you to know yourself as Me, and that is for you first to know yourself as not Me. [...]
Upon entering the physical universe, you relinquished your remembrance of yourself. This allows you to choose to be Who You Are, rather than simply wake up in the castle, so to speak. [...]
Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to re-member Who You Are. And to re-member who everyone else is. That is why a big part of your job is to remind others (that is, to re-mind them), so that they can re-member also.
All the wonderful spiritual teachers have been doing just that. It is your sole purpose. That is to say, your soul purpose.
Know this: there is no such thing as an incorrect path — for on this journey you cannot “not get” where you are going.
It is simply a matter of speed — merely a question of when you will get there — yet even that is an illusion, for there is no “when,” neither is there a “before” or “after.” There is only now; an eternal moment of always in which you are experiencing yourself.
Then what is the point? If there is no way not to “get there,” what is the point of life? Why should we worry at all about anything we do?
Well, of course, you shouldn’t. But you would do well to be observant. Simply notice who and what you are being, doing, and having, and see whether it serves you.
The point of life is not to get anywhere — it is to notice that you are, and have always been, already there. You are, always and forever, in the moment of pure creation. The point of life is therefore to create — who and what you are, and then to experience that.
"Great!" Richard replied. "My assistant will sort out the details."
Richard was the founder & CEO of a multi-billion-dollar tech success story in Australia. The year was 2016. I was twenty-four years old and just starting my new business, CodeMakers.
I'd actually met Richard back in my university days when I was a starry-eyed nineteen-year-old with my fledgling tech startup, 99dresses. As a scholarship recipient, I was invited to one of the university's fancy award dinners along with their prominent alumni and supporters. Richard and I had been seated next to each other on a table with several other guests. He was around my dad's age. I had no idea who he was or what he did, but he seemed quite smart and lovely. We talked about various things together, then went our separate ways at the end of the night.
Nearly six years later, I received an email from him. The email was attached to a media article about my new business.
Nikki,
I hope this email address on LinkedIn still finds you.
I don't know if you remember me. I probably did not leave that much of an impression, but I did meet you some years ago at one award bake off or another, and was impressed with your entrepreneurship and flair. Your intellect shines through, your presence is powerful, and you have that icon air about you.
I am sorry to read about 99dresses. I thought it was a great idea. Regardless, I'm impressed by the way you talk about failure. I have, deep in my distant past, several non-fatal business failures that have informed my current (apparent) success.
I am very interested in engaging our next generation of software entrepreneurs and found your comments both important and a point of alignment. Personally, and through [my company], we are sponsoring a number of activities. [...] I/we want to do more...
Females, in particular, are excluded (or select themselves out) mainly by social factors from an early age. These pre-set social biases are very hard to defeat, as they are all but invisible. We all need to work hard, probably from early primary school, to offset such biases. We certainly need people like you to lead. I can't really provide the right setting for this myself, but I/we can provide resources, impetus and connections.
If there is any interest, I and [my company] would love to work with you, include you, sponsor relevant activities, or do anything to assist. Let me know if this is interesting.
I am sure you have many offers of mentorship, and I don't want to overreach, but if you ever want a sounding board (time permitting, I imagine for both of us), I am happy to provide one.
In case this is all too much or not of interest, I completely understand. I am still proud to have you as an Australian entrepreneur - I hope to see you learn, grow and excel now and in the future.
Regards,
Richard
I replied, of course. It was lovely to hear from him after so many years.
And that's how I found myself in his office in 2016. We talked for a while, and then he gestured me over to his desk.
"You know, I wasn't always like this. I used to be a musician, back in the day." He showed me a picture of a younger Richard. After taking it in, I glanced out the office window to the vast open-plan area of desks, with people busily collaborating with each other and working together on his vision.
Richard directed my attention back to a graph on his desk. He traced his finger across many years of slow and steady growth. Then he tapped his finger at a steep inflection point — the moment everything changed and his company began making quantum leaps. It was an incline so steep that venture capitalists would've scrambled to get a seat on board that rocket ship. Yet somehow, Richard managed to maintain a huge percentage of the company by the time it went public.
With his finger still tapping on the inflection point, he looked me in the eyes and said, "Nikki, this point right here represents the moment I learned how to think. I mean, really think."
He told me about a course he did in New Zealand called A Black Belt In Thinking. He told me it changed everything for him. It changed the way his mind worked. It changed the way he approached problems. He could see points of failure in complex systems with incredible clarity, just by applying rigorous logic. He could spot little fixes that had massive positive consequences. He could see problems as symptoms and trace them all the way back to their root cause.
It changed his company, and it changed his life. It changed mine, too.
"Nikki," he said. "I'm sending some employees to this ten-day boot camp in New Zealand so they can learn the same thinking processes that I did. It's going to be intense — wake up at six a.m., go to bed at midnight, and train your mind in between. The boot camp is in two weeks. I'd like to send you, too. I'll pay for the whole thing, of course. Flights, accommodation, food — all taken care of. Do you want to go?"
I was a bit surprised. That wasn't what I was expecting, but of course I said yes. When a smart, forward-thinking billionaire offers to send you on a $12,000 learning adventure, you'd be silly to refuse.
"Can I ask why?" I said, after I'd accepted his offer. "Why me?"
"Because I have a feeling you're going to change things. I see something in you. You're going to make an impact."
It was fascinating how his mind worked. He just saw things with eerie clarity. I sometimes wished I had that foresight when I looked into a mirror and saw a lost 24-year-old staring back at me.
"You may choose to be any Part of God you wish to be," I said to Jamal's Soul. "You are Absolute Divinity, experiencing Itself. What Aspect of Divinity do you now wish to experience as You?"
"Okay," said Jamal's Soul, "then I choose deep, unwavering, romantic love. I want to experience my Self in a soulmate connection. Who, then, shall be my soulmate?"
Just then, another soul stepped forward from the crowd. "I will be your soulmate," said Simone's Soul. "Besides, you've done the same for me."
"I have?" asked Jamal's Soul.
"Of course. Don't you remember? We've been All Of It, you and I. We've been the Up and the Down of it, and the Left and the Right of it. We've been the Here and the There of it, and the Now and the Then of it. We've been the Big and the Small of it, the Male and the Female of it, the Good and the Bad of it. We've all been the All of It.
And we've done it by agreement, so that each of us might experience ourselves as The Grandest Part of God. For we have understood that...
If you choose to be a thing, something or someone opposite to that has to show up somewhere in your universe to make that possible."
Jamal's Soul was excited now to know that he could experience every Divine Aspect of God. He understood, now, The Plan.
Do not forsake Me when you need Me most. Now is the hour of your greatest testing. Now is the time of your greatest chance. It is the chance to prove everything that has been written here.
When I say “don’t forsake Me,” I sound like that needy, neurotic God we talked about. But I’m not. You can “forsake Me” all you want. I don’t care, and it won’t change a thing between us. I merely say this in answer to your questions. It is when the going gets tough that you so often forget Who You Are, and the tools I have given you for creating the life that you would choose. [...]
You can define these present conditions and circumstances as what they truly are: temporary and temporal. You may then use them as tools — for that is what they are, temporary, temporal tools — in the creation of present experience.
Just who do you think you are? In relationship to the experience called lose-a-job, who do you think you are? And, perhaps more to the point, who do you think I am? Do you imagine this is too big a problem for Me to solve? Is getting out of this jam too big a miracle for Me to handle? I understand that you may think it’s too big for you to handle, even with all the tools I have given you — but do you really think it’s too big for Me? [...]
There is nothing you can’t have if you choose it. Even before you ask, I will have given it to you. Do you believe this?
No. I’m sorry. I’ve seen too many prayers go unanswered. [...] I don’t believe that whatever I ask, I get. My life has not been a testimony to that. In fact, I rarely get what I ask for. When I do, I consider myself damned lucky.
That’s an interesting choice of words. You have an option, it seems. In your life, you can either be damned lucky, or you can be blessing lucky. I’d rather you be blessing lucky — but, of course, I’ll never interfere with your decisions.
I tell you this: You always get what you create, and you are always creating.
I do not make a judgment about the creations that you conjure, I simply empower you to conjure more — and more and more and more. If you don’t like what you’ve just created, choose again. My job, as God, is to always give you that opportunity.
Now you are telling Me that you haven’t always gotten what you’ve wanted. Yet I am here to tell you that you’ve always gotten what you called forth.
Your Life is always a result of your thoughts about it — including your obviously creative thought that you seldom get what you choose. Now in this present instance you see yourself as the victim of the situation in the losing of your job. Yet the truth is that you no longer chose that job. You stopped getting up in the morning in anticipation, and began getting up with dread. You stopped feeling happy about your work and began feeling resentment. You even began fantasizing about doing something else. You think these things mean nothing? You misunderstand your power. I tell you this: Your Life proceeds out of your intentions for it. So what is your intention now? Do you intend to prove your theory that life seldom brings you what you choose? Or do you intend to demonstrate Who You Really Are and Who I Am? [...]
The first thing to understand about the universe is that no condition is “good” or “bad.” It just is. So stop making value judgments. The second thing to know is that all conditions are temporary. Nothing stays the same, nothing remains static. Which way a thing changes depends on you.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
There is no time. All things exist simultaneously. All events occur at once.
This Book is being written, and as it’s being written it’s already written; it already exists. In fact, that’s where you’re getting all this information — from the book that already exists. You’re merely bringing it into form.
This is what is meant by: “Even before you ask, I will have answered.”
[...]
But… if everything has already happened, then it follows that I am powerless to change my future. Is this predestination?
No! Don’t buy into that! That is not true. In fact, this “set up” should serve you, not disserve you!
You are always at a place of free will and total choice. Being able to see into the “future” (or get others to do it for you) should enhance your ability to live the life you want, not limit it.
How? I need help here.
If you “see” a future event or experience you do not like, don’t choose it! Choose again! Select another! Change or alter your behavior so as to avoid the undesired outcome.
But how can I avoid that which has already happened?
It has not happened to you — yet! You are at a place in the Space-Time Continuum where you are not consciously aware of the occurrence. You do not “know” it has “happened.” You have not “remembered” your future!
(This forgetfulness is the secret of all time. It is what makes it possible for you to “play” the great game of life!)
What you do not “know” is not “so.” Since “you” do not “remember” your future, it has not “happened” to “you” yet! A thing “happens” only when it is “experienced.” A thing is “experienced” only when it is “known.”
Now let’s say you’ve been blessed with a brief glimpse, a split-second “knowing,” of your “future.” What’s happened is that your Spirit — the nonphysical part of you — has simply sped to another place on the Space-Time Continuum and brought back some residual energy — some images or impressions — of that moment or event.
These you can “feel” — or sometimes another who has developed a metaphysical gift can “feel” or “see” these images and energies that are swirling about you.
If you don’t like what you “sense” about your “future,” step away from that! Just step away from it! In that instant you change your experience — and everyone of You breathes a sigh of relief!
Wait a minute! Whoaaaa—?
You must know — you are now ready to be told — that you exist at every level of the Space-Time Continuum simultaneously.
That is, your soul Always Was, Always Is, and Always Will Be — world without end — amen.
I “exist” more places than one?
Of course! You exist everywhere — and at all times!
There is a “me” in the future and a “me” in the past?
Well, “future” and “past” do not exist, as we’ve just taken pains to understand — but, using those words as you have been using them, yes.
There is more than one of me?
There is only one of you, but you are much larger than you think!
So when the “me” that exists “now” changes something he doesn’t like about his “future,” the “me” that exists in the “future” no longer has that as part of his experience?
Essentially yes. The whole mosaic changes. But he never loses the experience he’s given himself. He’s just relieved and happy that “you” don’t have to go through that.
But the “me” in the “past” has yet to “experience” this, so he walks right into it?
In a sense, yes. But, of course, “you” can help “him.”
I can?
Sure. First, by changing what the “you” in front of you experienced, the “you” behind you may never have to experience it! It is by this device that your soul evolves.
In the same way, the future “you” got help from his own future self, thus helping you avoid what he did not.
[...]
You are using all of Life — all of many lives — to be and decide Who You Really Are; to choose and to create Who You Really Are; to experience and to fulfill your current idea about yourself.
You are in an Eternal Moment of Self creation and Self fulfillment through the process of Self expression. You have drawn the people, events, and circumstances of your life to you as tools with which to fashion the Grandest Version of the Greatest Vision you ever had about yourself. This process of creation and recreation is ongoing, never ending, and multi-layered. It is all happening “right now” and on many levels.
In your linear reality you see the experience as one of Past, Present, and Future. You imagine yourself to have one life, or perhaps many, but surely only one at a time.
But what if there were no “time”? Then you’d be having all your “lives” at once!
You are!
You are living this life, your presently realized life, in your Past, your Present, your Future, all at once! Have you ever had a “strange foreboding” about some future event — so powerful that it made you turn away from it?
In your language you call that premonition. From My viewpoint it is simply an awareness you suddenly have of something you’ve just experienced in your “future.”
Your “future you” is saying, “Hey, this was no fun. Don’t do this!”
You are also living other lives — what you call “past lives” — right now as well — although you experience them as having been in your “past” (if you experience them at all), and that is just as well. It would be very difficult for you to play this wonderful game of life if you had full awareness of what is going on. Even this description offered here cannot give you that. If it did, the “game” would be over! The Process depends on the Process being complete, as it is—including your lack of total awareness at this stage.
So bless the Process, and accept it as the greatest gift of the Kindest Creator. Embrace the Process, and move through it with peace and wisdom and joy. Use the Process, and transform it from something you endure to something you engage as a tool in the creation of the most magnificent experience of All Time: the fulfillment of your Divine Self.