To Wim, more on NDE

July 6, 2002

i was about six years old. as a youngster, i would often receive

visits from beautiful beings of Light -- especially happy beings who

played with me and made me laugh and fill up with tears of Love so

much that this little boy-frame could hardly bear it! i had been

raised in a pious Roman Catholic family, and would often wait for my

parents to go to bed, because i knew that they didn't understand, and

then i would get down on the floor in prostration and fall into

Jesus' Heart. Seven years later, at the age of 13, i would enter the

Seminary to become a priest. i would spend 7 years there, and when i

finally left, i would meet Jesus again and be released from the

burden of man-made belief in the great lie of separation -- that we

are outside of God and need to get back, that God is "other" than who

we are. but that is another story, and so let's return to that six

year old boy, who was dying of complications from pneumonia, and who

was lying in a hospital bed, his labored breathing finally coming to

an end with one long, drawn-out exhalation. He finds himself floating

up above his body, looking down on it as if it is just some worn-out

clothes that he has discarded, and then he is taken by the hands --

one hand held by Mary, the other by Jesus -- and he is taken into a

most Loving Light, such a Loving Light it cannot be described, and he

is shown that this Light, which he is, and Mary is, and Jesus is, is

All that there Is. There is nothing but this Light, and everything

that appears to be many beings, and worlds, and thoughts, and

speaking, and laughing, and even good and bad, and even angels and

devils, and even the stars and moon and sky and everything is just

the Play of this Light, and then there was something for which there

are no words, even though these words themselves are Light, and that

was the Source of this Light Itself, and it is not what anyone might

imagine, for in itself it is not a thing -- not God, not Love, not

anything of words -- and yet from it emerges this Beauty of Light,

and to it the Light of Love returns, and this coming out and

returning is happening simultaneously, and as this Light flows into

the space and time of form it takes on the colors and shapes of

forms, although in appearance it is clear and white, and in these

forms it forgets that it is the light, but not for long! The destiny

of Light is the Ocean of Light, and the Vastness of the Mother of

Light.

And this Light wants to be sung, and celebrated, and reveled in for

the sheer Joy of Itself, just as the waves love to splash onto the

shore, and so some of us come here again to sing this song, and to

share with the Light that has forgotten Itself as Only Light that All

Is Well. Yes, All Is Well!

After that hospital experience, he spent days, then months, absorbed

in a condition that can only be compared to the awareness present in

deep sleep, and yet somehow he was able to function in the

environment. He could eat, and walk, and even go to school. There was

little if any consciousness of self. It was more as if there was

simply nothing -- no self-reflection, no noticing of changes of

passing days, no sense of differentiation from anything around him.

He ate almost nothing, even emptying his lunch bag into neighborhood

mail boxes on the way to school.

When he had recently turned 8, and was returning from his first week

away from family's home, at a Catholic Youth Organization Summer Camp

near the Russian River, in Northern California, he had started

to "come down" into "normal" consciousness. It was 1957, although it

could have been any year, or no year. Why even keep track? For the

boy, such numbers carried no meaning.

As he dismounted the bus and saw his family waiting there for him,

smiling with love and anticipation, he experienced such an

overwhelming rapture of bliss that he suddenly staggered and

collapsed on the pavement. With a great surging roar, a powerful

energy/awareness had somehow been unleashed within him, which

immediately shot up his spine and literally expanded out beyond his

perceived bodily limits – and "it" just kept going, ecstatically

gathering all of infinity into an ever-widening embrace!

At a certain point, a kind of fear arose - not of extinction - but of

not being able to return to share this Love with all. From a timeless

ocean of undifferentiated awareness, he now found himself as a

pinpoint of consciousness riding the frothy curl of this wave of

fear. With a gentle splash he was unaccountably deposited on the

shore of vague and dreamy embodiment, and opening his eyes he found

his family hovering around, worriedly studying him. They had

apparently taken him back home, although he had no memory of being

moved. In their concern, they had also called the family doctor.

Curiously, they all looked like people he vaguely recognized, and

somehow he knew they were supposed to be "his family", and yet he

could no longer be the "person" he had been. He was the Mystery,

although he had no such words for This at the time.

He no longer felt himself to be a body exclusively, and if anything

he seemed to float behind and above it. It was perplexing, in a way,

and it would actually take him weeks to finally inhabit this body to

any significant degree.

The doctor arrived and examined him thoroughly, and it was funny,

because as he was leaning over the boy, the boy was simultaneously

looking down on himself through the eyes of the doctor!

Suddenly he began to weep. The doctor asked him what he was feeling.

The boy replied:

"These tears are the eyes' way of kissing you. When I look up at you,

I see only God looking down at God. It makes me smile, it makes me

cry."

The doctor glanced over to the boy's parents, and they exchanged

uncomprehending stares.

"Strange, these beings -- giants convinced they are midgets…" the boy

mused.

The doctor continued with his exam, and finding no physical

abnormality, prescribed some rest and aspirin. He also suggested that

a talk with the parish priest might be advisable.

When Father Antonelli arrived a few evenings later, he found the boy

on his back on the lawn behind the house, gazing into the cloudless

night sky. He came and sat down beside him, and remarked on what a

beautiful warm summer night it was. The boy made no reply, and in

fact gave no indication that he was even aware of the priest by his

side. The older man reached over and took the boy's hand in his and

asked:

"Son, what are you doing here?"

The boy remained still for a long moment, and then spoke softly:

"Drifting, drifting, hand in hand, on a sea of light, I gently

squeeze your perfect hand and, nodding upward, point silently to the

starry majesty of our truth ablaze across the evermore of space."

"Who taught you to say such things, Lad?" the priest exclaimed.

"The same one." the boy replied.

"Which one do you mean?" asked the puzzled cleric.

"The one who is living us right now," answered the boy, "the one who

shines these stars, who pumps our blood, who breathes us into all

these forms and draws us back into itself again, and again, and

again."

"Do you mean God the Father?"

"Father. Mother. Sister. Brother. Sky. Tree. You. Me."

The priest fell silent. All of his possible responses bubbled up in

his mind, but the bubbles burst before he could wrap words around

them. Finally, he lifted the boy's hand, which was still in his, and

kissed it. He stood up, walked back into the house, and without

saying a word embraced the boy's parents and went on his way.

The boy soon returned to school for the fall semester, but for a long

time after that, he really seemed to take no interest in the

subjects. He was gradually moved to the back of the class, and placed

with the hopeless ones who "didn't have a clue."

Actually, he really didn't have a clue! He would arrive at his desk

in the morning with no idea how he had gotten there, and then

suddenly it was time to go home, as if some time had actually passed!

When he got home, he would lie on his back on the soft, green lawn

behind the house. Opening out into the vast blue sky, the endlessness

of blue, and steadily inhaling the earthy aromas, the grassiness, the

tree-ness, the shrub and flower-ness, he could feel the whole planet

gently rolling in the midst of the universe, and it was his very own

body – this globe of color, sound, and dreamy form.

And then it was time to eat, but he hardly touched the food. When the

parents had gone to bed, he would get down on the floor and lose

himself completely in Mystery, which he knew in his heart was only

this unbearable Love pulsing through him into the limitless space.

He "knew" he was that space, more than he knew he was anything or

anybody.

Eventually, he began assuming the conventions of his peers -- joining

in the sports games, laughing at the jokes, collecting baseball

cards, and listening to the ingenious little portable transistor

radios that had just come on the market. It was all a kind of a game,

like "Let's Pretend", although they all seemed to take everything so

seriously. At any rate, he went along. There was no resistance. It

was "no big deal."

In time, it became second nature –

just going along,

pretending.

LoveAlways,

b

July 6, 2002

Ah Bob,

the one love we all emerged from...

then the common strands of destiny...

and when arrived back to the beginning...

one love immersed in again

and emerging

Wim

mazie_l [sraddha54]

Saturday, July 06, 2002 11:57 AM