Imagining the Unimaginable

By Richard Rowe

Imagining the Unimaginable synthesizes data from NDE and past-life regression research to develop a model to answer profound questions. Author Richard Rowe leverages thirty-plus years of system engineering experience, problem-solving, and inventing to synthesize a vast amount of first-hand experiences. After nearly dying from a blood clot, the author began a spiritual journey to answer age-old questions from a modern day perspective.

The first-hand evidence culled from thousands of near-death experiences (NDEs) is analyzed until an overarching model is developed using easy-to-understand diagrams and explanations to infer and describe the author’s perspective of heavenly realms.

Imagining the Unimaginable uses an innovative approach to search for answers to age-old questions by excluding traditional sources of spiritual information. The book starts off by focusing only on insights from NDEs. When the author’s quest requires a more in-depth search for answers, he adds a second source of first-hand information from the experiences of subjects under past-life regression hypnosis. The author does not stop at that point. He continues digging deeper by personally experiencing past-life regression hypnosis and uses insights from the experience to answer more questions. He then surprises the reader with impassioned practical applications addressing some of our most pressing social and environmental problems at the end of the book.

Readers will be inspired and encouraged to use the author’s approach on their spiritual journey to search for answers through first-hand experience, personal experience, and personal insights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005696023

Richard Rowe

Richard Rowe is an English Teacher and Ian McEwan obsessive. He does not generally think of himself as an author and spent two years sitting on this text before he managed to get over himself and publish it. His other interests include obsessing over soccer, cooking a mean roast dinner and having family movie nights at home.

Book preview

CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE

A System Engineer’s Journey into the Afterlife

By

Richard Rowe

CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

Table of Contents

Title Page

Author’s Note

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Questions

Chapter 2 - Self = Soul + Ego

Chapter 3 - Understanding the Near-Death Experience

Chapter 4 - Birth of the Self

Chapter 5 - The Physical Life Experience

Chapter 6 - Free Will and Causality

Chapter 7 - Postulating a Reincarnation System

Chapter 8 - Spiritual Realms

Chapter 9 - Hypnosis, Meditation, and Past-Life Regression Hypnosis

Chapter 10 - Existence between Incarnations

Chapter 11 - Revisiting Two Core Questions

Chapter 12 - Considering Future Incarnations

Chapter 13 - Observations and Lessons Learned

Chapter 14 - Questions and Commentary

Afterword

Acknowledgments

References

References by Chapter

About the Author

CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

© 2018 by Richard Rowe

All rights reserved. No part of this book, in part or in whole, may be reproduced, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, photographic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc. except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles and reviews.

For permission, serialization, condensation, adaptions, or for our catalog of other publications, write to Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 754, Huntsville, AR 72740, ATTN: Permissions Department.

Rowe, Richard – 1959 -

Imagine the Unimaginable by Richard Rowe

Imagining the Unimaginable is an inventor’s journey to answer age-old questions from a modern day perspective using only first-hand human experiences. What happens after we die? Is there an afterlife? Why is there so much suffering in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people?

NED - Near Death Experience Spiritual Realm Metaphysical Reincarnation

Cover Art and Layout: www.vril8.com

Book Design: Tab Pillar

Published by:

PO Box 754, Huntsville, AR 72740

800-935-0045 or 479-738-2348; fax [phone]

WWW.OZARKMT.COM

CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

Dedicated to those brave enough to take the first step

on their own spiritual journey and share their experience with the rest of us.

CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

Author’s Note

I started my spiritual journey with one question, Why does suffering exist? My next question became bolder, Why do bad things happen to good people? I even began with the notion that there might be a flaw in the very fabric of the universe.

These were personal questions for me. I was troubled. Life felt unfriendly and unfair. How could bad things happen to me and to so many innocent people in the world? What is the point of my life? How do I live my life in a meaningful way?

Maybe you are just curious, or maybe you are asking similar questions. Perhaps you are ready to go on a spiritual journey but struggle to make it a priority. If this is you, then you probably could use a life raft. You are searching for some way to orient to life as it is rather than life as you thought it was going to be.

We live on an amazing planet with so much wonderful diversity and creativity. We all start life with dreams and optimism about our careers, family, love, and place in the world. But then things just happen along the way. We get smacked in the face, knocked down, and feel as if we’ve slipped into a fast-moving river. We’re drowning, struggling to breathe, trying to find a job or a better one, searching for a life partner, wanting to build a better life, and looking for happiness.

This book is a narrative about my spiritual journey and my search for answers to fundamental questions. I explain why it is important never to give up no matter how hard your life feels at this moment, place, and time. You’ll read over my shoulder as I research, analyze, and try to make sense out of my discoveries. I show you how incredibly special you are and why your personal journey is so important even if you don’t understand it at this moment in time. Rather than rely on traditional books of faith or new-age/ metaphysical beliefs as my information sources to search for answers, a life-changing moment motivated me to take a completely different approach. I turned to firsthand accounts of people who have reported near-death experiences (NDEs) and related research documented by experts. You’ll also learn how I discovered past- life regression hypnosis and why I decided to include it as a second source of firsthand experiences later in the book. As my third and last information source, I perform experiments with past-life regression hypnosis and document my experiences to search deeper for understanding and answers to my questions. I use diagrams to connect the dots to infer the functionality of a heavenly system using only these three specific sources to answer my questions.

I don’t challenge or disrespect the beliefs of anyone or tell you what you should or shouldn’t believe. I do not see myself as a teacher, a scribe, or an expert. I am simply one person who happens to be an inventor on a personal journey to imagine the unimaginable searching for personal truths using only these three information sources.

During my early years, I believed something existed beyond me. That something was loving, divine, and the source of everything. Yet, I could never fully conceptualize what that meant because it was beyond my experience. What I discovered on the journey memorialized in this book helped me to embrace the faith I enjoyed as a boy through the filter of life experience and the firsthand experience of others.

By asking big questions and searching for big answers, I arrive at an understanding about the nature of my existence and how I am ultimately connected to everyone and everything around me back to the divine source. Through this experience, I have a gained a better understanding of how it is possible to be me, while at the same time be connected to everything.

You decide what is meaningful to you, debate my perspective from afar, challenge my interpretations to form your opinions, or catch a different raft down the fast-moving river on a spiritual expedition of your own.

Regardless of why this book has found you, I trust it found you for a reason. I hope this book will demonstrate the value of going on a personal spiritual journey using whatever approach feels right for you to find your way to connect with the infinite source of love that unites us all.

CREATED BY JUTOH - PLEASE REGISTER TO REMOVE THIS LINE

Introduction

Innocent people are suffering. Terrorism, war, mass murders, and crime are in the headlines every day. I hear reports of a drive- by shooting. I watch the news and witness recent actions of groups inflicting pain on innocent men, women, and children. Empathy kicks in and I imagine how it would feel to suffer like the victims.

I ask myself how people can treat other human beings so badly. Then I tell myself I am thankful for my life and say a prayer for those who are suffering. Others may volunteer, donate, and help out.

We do what we can.

I try to shift my focus to stories about good people who are helping others. Some of us meditate, others pray. Some read, exercise, watch TV, or focus inward.

After a time, the internal storm passes. We continue on with our lives and let the following questions linger.

Why do innocent people suffer?

What’s the point of suffering?

Why are we here?

After all, I have things to do and bills to pay. Does this sound familiar?

I am a system engineer, engineering executive, and inventor who has developed a wide range of technical system products over many decades. I applied for my first US patent at age twenty, and I’ve been a named inventor on well over a hundred engineering-related patents and patent applications. I consider myself to be a creative technical person with a love for learning who is passionately curious and driven to innovation. Simply put, I have made a career out of asking lots and lots of questions and building high-tech systems and system product organizations.

Just like millions of other people around the globe my life was filled with work, projects, and family. At least that was until my life changed forever the week before Thanksgiving in 2004.

I was busy with the typical day-to-day work and home activities. My wife was doing the same. I woke up one morning not feeling well, and my wife noticed my skin coloring looked very gray. I was having trouble breathing. But I brushed it off as nothing. Besides, I couldn’t stay home. I had work meetings planned and projects to keep moving. I’d push through whatever virus I was fighting and deal with it as I always did.

My wife would not let it go. She saw what I couldn’t see. There was something going on with me that was not normal, something scary and unusual. My wife was convinced something was seriously wrong.

After a debate with my wife where she literally had to raise her voice to get my attention, I listened. Together we went to the emergency room.

When we arrived at the ER, the staff had no idea what was going on with me. They suspected it was heart related and ran numerous tests. My heart was beating erratically, my oxygen levels were low, and my EKG looked suspicious. A series of tests followed, but still there was no definitive diagnosis. The doctors remained puzzled.

This continued for some time as the ER filled up with more patients. When a blood test came back indicating I had not had a heart attack, the doctors felt I had stabilized. More tests were scheduled. I was soon placed in the hallway on a bed, since other, presumably more urgent cases required the rooms.

My wife was beside herself. Not only were the doctors not making any progress figuring out what was wrong with me, she felt my skin color was turning grayer and I was getting worse. I had a pain in my shoulder, but nothing too intense.

When I told my wife I felt as if I was going to pass out, she sprang into action. She insisted the nurse send over a doctor. The doctor politely checked me out again in the hallway, and then quickly moved me back into an ER room where I could be monitored. Yes, he verified, my condition was getting worse. My body acted as if it was shutting down. But the doctors were still at a loss.

Everything changed when a young intern arrived to take her shift and became determined to figure out what was going on with me. Out of the blue, she asked the other doctors if I had had a CT scan. They told her no. I was quickly taken in for the scan. Not long after the test, the results came back.

I had a pulmonary embolism (PE), a blood clot in my lungs. With this new information, I suddenly became the most popular patient in the ER with doctors and nurses kicking into overdrive. I had never heard of a PE or a blood clot in the lung. It sounded bad.

It was bad. Later, I found out around 300,000 people die every year from similar blood clots. If left untreated, the chances of survival are not good.

I was lucky.

I spent the next few days in the ICU, confined to the bed while they ran tests, fearing more blood clots would move around and make me worse. But it turned out the blood clot didn’t come from my legs. I had a genetic condition where my blood actually clots more than the average person’s blood. Most people have heard about a condition called hemophilia, where the blood does not clot properly. My condition was the opposite, but just as treatable.

Thanks to my wonderful, loving, persistent, and observant wife; a passionate doctor determined to find answers to the right question; and the hard-working nursing staff at our local hospital, I survived.

I didn’t have the typical near-death experience I will discuss in this book, but I did have a profound life moment where I woke up and became aware of the miracle I had taken for granted. The miracle of life. On that fall morning, any one of the numerous choices made by me, and others around me, could have been different, and my life would have ended. Was it a miracle? Was it luck?

This is where my spiritual journey began. I looked up like a marmot from my busy day-to-day life and began to ask questions about life. My questions were not about engineering technical solutions or products. My questions had become deeper, and more spiritual, related to a world full of wonders and contradictions.

With this new perspective, I saw both incredible joy and incredible suffering around the world, but it was the pain and suffering being experienced by average people that grabbed my attention. Pain and suffering in all forms from violence, relationships, resulting from bad choices, addiction, random acts, experienced due to the actions of others, and so on.

While I had always believed in a higher power throughout my life, I honestly did not understand the point of suffering, or feeling pain. Sure, I get that some pain may be the result of bad personal choices, but why are some people cold and cruel to others? Why do bad things happen to good people? I had read about the concept of karma and understood the idea behind the saying: what goes around comes around. But that doesn’t help the innocent person who gets hurt by a random act of violence. I wanted a deeper understanding.

I realize this sounds as if I am forgetting about the millions of wonderful people and nonprofits focused on helping those in need around the world. I could certainly turn the news off and retreat to focus on only those things under my direct control. Yet my logic was simple, at least in my mind. If I could figure out what was going on from a spiritual perspective with pain and suffering in the world, I might better understand it. Was too much suffering due to a flaw in the universe that needed to be tweaked?

Up until my pulmonary embolism experience, the way I dealt with difficult life moments and personal pain was to say a prayer, then find my way back to day-to-day life and keep moving. After my PE experience, I found myself sitting on mountaintops asking the universe, I must have survived for a reason. But what reason? I wanted to know more about why bad things happen to good people. Are such things due to random events? Or is something else going on that I don’t understand? After all, I had survived a PE while 300,000 others each year do not.

I turned my questions to spirituality and how the spiritual universe works. I focused on a different kind of system, the universe’s spiritual operating system. I asked questions in an attempt to speculate how the universe might function. After all, I imagined, there must be some kind of grand operating system behind the incredible complexity of physical and spiritual existence, an operating system managing the nature of consciousness.

For this book, my objective was to ask all sorts of questions about consciousness, life, death, and the afterlife. Then I used the answers I found as the basis to suggest how such a system might function. Rather than exploring the debate between traditional neurologists and spiritual teachers, researching the numerous belief systems, reviewing the teachings of