Ben Affleck and the Flipside

Rarely do we see how silly "modern science" can be.

"Ben Affleck Asked PBS Not To Reveal Ancestry"

 (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File

First off, let me say I've met Ben an a few occasions, in Cannes where I introduced him to Chantal Cerruti, who offered to outfit him in a suit. (I was wearing one, and was happy to make the introduction.) And then later in Santa Monica, where our kids shared a pre-school - his were stalked by paparazzi in trees hovering over the playground, mine were bouncing around the chicken coop - but he and his wife couldn't have been nicer people. 

Despite playing my way through Boston U via a piano-bar in Charlestown (The Warren Tavern) near his home - other than that proximity, I have no reason to comment on this story, other than... it's nonsense.

She agrees with me. Or at least I hope so.
Taken on the set of my film "My Bollywood Bride"

Forget for a moment, the illegal posting of private emails by Wikileaks (One thing to reveal criminal behavior on behalf of hidden agendas, and another to post emails of people who happen to work for or be affiliated with a company... mine included - as I worked on their film "Salt.")  That's beyond the pale, and for my two cents, its reputation just went into a pail.

But back to Mr. Affleck who is "accused" ("Je Accuse!") of asking a reality TV show to cut out the part where his ancestors owned slaves.

Here's the issue:  Harvard's Robert Gates, who hosts the show, claims Ben (or his reps) asked him to delete that part of the show that revealed Ben's relatives owned slaves:

"PBS and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, host of the show that traces the ancestry of well-known guests, said in separate statements that they didn't censor the slave-owner details. Instead, more interesting ancestors of the actor emerged and Gates chose to highlight them in October's segment featuring Affleck, they said in the statements posted on the PBS website..." 

(Professor Gates is the professor who was arrested on his porch in that tragic "arrested for being black" incident in Cambridge years ago.  Unfortunately, a victim of a centuries old amount of prejudice in the Boston area, where I went to school across the Charles River.)

And then this quote jumped out at me:

"In their email exchange, Gates asks (Sony's Michael) Lynton for advice on how to handle Affleck's request. "Here's my dilemma: confidentially, for the first time, one of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors--the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We've never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He's a megastar. What do we do?" Gates wrote on July 22, 2014."

Hello?

"The fact that HE OWNED SLAVES."  Now, I imagine he's not referring to Ben Affleck here, because Ben never owned slaves.

Includes an account of someone who did own slaves... in a previous life

But this sentence goes to the heart of why this research into consciousness, into the "Flipside" is so important.  For Ben, and for Gates, who is belaboring under the concept that somehow we are our ancestors (genetically or epigenetically.) 

There's no evidence that we are our ancestors.  We don't have memories of what our ancestors did.  Under hypnosis, during a near death experience, or any other event in human history.  None. (I'm sorry all those relatives of mine, Irish and Italian who celebrate that fact every year with pasta or beer. It's nice to believe we are them, but we ain't. And it shows)

However we have tons of evidence that people have memories of previous lifetimes that weren't, could not be, were in no relation to their ancestors.  Under hypnosis, during near death experiences, and sometimes during a coma, an out of body experience, during an LSD trip - even while being "cleared" during Scientology.  People have "memories" of their previous lifetimes. Memories that can be forensically looked up and proven.

How could that be?

I can tell you what scientists say.  That it's "cryptomnesia" - or somehow remembering something they saw, or heard on tv, or imagined.  Somehow they made up these details - emotions and everything else that goes along with a previous remembrance of a lifetime.

Hypnotherapists in Iowa watching "Flipside" on DVD. 
Available on Amazon, or Gaiam TV.  Nice screening room.

But where are these memories stored?  In our DNA?  Well, that doesn't make sense, because these memories are of different races - sometimes remembering a lifetime as a slave owner (as in "Flipside") or sometimes a lifetime remembered as an Asian monk (in "Flipside" and "It's a Wonderful Afterlife.")  

What people report under deep hypnosis is that these memories are not stored in our DNA, but travel with us in the form of energetic "hard drives" - they're described in various accounts as "fractals" or some other mode of transport that retain all of our memories from previous lifetimes.  And that when we need to access them - moments of clarity, apotheosis, or in moments of fear, or nearly dying - we access them.  

Could they be part of the Jungian "pool" of consciousness, as one scientist has suggested to me?  Well that doesn't make a lick of sense either, because people who remember these past lives, remember the death scene, remember leaving the body, and when asked where they'd like to "go" they inevitably say "HOME."  As all the 26 people I've filmed under deep hypnosis say.  And then, they go "home" - where they claim they meet their loved ones, hang out with spirit guides, and generally plot their next lifetime. 

(I began "Flipside" as a documentary about Michael Newton's work as a psychologist where over 7000 people said the same things under deep hypnosis about the afterlife over 30 years prior to his publishing in 1994.  I've discovered Dr. Helen Wambach, another psychologist got the same results in her studies in the 1960's. So there's plenty of research to back up these accounts.)

I'm not hypothesizing this detail - it's not a belief or a philosophy - it's what thousands have reported.  Consistently.  Which is what science requires.

So let's start there.  

Ben Affleck should know, should be aware that he is not his ancestors.  Any more than the actress who plays Desdemona coming off stage and berating the actor who played Othello for killing her.  "It's in the play!"

(This quote, courtesy of the actress Kathy Bates, who said it at the end of last year's "American Horror Story" - which sums up perfectly what these reports of why we choose difficult lives, but there's only forgiveness in the afterlife.)

Kathy Bates in her "Freak Show" costume

So if Ben had slave owners in his memories of previous lifetimes - which like I say, occurred in someone interviewed in "Flipside" who saw and felt and experienced what it was like to beat and whip people without any feeling for them - and seeing and feeling and experiencing the horror of that experience.  

And then being told by his spirit guides that he had "transferred that anger to himself" and was still working on beating himself up over his past life behaviors, but that he's "doing better now."  (The person is a hypnotherapist, who has healed countless people in his work; Paul Aurand, former President of the Newton Institute).

Gary Schwartz PhD, author of many books 
on consciousness, "Sacred Promise" included.

Harvard's Gary Schwartz PhD wrote the introduction to "Flipside."  (He also got a PhD from Yale and ran one of their medical schools).  He's been at the forefront of studying consciousness existing outside the body, so Professor Gates might want to check into his work. 

Harvard's own Dr. Alexander wrote about his consciousness existing beyond his body.

 Or perhaps Harvard's Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who had a profound between life experience as recounted in "Proof of Heaven" (Proof also mean a scientific argument for, by the way) - who has personally experienced consciousness existing outside the brain.  Or perhaps look into the work of UVA's Dr. Bruce Greyson, whose epic work on near death experiences is distilled in the youtube video "Is Consciousness Produced by the Brain" where he demonstrates the many cases where people whose brains are not working, actually work in various cases.

The book by Dr. Greyson, Drs Kelly, interviewed in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife"

(80 mins that will convince you that consciousness is not confined to the brain. UVA's Dr. Bruce Greyson speaking in Dharamsala, reproduced in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife")




But no, you see, people focus on the idea that somehow Ben's stardom might have been affected by this revelation that someone in his genetic tree owned slaves.  And now, here we have the opportunity to prove that's nonsense - that he has no more responsibility for what his genetic forefathers did, than a fruit fly does for being angry that he lives for 24 hours. 

Just like people killing each other in Northern Ireland for the fact that their forefathers were of a particular religion.  There's no evidence they are their forefathers, but there is evidence that they've reincarnated on both sides of the fence.

Just like people killing each other in the Middle East. There's DNA evidence that shows Palestinians and Israelis are nearly identical in their DNA, much more so than those outside their group.  And there's no evidence that people had previously lifetimes in their genetic tree - unless they chose to do so.  And there's plenty of evidence of people reincarnating on "opposite sides of the fence."

Just like slaves and their slave owners.  There's no evidence that people remembered lifetimes as slaves (unless that was a choice they made in a previous lifetime) nor is there any evidence that people were slave owners.  However there is evidence that a boy in Ohio who is white, remembers a lifetime where he was a young girl who died in a fire in Chicago (who was black.)
Here's his story.




"It's in the data.  Data does not lie.  We only lie to ourselves about the data."  (said no one but me)


What the research in "Flipside" demonstrates, (and now in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife") over and over again is that we choose our parents each time out.  We choose our lifetime each time we decide to come here.  Yes, we can choose to be a slave owner, yes, we can choose to be a slave - and we have our own private, personal reasons for making that choice, and none of us can judge another for their choice - because we can't be in their shoes.  

And in this case, Ben chose to be here on the planet, and I applaud him for it.  But he should take this opportunity to look into the research - the real research about who he is, about why he chose to be on the planet.  He'll find it if he looks for it, if he's open to it.  To examine why he chose this particular life, this particular path.

Prior to some screening somewhere on the planet.

And that my friends, is my two cents for the day.