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The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day for the second time in the history of the world, human beings will have discovered fire.

                                                — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Toward the Future

Love is the inner, the universal, the cosmic Self.

                                                 — Swami Muktananda

This book has been written with love: love of life, love of the beauty, wonder and sacredness of the earth and all its species, love of humanity and the sublime expressions of its creative spirit, love of my family and my close friends and love of the cosmic mystery I serve.
        But although love and a passionate desire to fathom the mystery has informed all my writing, I have had only one experience in my life that I would describe as one of cosmic love. This experience is precious because it is not often in the course of a life that glimpses of the eternal break through the cloud of our temporal awareness. It happened when I was recovering from a serious operation. I had not eaten anything for several days. It felt like the sun coming out after a winter of darkness: a warm, enveloping feeling of intense and unconditional love which seemed to flow into and through me towards every person I met. It lasted for about ten days after I left the hospital. It was as if a dam in my heart had burst and the water of love poured out into the world. I was simply a vehicle of that love. How, I wondered, could this ecstatic experience change my understanding of life and my relationships with other people? And, in a wider planetary sense, how could we attune ourselves to this incandescent power within all of us which could unite us, connect us to each other, transform the way we see and relate to each other and to the earth, our planetary home?
        We are the inheritors of an immensely rich spiritual tradition — from the Christian West, from India, Persia, the Middle East and elsewhere — which speaks of love as the pulse of the cosmos and the secret pulse of our own being. The exquisite poetry of this tradition — which includes The Divine Comedy, the Upanishads, the poems of the Sufis and the Song of Songs — speaks of the longing of the human heart for reconnection with its Source or Ground but also the longing of that Source for communion with ourselves. “I was a treasure longing to be known; that is why I created the world”, says a hadith from the Koran.
        This invisible voice of the universe can only communicate with us through those individuals during the millennia of our human experience on this planet who have become receptive to its presence. We only know of the existence and nature of this Ground of Being through the men and women who have spoken of their experience of it: some have described it as Father, as Christ did; others as Mother, as the Taoists and the Indian sage Ramakrishna did. Some describe it as Cosmic Love; others as Creative Intelligence or Sacred Mind. Mystics call it the Divine Ground. People who have had near-death experiences describe it as both Light and Love. They are profoundly changed by their experience, losing all fear of death. Although they return to this dimension of experience, the focus of their life is to stay in touch with the light and love radiating from the ground they have encountered.
     The writings of the world's greatest spiritual teachers as well as these personal experiences affirm that light and love are the fundamental principle of the universe: the visible universe is brought into being by love and sustained by love; we participate in, are by contained by this fathomless ocean of light and love. We sail the fragile vessel of consciousness on the surface of the great sea of Life not knowing that we are, in essence, what we seek. A master of the Tibetan Tantric path says, “The luminous awakened mind is always present; we have simply to recognize it.” The secret intention of the life that lives us — the secret dream of the cosmos — is to bring us to the discovery that we belong to this divine ground, that we are actually immersed in it, bathed in it. It carries, permeates and structures the physical organism of our body. All traditions say that, as Blake understood, the doors of our perception have to be cleansed before we can see and experience the dazzling radiance of that divine ground. The eye of the heart and the eye of the mind have to be prepared for the revelation that we are, in our essential being, one with that Light and Love. A passage from the Zohar says that when a man has been shut up in darkness for a long time, a tiny opening has to be made for him at first, and then another a little larger, and another, until he can bear the full radiance of the Light.
        In the Indian Vedic texts which may be the remnants of an oral tradition from a lost civilization buried 10,000 years ago beneath the waters of the Great Flood, we hear the resonant words which describe the beginning of the universe:

        Later, in the Upanishads, Brahman — the supreme reality — is described as Truth and as Love: Brahman as Spirit both transcendent and immanent, dwelling beyond and within all that we can know or apprehend. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (fifth Brahmana) honey is used as a metaphor of how all things, all elements of creation, are contained within, sustained by the divine ground: “This Self is the honey of all beings, and all beings are the honey of this Self.” (2) The idea of the bond of love between the Divine Ground and the human soul is described in the peerless poetry of the Bhagavad Gita. There, Krishna says to Arjuna “only through constant love can I be known and seen as I really am, and entered into.” (11:54) and again, “Fix your mind on Me, give your heart's love to Me, consecrate all your actions to My service, hold your own self as nothing before Me. To Me you will come; truly I promise for you are dear to Me.” (18:65) (3)
        Still later, we hear the voice of the Buddha and his teaching about how to clear the mind of all that clouds the luminosity of the clear light of the Void so that we may become transmitters of Compassion radiating like the sun from the Source of Life.
        In the Christian tradition, we hear the voice of Christ and the affirmation that is the foundation of his message: “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” (1 John 4:16) And the great commandment he gave to his disciples on the eve of his Passion: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you too must love one another.” (John: 13: 34-35 and 15:12).
        Mystics from all traditions have spoken of their encounter with the cosmic love of the divine ground and none more beautifully than Julian of Norwich: “Thus I learned that love is our Lord's meaning. And I saw full surely in this and in everything else, that before God made us, he loved us. And that love was never ended nor ever shall be. And in this love he has performed all his actions; he has made all things profitable to us. And in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had our beginning: but the love wherein he made us is without beginning…And all this shall we see in God without end.”(4)
        And, finally, we have Dante, guided by Beatrice to his great vision of the Empyrean:

        Truly with all these traditions, each of which connects us with the light and love of the divine ground, we have been offered a feast. But who has prepared this feast if not Cosmic Intelligence, or the Holy Spirit, or Sacred Mind working through centuries and millennia and the souls of countless indivdiauls to awaken our slumbering consciousness to awareness of its ground.
        How could we define the feeling of love? In my experience, it is associated with a feeling of ecstatic joy, an upwelling of a feeling that exists prior to any conception of what that joy might pertain to. That joy may well up suddenly and unexpectedly as we awaken from sleep and we may lie in bed blissfully immersed in it as we return from communion with a deeper ground to the focus of our daily lives. It may express itself as the longing for emotional and sexual union with a beloved partner. A verse from one of the Upanishads says, “And then he saw that Brahman was joy: for from joy all beings have come, by joy they all live, and unto joy they all return.”(6)
        How does this capacity for joy, for love, for union awaken in us? First of all it arises through the blissful experience of the infant's relationship with its mother. Look at the face of a newly born infant that has been delivered with all the care and attention and love shown by the Leboyer and other pioneers in their approach to childbirth.Watch how it responds to its mother's touch, feel, smell, glance. As the child grows up trust may be one of the fruits of this primary love and care: the mutual trust between child and parent that leads her to trust life, rejoice in life, in other people and himself.
        Later, we know it through our own experience as the feeling that spontaneously arises in us when we hold our child in our arms or suddenly feel an intense love for someone close to us, perhaps fused with grief at the moment of saying goodbye to them. During the course of our life love may manifest through some kind of activity that attracts us and arouses our passionate interest, that beckons us to develop a talent, a skill of some kind through which we can express our essential being—basically, our passion and capacity for love. It manifests in our relationships, our ability to trust others and to give love to them and receive love from them, often sustained through the most difficult circumstances. It may come through the discovery that we can help others in some way, that we enjoy helping others - perhaps people we will never meet, that we can help in some tangible way to alleviate and transform their suffering. In so doing, we transform our own. Love is found in the bond of brotherhood between warriors facing death on the battlefield, instinctively sacrificing their life to save or help another. Again, it may come in the feeling that the heart is bursting with the longing to stand with people who are suffering, to alleviate that suffering in some tangible way.
      Love may also arise in our heart when we can truly see something clearly for the first time with fresh eyes as when we saw our planet from space for the first time. The astronaut Edgar Mitchell described his view of earth as a glimpse of divinity and wrote this on his journey home from the moon: “Gazing through 240,000 miles of space towards the stars and the planet from which I had come, I suddenly experienced the Universe as intelligent, loving, harmonious”.
        Time is needed to reflect on and absorb all these and more aspects of love, time to discover how to become aware of the power of the energy that is living through us and in us, time to open the eye of the heart. I am reminded of the story of Martha and Mary in the New Testament: Martha caught in the net of the preoccupations of every day life; Mary sitting in stillness, listening to the symphony of a deeper reality.
        If we trust the word of the mystics and those who have broken through our limited consciousness to the divine ground, love is the great holding, connecting power of the universe. It is so difficult for us to realise that our life is an expression of that love, that everything we are and do flows from that love: all our relationships, our creative endeavours, our hopes, our longings, our fears and failures, even the wounds inflicted by our cruelties and hatreds, exist in the vast embrace of that love.
        What about our propensity for evil, hatred and cruelty? I think these are born of fear and from the belief that we are not loved, not loveable. They are born from self-rejection, self-hatred, a distortion of our nature caused by past and present suffering that festers in us unrecognised and unhealed. Children who have been rescued from unimaginable suffering inflicted by cruelty or neglect can be healed by the loving attention of an adult. The Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh has this to say about love as mindfulness, as the ability to contain anger and the desire for vengeance. After 9/11 he said,“If I were given the opportunity to be face to face with Osama bin Laden, the first thing I would do is listen. I would try to understand all of the suffering that had led him to violence…because such an act of violence is a desperate call for attention and for help”. (7)
        Cosmic Love can act more effectively through us as our capacity to feel empathy for the suffering of others expands. Thich Nhat Hanh exemplifies that empathic understanding which could bring about healing at the international level if we were able to embody it in our relations with others. Paul Hawken in his book Blessed Unrest has described the rising impulsion to heal and to help, expressed in the millions of people who are engaged in countless initiatives to help others and to help the planet.
        There are many old and new methods of healing that are being rediscovered and implemented. In relation to my own profession of psychotherapy, I treasure these eloquent words of a counsellor called Brian Thorne:

Love calls us to caring, solicitude, insight, gentleness and understanding but also to strength, power, and intelligence used in the service of humanity and the life of the planet. It calls us to make conscious and contain the desire for control and the need for dominance that are rooted in the opposite of love—in fear.
The traditions I have spoken about, as well as modern testimonies to the existence of this deeper ground of consciousness, tell us that Love and L ight as the pulse of the cosmos flow to us in the creation and becoming of our own being, holding this world of time in the embrace of eternity. The words of the great Flemish Christian mystic, John of Ruysbroeck (1273-1381), offer the essence of this embrace:

To end I would like to offer you the words of three people who, in our time, have experienced the Light of this divine ground, this cosmic Sea of Being: First, the words of Gopi Krishna who, in 1937, experienced a sudden and overwhelming ascent of Kundalini. In an interview in a recently published book called Kundalini Rising he says that the stage is being set for a movement from the external world to the inner world of consciousness, that an unlived potential of human consciousness - a supersensory channel of cognition - is being activated and will, in time, manifest in our species. We may eventually be able to discover the answer to the question “How does Eternal Consciousness come to be embodied and then rise, step by step, through aeonian spans of time, to the realization of its own sovereignty”and also the question of how this process is revealed in the organic evolution of the brain. Bearing witness to the fact that the supersensory channel of cognition has been opened in himself, he writes that at every moment of his life he lives in two worlds:

Second, these words of Christopher Bache, whom I have quoted before in this book:

Once again, as in the early centuries of the Christian era, it seems as if new bottles are needed to hold the wine of a new revelation. What is the emerging vision of our time? I believe it is a vision which takes us beyond an outworn paradigm where we are held in bondage to beliefs and attitudes specific to race, nation, religion or gender. It is a vision which reveals a new concept of spirit as an infinite sea of being — as well as the creative consciousness or organising intelligence of that sea or field, and a new concept of ourselves as belonging to and participating in that incandescent ground of consciousness. It is a vision which recognises the sacredness and indissoluble unity of the great cosmic web of life and imposes on us the responsibility of becoming far more sensitive to the effects of our decisions and our actions. It invites our recognition of the needs of the planet and the life it sustains as primary, with ourselves as the conscious servants of those needs.
Because at the quantum level, we are all connected, when thousands of us begin to change our consciousness, millions are affected. We can choose whether to continue in the patterns of the past or to live and act from a different relationship with life. As we do so, we will begin to align ourselves with the luminous ground of reality. Our minds will serve the deepest longing of our hearts, the deepest wisdom of our genetic coding. In our relationships and in our work, we will transmit the light and love flowing from this divine ground. We will know who we are and why we are here. We will live the Dream of the Cosmos.

Notes:

1. The Upanishads, translated and with an introduction by Juan Mascaró, Penguin Books, London 1965
2. Raymond Van Over (editor) Eastern Mysticism, Volume One: The Near-East and Asia, New American Library Inc., New York, 1977, p. 125
3. The Bhagavad Gita, translated and with an introduction by Juan Mascaró
4. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love
5 . Paradiso, last canto
6 . The Upanishads, translated and with an introduction by Juan Mascaró
7 . Thich Nhat Hanh (newspaper report 2001)
8 . Brian Thorne, Person-Centred Counselling and Christian Spirituality, Whurr Publishers, London, 1998. See also The Mystical Power of Person-Centred Therapy: Hope Beyond Despair, Whurr Publishers, 2002.
9 . Jan van Ruysbroeck, The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, The Book of Truth, The Sparkling Stone, Dutton & Co. New York, 1916
10 . Interview with Gopi Krishna in Kundalini Rising, Sounds True Inc., Boulder, CO., 2009, p. 295
11 . Christopher Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, p. 67
12. ibid, p. 70

coda
The third testimony is from the experience of a man called Mellen-Thomas Benedict, who described what happened to him after he had clinically died of cancer and returned to life after an OBE. He describes a journey he took into the Light and how the Light answered his questions and took him deeper and deeper into Itself. Because the description of his experience is so wide-ranging, so clearly expressed and so inspiring, with his permission I have included it here, as a kind of coda to this book in the hope that it will inspire and help others. His experience offers a message of hope and inspiration for humanity, delivered with a joy and clarity that is authentic and refreshing.

Mellen-Thomas Benedict: His Experience in his own words
I remember waking up one morning at home about 4:30 am, and I just knew that this was it. This was the day I was going to die. So I called a few friends and said goodbye. I woke up my hospice caretaker and told her. I had a private agreement with her that she would leave my dead body alone for six hours, since I had read that all kinds of interesting things happen when you die. I went back to sleep. The next thing I remember is the beginning of a typical near-death experience. Suddenly I was fully aware and I was standing up, but my body was in the bed. There was this darkness around me. Being out of my body was even more vivid than ordinary experience. It was so vivid that I could see every room in the house, I could see the top of the house, I could see around the house, I could see under the house.

There was this light shining. I turned toward the light. The light was very similar to what many other people have described in their near-death experiences. It was so magnificent. It is tangible; you can feel it. It is alluring; you want to go to it like you would want to go to your ideal mother's or father's arms. As I began to move toward the light, I knew intuitively that if I went to the light, I would be dead. So as I was moving toward the light I said, “Please wait a minute, just hold on a second here. I want to think about this; I would like to talk to you before I go.”

To my surprise, the entire experience halted at that point. You are indeed in control of your near-death experience. You are not on a roller coaster ride. So my request was honored and I had some conversations with the light. The light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked the light, “What is going on here? Please, light, clarify yourself for me. I really want to know the reality of the situation.”

I cannot really say the exact words, because it was sort of telepathy. The light responded. The information transferred to me was that your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not.

As the light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our Higher Self matrix. The only thing I can tell you is that it turned into a matrix, a mandala of human souls, and what I saw was that what we call our Higher Self in each of us is a matrix. It's also a conduit to the Source; each one of us comes directly, as a direct experience from the Source. We all have a Higher Self, or an oversoul part of our being. It revealed itself to me in its truest energy form. The only way I can really describe it is that the being of the Higher Self is more like a conduit. It did not look like that, but it is a direct connection to the Source that each and every one of us has. We are directly connected to the Source.

So the light was showing me the Higher Self matrix. And it became very clear to me that all the Higher Selves are connected as one being, all humans are connected as one being, we are actually the same being, different aspects of the same being. It was not committed to one particular religion. So that is what was being fed back to me. And I saw this mandala of human souls. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I just went into it and, it was just overwhelming. It was like all the love you've every wanted, and it was the kind of love that cures, heals, regenerates.

As I asked the light to keep explaining, I understood what the Higher Self matrix is. We have a grid around the planet where all the Higher Selves are connected. This is like a great company, a next subtle level of energy around us, the spirit level, you might say. Then, after a couple of minutes, I asked for more clarification. I really wanted to know what the universe is about, and I was ready to go at that time.

I said, “I am ready, take me.” Then the light turned into the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen: a mandala of human souls on this planet. Now I came to this with my negative view of what has happened on the planet. So as I asked the light to keep clarifying for me, I saw in this magnificent mandala how beautiful we all are in our essence, our core. We are the most beautiful creations. The human soul, the human matrix that we all make together is absolutely fantastic, elegant, exotic, everything. I just cannot say enough about how it changed my opinion of human beings in that instant. I said, “Oh, God, I did not know how beautiful we are.” At any level, high or low, in whatever shape you are in, you are the most beautiful creation, you are. I was astonished to find that there was no evil in any soul. I said, “How can this be?”

The answer was that no soul was inherently evil. The terrible things that happened to people might make them do evil things, but their souls were not evil. What all people seek, what sustains them, is love, the light told me. What distorts people is a lack of love.

The revelations coming from the light seemed to go on and on, then I asked the light, “Does this mean that humankind will be saved?”

Then, like a trumpet blast with a shower of spiraling lights, the Great Light spoke, saying, “Remember this and never forget; you save, redeem and heal yourself. You always have. You always will. You were created with the power to do so from before the beginning of the world.”

In that instant I realized even more. I realized that WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN SAVED, and we saved ourselves because we were designed to self-correct like the rest of God's universe. This is what the second coming is about.

I thanked the light of God with all my heart. The best thing I could come up with was these simple words of total appreciation: “Oh dear God, dear Universe, dear Great Self, I love my life.”

The light seemed to breathe me in even more deeply. It was as if the light was completely absorbing me. The love light is, to this day, indescribable. I entered into another realm, more profound than the last, and became aware of something more, much more. It was an enormous stream of light, vast and full, deep in the heart of life. I asked what this was. The light responded, “This is the RIVER OF LIFE. Drink of this manna water to your heart's content.” So I did. I took one big drink and then another. To drink of life Itself! I was in ecstasy.

Then the light said, “You have a desire.” The light knew all about me, everything past, present and future. Yes!” I whispered.

I asked to see the rest of the universe; beyond our solar system, beyond all human illusion. The light then told me that I could go with the Stream. I did, and was carried through the light at the end of the tunnel. I felt and heard a series of very soft sonic booms. What a rush!

Suddenly I seemed to be rocketing away from the planet on this stream of life. I saw the earth fly away. The solar system, in all its splendor, whizzed by and disappeared. At faster than light speed, I flew through the center of the galaxy, absorbing more knowledge as I went. I learned that this galaxy, and all of the universe, is bursting with many different varieties of LIFE. I saw many worlds. The good news is that we are not alone in this universe!

As I rode this stream of consciousness through the center of the galaxy, the stream was expanding in awesome fractal waves of energy. The super clusters of galaxies with all their ancient wisdom flew by. At first I thought I was going somewhere; actually traveling. But then I realized that, as the stream was expanding, my own consciousness was also expanding to take in everything in the universe! All creation passed by me. It was an unimaginable wonder! I truly was a wonder child; a babe in Wonderland!

It seemed as if all the creations in the universe soared by me and vanished in a speck of light. Almost immediately, a second light appeared. It came from all sides, and was so different; a light made up of more than every frequency in the universe.

I felt and heard several velvety sonic booms again. My consciousness, or being, was expanding to interface with the entire holographic universe and more. As I passed into the second light, the awareness came to me that I had just transcended the truth. Those are the best words I have for it, but I will try to explain. As I passed into the second light, I expanded beyond the first light. I found myself in a profound stillness, beyond all silence. I could see or perceive FOREVER, beyond infinity. I was in the void. I was in pre-creation, before the Big Bang. I had crossed over the beginning of time - the first word - the first vibration. I was in the eye of creation. I felt as if I was touching the face of God. It was not a religious feeling. Simply I was at one with absolute life and consciousness.

When I say that I could see or perceive forever, I mean that I could experience all of creation generating itself. It was without beginning and without end. That's a mind-expanding thought, isn't it? Scientists perceive the Big Bang as a single event which created the universe. I saw that the Big Bang is only one of an infinite number of Big Bangs creating universes endlessly and simultaneously. The only images that even come close in human terms would be those created by supercomputers using fractal geometry equations.

The ancients knew of this. They said Godhead periodically created new universes by breathing out, and de-creating other universes by breathing in. These epochs were called yugas. Modern science called this the Big Bang. I was in absolute, pure consciousness. I could see or perceive all the Big Bangs or yugas creating and de-creating themselves. Instantly I entered into them all simultaneously. I saw that each and every little piece of creation has the power to create. It is very difficult to try to explain this. I am still speechless about this.

It took me years after I returned to assimilate any words at all for the void experience. I can tell you this now; the void is less than nothing, yet more than everything that is! The void is absolute zero; chaos forming all possibilities. It is absolute consciousness; much more than even universal intelligence.

Where is the void? I know. The void is inside and outside everything. You, right now even while you live, are always inside and outside the void simultaneously. You don't have to go anywhere or die to get there. The void is the vacuum or nothingness between all physical manifestations. The SPACE between atoms and their components. Modern science has begun to study this space between everything. They call it zero-point. Whenever they try to measure it, their instruments go off the scale, or to infinity, so to speak. They have no way, as of yet, to measure infinity accurately. There is more of the zero space in your own body and the universe than anything else!

What mystics call the void is not a void. It is so full of energy, a different kind of energy that has created everything that we are. Everything since the Big Bang is vibration, from the first word, which is the first vibration.

The Biblical “I am” really has a question mark after it.
“I am? What am I?”

So creation is God exploring God's Self through every way imaginable, in an ongoing, infinite exploration through every one of us. Through every piece of hair on your head, through every leaf on every tree, through every atom, God is exploring God's Self, the great “I am”. I began to see that everything that is, is the Self, literally, your Self, my Self. Everything is the great Self. That is why God knows even when a leaf falls. That is possible because wherever you are is the center of the universe. Wherever any atom is, that is the center of the universe. There is God in that, and God in the void.

As I was exploring the void and all the yugas or creations, I was completely out of time and space as we know it. In this expanded state, I discovered that creation is about absolute pure consciousness, or God, coming into the experience of life as we know it. The void itself is devoid of experience. It is pre-life, before the first vibration. Godhead is about more than life and death. Therefore there is even more than life and death to experience in the universe!

I was in the void and I was aware of everything that had ever been created. It was like I was looking out of God's eyes. I had become God. Suddenly I wasn't me anymore. The only thing I can say, I was looking out of God's eyes. And suddenly I knew why every atom was, and I could see everything.

The interesting point was that I went into the void, I came back with this understanding that God is not there. God is here. That's what it is all about. So this constant search of the human race to go out and find God ... God gave everything to us, everything is here - this is where it's at. And what we are into now is God's exploration of God through us. People are so busy trying to become God that they ought to realize that we are already God and God is becoming us. That's what it is really about.

When I realized this, I was finished with the void, and wanted to return to this creation, or yuga. It just seemed like the natural thing to do.

Then I suddenly came back through the second light, or the Big Bang, hearing several more velvet booms. I rode the stream of consciousness back through all of creation, and what a ride it was! The superclusters of galaxies came through me with even more insights. I passed through the center of our galaxy, which is a black hole. Black holes are the great processors or recyclers of the universe. Do you know what is on the other side of a black hole? We are; our galaxy; which has been reprocessed from another universe.

In its total energy configuration, the galaxy looked like a fantastic city of lights. All energy this side of the Big Bang is light. Every sub-atom, atom, star, planet, even consciousness itself is made of light and has a frequency and/or particle. Light is living stuff. Everything is made of light, even stones. So everything is alive. Everything is made from the light of God; everything is very intelligent.

The Light of Love
As I rode the stream on and on, I could eventually see a huge light coming. I knew it was the first light; the Higher Self light matrix of our solar system. Then the entire solar system appeared in the light, accompanied by one of those velvet booms.

I saw that the solar system we live in is our larger, local body. This is our local body and we are much bigger than we imagine. I saw that the solar system is our body. I am a part of this, and the earth is this great created being that we are, and we are the part of it that knows that it is. But we are only that part of it. We are not everything, but we are that part of it that knows that it is.

I could see all the energy that this solar system generates, and it is an incredible light show! I could hear the music of the spheres. Our solar system, as do all celestial bodies, generates a unique matrix of light, sound and vibratory energies. Advanced civilizations from other star systems can spot life as we know it in the universe by the vibratory or energy matrix imprint. It is child's play. The earth's wonder child (human beings) make an abundance of sound right now, like children playing in the backyard of the universe.

I rode the stream directly into the center of the light. I felt embraced by the light as it took me in with its breath again, followed by another soft sonic boom. I was in this great light of love with the stream of life flowing through me. I have to say again, it is the most loving, non-judgmental light. It is the ideal parent for this wonder child.

“What now?” I wondered.

The light explained to me that there is no death; we are immortal beings. We have already been alive forever! I realized that we are part of a natural living system that recycles itself endlessly. I was never told that I had to come back. I just knew that I would. It was only natural, from what I had seen.

I don't know how long I was with the light, in human time. But there came a moment when I realized that all my questions had been answered and my return was near. When I say that all my questions were answered on the other side, I mean to say just that. All my questions have been answered. Every human has a different life and set of questions to explore. Some of our questions are universal, but each of us is exploring this thing we call life in our own unique way. So is every other form of life, from mountains to every leaf on every tree.

And that is very important to the rest of us in this universe. Because it all contributes to the Big Picture, the fullness of life. We are literally God exploring God's Self in an infinite Dance of Life. Your uniqueness enhances all of life.

My Return to Earth
As I began my return to the life cycle, it never crossed my mind, nor was I told, that I would return to the same body. It just did not matter. I had complete trust in the light and the life process. As the stream merged with the great light, I asked never to forget the revelations and the feelings of what I had learned on the other side.

There was a “Yes.” It felt like a kiss to my soul.

Then I was taken back through the light into the vibratory realm again. The whole process reversed, with even more information being given to me. I came back home, and I was given lessons on the mechanics of reincarnation. I was given answers to all those little questions I had:

“How does this work? How does that work?” I knew that I would be reincarnated.

The earth is a great processor of energy, and individual consciousness evolves out of that into each one of us. I thought of myself as a human for the first time, and I was happy to be that. From what I have seen, I would be happy to be an atom in this universe. An atom. So to be the human part of God ... this is the most fantastic blessing. It is a blessing beyond our wildest estimation of what blessing can be. For each and every one of us to be the human part of this experience is awesome, and magnificent. Each and every one of us, no matter where we are, screwed up or not, is a blessing to the planet, right where we are.

So I went through the reincarnation process expecting to be a baby somewhere. But I was given a lesson on how individual identity and consciousness evolve. So I reincarnated back into this body.

I was so surprised when I opened my eyes. I do not know why, because I understood it, but it was still such a surprise to be back in this body, back in my room with someone looking over me crying her eyes out. It was my hospice caretaker. She had given up an hour and a half after finding me dead. She was sure I was dead; all the signs of death were there - I was getting stiff. We do not know how long I was dead, but we do know that it was an hour and a half since I was found. She honored my wish to have my newly dead body left alone for a few hours as much as she could. We had an amplified stethoscope and many ways of checking out the vital functions of the body to see what was happening. She can verify that I really was dead.

It was not a near-death experience. I experienced death itself for at least an hour and a half. She found me dead and checked the stethoscope, blood pressure and heart rate monitor for an hour and a half. Then I awakened and saw the light outside. I tried to get up to go to it, but I fell out of the bed. She heard a loud “clunk”, ran in and found me on the floor.

When I recovered, I was very surprised and yet very awed about what had happened to me. At first all the memory of the trip that I have now was not there. I kept slipping out of this world and kept asking, “Am I alive?” This world seemed more like a dream than that one.

Within three days, I was feeling normal again, clearer, yet different than I had ever felt in my life. My memory of the journey came back later. I could see nothing wrong with any human being I had ever seen. Before that I was really judgmental. I thought a lot of people were really screwed up, in fact I thought that everybody was screwed up but me. But I got clear on all that.

About three months later a friend said I should get tested, so I went and got the scans and so forth. I really felt good, so I was afraid of getting bad news. I remember the doctor at the clinic looking at the before and after scans, saying, “Well, there is nothing here now.”

I said, “Really, it must be a miracle?”

He said, “No, these things happen, they are called spontaneous remission.” He acted very unimpressed. But here was a miracle, and I was impressed, even if no one else was.

The Lessons I Learned
The mystery of life has very little to do with intelligence. The universe is not an intellectual process at all. The intellect is helpful; it is brilliant, but right now that is all we process with, instead of our hearts and the wiser part of ourselves.

The center of the earth is this great transmuter of energy, just as you see in pictures of our earth's magnetic field. That's our cycle, pulling reincarnated souls back in and through it again. A sign that you are reaching human level is that you are beginning to evolve an individual consciousness. The animals have a group soul, and they reincarnate in group souls. A deer is pretty much going to be a deer forever. But just being born a human, whether deformed or genius, shows that you are on the path to developing an individual consciousness. That is in itself part of the group consciousness called humanity.

I saw that races are personality clusters. Nations like France, Germany and China each have their own personality. Cities have personalities, their local group souls that attract certain people. Families have group souls. Individual identity is evolving like branches of a fractal; the group soul explores in our individuality. The different questions that each of us has are very, very important. This is how Godhead is exploring God's Self - through you. So ask your questions, do your searching. You will find your Self and you will find God in that Self, because it is only the Self.

More than that, I began to see that each one of us humans are soul mates. We are part of the same soul fractaling out in many creative directions, but still the same. Now I look at every human being that I ever see, and I see a soul mate, my soul mate, the one I have always been looking for. Beyond that, the greatest soul mate that you will ever have is yourself. We are each both male and female. We experience this in the womb and we experience this in reincarnation states. If you are looking for that ultimate soul mate outside of yourself, you may never find it; it is not there. Just as God is not “there.” God is here. Don't look “out there” for God. Look here for God. Look through your Self. Start having the greatest love affair you ever had ... with your Self. You will love everything out of that.

I had a descent into what you might call hell, and it was very surprising. I did not see Satan or evil. My descent into hell was a descent into each person's customized human misery, ignorance, and darkness of not-knowing. It seemed like a miserable eternity. But each of the millions of souls around me had a little star of light always available. But no one seemed to pay attention to it. They were so consumed with their own grief, trauma and misery. But, after what seemed an eternity, I started calling out to that light, like a child calling to a parent for help. Then the light opened up and formed a tunnel that came right to me an insulated me from all that fear and pain. That is what hell really is.

So what we are doing is learning to hold hands, to come together. The doors of hell are open now. We are going to link up, hold hands, and walk out of hell together.

The light came to me and turned into a huge golden angel. I said, “Are you the angel of death?”

It expressed to me that it was my oversoul, my Higher Self matrix, a super-ancient part of ourselves. Then I was taken to the light.

Soon our science will quantify spirit. Isn't that going to be wonderful? We are coming up with devices now that are sensitive to subtle energy or spirit energy. Physicists use these atomic colliders to smash atoms to see what they are made of. They have got it down to quarks and charm, and all that. Well, one day they are going to come down to the little thing that holds it all together, and they are going to have to call that ... God. With atomic colliders they are not only seeing what is in here, but they are creating particles. Thank God most of them are short-lived milliseconds and nanoseconds. We are just beginning to understand that we are creating too, as we go along.

As I saw forever, I came to a realm in which there is a point where we pass all knowledge and begin creating the next fractal, the next level. We have that power to create as we explore. And that is God expanding itself through us.

Since my return I have experienced the light spontaneously, and I have learned how to get to that space almost any time in my meditation. Each one of you can do this. You do not have to die to do this. It is within your equipment; you are wired for it already.

The body is the most magnificent light being there is. The body is a universe of incredible light. Spirit is not pushing us to dissolve this body. That is not what is happening. Stop trying to become God; God is becoming you. Here...

I asked God, “What is the best religion on the planet? Which one is right?”

And Godhead said, with great love, “I don't care.” That was incredible grace. What that meant was that we are the caring beings here.

The Ultimate Godhead of all the stars tells us, “It does not matter what religion you are.” They come and they go, they change. Buddhism has not been here forever, Catholicism has not been here forever, and they are all about to become more enlightened. More light is coming into all systems now. There is going to be a reformation in spirituality that is going to be just as dramatic as the Protestant Reformation. There will be lots of people fighting about it, one religion against the next, believing that only they are right.

Everyone thinks they own God, the religions and philosophies, especially the religions, because they form big organizations around their philosophy. When Godhead said, “I don't care,” I immediately understood that it is for us to care about. It is important, because we are the caring beings. It matters to us and that is where it is important. What you have is the energy equation in spirituality. Ultimate Godhead does not care if you are Protestant, Buddhist, or whatever. It is all a blooming facet of the whole. I wish that all religions would realize it and let each other be. It is not the end of each religion, but we are talking about the same God. Live and let live. Each has a different view. And it all adds up to the Big Picture; it is all important.

I went over to the other side with a lot of fears about toxic waste, nuclear missiles, the population explosion, the rainforest. I came back loving every single problem. I love nuclear waste. I love the mushroom cloud; this is the holiest mandala that we have manifested to date, as an archetype. It, more than any religion or philosophy on earth, brought us together all of a sudden, to a new level of consciousness. Knowing that maybe we can blow up the planet fifty times, or 500 times, we finally realize that maybe we are all here together now. For a period they had to keep setting off more bombs to get it in to us. Then we started saying, “We do not need this any more.”

Now we are actually in a safer world than we have ever been in, and it is going to get safer.

The clearing of the rain forest will slow down, and in fifty years there will be more trees on the planet than in a long time. If you are into ecology, go for it; you are that part of the system that is becoming aware. Go for it with all your might, but do not be depressed. It is part of a larger thing.

Earth is in the process of domesticating itself. It is never again going to be as wild a place as it once was. There will be great wild places, reserves where nature thrives. Gardening and reserves will be the thing in the future. Population increase is getting very close to the optimal range of energy to cause a shift in consciousness. That shift in consciousness will change politics, money, energy.

What happens when we dream? We are multi-dimensional beings. We can access that through lucid dreaming. In fact, this universe is God's dream. One of the things that I saw is that we humans are a speck on a planet that is a speck in a galaxy that is a speck. Those are giant systems out there, and we are in sort of an average system. But human beings are already legendary throughout the cosmos of consciousness. The little bitty human being of Earth/Gaia is legendary. One of the things that we are legendary for is dreaming. We are legendary dreamers. In fact, the whole cosmos has been looking for the meaning of life, the meaning of it all. And it was the little dreamer who came up with the best answer ever. We dreamed it up. So dreams are important.

After dying and coming back, I really respect life and death. In our DNA experiments we may have opened the door to a great secret. Soon we will be able to live as long as we want to live in this body. After living 150 years or so, there will be an intuitive soul sense that you will want to change channels. Living forever in one body is not as creative as reincarnation, as transferring energy in this fantastic vortex of energy that we are in. We are actually going to see the wisdom of life and death, and enjoy it.

As it is now, we have already been alive forever. This body that you are in, has been alive forever. It comes from an unending stream of life, going back to the Big Bang and beyond. This body gives life to the next life, in dense and subtle energy. This body has been alive forever already.