Funny how much George Lucas' research into the Force mimics research into the Flipside.
Back in the 1970's, George wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, tried to acquire the rights, but couldn't. So he set out to tell his own space saga, in the style of the old serials, the kind that Flash Gordon did. Evil emperors, heroes fighting their way through space. So George wrote this film as a trilogy with the help of Joseph Campbell, the author of "Hero with a Thousand Faces."
Most people know about this connection - but if you don't, Professor Campbell had studied thousands of different myths, and had synthesized them into simple story lines. Hero goes off on a journey, travels to far and distant lands, and then returns with some kind of benefit or victory - and there are other darker forces that are included in these myths, including son learning that father is not who he thought he was, mother turns out to be someone else, etc. It's a brilliant book if you haven't seen it, and I highly recommend all of his books.
But meanwhile George made "American Graffiti" and it won a number of awards, and did great box office. So at some point they suggested George renegotiate his salary for directing "Star Wars." He was going to be paid something around scale at the time, $150,000 for making the 8 million dollar film (which the original budget had been sliced in half by the skeptical studio.) Ultimately, the put 3 more million into the finished budget, but when the discussion of his salary came about, George remembered his dream.
He had a dream that he saw R2D2 and his other characters on coffee mugs, keychains, etc. Now whether it was a conscious dream, or a dream while he was asleep doesn't matter - it's not the sort of thing people see when they're making a film. (Sure, Hateful Eight lunch boxes, but not likely back in 1976).
So George famously turned down the increase in salary (they offered him $500K) in return for the rights to the sequels and the merchandising. Today it's considered the smartest business deal ever made in Hollywood - as it turned into a multi billion dollar bet. No one thought that the film would be so wildly successful, and they couldn't foresee what George did. Star Wars Everywhere.
But let's examine this for a moment.
Who dreams about coffee mugs with their characters on them?
Not many people. Being a film writer/director myself, it's hard enough to picture who your characters are and what they're doing - without having to think of ancillary markets.
But George had this dream - that he saw these creatures and characters on mugs and items.
Now when you're dreaming or visualizing something - you're not thinking "Gee, how can I market this idea?" Generally you're seeing things or items, and in this particular dream he saw things that no one else saw or could see. Tesla was famous for conceiving and testing his inventions in his minds eye - before he ever put them onto paper - and as he attested, "they always worked" once he put paper to metal.
Was George seeing into the future? Or was he imagining the future? I don't know. But it's the same thing.
I do know that I played Risk with George once in Francis Ford Coppola's home. George had come by for Thanksgiving dinner, and I was there with Luana Anders (the inspiration for my Flipside books) who had starred in Francis Ford's first film - "Dementia 13." They had met while he was still a sound man on Roger Corman films, and he asked Luana if she would star in a movie he was going to shoot in Ireland. It was on the way back from Luana's Roger Corman film "The Young Racers" with Mark Damon, and Francis did the sound, and his girlfriend, later wife Eleanor did the costumes on that film, and the one in Ireland.
Same cast worked on Dementia. Francis Ford was the sound man.
And some odd years later, after I'd met and befriended Luana, I met Francis at a screening of Apocalypse Now in Westwood, and mentioned Luana's name. He asked me to tell her to call him - which I did - which led to 8 years of our going up to the Coppola home for their traditional thanksgiving dinners. I was a literal fly on the wall - some amazing people came through, I generally hid behind the piano, where night after night, they let me pound away on the keys. Sometimes Francis would pick up his stand up bass and play along... but one night we sat down to play Risk.
I hadn't played the game before, I think I played a conservative game - as did George, but he was the first one to fall, and then Francis threw all of his armies at my troops, and for some lucky roll of the dice, he failed in disrupting my armies, and fell out of the game as well, and that left me and his nephew John Schwartzman playing each other - which Johnny won handily. I remember thinking it was odd that Francis did such a rash thing of throwing everything at me, and then failing to dislodge me from the game - after all, he was my host, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why he was trying to destroy me at that very moment.
But oddly enough, John grew up to become an accomplished cameraman, (He shot a short film that started my career with "Video Valentino" and shot my film "You Can't Hurry Love" and 2nd unit on "Limit Up") and shot the film "Jurassic World" and of course we all know that this week "Star Wars" surpassed the economic records of that film.
So what does this have to do with the Flipside?
Well, consider for a moment that George, way back in the 1970's, had this odd dream that he needed to hang onto the rights to the film's characters and story lines. And he was right. With his guidance, the films became the zeitgeist of our world.
And maybe it wasn't such a dream - but a vision of his own future. In the same way that people envision what's going to happen to them, but haven't a clue as to how or why they're going to go about it. "I always knew that I would be a _____" is something I've heard alot in this research. Like the FBI agent who I asked "When did you have the conscious thought you'd work with the FBI?" And she said "Preschool" she said. I asked "How?" She said "I kept lists on everybody in class - what they wore, what they had for lunch."
The other day, Kathleen Kennedy recounted the story of how she had hired a young J.J. Abrams to help catalog Steven Spielberg's super 8 films at Amblin, and now here all these years later, the film that she once stood in line to see she produced, and J.J. directed. Another example of the Flipside in action. Is it a mere coincidence that these people all came together?
As I'm fond of quoting my old professor Julian Baird (who went to Oxford and Harvard and taught at B.U.) "I would agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong."
If you examine the research of what people say from the Flipside (flipsidethebook.com or flipsidethefilm.com) - they talk about time being relative. That events that seem to take forever over here, appear to happen in a few seconds, minutes or hours over there.
For example in one of the cases in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" a woman says that her entire lifetime as a British Sailor in the 17th century, felt like "about 15 minutes" from her perspective over there. That 25 year life where she remembered details about being a Captain aboard a British ship (details which I was able to verify) felt like about 15 minutes over there on the Flipside.
So if you do that math - 100 years is like an hour. Star Wars came out a little less than 40 years ago. And how long ago did that feel to the folks over there? Oh, about half an hour or so. And when you examine people discussing their "life planning" session - where they discuss or plan what the highlights of their lifetimes are going to be - we see that it's not mistake that George wanted to make a Flash Gordon film. (I did too). That serial made him remember the life plan he had that would include making Star Wars, and when it came time for him to "take the money" his higher self allowed him to access the merchandising that was going to come in the future.
The movie wasn't begun when he had the dream about the coffee mugs. It wasn't in the theaters yet. It was in his mind. And on the page. But there's more than meets the eye to this story. Clearly.
And then finally, when we examine the Flipside with regard to "the force." The force refers to the "light" that connects us all. That tapping into that light - or that consciousness - is a way of doing super human feats, or understanding powerful thoughts and feelings. And is also responsible for why and how people like mediums access the flipside - they're able to tap into the "force" and see visuals and feelings that relate to events they couldn't possibly know.
In the 25 sessions that I've filmed of people under deep hypnosis, remembering previous lives, many of which I could verify, they recount a "between lives realm" that exists in "Now Time" - meaning exists as I'm writing this sentence where they are able to observe and access why and how they chose to come to the planet. They speak of a "light" and "radiance" that connects us all - describing it alternately as "A string of lights" or "beams of light" that connect everyone and all things.
(J.J. Abrams worked on the show "Lost" which existed entirely on the Flipside in "now time." Between life time where people examined their previous lifetimes. Coincidence? Perhaps.)
In terms of the "dark side" of the force - well, that's great here on this realm, and of course is part and parcel of Campbell's Greek myths, and the myths that we all experience here. The path while we are human includes good and bad, dark and light - but, in the thousands of cases I've examined of people talking about the Flipside under deep hypnosis, in the 25 cases I've filmed - and in the literature I've studied about this realm, there is nearly no mention of there being a "dark force" or "dark entity" that exists over there.
Evil, as a thing, does not exist on the Flipside. (Or those who've claimed to have experienced some form of it have actually said "in very minute amounts" compared to the light). I'm sorry if that rocks anyone's boat, but it's not my opinion, or belief - it's just in the data - it's in the research and it is repeated consistently. If it was different I'd report it - but it's not.
So the idea that someone can "fall into the dark side" does not bear out in this research - because we choose our lifetimes, we plan our lifetime in advance - not down to the nth degree, but on an improvisational level - so that fact that "bad things" happen - or that our loved ones get killed, is beyond our comprehension to understand or comprehend unless we are in their shoes.
From that perspective I'm sorry that this latest incarnation of the story didn't go further into the Flipside to research that out - perhaps someone will in the future - but the saga that we all go through is thought out in advance before we even get to this universe. Certainly things happen that seem random, that seem out of the blue - but when you really examine them, they tell a different story.
So "The Force Awakens" - well, the force never sleeps - it may be that we're so caught up with being human, living our lives and cursing the darkness that we lose touch with the flipside - so I'll offer General Leah's advice (Carrie Fisher) who posted today "The Force has awakened, and now I'm going to go and take a nap."
May the Flipside Be with you. Meaning may you always be aware of the fact that your loved ones are not gone, they're just not here. That we are wearing this costume and walking in these shoes for a reason, and that we're doing exactly what we signed up to learn, teach or share. And that's a powerful thing to wake up within you - so when you think about the Force awakening, think about the Flipside awakening within - being awake to the nature of reality in all its beauty.
My two cents.
And finally, with his permission, I'm reprinting an email I got from a Minister of a large church in big city in a conservative state. He'd written me asking about my research into reincarnation; ("flipside" and "its a wonderful afterlife") noting that if its driven by karma, as depicted in eastern philosophy, it implies "it doesn't really matter if we're aware that we reincarnate or not."
I replied that the main difference my research shows from traditional incarnation theory is "free will." That we choose to return here, and if that's the case, its important to leave behind a clean planet. Here's his reply:
Back in the 1970's, George wanted to make a Flash Gordon movie, tried to acquire the rights, but couldn't. So he set out to tell his own space saga, in the style of the old serials, the kind that Flash Gordon did. Evil emperors, heroes fighting their way through space. So George wrote this film as a trilogy with the help of Joseph Campbell, the author of "Hero with a Thousand Faces."
Most people know about this connection - but if you don't, Professor Campbell had studied thousands of different myths, and had synthesized them into simple story lines. Hero goes off on a journey, travels to far and distant lands, and then returns with some kind of benefit or victory - and there are other darker forces that are included in these myths, including son learning that father is not who he thought he was, mother turns out to be someone else, etc. It's a brilliant book if you haven't seen it, and I highly recommend all of his books.
 |
| Hero with One face. courtesy wiki |
But meanwhile George made "American Graffiti" and it won a number of awards, and did great box office. So at some point they suggested George renegotiate his salary for directing "Star Wars." He was going to be paid something around scale at the time, $150,000 for making the 8 million dollar film (which the original budget had been sliced in half by the skeptical studio.) Ultimately, the put 3 more million into the finished budget, but when the discussion of his salary came about, George remembered his dream.
He had a dream that he saw R2D2 and his other characters on coffee mugs, keychains, etc. Now whether it was a conscious dream, or a dream while he was asleep doesn't matter - it's not the sort of thing people see when they're making a film. (Sure, Hateful Eight lunch boxes, but not likely back in 1976).
So George famously turned down the increase in salary (they offered him $500K) in return for the rights to the sequels and the merchandising. Today it's considered the smartest business deal ever made in Hollywood - as it turned into a multi billion dollar bet. No one thought that the film would be so wildly successful, and they couldn't foresee what George did. Star Wars Everywhere.
But let's examine this for a moment.
 |
| They credit Castaneda and Campbell here. But should include Flash. |
Who dreams about coffee mugs with their characters on them?
Not many people. Being a film writer/director myself, it's hard enough to picture who your characters are and what they're doing - without having to think of ancillary markets.
But George had this dream - that he saw these creatures and characters on mugs and items.
Now when you're dreaming or visualizing something - you're not thinking "Gee, how can I market this idea?" Generally you're seeing things or items, and in this particular dream he saw things that no one else saw or could see. Tesla was famous for conceiving and testing his inventions in his minds eye - before he ever put them onto paper - and as he attested, "they always worked" once he put paper to metal.
Was George seeing into the future? Or was he imagining the future? I don't know. But it's the same thing.
 |
| Hasro bro. Originally Parker. |
I do know that I played Risk with George once in Francis Ford Coppola's home. George had come by for Thanksgiving dinner, and I was there with Luana Anders (the inspiration for my Flipside books) who had starred in Francis Ford's first film - "Dementia 13." They had met while he was still a sound man on Roger Corman films, and he asked Luana if she would star in a movie he was going to shoot in Ireland. It was on the way back from Luana's Roger Corman film "The Young Racers" with Mark Damon, and Francis did the sound, and his girlfriend, later wife Eleanor did the costumes on that film, and the one in Ireland.
Same cast worked on Dementia. Francis Ford was the sound man.
And some odd years later, after I'd met and befriended Luana, I met Francis at a screening of Apocalypse Now in Westwood, and mentioned Luana's name. He asked me to tell her to call him - which I did - which led to 8 years of our going up to the Coppola home for their traditional thanksgiving dinners. I was a literal fly on the wall - some amazing people came through, I generally hid behind the piano, where night after night, they let me pound away on the keys. Sometimes Francis would pick up his stand up bass and play along... but one night we sat down to play Risk.
 |
| John filmed my first effort |
I hadn't played the game before, I think I played a conservative game - as did George, but he was the first one to fall, and then Francis threw all of his armies at my troops, and for some lucky roll of the dice, he failed in disrupting my armies, and fell out of the game as well, and that left me and his nephew John Schwartzman playing each other - which Johnny won handily. I remember thinking it was odd that Francis did such a rash thing of throwing everything at me, and then failing to dislodge me from the game - after all, he was my host, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why he was trying to destroy me at that very moment.
But oddly enough, John grew up to become an accomplished cameraman, (He shot a short film that started my career with "Video Valentino" and shot my film "You Can't Hurry Love" and 2nd unit on "Limit Up") and shot the film "Jurassic World" and of course we all know that this week "Star Wars" surpassed the economic records of that film.
So what does this have to do with the Flipside?
Well, consider for a moment that George, way back in the 1970's, had this odd dream that he needed to hang onto the rights to the film's characters and story lines. And he was right. With his guidance, the films became the zeitgeist of our world.
And maybe it wasn't such a dream - but a vision of his own future. In the same way that people envision what's going to happen to them, but haven't a clue as to how or why they're going to go about it. "I always knew that I would be a _____" is something I've heard alot in this research. Like the FBI agent who I asked "When did you have the conscious thought you'd work with the FBI?" And she said "Preschool" she said. I asked "How?" She said "I kept lists on everybody in class - what they wore, what they had for lunch."
The other day, Kathleen Kennedy recounted the story of how she had hired a young J.J. Abrams to help catalog Steven Spielberg's super 8 films at Amblin, and now here all these years later, the film that she once stood in line to see she produced, and J.J. directed. Another example of the Flipside in action. Is it a mere coincidence that these people all came together?
As I'm fond of quoting my old professor Julian Baird (who went to Oxford and Harvard and taught at B.U.) "I would agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong."
If you examine the research of what people say from the Flipside (flipsidethebook.com or flipsidethefilm.com) - they talk about time being relative. That events that seem to take forever over here, appear to happen in a few seconds, minutes or hours over there.
For example in one of the cases in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" a woman says that her entire lifetime as a British Sailor in the 17th century, felt like "about 15 minutes" from her perspective over there. That 25 year life where she remembered details about being a Captain aboard a British ship (details which I was able to verify) felt like about 15 minutes over there on the Flipside.
So if you do that math - 100 years is like an hour. Star Wars came out a little less than 40 years ago. And how long ago did that feel to the folks over there? Oh, about half an hour or so. And when you examine people discussing their "life planning" session - where they discuss or plan what the highlights of their lifetimes are going to be - we see that it's not mistake that George wanted to make a Flash Gordon film. (I did too). That serial made him remember the life plan he had that would include making Star Wars, and when it came time for him to "take the money" his higher self allowed him to access the merchandising that was going to come in the future.
The movie wasn't begun when he had the dream about the coffee mugs. It wasn't in the theaters yet. It was in his mind. And on the page. But there's more than meets the eye to this story. Clearly.
And then finally, when we examine the Flipside with regard to "the force." The force refers to the "light" that connects us all. That tapping into that light - or that consciousness - is a way of doing super human feats, or understanding powerful thoughts and feelings. And is also responsible for why and how people like mediums access the flipside - they're able to tap into the "force" and see visuals and feelings that relate to events they couldn't possibly know.
In the 25 sessions that I've filmed of people under deep hypnosis, remembering previous lives, many of which I could verify, they recount a "between lives realm" that exists in "Now Time" - meaning exists as I'm writing this sentence where they are able to observe and access why and how they chose to come to the planet. They speak of a "light" and "radiance" that connects us all - describing it alternately as "A string of lights" or "beams of light" that connect everyone and all things.
(J.J. Abrams worked on the show "Lost" which existed entirely on the Flipside in "now time." Between life time where people examined their previous lifetimes. Coincidence? Perhaps.)
In terms of the "dark side" of the force - well, that's great here on this realm, and of course is part and parcel of Campbell's Greek myths, and the myths that we all experience here. The path while we are human includes good and bad, dark and light - but, in the thousands of cases I've examined of people talking about the Flipside under deep hypnosis, in the 25 cases I've filmed - and in the literature I've studied about this realm, there is nearly no mention of there being a "dark force" or "dark entity" that exists over there.
Evil, as a thing, does not exist on the Flipside. (Or those who've claimed to have experienced some form of it have actually said "in very minute amounts" compared to the light). I'm sorry if that rocks anyone's boat, but it's not my opinion, or belief - it's just in the data - it's in the research and it is repeated consistently. If it was different I'd report it - but it's not.
So the idea that someone can "fall into the dark side" does not bear out in this research - because we choose our lifetimes, we plan our lifetime in advance - not down to the nth degree, but on an improvisational level - so that fact that "bad things" happen - or that our loved ones get killed, is beyond our comprehension to understand or comprehend unless we are in their shoes.
From that perspective I'm sorry that this latest incarnation of the story didn't go further into the Flipside to research that out - perhaps someone will in the future - but the saga that we all go through is thought out in advance before we even get to this universe. Certainly things happen that seem random, that seem out of the blue - but when you really examine them, they tell a different story.
 |
| There are two volumes. Filled with testimony. |
So "The Force Awakens" - well, the force never sleeps - it may be that we're so caught up with being human, living our lives and cursing the darkness that we lose touch with the flipside - so I'll offer General Leah's advice (Carrie Fisher) who posted today "The Force has awakened, and now I'm going to go and take a nap."
May the Flipside Be with you. Meaning may you always be aware of the fact that your loved ones are not gone, they're just not here. That we are wearing this costume and walking in these shoes for a reason, and that we're doing exactly what we signed up to learn, teach or share. And that's a powerful thing to wake up within you - so when you think about the Force awakening, think about the Flipside awakening within - being awake to the nature of reality in all its beauty.
My two cents.
And finally, with his permission, I'm reprinting an email I got from a Minister of a large church in big city in a conservative state. He'd written me asking about my research into reincarnation; ("flipside" and "its a wonderful afterlife") noting that if its driven by karma, as depicted in eastern philosophy, it implies "it doesn't really matter if we're aware that we reincarnate or not."
I replied that the main difference my research shows from traditional incarnation theory is "free will." That we choose to return here, and if that's the case, its important to leave behind a clean planet. Here's his reply:
"You make two points that resonate with me. One is that reincarnation
does matter if it's true. As you know and write about, there is a lot of
evidence that it is true. As you say, it matters because it has
implications for how we live. Personally, I find the idea of
reincarnation liberating in the sense I can relax and enjoy the show
more knowing this is not my only performance so I don't have to try to
cram everything into this one performance.
The other point you make is that we reincarnate by choice based on our own goals and our own free will. Reincarnation by free will is a powerful and empowering concept. As you say, none of the religions, ancient or modern, got that right.
By the way, it took me about two months to read your books and it usually only takes me a few days to read similar books. The reason is your books are so dense in the sense of heavy, packed with new ideas, stories, insights and such. Your books also kept leading me to other books and I world go read them then come back to yours. Your books were like reading an encyclopedia in a way. Mind blowing. So it took time to read, digest. Let it sink in. Then read a little more.
I'm looking forward to reading your new book Hacking the Afterlife, when it is done. I hope that project is going well.
Merry Christmas to you and your family, Rich. Keep up the good work."
I'll endeavor to try. Thanks for the vote of confidence!
The other point you make is that we reincarnate by choice based on our own goals and our own free will. Reincarnation by free will is a powerful and empowering concept. As you say, none of the religions, ancient or modern, got that right.
By the way, it took me about two months to read your books and it usually only takes me a few days to read similar books. The reason is your books are so dense in the sense of heavy, packed with new ideas, stories, insights and such. Your books also kept leading me to other books and I world go read them then come back to yours. Your books were like reading an encyclopedia in a way. Mind blowing. So it took time to read, digest. Let it sink in. Then read a little more.
I'm looking forward to reading your new book Hacking the Afterlife, when it is done. I hope that project is going well.
Merry Christmas to you and your family, Rich. Keep up the good work."
I'll endeavor to try. Thanks for the vote of confidence!
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