OVERVIEW
To strive to make sense of tragedy does not minimize the pain and suffering; it only seeks to place it in a larger, more meaningful context. In October 2002, an earthquake in Italy caused the collapse of a small town's school and the death of every kindergarten child … except one. Why the tragic, senseless death of 20 innocents? And why did one walk out unscathed?
On October 21, 1966, in Aberfan, Wales, a mountain of coal slurry, turned into liquid sludge by weeks of heavy rain, crashed down onto the town school, burying teachers and students under millions of cubic yards of slurry that immediately resolidified. An entire generation of Aberfan's citizens was wiped out in an instant. Why? An angry God? A cruel act of nature, revenge for man's neglect in just dumping the slurry from the coal mine? Or simple fate?
On the face of it, life doesn't make sense. Innocence is punished, and evil walks free. Our daily reality makes sense only when looked at through the eyes of our souls, and against the backdrop of reincarnation.
These are the issues that this book tackles. How can any meaning be found in such apparently meaningless tragedies? The book's intent is not to minimize the reality of death and suffering-or the joy when a new life comes into the world-but to change the way we see and experience it as a set of interlocking plans designed and orchestrated by us at the soul level for very specific purposes.The book's larger purpose, however, is to introduce us to who we are at the soul level so that we can embrace our true identity and incorporate more of that in our daily lives. As we will see, the soul is a far cry from what organized religions teach-that it comes into being at conception or birth, hangs in the background while you live your life, and then ascends to heaven, where it waits patiently for Judgment Day and assignment to the fiery pit or saintly eternity.
Sorry, it ain't nothing like that. As part of an unimaginably vast entity, you-the-soul has been around since forever and has undertaken cycles of lives on physical planes in all corners of Creation. You are currently living one life out of one cycle on one physical plane associated with one planet-Earth.
Why is all this happening? It's a long story but you will know by the end of this book. Promise.
This book presents what is termed a "worldview." It is simply an observation as to how things are from the author's point of view, and is far from scholarly and academic. What are my credentials for having written it? Twenty-five years of immersion in the study of spirituality, osmosis from having edited almost 200 spiritual and metaphysical manuscripts, and from information "dumped" into my awareness by those in higher dimensions. However, know that, on the physical plane, we cannot know the Truth … and even if we did, we certainly cannot express it in the English language.What you hold as truth can only ever be your subjective truth, because it must be filtered through your perceptions, then interpreted, and finally assessed for meaning. And that process is uniquely yours, and by definition would differ in you and I because of our different soul experiences, genetics, upbringing and imprinting. And that's what makes life interesting.
Can I prove any of this? I don't need to, because plenty of other people have already done it for me. For example, Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona at Tucson has conducted countless tests on mediums such John Edward and George Anderson, who actually replicated each other's readings, satisfying a basic requirement of the scientific method-that the results be reproducible in the lab-thus proving the reality of life-after-death. However, life-after-death doesn't prove reincarnation; for that we turn to famous cases such as the stories of Bridey Murphy (documented by Morey Bernstein-see chapter 9) and Shanti Devi (documented by Dr. Ian Stevenson), and countless other well-documented cases … and, by the way, all targets of failed debunking attempts. After being immersed in hundreds of such accounts, I have no doubts as to their unimpeachable authenticity.
And before the debunkers (sorry, skeptics) start foaming at the mouth, the Law of Occam's Razor states that: "The most plausible explanation of any phenomenon is that which is the simplest and most economical." So given the accuracy of the TV mediums, how do they do it? Private detectives, genealogy researchers, microphones under your bed? No, too complex and too expensive. The simplest and most economical explanation is that they really are doing what they say they're doing … talking to those on the other side. But far from being full of "dead people," the "other side" is alive, dynamic, vibrant and a whole lot more fun than we alleged "live" people get to enjoy. The question should not be, "Is there life after death?" but, "Is there life after birth?"
Is thinking about what happens after death morbid? Should we be more focused on life? Does reincarnation reduce the importance of one lifetime? Absolutely not … and for three main reasons:
- You can better appreciate your current life if you see it in the context of a carefully planned progression on the part of you-the-soul. When you know that you lovingly crafted your life's circumstances and your personality for a specific purpose-soul growth-then you can set about discovering that purpose … and striving to achieve it.
- The deaths of loved ones cause intense grief in those "left behind" if you think that you have "lost" them, when in fact, they may be standing over your shoulder, grinning at you and waiting for you to join them back Home.
- " If you know a little of what to expect on the soul plane, your own crossing will prove far less confusing and disorienting, and you can immediately begin enjoying your new life on the soul plane.
The main reason why spiritual growth on this planet is so stagnant is that most of us simply do not realize that we didn't incarnate just to hold a job, earn a living, have kids, get old and die. We have a much larger spiritual purpose down here-tackling challenges on the Earth plane that we cannot tackle on the soul plane. However, the same veil of amnesia (i.e., loss of memory) that makes this planet such a realistic school for learning and growing (by making us forget who we really are as souls) also makes us forget why we came here … and that is a tragic waste of opportunity.
We're here on an important mission but we've forgotten what it is, and worse, we've forgotten that we even have a mission. So we just wallow around in the muck and mire of the Earth plane, getting dirty, bloodied and bruised until it's time to go back Home. Hopefully, reading this book will change all that for you, and have you "living on purpose."
If the contents of this book ring true for you, does that mean that everything you currently believe about soul and the afterlife is wrong? Or that your religion has lied to you all these years? No, just that you and they do not yet have the full story. In order to control you, organized religions present extremely limited views of the soul, which is actually a highly complex and powerful spiritual entity that is very active on many dimensions, including the soul plane; it's not just waiting around for Resurrection Day. (As we will see, reincarnation was an integral part of Christian dogma until the fifth century, when it was written out for political reasons. Hinduism does acknowledge reincarnation but conveys only a fraction of its glorious complexity, and mixes it up with India's caste system, again for political purposes.)
You do not, therefore, have to abandon any cherished beliefs for they are not 'wrong," just limited. So you only need gently widen your beliefs. None of the major religious belief systems are "wrong," and actually contain much that is "right." They were perfect for their time when people were less sophisticated, but times have moved on and people have gotten smarter. Therefore this book intends to bring things up-to-date.
So be prepared to leave your limited view of you as a lifeform just trying to make it through the day and eventually get to heaven (or whatever you call it) when you die. Such notions belong with theories that the Earth is flat and that the Sun rotates around it. The truth of who you really are is so wonderful that embracing it will be a stretch … but well worth it.This worldview is a mental model. Now a model is "an imperfect replica of some aspect of the real world, intended to aid understanding." The model may be smaller than reality, as when we place a model of an airplane in a wind-tunnel to see if it might fly. Or the model may be larger, as when we draw pictures of dots flying around each other to model the tiny atom. Maps and photographs are also models of reality, to help us understand some part of reality, but they are always imperfect, as I discovered when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. Nothing could have prepared me for the breathtaking spectacle, but the maps and photos helped me understand what I was looking at geologically, even though the reality caused my jaw to drop.
A globe sitting on someone's desk is a model of the planet, and even though it's better than the "flat Earth" models we had before Columbus' time, it is still imperfect, and no one would confuse the model with the real thing. Similarly, a body of knowledge devised to try to understand reality is necessarily imperfect-for a start, it has to be filtered through our primitive linear brains.
Organized religion attempts to model reality and offers pathetic models that any thinking person dismisses as far too limited to explain that reality. This book offers what is hopefully a slightly larger model of how reality could work, but it is still limited. So please do not seize on any part of the model as "gospel." The truth may be as breathtaking as the Grand Canyon is, compared to a grainy black-and-white photo of it.
A major human failing is that our intellect does not recognize its own limitations. Thus once we think we understand something, we sit back with a satisfied smile and say, "Got it," when we haven't even begun to "get it." So please be careful with the models in this book. When I show a 12-dimensional model of Creation, this offers a limited truth of something so complex that the human mind simply cannot get a handle on it. But at least a 12-level model is better than organized religion's 2-level models-Earth and heaven. So, if 12 levels are enough to make the point, why not stop there? And as to the ultimate question, the nature of the Creator of All That Is, there is no way any of us could even contemplate that, so why bother? Just accepting that we are all thoughts in its vast mind will be enough of a major leap for some.
Finally, early readers tell me that they find this book to be "intense." Yes it is, I'm afraid, and you may find that one sentence provokes hours of thought. So I suggest that you read it once quickly to get "the big picture" and then go back in more depth to "sweat the details." And because the issues are so interwoven, we keep running into the same topics but from different directions, so please forgive any apparent duplication of material.
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