Thanks for this interview Alex, great guest to have on!
I read Jurgen’s book quite a few years ago now and was pleasantly surprised to see he was a guest on the show, and even more pleasantly surprised that he was gracious enough to come here and chat on the forum in person. To be really honest, I can’t really recall the book that well so was planning on skim-re-reading it over a weekend, and coming back here to pose any questions that I may have had to Jurgen, to take that opportunity!
I’m no expert on Jurgen, by any means, but from my limited exposure, I’m not really sure how it can be said that he is an "outright fraud"? I’m all for being direct and challenging, but I think before we make statements like "outright fraud", we should express the reasoning behind it, put those to the person in question to let them address them, and then if we find the responses unsatisfactory we are well within our rights to believe someone is an "outright fraud"? But each to their own, I think it was a bit of a loss to the forum myself!
I recall being quite excited by the title of this book when it first came out. Several years previously, I was having some very unusual "OBEs" which are very hard to describe. The best way I can describe it is as if there were hundreds of "lives" being played or lived out across many different & unrelated "universes" or "worlds", and my consciousness was "cycling" through them, one by one. I was completely & utterly "identifying" with each "life" when I got to it, "remembered" who that was, their history and life etc. There was also an overwhelming sense of "connection" between each "life", as if there was a narrative connection I couldn’t quite put my finger on as it was so subtle. (as an aside, as I can’t really put this into words, I would "come back" to my own personality/body and I would be listening to the "inner sound", and it was this "inner sound" that was "connecting" all the "lives" – pure nonsense, I know :)
I had no context or examples from existing literature that described these kinds of experiences, and I was kind of at a loss to understand them. In my own head I signified these experiences as the "multidimensionality of man", so when a few years later I came across Jurgen’s book, I was very excited! :) I think he did touch on these kinds of experiences...but sadly cannot recall now? Funnily enough, since those experiences, Jurgen’s book came out, I started hearing numerous NDEs that described the same thing and movies like Cloud Atlas came out.
Is it just that I was paying more attention to the phenomena – I do not recall ever hearing or seeing anything before – or is the very nature and narrative of these experiences evolving, becoming more sophisticated?
Just to clarify – I have no idea what the experiences mean or signify, and I cling to no particular interpretation of them. They may just be neural delusions, but they are certainly mind-blowing experientially to the person, and the "neural" hallucinations explanation just doesn’t seem to do the complexity & sense of "meaning" justice. But who knows!
In regards Far From Here’s caveat about how we interpret the narratives of these experiences and mention of "archons" etc, I cannot agree more!
If one takes ALL the narratives from ALL of known history from ALL the "paranormal" sources we have, then we are left with, imo, irreconcilable differences in conceptual narratives about the paranormal and after death states etc. That is my personal understanding. There are so many "outliers" of data that really do confuse matters. (of course, there are also a whole host of reasonable sounding explanations and rationalisations for these variances, some of which have been suggested in this thread)
Having quite a broad & informed knowledge of these areas, it is sometimes too easy for me to slip into broad generalisations which mean absolutely nothing to those who prefer specifics. There are too many!
But, let’s take a very narrow and specific example.
For centuries, in Indian culture (I have heard a handful myself from trustworthy family and friends), a typical NDE narrative ended with some administrator for the lord/angel of death (dharam-rai or yamraj) telling death’s henchmen (yamdoots) to "take this soul back, you have brought the wrong person, this is a mistake!".
Nowadays, in the west, the typical narrative is "Do you want to stay here or go back?" or "You still have some important work to do, you must go back".
Now, whilst there are ways to rationalise away as ultimately benign the narratively speaking irreconcilable differences, such as the "form" the experience takes is "in part" human psychology, or that the truth or reality is so abstract that our human minds cannot comprehend it so it manifests in a form we can understand etc, there is none-the-less extremely significant differences in the narrative we are getting in relation to our "soul purpose" here on earth and the mechanics of how it all works.
On top of this, we have the history of "angels" and "ufos" and "fairies" "Virgin Mary apparitions" etc, and how experiences with these have guided humanity and important figures through time – very often to "abandon" them or give them "bad" information once their "goal" has been achieved, like Joan of Arc etc.
Another question to ask is, why does something manifest as an "angel" or a "fairy" or "elemental" in the past, but now appear as "aliens" from Sirius B? (to this I would add "deceased family members" during NDEs, who by other systems of thought should have incarnated elsewhere by now – time and space and identity is an illusion? Then EVERYTHING we’re discussing is an illusion!)
Again like NDEs there may well be – and I hope so – a reasonable and benign answer related to our human limitations, or the uplifting guidance of humanity etc.
But still we must agree that by normal human standards there is an element of "deception" or "trickery" or "manipulation"? We are not smart enough to know the truth, so here’s a children’s story for you to grasp!! It may well be true and right, but it’s still a little deceptive?
It may well be, and I hope it is, all benign and loving and ultimately wonderful and joyous etc. But, as Far From Here says, we shouldn’t be dogmatic & unquestioning about it.
Personally speaking – though I am not at all certain of it – I DO think ultimately it is all just one big ocean of love
)
PS – here’s an interesting website I’m sure a few have already come across:
www.trickedbythelight.com/tbtl/index.html