Background

In Mexico, the “Day of the Dead” is a day of festive remembrance of family and friends who have passed away.  Families typically visit the graveyards where their loved ones are buried and bring pictures of the deceased along with their favorite food, drink, and music.  These items are thought to encourage the visit of the deceased one’s spirit from the “land of the dead”.  The origins of this cultural tradition are thought be among the Aztec civilization 2,500 – 3,000 years ago (see reference 1 below for more information).

The movie Coco depicts this Mexican festival beautifully and the movie has become mandatory viewing for all young Americans of Mexican descent (trust me on this one).

Movie Synopsis

Miguel is a young boy who desires more than anything else to be a musician.  However, he has the bad fortune of being born into a family that has completely shunned music and anything having to do with music for generations.  On the day of the dead, Miguel somehow passes into the “land of the dead”, meets several of his ancestors he’s only seen in pictures, explores the history of his family’s relationship to music and fame, helps his family discover the truth behind a terrible incident, and resolves conflicts that have robbed the family of peace for decades.

It is a wonderful story exposing children and adults alike to concepts worth thinking about and discussing.

The Land of the Dead

Not only does the whole country of Mexico believe that people continue their existence after death in a subtler realm, but so do several other cultures like modern Tibetan Buddhists (ref: The Tibetan Book of the Dead), ancient Egyptians (2), the Ancient Mayans (3) and Aztecs (4), modern Hindus (5), Celtics (6), and even several modern American and British authors like the clairvoyants CW Leadbeater (7) and Annie Besant (8).  In many cases, the aforementioned peoples and writings give a detailed geography of the other world, outlining various regions of it and describing their qualities.  All these people and cultures (except Mexico, oddly enough), say that a person goes there after death and stays there for a time before eventually reincarnating in another body for another round of earthly life.  [Sometimes in dreams we really speak to those people who are living in that realm for the time being.]

Crossing Over

There are 3 ways to cross over into and have experiences in the “Land of the Dead” (i.e. Subtle Realm):

1. Death – when the physical body ceases to function, this has absolutely no bearing on a person’s other energy bodies.  Hence, his next level up” body -his subtle body- is perfectly fine at the time of physical death and he/she is able to interact with things and people on that plane.
2. Sleep – During sleep, the dreams we experience are usually a jumble mess of memories from the day, imaginings from the brain, and actual impression from the subtle realm where the astral body finds itself when the physical body is “deactivated”. 
3. Meditation – In certain yogic practices, like Raja Yoga, sense withdraw is practiced.  This means that a yogi can stop the functioning of his 5 physical senses and thereby become sensitive to impressions made upon his non-physical bodies by non-physical objects and/or people. 

Conclusion

The “Land of the Dead” is a concept embraced by many different cultures around the world and throughout time.  This movie does a great job depicting, in a fun and family-friendly way, what that “place” (realm) might be like. 

If you liked this movie, there is another movie that came out a few years earlier that didn’t get as much attention but that is equally enjoyable and beautiful and also centers around the day of the dead and traveling to the land of the dead.  It’s called “Book of Life”.

References

1) https://www.diffen.com/difference/Day_of_the_Dead_vs_Halloween

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion#Afterlife 

3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_death_rituals#Beliefs_about_the_afterlife

4) http://www.pitlanemagazine.com/cultures/aztec-mythology-and-afterlife-and-life-after-death-in-aztec-beliefs.html

5) http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/rs/death/hindubeliefrev2.shtml

6) https://www.adf.org/articles/gods-and-spirits/ancestors/afterlife-hero-dead.html 

7) Book: Life After Death

8) Book: Death - and After?

The Sixth Sense - a Review

I recently watched M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, The Sixth Sense, again after quite some time. When it came out in 1999, I was in my late twenties. At the time, although I was as impressed as everyone else at the plot twist at the end, I didn’t think much of the plot itself. I thought of it as being just another ‘ghost movie’ that happened to be written better than most others. But after a few years of studying the Subtle World and its characteristics, this movie now speaks to me on a level I never thought possible. 

In light of my studies, the movie’s premise that a person can see dead people all around them, and even communicate with them, doesn’t seem quite so far-fetched.  

The Subtle World is all around us. Although we cannot see it, it interpenetrates the same space we live in, and is inhabited by all kinds of life forms, including human beings. It is the place where we go when we are asleep, the place where we experience our dreams. It is also the place we go when our physical bodies die. We can exist there because humans (and other life forms) have other bodies, not just the physical ones we can see. With this basic understanding, let’s explore The Sixth Sense in a more comprehensive way. Let’s forget the fear and loneliness the main character, Cole Sear, experiences for a moment and simply study the way things are for him. 

Although he appears to be a ‘normal’ boy to everyone around him, he is different from people around him for an unusual reason: he can see into the Subtle World and even interact with the people there. Since nobody else has this ability, to them, Cole seems to be a ‘monster’ because he knows things he shouldn’t know, understands things he shouldn’t understand. An example is how Cole knew about his teacher’s stuttering problem. M. Night Shyamalan seems to be having fun with this by working this into Cole’s last name: Sear is just too close to “seer” to ignore. 

And “seer” is just what Cole is. He has the ability to see things that others cannot - a sixth sense as it were. This ability brings him a lot of misery because he doesn’t understand why it’s happening, and/or what he can do about it. He also understands that, just like in the physical world, not all the people in the Subtle World are friendly. Dr. Crowe helps Cole by acknowledging the reality of the situation, but also tells him that even though they may look scary, some of the dead people he sees may just need help. 

And so Cole (being an incredibly brave young man) decides to give this a try. He sees a girl inside his ‘fort’ built from blankets and clothes pins where he sometimes goes to hide. She is ‘dead’, and yet desperately needed to get a message to her father about the way she died because her little sister was in danger of dying the same way. She sought Cole because he can see and understand her, and could relay her message of warning to her father. Once Cole delivers the message that saves her little sister’s life, she feels free to move on, and she no longer bothers Cole. In the same manner, Cole helps Dr. Crowe by telling him to talk to his wife while she sleeps because she will understand him, and yet he won’t scare her. This is another allusion to the Subtle World being the world of dreamers too, not just the dead. And once Dr. Crowe sees that he has really helped Cole and then tells his (still-living) wife what he needs to, he too feels as though he can move on and Cole rightly guesses that he probably won’t see him again. Like the girl, he can finally let go of the world of the living. 

I loved this film for so many reasons, but the main one has to be that Cole is able to overcome his fear by having compassion and helping people. In the final scenes with Cole, we see that he is smiling, and we get the feeling that he will be okay because he knows he can use his gift to help people. 

I highly recommend this movie to anyone with a curiosity about the subtle world. There is a lot of great information in it, the movie is superbly written and directed, and the casting is about as perfect as you can get. 

This book is essentially a guidebook for anybody who is ready to begin out of body exploration on their own. If you’ve read enough about the “astral plane”, or “other dimensions”, or “other modes of existence” and are ready to actually experience it for yourself, then you’ll want to pick this book up and begin following its instructions right away.

Many techniques are presented for your use, along with descriptions of what to expect along the way. The author also helps us understand what sort of mindset is most conducive to successful out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Hint: control of your thoughts is key.

He includes several journal entries from his early days of OBEs which really brought the reality of the possibility of out of body travel clearly into my mind. This was really exciting and motivating.

One critique is that, in the middle of the book, the author goes into his own theories and speculations on the nature of physics and reality that he has derived from his 20 years of OBEs quite extensively. While the ideas are compelling, provocative, and even quite convincing, I think that it might have been more effective to cut all that in half and instead provide more of his personal journal entries from his early OBEs, like the ones he copied for the reader in the first 2 chapters.

I also would have liked to learn more about how meditation helps one to achieve OBEs. The author did not go into any depth around this.

I am currently using his techniques and will update this book review once I have achieved success! He says to give it 30 days at least.