- THROUGH THE LIGHT....THE ROAD TO DEATH -

In 1982 I died from terminal cancer. My condition was non-operable. I chose not to have chemotherapy and I was given six to eight months to live. Before this time, I had become increasingly despondent over the nuclear crisis, the ecology crisis, and so forth. I came to believe that nature had made a mistake - that we were probably a cancerous organism on the planet. And that is what eventually killed me.

Before my death, I tried all sorts of alternative healing methods. None helped, so I determined that this was between me and God. I had never really considered God. Neither was I into any kind of spirituality, but my approaching death sent me on a quest for more information about spirituality and alternative healing. I read various religions and philosophies. They gave hope that there was something on the other side.

I had no medical insurance, so my life savings went overnight on tests .Unwilling to drag my family into this, I determined to handle this myself. I ended up in hospice care and was blessed with an angel for my hospice caretaker, whom I will call "Anne." She stayed with me through all that was to follow. It lasted about eighteen months.

THE LIGHT OF GOD

I woke up about 4:30 am and I knew that this was it. I was going to die. I called a few friends and said good-bye. I woke up Anne and made her promise that my dead body would remain undisturbed 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, I was fully aware and standing up. Yet my body was lying in the bed. I seemed to be surrounded by darkness, yet I could see every room in the house, and the roof, and even under the house.

A Light shone; I turned toward it, and was aware of its similarity to what others have described in near-death experiences. It was magnificent and tangible, alluring. I wanted to go towards that Light like I might want to go into my ideal mother's or father's arms. As I moved towards the Light, I knew that if I went into the Light, I would be dead. So I said/felt, "Please wait. I would like to talk to you before I go."

The entire experience halted. I discovered that I was in control of the entire experience. My request was honored. I had conversations with the Light. That's the best way I can describe it. The Light changed into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked in a kind of telepathy, "What is going on here?"

The information transmitted was that our beliefs shape the kind of feedback we receive: If you are a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own images. I became aware of a Higher Self matrix, a conduit to the Source. We all have a Higher Self, or an oversoul part of our being, a conduit. All Higher Selves are connected as one being, all humans are connected as one being. We are literally the same being.

It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. It was like all the love you've every wanted, and it was the kind of love that cures, heals, regenerates. 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. I saw that we are the most beautiful creations - elegant, exotic . . .everything. I just cannot say enough about how it changed my opinion of human beings in an instant.

I said/thought/felt, "Oh, God, I didn't realize." I was astonished to find that there was no evil in any soul. People may do terrible things out of ignorance and lack, but no soul is evil. What all people seek, what sustains them, is love, the Light told me. What distorts people is a lack of love.

The revelations went on and on. I asked, "Does this mean that humankind will be saved?" Like a trumpet blast with a shower of spiraling lights, the Light "spoke," saying, "You save, redeem and heal yourself. You always have and always will. You were created with the power to do so from before the beginning of the world."

In that instant I realized that WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN SAVED; 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: "Oh dear God, dear Universe, dear Great Self, I love my Life." The Light seemed to breathe me in even more deeply, absorbing me. I entered into another realm more profound than the last, and was aware of an enormous stream of Light, vast and full, deep. I asked what it was. The Light answered, "This is the RIVER OF LIFE. Drink of this manna water to your heart's content." I drank deeply, in ecstasy.

THE VOID OF NOTHINGNESS

Suddenly I seemed to be rocketing away from the planet on this stream of life. I saw the earth fly away. The solar system, whizzed by and disappeared. 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. We are not alone in this Universe.

It seemed as if all the creations in the Universe soared past me and vanished in a speck of Light. Almost immediately, a second Light appeared. As I passed into the second Light, I could perceive forever, beyond Infinity. I was in the Void, pre-Creation, the beginning of time, the first Word or vibration. I rested in the Eye of Creation and it seemed that I touched the Face of God. It was not a religious feeling. I was simply at One with Absolute Life and Consciousness.

It would take me years to assimilate the Void experience. It was less than nothing yet greater than anything. Creation is God exploring God's Self through every way imaginable. Through every piece of hair on your head, through every leaf on every tree, through every atom, God is exploring God's Self. I saw everything as the Self of all. God is here. That's what it is all about. Everything is made of light; everything is alive.

THE LIGHT OF LOVE

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. And the truth was obvious that there is no death; that nothing is born and nothing dies; that we are immortal beings, 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.

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 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.

I thought of myself as a human again 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 reincarnated back into this body. I was so surprised when I opened my eyes, to be back in this body, back in my room with someone looking over me, crying her eyes out. It was "Anne," my hospice caretaker. She had found me dead thirty minutes before.

We do not know how long I was dead, only that she found me thirty minutes before. She had honored my wish to have my newly-dead body left alone. She can verify that I really was dead. It was not a near-death experience. I believe I probably experienced death itself for at least an hour and a half. Then I awakened and saw the light outside. Confused, 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 surprised and awed about what had happened,

I had no memory at first of the experience. 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 ever before. My memories of the journey came back later. But from my return I could find nothing wrong with any human being I had ever seen. Previous to my death I was judgmental, believing that people were really screwed up . . everyone but me.

About three months later a friend said I should get tested for the cancer, so I got the scans and so forth. I felt healthy. I still remember the doctor at the clinic looking at the "before" and "after" scans. He said, "I can find no sign of cancer now." "A miracle?" I asked. "No," he answered. These things happen . . . spontaneous remission." He seemed unimpressed. But I was impressed, and knew it was a miracle.

LESSONS LEARNED

The Great Mystery of life has little to do with intelligence. The universe is not an intellectual process. The intellect is helpful; but our hearts are the wiser part of ourselves.

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. You can also do this. You do not have to die first. 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. We don't need to commune with God; God is communing with us in every moment.

I asked God: "What is the best religion on the planet? Which one is right?" God said with great love: "I don't care." What an incredible grace. It does not matter what religion we are. Religions 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.

Many will resist and fight about it, one religion against the next, believing that only they are right. When Godhead said, "I don't care," I understood that it is for us to care about, because we are the caring beings. The Source does not care if you are Protestant, Buddhist, or Jew. Each is a reflection, a facet of the whole. I wish that all religions would realize it and let each other be. It is not the end of separate religions, but live and let live. Each has a different view. And it all adds up to the big picture.

I went over to the other side with a lot of fears about toxic waste, nuclear missiles, the population explosion, the rain forest. 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. More than any religion or philosophy on earth, that terrible, wonderful cloud 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. So I came back loving toxic waste, because it brought us together.

These things are so big. 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 or disheartened. Earth is in the process of domesticating itself and we are cells on that Body.

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.

Here's to life! Here's to death! Here's to it all!





Mellen-Thomas Benedict is an artist who survived a near-death experience in 1982. Dr. Kenneth Ring has said, "His story is one of the most remarkable I have encountered in my extensive research on near-death experiences."

Charles Schultz Peanuts Philosophy

Charles Schultz Philosophy The following is the philosophy of Charles Schultz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip. You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just read the e-mail straight through, and you'll get the point. 1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world. 2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners. 3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America Contest. 4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize. 5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress. 6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners. How did you do? The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners . Here's an other quiz. See how you do on this one: 1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school. 2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time. 3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile. 4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special. 5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with Easier? The lesson: The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care . Pass this on to those people who have made a difference in your life. "Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia " (Charles Schultz)

2nd BURIAL.

Burying a loved one is a sad affair in most places, but burying them twice is a cause for happiness in Taiwan...find out why.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/v... (more)

Death and Dying are not Inevitable

You should not meditate or contemplate on death unless you want to die which is not a good idea. If you really, really don't want to die you won't die. Death is just a mistake that humanity has embraced but in the Golden Age that is going to come we will come to know that there is no need to die. (more)

... Dattatreya Siva Baba

Dattatreya Siva Baba







.

GREEN FUNERAL GRASS ROOTS MOVEMENT. USA TODAY

USA TODAY


Moving on from life, naturally

By Marco R. della Cava, USA TODAY

SEBASTOPOL, Calif. — For most mortals, talk of death is about as pleasant as a paper cut. But Jerri Lyons stands poised with a psychic Band-Aid.
Why pay for a coffin that costs as much as a car? Final Passages leader Jerri Lyons poses with a cardboard casket.
By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY

"We're fine with birth, but we've become so separated from the passage of life to death," says the dulcet-toned grandmother. "We need to accept death with all our senses."

All five of them.

Lyons, 56, runs Final Passages, a non-profit concern an hour north of San Francisco that has helped more than 200 families conduct funerals of loved ones in their own homes.

No embalming. No funeral directors. No sticker shock.

Instead, for about $1,000, Lyons will help wash, clothe and give a wake for the departed. Or for $45, she'll sell you a do-it-yourself handbook that tackles everything from how to move a body (the expression "dead weight" has real roots, she warns) to how to keep it cool (dry ice is best, but frozen peas are fine, too).

Ripped from a B-horror movie? Try history. Before Civil War-era doctor Thomas Holmes found a way to embalm the bodies of soldiers journeying home, most funerals were held in parlors and many burials on the back forty.

Only now, the natural approach has a hip, eco-friendly bent and a growing baby-boomer base whose take-charge attitude has embraced death. From modest caskets to burials in tombstone-free nature preserves, the emphasis is on finding a greener way to go.

"This movement is growing," says Lisa Carlson, author of Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love. "Boomers wrote their own wedding vows, they had home births, and they will create their own funeral traditions."

Though they aren't pushing their unorthodox views on aging parents, some boomers may well challenge their peers to think differently about the dead.

Lyons addresses the inescapable "ick" factor in her home funeral seminars by having participants decorate cardboard caskets and take turns climbing in. She also suggests talking friends and family through what a green funeral may involve.

Shortly before Dwight Caswell's wife, Anne, 56, died in October 2002, she asked to have a wake in their home in Sonoma, Calif.

"Friends would just walk into the room (where her body was), close the doors and say whatever they had to say," Caswell recalls. "I knew nothing about home funerals, didn't even think they were legal. But I've learned that death is an intimate thing, and this provides an experience I just haven't seen at funeral homes."

Not that your local funeral director will be looking for work frothing lattes anytime soon: The $20 billion-a-year mortuary industry offers a service that remains the third-largest personal expense, after a house and car.

In five states — Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska and New York — green funerals are tricky because laws require funeral directors to be involved to some degree, according to the watchdog group Funeral Consumers Alliance. (Nationwide, burials on private property are all but impossible in cities and require local zoning approval in rural areas.)

But in 45 states, citizens can legally bypass funeral homes and obtain permits to handle the body on their own.

A change of image

"The soil is right for experimentation," says Gary Laderman, author of Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and Funeral Homes in Twentieth-Century America. "There is an environmental movement that didn't exist decades ago, as well as an interest in customization and customer empowerment."

Though the traditional funeral has become "deeply rooted in society," the green trend could gather momentum if boomers express interest in some aspects (forgoing embalming but favoring traditional cemeteries) and force the industry to go along.

Funeral directors know their Six Feet Under image needs a makeover.

"We're changing, and our new campaign aimed at boomers is 'A life worth celebrating,' " says Bob Biggins of the National Funeral Directors Association. "We'll set anything up, whether it's on a golf course or even at home. Remember, we can bring about ceremony and ritual in a very short period of time."

Proponents of green funerals insist their approach promises mourners a more personal experience without the risk of a financial nightmare.

"It's so easy to turn that feeling of helplessness that death creates into purchasing," says Karen Leonard, an activist who helped the late Jessica Mitford update her 1963 exposé, The American Way of Death. "When you're grieving, it's really hard to say, 'What's the cheapest casket you've got?' "

But boomers are asking such questions and in so doing are fueling new businesses.

Outside Dubuque, Iowa, the Trappist monks of New Melleray Abbey can't turn out their hand-hewn, wooden-nailed caskets quick enough. Sales have soared since 2000, doubling to 800 last year and projected to double again this year. Fashioned from sustainable wood, the caskets range from $695 for a plain pine box to $1,795 for a walnut coffin.

Price lures some to Houston's The Pine Box, where the cheapest casket sells for $395. "Families want to get back to basics, and that often means taking the funeral home out of the equation," owner Chip Beresford says.

'They want to call the shots'

The Pine Box also offers funeral consulting, which is aimed at helping shoppers find the best prices on funeral-related services. "Clearly, customers want options," Beresford says.

Barbara Kernan agrees, which is why last July she opened Thresholds, a funeral services company specializing in green ceremonies, just outside San Diego.

"I get the sense that plenty of people in their 50s and 60s are really starting to think about how they want to go. These are people who had free sex and questioned authority. They want to call the shots, even in death."

Not surprisingly, Kernan's biggest bête noire is Hollywood. "People aren't sure about a dead body in their house," she says. "I have to reassure them they don't explode or pop up out of the ground."

In fact, some advocates of green funerals want to do away with tombstone-studded cemeteries altogether.

Picture a woodland that is maintained but not manicured. Imagine headstones replaced by tree plantings or inscribed rocks. Welcome to Ramsey Creek Preserve outside Westminster, S.C.

Run by local doctor Billy Campbell, the 37-acre preserve is a prototype that he hopes to replicate across the USA. A passionate environmentalist, he took his lead from nature-loving Britain with its 200 green burial locations and created "a land conservation tool" that allows the eco-conscious living to preserve nature through death. Similar recently opened sites include the Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve in the Florida Panhandle and Ethician Family Cemetery in East Texas.

Most Ramsey Creek burials, which involve non-embalmed bodies in biodegradable cardboard or wooden caskets, cost around $2,500, with 25% of the cost going to maintaining the natural habitat.

"We are certainly not inventing anything new," Campbell says. "Buddhists, Muslims, Jews all essentially practice green burials."

You can even go digital

Campbell recently joined forces with Los Angeles-based funeral home operator Tyler Cassity on a new project near San Francisco.

In the hills of Marin County, the duo is closing a deal on property that would serve this land-preserving market. (Though the national cremation rate has doubled since 1982 to 27%, roughly 70% of Bay Area residents prefer to be cremated.)

"Cremation can be misleading. It does pollute, and it's almost a denial of death," Cassity says. "No one seems to be remember why we have ceremonies where bodies are put back in the earth. And that is to honor the dead and confront our mortality."

And to help them live forever in the digital ether. Cassity, who runs famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery, hopes to install a local area network that would allow visitors to walk the preserve with a handheld device that brings up still and video images of the deceased.

This perpetual rerun is embraced by green-burial fans who are as passionate about memorials as they are their dust-to-dust departures. "Think about Egyptians and their hieroglyphs," Cassity says. "Our idea is completely modern and ancient at the same time. Natural and virtual."

There is nothing virtual about a body. So naturally, when people come to visit Lyons, she has to work hard to put them at ease.

First, she brews some herbal tea in her backyard office, where massage tables share space with Buddhist statues. This is, after all, the heart of Sonoma, where the cosmic clock on the '60s never really ran out.

Next, she opens a brightly decorated binder. It is filled with photos of caskets and people. The caskets are cardboard, all elaborately personalized. The people are dead, all surrounded by family.

"Then I show them this," says Lyons, who pops in a video. It is the story of a woman dying of cancer.

She dies. Her hair is washed. She is dressed by friends. The house fills up. People chat, about her, about anything. When the wake ends, usually after a day or two, the group lifts the woman from her bed into a cardboard casket and takes her away.

Grim as this video life-lesson is, it also is oddly comforting.

"I'll tell you why," Lyons says. "Because this wasn't a place where you show up for a viewing at a certain hour and emote on command in front of strange people. This was as nature intended things."

Healing in peace

Norma Wilcox, 57, and her husband, Forest Harlan, 53, plan to leave life as peacefully as they arrived. The Chico, Calif., couple started thinking about their funerals when Harlan was diagnosed with cancer in June. They want a home funeral and a green burial.

"We want our friends to be able to grieve in a personal setting, and we don't want to pollute," says Wilcox, who recalls her grandfather's wake in the family's Vermont farmhouse in the 1950s.

"The neighbors came in and brought food. It was so nice, so healing," she says. "I'd certainly be happy with that."



Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-02-03-green-funerals_x.htm


Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

MEDICAL DOCTOR LEARNS TO SEE ANGELS THROUGH MEDITATION

The true story of physician and psychiatrist Dr. Mitchell Gibson's discovery of the remarkable ability to see and communicate with ghosts, angels, and other supernatural entities.

To learn more go to www.tybro.com (more)

OR CLICK HERE to see ALL the interview episodes played back to back.


There is a whole series of interviews of this subject with Dr. Gibson. You can see them by double clicking on this You Tube video. Doing so will take you directly to the You Tube site with the other videos.