Hello Daniel,

You wrote,
Your other line of evidence seems to be anecdotal, taken from experiences people have reported, subjective experiences that cannot be verified.

We're in an odd age when the inner person is mistrusted. People have a disdain for personal experience and will accept only data sensed that can be replicated. We're starting to grow out of that. 99.9% of who we are is that inner sense: emotion, attitude, presumptions, personal experiences, and on and on. And spiritual knowledge and advancement comes from such personal experiences. We are just coming to realize how important they are to help us understand outselves, the universe, and the mind of God. They aren't demonic and aren't superfluous. They are the fuel for our spiritual growth, and as such are quite real and quite relevant.

You wrote,
Since I have had no such experiences, I cannot take these stories as anything other than reports that may or may not be altogether true.

Yes, it requires trust, regard, and love. Those are missing today. We hear about a personal experience and wonder whether the person is lying. It's unfortunate. When we begin to accept others' reports, we'll both grow closer to each other and advance in our understanding of the inner person.

You wrote,
It seems to me that if we are eternal entities having physical experiences we should know that to be the case but we do not so our status as eternal beings appears to be open to question, doubt, denial and skepticism.

As soon as we use the words "should" or "could," it moves us into judging spirit based on our personal conception of the physical realm. "It seems that a loving God shouldn't allow suffering." "If we've had past lives, we should remember them." And so on. When we judge the greater reality based on our conceptions of what should be, we're appying the physical realm understanding to what can't be understood.

As to whether we know we're eternal beings, we know that the history of humankind has been a gradual evolution away from barbarism toward peace and brotherhood. Consciousness, as a whole, and even God, are growing and evolving. We know more and are more spiritually sensitive now than people were in th Dark Ages in Europe. To grow in stature, we have to evolve from ignorance, self-centeredness, separation, and disregard into knowledge, other-centeredness, feelings of oneness, and love. To grow, we have to have changes of attitude, changes of mind. That requires the kind of personal discovery, overcoming obstacles, and growth we're experiencing. We just know that spirituality, for individuals and humankind, is a process of growth and evolution. We need to go through that rather than being instantly born into celestial perfection and knowledge. We must evolve, and that now requires growing out of the ignorant thinking that we're soft rocks to realizing our eternal nature. It's simply part of our evolution as individuals and a species.

You wrote,
And, in turn, if I follow your reasoning correctly, this ignorance of who we are leads to all of the horrors of history and all of humanity's disasters. Why should this have become the case if we are indeed eternal beings?

We're back to "should" again. It simply is. Why does water appear as a gas, a liquid, and a solid? It simply is. Why do ticks and mosquitoes exist? They simply do. We are eternal beings, but we live in ignorance. We're reared in a society that believes we're separate and self-consumed, so we are made up of those beliefs. Only when we mature and can use our free will to see ourselves differently do we start our spiritual growth. As long as we live in the ignorance that came from our physical upbringing, we are still prisoners of the material realm. When we can start to question, listen to the inner self, and begin to understand, we exercise free will and climb out of the misconceptions.

You wrote,
If we are eternal beings having physical experiences, why don't we know who we really are from the very outset?

We will. That will come. We and humankind haven't evolved to that state yet. But when we all realize the truths we are coming to know now, that are now smothered in the mire of ignorance about our nature, then we'll be reared to know we're eternal beings. It will be a fact of life. But consciousness, us and society, must evolve to that. Our learning and our experiences are evolution parallel to the evolution of the universe. It simply is happening that way. The fact that we don't understand why we and our consciousness is in the act of being created in this way rather than through the whish of a magic want that would instantly create all-knowledgeable beings is something we don't understand. But the fact that we don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't true. It just is.

You asked,
And, as a corollary question, in the absence of matter and energy how can there be knowledge?

Study the presence of information in the vacuum. The universe is filled with knowledge that is aside from matter and energy. That's physics, not metaphysics.

But also, we are quite egocentric. We believe our world is the only world and is the way life ought to be. It isn't. Most of existence is outside of our Earth plane. To say that if we don't exist or we don't exist in matter and energy, existence becomes meaningless or won't exist is just egocentric, limited sight. There's much that isn't us. We are just too myopic to realize it.

You wrote,
How can an entity which is non-material be anything at all rather than nothing?

Well, "nothing" is a pregnant word. It means "no thing," or "not material." We know that matter, energy, forces, and consciousness all exist. But consciousness is no thing; it isn't matter, energy, or a force. That doesn't mean there is no consciousness. It's just not a thing in the material realm. But the realms outside of the material realm are infinite. We just don't have access to them or understand them.

Love and peace, Craig