Live Fearlessly and Don’t Get Stuck

A Knight’s Life

Erich Von Daniken has died, and amongst the accolades and farewells from followers, friends, and loved ones surely somebody thought, “Well, now you know, Erich. NOW YOU KNOW.”

Because he does; Von Daniken (EvD, more familiarly) has crossed the threshold and either found something, or nothing. If he found what he suspected, EvD is laughing it up with extraterrestrial consciousness in his new energy body and enjoying a warm welcome.

If not, I hope he is instead facing some Jehovah god with a sense of humor who asks, “But wasn’t it fun? You had fun, right?” and not some dour scribe of an angel, sending him to a midrange, two-star afterlife with a continental breakfast and a limited hours swimming pool across the parking lot, behind a chain link fence.

Or third option, nothing; the nothingness of skeptics and atheists, which to them sounds like an easy, reasonable wink-out, but to me sounds an awful lot like being erased, as if you never were.

Here is my argument with skeptics who deny an afterlife of some sort; what is the point of all this, if nobody will remember it? And the reply might be, “There is no point.”  A nonbeliever could rightly say that we humans seek meaning so we have a reason to stay busy, or else we would walk out in front of a bus from boredom. Why not just check out when you feel like it, if life is some random, meaningless collision of cellular energy?

And what is the function of memory, if not simply as a strategic device? “Remember when Fred walked out in front of a bus? Yeah, don’t do that.”

Even EvD said we were “…nothing but ants” in the vast universe. Ants, yes. But not nothing.

I think EvD used this example to remind us that we were not, in his opinion, the top of the physical energy pyramid. His work, whether readers believed it all or in part, or called it science fiction, pushed people to conceive of potential realities outside of what we are commonly taught. That is a good thing.

Here is another reality outside of what a doubter might take for granted, in their wink-out theory: near death experiences. People who have died and been brought back to life often return with vivid tales of their post-life experiences, and a percentage of these experiences are positive. Scientists say this is a function of the brain easing people into death, and out of existence.

But whether the experience was positive or negative, why would people need this experience if they were just going into the blackness of nothing? I can’t remember anything before my birth. Presumably, life’s closing scene wink-out would be like that too, so I’d hardly need a nice memory of tunnels, white light, and dead family members to soothe me when I reflected on the epic transition to my afterlife state. Because I wouldn’t be.

And what about ghosts, who populate a good bit of the nonphysical, but still Earthly, world? Let’s use the late EvD in this example, as I think he would enjoy thinking about it and not mind at all.

If someone sees the ghost of EvD, rifling through papers on his desk, is that his trapped soul? I would say, from my perspective, no. I believe EvD’s great big energetic soul is fully aware and enjoying his afterlife, not futzing over what is said, or was left undone, here.

While a tiny part of this soul was on Earth, being a seeker and nonconformist, we called him Erich Von Daniken; and he was a fully-fledged energy consciousness that was individual, while also being part of the big EvD soul energy.  He was, as are we all, an extended piece of that soul.

I believe ghosts are part of what made up a soul, not the whole of it. So we could pretend that the departed EvD might get in a huff over being dismissed by skeptics and critics reviewing, maybe harshly, his body of work in the wake of his death. That earthly emotion could tie EvD’s personality to this physical world, fueled by the desire to prove his theories created over a lifetime of effort.

That’s what a lot of the ghosts I run into are doing; who they were in this life is tied, emotionally, to an experience that nags for resolution.

It’s not a physical problem that tethers ghosts to the physical world. It’s emotions.

So if emotions are so incredibly strong they can keep a piece of us stuck here, in a state of distress or shadowy half existence, shouldn’t we be paying more attention to how we feel and what we regret, and put those in order on a regular – perhaps even daily – basis?

None of this is to say that Erich Von Daniken is a ghost, or that he is in the least bothered by what anybody has to say about his body of work. Whatever he found when he got to the other side, I hope he’s very proud of what he did while he was here. Like a Knight in a Tarot deck, EvD was a catalyst, always pushing, fully invested in and not backing down from what he purported to believe in.

No regrets.