Alternate Perceptions Magazine, March 2025
Reality Surfing with James Dean
by: Dennis Stamey
Manifest gurus espousing Goddard's philosophy can be found throughout social media and they are growing in popularity. We queried a few about different aspects of manifesting, but they wouldn’t answer. Maybe we had to purchase their exorbitantly priced books and videos first. But in a recent live Q&A on Facebook, we were able to ask one such guru, we’ll call her Stella, concerning visualization and multiple universes. She said that there is a reality for any circumstance, that each person’s life has an infinite number of possibilities, for example, there’s a reality where Stella is POTUS, where she is homeless, or where she is a superstar entertainer. If you can visualize enough, believe strongly enough, and know that your vision is real, you will eventually align with this reality.
Feeling and knowing are paramount in manifestation. If you want a new car, you need to feel the upholstery or the steering wheel. If you want a lover, you need to feel their touch or their kiss. Knowing is having no doubt it will happen. Both concepts sound like belief. Belief has its own frequency. So, could belief transform our lives, giving us what we desire, moving the universe to create manifestations? Probably. These changes don’t involve aligning yourself with an alternate reality, they involve aligning your frequency with whatever you want. A few gurus, a very few, even talk about frequencies instead of multi universes. Money has a certain frequency as does a nice house or a soul mate, they claim.
Maybe this is why those born into poverty stay poor and those born into wealth remain affluent. Neither group can conceive of any other lifestyle. We remember years ago seeing a Mercedes Benz driving around with the license plate “4Kmind.” To succeed in this world, you certainly need a 4K mind. It’s not “ask and you shall receive” it’s “believe and you shall receive.”
We also asked Stella about how paranormal phenomena might relate to the doctrine \to the multiverse, also known as the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI). She explained that the unexplained involved awareness, i.e. if you’re aware of something, you will see it. Hence, if you believe in UFOs, you might see them whenever you look skyward. Again, this idea concurs with our own interpretations. If somebody sees a witch in the forest, then soon other people may see it.
She then went on to talk about the MWI theory, explaining that she once had a friend who was transgender and later found out that this person had given birth, which illustrates a prime example of a reality shift. But was Stella merely repeating hearsay? She never met that individual again. Maybe her friend adopted a child and those unaware of her true gender thought she had birthed it. Stella also related that she had crossed paths with people from her past who had died. More cases of reality shifts. Maybe she saw individuals who reminded her of dead friends and relatives. That can happen.
Nonetheless, this reminds us of someone we encountered who looked exactly like our late brother-in-law, we mean exactly in every way. This happened a year after our brother-in-law, whose name was Bonnie, died from a stroke in 2003. Each morning as we were heading home after dropping our wife off at work, we would encounter, driving the opposite way, a man who resembled Bonnie in every detail. Bonnie drove a white Lincoln. This guy drove a white Taurus. Both cars look similar. This continued for a month. I’ve never seen the look-alike since. Was it a wicked coincidence or was Bonnie alive in a different universe that happened to intersect into mine?
Was the deceased Wal-Mart supervisor that I saw last year also alive in one of these other realities and accidentally stepped into mine or I stepped into hers (see our article “Wish Fulfillment, Bigfoot, and the Collective Psyche” in the January 2025 issue of AP Magazine concerning this incident)? I sort of remember, the more I ruminated about my experience, this woman approaching some customers, odd for a ghost.
There’s also the ghost of a friend John Keel entertained. Filmmaker Daniel Drasin was at Keel’s apartment when Joe arrived. The three of them watched TV and later Keel and his friend went out to dinner and to attend a UFO conference. That very night, the Silver Bridge at Point Pleasant, a town that had been undergoing strange events, collapsed. The next day Joe was gone and shortly thereafter, Keel learned that this person had been dead for two years. Again, Joe’s actions seemed odd for someone who should have been ectoplasmic residue.
Perhaps the dead supervisor and Keel’s friend were examples of simulated reality, temporary reality created out of energy by the collective psyche or even our psyche. Real enough to be touched but having no objective existence and lasting a few minutes or a few hours. As far as my brother-in-law’s doppelganger, maybe this was synchronicity. Carl Jung believed that a lot of events that are written off as coincidence are psychic manifestations from the collective unconscious, not simulated reality necessarily but personalized messages if you will. Maybe there was an individual in my hometown who looked like Bonnie and the universe conspired to have our paths cross. If time and space don't exist, the universe created this real person, put him in this Houston suburb, and arranged for me to encounter him if only from a distance and for a short while.
Neville Goddard said that coincidences were also manifestations from the subconscious reflecting our current thoughts and beliefs, aligning experiences to match our inner state. Thus, if we wanted a red Corvette, we might start seeing them everywhere. This has happened to us.
Returning to the MWI theory, what is it? Having dropped out of Physics 101 in college, we are the last ones who should try and explain. Basically, and very basically, it proposes that every decision we make splits reality or a quantum particle creating a new universe. If we decide not to go into work today, bam, a new world appears, one where we do go to work. The MWI theory began with the musings of Greek philosophers and since the 1990s has gained popularity among quantum physicists. The problem with the MWI is that it’s purely speculative without any empirical data to back it up.
Nevertheless, we’ve always been fascinated by the concept of alternate realities. In the 1960s, Allen Greenfield proposed that paranormal phenomena come from a parallel universe where magic dominates science. Many works of fantasy, such as Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson and The Dark Gate by John Jakes explore this theme. This is probably where Greenfield, a fantasy literature buff, derived his idea. We occasionally wrote for his publication Alternate Horizons Newsletter. Sometimes we are drawn back to the alternate reality thesis. What stops us, however, is knowing that the AR theory doesn’t offer satisfactory answers for strange anomalies. Is there a wizard waving a wand and making UFOs materialize or a sorceress casting spells to create some cryptid? That’s the crux of the AR theory. This notion plays out better in fantasy literature. Naw, we’ll pass.
We ask again what happens to our consciousness when we die, that part of us which is immortal? Does it wander the earth like the main character in the film American Beauty, does it go into another body that has just been born, or does it reunite with Universal Consciousness? If our personal consciousness is not at a high frequency like the cosmic mind (which would be the highest frequency in creation), it unquestionably couldn’t reunite, it would have to be purified somehow (which might happen if the universe eventually explodes. If it floats around as a ghost with millions and millions of others, our world would be fearfully haunted. If people are reincarnated, there is no evidence for rebirth except for Deja vu. The problem with Deja vu is that a person’s memory can’t survive death. Once the brain dies, it's impossible for memory to be restored.
Goddard didn’t say a lot about life after death only that once we die, we will “simply dream” ourselves into another body and continue doing what we’ve been doing. His statements are a bit ambiguous but they suggest reincarnation.
We recently speculated in an online chat room that when we die, our consciousness might enter a new reality, creating a personal universe where we start again at a random point. Maybe James Dean didn’t die in the crash of his Porsche Spyder, we said but continued living in another world where he went on to act in more films. It is noteworthy that the writer William Blast mentioned having recurring dreams in which Dean informed him that he was alive.
We thought we were being original with our suggestion until our daughter mentioned quantum immortality. This is another offbeat idea proposed by quantum physicists which contends that because electrons can spin clockwise and counterclockwise, there can be different versions of an outcome. Dean dies when a careless driver swerves in front of him. There goes his consciousness and the universe as he knew it. But wait, quantum mechanics say that the accident will be split in two. The likelihood of the Spyder colliding with this car on a quiet California road is low. That’s an electron turning right. The higher odds say Dean will never encounter him. The electron turning left. Thus, a parallel universe must exist where consciousness survives and can't be eliminated. This conforms to the First Law of Thermodynamics which tells us that energy can only change or be transferred from one object to another. Dean is thus immortal. We all are.
Consider Robert Nathan’s novel Portrait of Jennie where an impoverished painter meets a beautiful young woman in a park in New York City. He begins painting portraits of her and subsequently his career takes off, portraits of her in high demand. But the painter notices that each time he meets the girl, she seems older. She even talks about past events as if they had just happened. Eventually, the painter learns that Jennie has been dead for years. She is not a ghost but someone from a different time flow.
If there are other universes that receive our consciousness when our body dies, what does this have to do with the paranormal? Probably nothing, that's a different story. Could alternate realities exist where the Axis won the war or Lincoln survived his assassination? Doubtful since the universal script or the script of creation has already been written. Even Goddard said this. By allowing the Axis to win, Germany and Japan, who were never close friends, would probably go to war with each other down the line using atomic weapons, thereby destroying the world in a nuclear winter No. Life continues until it naturally ends.
What if that is the whole purpose of multiple universes, to serve as receptacles for consciousness whose host has died, facilitating energy transfer. Perhaps this is what Goddard meant; we return to our old life maybe to repeat the process. But then again, this would involve recorrecting history. Hitler wises up and can win the war. Then there’s the eternal return, that time is caught in an infinite loop, that the same events will occur in the same way for eternity, a notion again postulated by ancient Greek philosophers including Socrates. Nietzche also touched upon it. Maybe this is the real reincarnation, having to relive everything over again. We can’t forget Woody Allen’s character lamenting in his mind the thought of eternal recurrence in the film Hannah and Her Sisters, “This mean that I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It’s not worth it.”
Multiple realities and time loops. We wish that we could develop a viable theory about life after death but at this juncture, we’re at an impasse. The astute reader might ask, “Well, what about near-death experiences? Don’t they reveal something about the afterlife?”
Maybe and maybe not. This implies that large-scale, spatially distributed electrical activity within the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, has broken down. Like a town that loses power one neighborhood at a time, local regions of the brain go offline one after another. The mind, whose substrate is whichever neurons remain capable of generating electrical activity, does what it always does: it tells a story shaped by the person’s experience, memory and cultural expectations. Studies of NDEs have shown that there are several common characteristics: being outside your body (called an out-of-body experience or OBE), entering a tunnel, arriving at a heavenly realm where you are greeted by loved ones who have passed on, reviewing your life, and meeting a deity that is part of your culture be it Christ or Muhammad. The problem is are the people experiencing NDEs dead? No, they aren’t. If they were dead and were miraculously resuscitated, then their brains would have died also. They would have no memory of going into the afterlife. The brain is still functioning in these NDE states, there is still consciousness, still brain waves.
The only scientific explanation is that when a person nears death (well, NDEs can even occur under anesthesia or if you faint), there is large-scale electrical activity within the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, breaks down, local regions of the brain shutting down in succession. The mind, left with a few remaining neurons remain capable of generating electrical activity, begins to create a story shaped by the person’s experience, memory and cultural beliefs.
States like NDE can be found in hallucinations, acid trips, transcendental meditation, and epilepsy. Dostoevsky described having a near NDE during one of his seizures. They can also be created artificially by neurosurgeons electrically stimulating the brain’s insular cortex in epileptic patients. Certain aspects of NDEs can also be found in UFO abduction cases. Abductees have even reported OBEs. Is there a rational explanation for these OBEs? Psychologists have noted that they seem to be produced by sensory deprivation, and the self must relocate somewhere else because the brain is unaware of its real location. Shamanistic or soul flight, where a shaman goes into a trance to communicate with spirits, also has elements of an NDE.
So, we return to the question once more, where do we go when we die? Maybe the consciousness of the departed (even animals too since they have a consciousness) remains in a holding pattern, waiting for the universe to collapse, if it does. That’s what most religions and even mythologies teach to a degree, that the dead are in a place of confinement be it Sheol or Valhalla or what the Catholics call Purgatory. Maybe they hang around their final resting places. Maybe that’s also why these ghost hunters pick up so many voices on their spirit boxes while in graveyards (unless it’s a radio station coming through).
If that’s true, maybe the dead, who are nothing more than consciousness devoid of mortal trappings, can create new realities as they float in the netherworld just as the living can create new realities (if Goddard is correct). Maybe they can do this intentionally or unintentionally. But what sort of reality? Probably something akin to their old lives, something that is familiar to them. Perhaps this is what my brother-in-law, the Wal-Mart supervisor, Keel’s friend or the dead people seen by Stella did and their realities happened to intrude into this one.
In our view, consciousness is reality and reality is energy. Reality therefore can be manipulated, putty to play with. Keep surfing, Dean.
