It’s a fascinating read, detailing his “near-death
experience” while he was in a coma brought about by bacterial meningitis. The
disease, in effect, killed the outer layers of his brain, and no one expected
him to survive. All of the data about his disease, his body functions during
the week he was in a coma, and his treatment were recorded in detail, and
nothing in the scientific literature can explain his experience or, for that
matter, his survival.
Furthermore, his scientific knowledge and training as a
surgeon grants his account more credibility, in my opinion, because of the
rigor with which he explores both his experiences and the possible explanations
for them. I would highly recommend the book to anyone with an open mind. As he
says, he himself would have dismissed an account like this as fantasy—until it
happened to him.
So I finished reading the book. It rings true, based on my admittedly limited experience of that other world in visions and meetings with folks who have already crossed over. The similarities and points of agreement are striking. Of course, I’ve not been there myself in the state of consciousness that he had—and I’m heartily glad of that! Even though I have had some encounters with the Other Side, I’m still pretty well shielded by my own resistance.
The part of his experience that most resonates with my own
is the feeling of absolute, unconditional love. We are loved for ourselves, no
matter what. That’s what I’ve felt from the Ladies, from my Guides. There is no
judgement, and nothing we do will change the love in which we are held, no
experience will separate us from the One, the Divine, and this
immeasurable love and compassion.
It’s interesting—the question is, of course, what am I going
to do with this?
I feel encouraged by the book. It feels like corroboration
from an outside source. The author is not only a scientific guy, a neurosurgeon,
but he’s also a lifelong skeptic. So for him to come back after this impossible
physical damage that he suffered, for him to come back totally healed with this
kind of message—that, I needed to hear.
Why is this book so much more encouraging than the other accounts that are out there, or (for pete's sake!) my own experiences? Because, truth be
told, all my Pacifica friends and colleagues, and all the New Age folks who are
saying the same thing, somehow are a little suspect, because of what I’ve
called the malleable nature of the Imaginal. It’s so easy, if you don’t watch
yourself in the imaginal world, to see just exactly what you want to see. And that’s
not the same as experiencing the true nature of reality, which is what he’s
talking about in the book.
Right now I need to figure out what to do with this
encouragement. How am I going to proceed with my work? I’m especially
interested and curious about how this can affect my work with Galahad and the
other horses. It’s so easy to slip back into my head, which is where I spend
most of my time, and stay here and write about it or talk about it, but I need
to get out in the living world that we call reality and see what happens there.
I know that it’s “only” a matter of opening to something that
is already there, that I know is there, that I’ve already experienced.
But if I’m lazy in any particular way, it would be this: I was
going to say “intellectually lazy,” but it’s not intellectual—it’s spiritually
lazy. I want it to come easily. I want to just flip a switch and there everything
and everybody is. I don’t want to sit and do meditation.
On the other hand, maybe that type of meditation isn’t the
one for me, simply because of who I am. I have never been any good at sitting
meditation. Even in the way I wrote the dissertation: Almost none of it, or
very little, anyway, was from sitting meditations, from active imagination per
se. Most of the insights came from my day-to-day work in the world; from being
open to other types of communication, other realms, at the same time I was “in
the world.” That’s hard to do, but I can do it. I have done it before, and I think
that’s what I’d like to try.
That means I have to get up off my duff and get moving, even
if it’s only 34 degrees outside….
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