Cyrus Kirkpatrick talks too much in this clip, but he does make some interesting points. Kirkpatrick is an "astral traveler" who believes that anyone can visit the astral plane (the afterlife) through a method similar to an out-of-body experience. He also believes in spirit communication with the dead (who are of course still alive on the other side), for instance with the aid of copper dowsing rods. So far, Kirkpatrick sounds like any other New Age channel or medium you are likely to encounter.
Except, of course, that he doesn´t.
Cyrus half-jokingly, half-seriously refers to his philosophy as "Anti-Orb-of-Light-ism". His view of the astral plane is very concrete, almost "physical" or "material". We are reborn on the other side as individuals with all our earthly memories intact, interact with people we knew during our earthly lives, and have desires and interests similar to those of earthlings. Indeed, the astral world looks pretty much like our physical world, only better!
Apparently, some people do become seemingly impersonal and blissful "orbs of light", but this is really a "hollow heaven" for misanthropic people who crave such a non-human or anti-human existence, believing that this makes them more "spiritually advanced", "closer to God", or whatever. In reality, this amorphous state is a cul-de-sac, and people stuck in it usually reincarnate on the astral level anyway, when they snap out of their orb-of-light-ism.
Kirkpatrick and others like him (this is an entire milieu) believe that concepts such as "ego" or "egolessness" have been misinterpreted by New Age teachers. Getting rid of egoism is one thing, getting rid of your literal personality or individuality is something else again. Indeed, Cyrus rejects puritanical religion and believe that we should get *more* grounded in our desires and earthly pleasures, rather than giving them up. He sounds almost a bit "Tantric" here, and indeed references (esoteric) Tibetan Buddhism at this point.
Somehow, becoming more grounded on the physical plane and being reborn on the Earth-like astral plane prepares us for further spiritual-evolutionary advances on higher planes, although Cyrus isn´t sure exactly how (in other clips, he has talked positively about "The Law of One", a Theosophy-derived system.)
Personally, I feel that he is simply going too far in the other direction. Just as the orb-of-light-ists are apparently *shocked* by the suggestion that people in the afterlife have astral sex or eat chocolate, Kirkpatrick is downright hostile to the idea of a perfectly blissful merging with the Divine (and individual orbs-of-lights?). But what if I *want* to merge with the Divine just as much as our soul-traveler wants to eat astral bonbons? Why does every little religion constantly consign its opponents to some equivalent of the hell realms, in this case the "hollow heaven" which impedes your karmic growth or whatever?
Why can´t their be more than one path through Eternity?
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