The Artist, The Art and YOU

What is the role of the artist in 2008? Is there one beyond personal expression? Is there a social role for an artist to play, and if he does, does it even matter to anyone other than to those to whom the artwork speaks? Or is art holographic in nature, bringing us to a different state of being each time we enter, and the artist's only role: creator?

The writer (Lolita) Vladimir Nabokov said, "A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual."

Fredrich Nietzsche felt that art had a broader value: "Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence."

Andy Warhol disrupted the common views of the role each artist should play in their art. With Warhol's Brillo there is absolutely no sign of the artist's hand or that this piece was even made by an artist. Since he uses different techniques than traditional artists, at times he may never touch the piece at all and it still will be credited to him. This is a complete turn around from what was once expected from the artist. Skill is no longer involved, it is much more about content, appearance, and processes. Now many artists, such as Chihuly and Oldenburg follow in the footsteps of Warhol, by acting as designer, and letting the actual making of their art work be the job of their hired contractors, laborers and apprentices.

Artist such as Van Gogh and Rembrandt are thought to have especially personal art because the "artist's hand" or brushstrokes are visible throughout their pieces, showing their inner emotions. This personal quality of is often said to be why their paintings sell at such high prices. The same can be said of Jackson Pollock's work.

There are those that believe the artist has a higher calling. Carl Jung believed, "Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being."

Joseph Campbell said, "The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul."

What do YOU think?

Artwork by Nancy Standlee Many thanks.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Do you find yourself speechless because the communication around you is edgy or hostile? Do you often think of things that could have been said afterward? How do you talk to others whose only concern is their own agenda?

Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg is founder and director of educational services for The Center for Nonviolent Communication, an international, non-profit organization, and has been developing his practices for compassionate communication since the 1960s. Nonviolent Communication (NVC) helps connect us with what is alive in ourselves and in others moment-to-moment, with what we or others could do to make life more wonderful, and with an awareness of what gets in the way of natural giving and receiving.

Whenever we become disconnected from our compassionate nature, whenever our hearts are not devoid of hatred in all of its forms, we have a tendency to act in ways that can cause pain for everyone in our lives, including ourselves.

Nonviolence, Dr. Rosenberg tells us, does not refer to the mere absence of physical harm. It is a way of life that takes its lead from a compassionate and connected heart, and can guide us toward a more complete and happy way of being. It is a practice rooted in understanding, in living honestly, and in acting empathically with all beings. It requires nonjudgmental observation, separating feeling from thought, assessing and meeting need, and making clear and concrete requests for action.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, "Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being."

What do YOU think?

Sharing a Laugh and a Smile

Some say laughter is the quickest way to change our mood or thinking. How often do you laugh? Can you laugh at yourself? Do you intentionally seek laughter to change your mood? Is laughter of value in your life, or just a natural reaction to stimuli?

Marshall Brain has studied laughter and tells us that the average adult laughs 17 times a day. When we laugh heartily, changes occur in many parts of the body, even the arm, leg and trunk muscles. Laughter seems to be produced via a circuit that runs through many regions of the brain. (This means that damage to any of these regions can impair one's sense of humor and response to humor, experts say.)

• The left side of the cortex (the layer of cells that covers the entire surface of the forebrain) analyzed the words and structure of the joke.
• The brain's large frontal lobe, which is involved in social emotional responses, became very active.
• The right hemisphere of the cortex carried out the intellectual analysis required to "get" the joke.
• Brainwave activity then spread to the sensory processing area of the occipital lobe (the area on the back of the head that contains the cells that process visual signals).
• Stimulation of the motor sections evoked physical responses to the joke.

Behavioral neurobiologist and pioneering laughter researcher Robert Provine believes that laughter is a decidedly social signal, not an egocentric expression of emotion. In the absence of stimulating media (television, radio or books), people are about 30 times more likely to laugh when they are in a social situation than when they are alone. Humor that creates laughter in these situations may be:

The incongruity theory suggests that humor arises when logic and familiarity are replaced by things that don't normally go together.

The relief theory - an actual story or situation creates tension within us. As we try to cope with two sets of emotions and thoughts, we need a release and laughter is the way of cleansing our system of the built-up tension and incongruity.

In some respects laughter may be a signal of dominance/submission or acceptance/rejection. Consider the distinction between laughing with and laughing at someone.

The superiority theory comes into play when we laugh at jokes that focus on someone else's mistakes, stupidity or misfortune.

A speaker, in other cases, may buffer an aggressive comment with laughter or deliver a remark using "laugh-speak," a consciously controlled hybrid of laughter and speech. In this sense laughter may modify the behavior of others by shaping the emotional tone of a conversation.

Laughter, in its highest form, can also be intentionally used to uplift the spirits of others, as in the case of clowns and comedians who visit hospitals and hospices to bring smiles to those in most need of them. In the Presence of Humor: A Guide to the Humorous Life by Cy Eberhart is a systematic and comprehensive guide, written to increase your ability to find and achieve the humorous life by activating your comic viewpoint. It's designed to help you realize the spiritual strengths that come from experiencing the humor present in your living.

What do YOU think?

The Marriage of Shiva and Neville's Imagination

When our world seems to fall apart and things start going wrong, what do we do? Do we blame ourselves or someone else? Do we start searching for causes and solutions? Do we hold on to our faith in Divine Will and believe that it will all work out?

The notion of the old dying and giving way for something new is as old as the ancient Hindu traditions, where Shiva is the destroyer of the world, following Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver, after which Brahma again creates the world and so on. Shiva is responsible for change both in the form of death and destruction and in the positive sense of the shedding of old habits.

Modern theories of deconstruction include Phenomenology, the philosophy founded by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, who say that the method of defining phenomenon includes three steps -- reduction, construction, and deconstruction -- and they explain that these three are mutually pertinent to one another. In the deconstruction, every object shows itself as a set of possibilities, not merely as a determinate thing. To see a particular object is to see it in terms of possibilities.

So while it seems that our experience is falling apart, possibility is also arising. If we can focus on the new possibility coming into our experience, instead of focusing on the old that no longer serves us and will fall away with change if we allow, we can see that all experience is experience of more, of possibility.

Neville Goddard believes that once we recognize the possibility, imagination is the key to creating our best possible lives. In his book, Awakened Imagination, he says: "The world presents different appearances according as our states of consciousness differ. What we see when we are identified with a state cannot be seen when we are no longer fused with it. By state is meant all that man believes and consents to as true. The world is a revelation of the states with which imagination is fused. It is the state from which we think that determines the objective world in which we live. If we detach ourselves from a state, and we may at any moment, the conditions and circumstances to which that union gave being vanish. The imaginative man does not deny the reality of the sensuous outer world of Becoming, but he knows that it is the inner world of continuous Imagination that is the force by which the sensuous outer world of Becoming is brought to pass."

What do YOU think?

Artwork by Robert Parker Many thanks.

Follow Your Bliss Like Joseph Campbell

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion." But just what is it that he suggests we scatter around? What role does joy play in our lives and what does it mean to you?

Hasidism emphasizes joy as a precondition to elevated spiritual awareness, and teaches the avoidance of melancholy at all costs. The consciousness of a loving, ever-present Creator should lead to a feeling of profound joy. Therefore the appropriate mood for worship is one of good cheer; whereas suffering impedes a proper relationship with God.

Joseph Campbell, contemporary theologian and best known for his study of mythology, tells his students, "Follow your bliss. Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it. Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chi" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, 'I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being.' I think it worked.

Bliss, joy and rapture seem to be interchangeable when they are associated with higher consciousness. The change in state of consciousness in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam is reported to be quite similar. The pursuit of yoga and the Buddhist Jhanas involve feelings of oneness with the world that give rise to a state of rapture. Christians also look at creation another way from the standpoint of Christ consciousness, rather than considering creation and life from a material perspective. Experiencing God through Christ enables the unit mind to arrive gracefully at the source of thought, the pure consciousness of God where everything is united and one.

What do YOU think?

Artwork by Aerten Caislean Many thanks.

Making the World a Better Place

Social responsibility is on the minds of many of us. How can we make the world a better place? Is this our duty, as Jean Paul Sarte and the existentialists believed? How can we fit our contribution to the greater community into our busy lives as we struggle with survival and self expression, daily?

Clare W. Graves, Ph.D, was a visionary thinker who began laying the groundwork for the theory behind the Spiral Dynamics application in the 1950s. His theory suggests that every individual or collective consciousness falls somewhere in, between, or among these various levels of being which are not types of people but ways of thinking about a thing.

Graves breaks it into one of nine groups called MEMEs, and assigns a color to each. Beige is the first, this group is involved solely in survival and would have no time to consider social responsibility. The green MEME has the greatest involvement in social issues, as their survival needs are met and their main concerns are harmony/love; joining together for mutual growth; awareness; belonging. The last MEMEs up the spiral, turquoise and coral, go beyond the physical social involvement and contribute to society in ways that involve consciousness more than doing. According to Graves, all groups contribute to life as we know it in valuable and significant ways. It is the dynamic between that creates the life spiral known as evolutionary consciousness.

Future By Design, an organization dedicated to reformulating the operation definition of a better world by introducing coherent planning strategies that are applicable to global and small groups alike, is a good example of green MEME work. Their credo: To constantly maximize existing and future technologies with the sole purpose of enhancing all human life and protecting the environment.

A good example of the work of the turquoise MEME is Dr. Bruce Lipton, the biophysicist who identified the two way communication of unique signals from our cell membranes into our experiential awareness.

An example of the coral MEME would be Neville Goddard, twentieth century mystic, who taught self realization through recognition: "The ideal you seek and hope to attain will not manifest itself, will not be realized by you, until you have imagined that you are already that ideal." We hold the space, imagine the world of our desire, and live from our awakened imagination. What do YOU think?

Illness and Healing, What Do We Know?

Hippocrates , the father of modern medicine, tells us that, "healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." We all know that when we are not feeling well, we want to heal, and there are myriad resources available to us for help. But what is healing? How do we choose the best resource from the overwhelming amount of information available?

Harvard Medical School online dictionary defines healing as:

1 : to make sound or whole especially in bodily condition
2 : to cure of disease or disorder <heal injured tissues>
intransitive verb
1 : to return to a sound state heals>
2 : to effect a cure

The National Cancer Institute online dictionary defines cure as: To heal or restore health; a treatment to restore health.

It may be that to understand healing, we need to understand illness. Dr. Bernie Siegal, MD and author of several books on health and healing says, "There is no incurable disease from which someone has not recovered, even at the threshold of death." If one person has the innate capability to overcome a particular disease, the all of us must have that same ability.

In his book, Healing Crisis, Dr. Bruce Fife tells us that the symptoms of the healing crisis are the same as those of an illness. For this reason, the healing crisis is greatly misunderstood and often believed to be an illness that must be treated to restore health. The healing crisis is a positive event, a sign of improving health. According to Fife, "when the body experiences dramatic symptoms of cleansing as a result of improved organ function and immune efficiency, it is referred to as a healing crisis - healing, because it expels toxins and brings about improvement in health, crisis because the symptoms associated with the toxic removal can be dramatic." What do YOU think?

Energy Healing and Western Medicine

The "life force," often called "energy" in Western culture, is the substance that permeates and bonds all. It is sometimes referred to as the "vital force." In China, it is called Qi; in India it is called prana. It is believed the "life force" extends throughout the universe and that the individual is part of an indivisible whole. The belief is that because the "life force" permeates everything, an individual is unavoidably affected by external events and energies. Thus, treatment of the individual should consider the mind/body/spirit interaction as well as an overall connection to the universe.

Energy healing is based on the belief that our "life force" creates energy fields that are unbalanced during emotional or physical disease. Because our energy fields are part of an interconnected whole, the use of focused intention by one individual can aid in the health and well being of another. Many individuals use their own individual means of directing their intention to heal.

An interesting feature of energy healing is that it may be performed over distances of thousands of miles. The "life force" claimed to be transmitted by energy healers does not have the properties of any known form of energy., comparable practice to energy healing that is used frequently in the West is prayer. A 1996 survey showed that 82 percent of Americans believed in the healing power of prayer. A survey of patients in American Cancer Society support groups for breast cancer found that 88 percent experienced beneficial effects of spiritual and religious practice.

In an effort to incorporate Western sciences' need for physical proof, studies have been performed on the impact of energy healing on living, isolated cells as opposed to human subjects. According to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in the U.S., many of the studies on isolated cells are inadequately controlled, are published as incomplete reports, or are published in non-reviewed journals. Of 23 clinical trials involving energy healing that did meet a rigorous criteria requiring adequate design, control and review procedures, 57 percent have shown a beneficial effect. This caused authors reviewing the studies to conclude that the "evidence thus far merits further study."

Indeed there is growing interest and evidence for alternative health exploration based on a "life force," wholeness, and interconnections. The National Institutes of Health has established a Center that is devoted to research in the area of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The budget is growing rapidly and research into areas such as energy healing and prayer is being encouraged. Several large clinical trials, especially on the effects of prayer, are now underway in major academic institutions across the U.S. Through science, researchers eventually hope to better understand how energy healing practices may be incorporated into Western medical practices. What do YOU think?

Time and the Transformation of Consciousness

Some people believe time is speeding up. For instance, time seems to be flying by faster than ever, or what used to take several years to accomplish now seems to be taking place in just a couple. You may have changed more in the past two years than you did in the five years before that. When more personal growth is crammed into a shorter amount of time, it appears that things have picked up pace and more ground is being covered more quickly.

In the 2012 paradigm, this idea serves to correlate the prophesied dissolution of time, or a change in our perception of time. Yes, there's more to it and the bottom line is the Mayan calendar is tracking the evolution of consciousness through nine sequentially ordered cycles of creation. The nine steps aren't linear which means you wouldn't lay them out end-to-end in a linear fashion. They are instead holographic in nature. All nine levels are nested into each other like a set of mixing bowls. That's how this calendar actually works. Each step up the nine leveled pyramid expands and develops the previous level with a 20 times faster frequency that continually drives evolution forward.

In his book The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, Carl Johan Calleman offers this idea: "The liberation of human beings from the negative effects of the frequency increase, such as stress, is a matter of entering the natural, nonphysical, divine flow of creation leading toward enlightenment. Today more than ever before, people are becoming aware of the stressful effects of subordinating their lives to physical time." What do YOU think?

Loving Our Pets and Other Creatures

Knowing who we are and our place in the world can involve more than understanding our relationships with other people. Animals, birds, fish and other creatures have always been known to bring peace and love into our lives. How do pets and other creatures give us an insight into our spiritual dynamic as we develop our relationships with them? What value do they bring into our lives?

According to Linda Kohanov, author of the Tao of Equus, and founder of Epona Equestrian Services, where people explore the potential of horse/human relationships: "Through a holistic approach to the equestrian arts, people explore assertiveness, stress reduction and emotional fitness skills, strengthening self-esteem and personal empowerment in the process. Consensus-building relationship models teach people how to take the reins of any situation without lapsing into the pitfalls of dominance, alienation, intimidation or victimization."

Anne Rudloe, Ph.D. is the Managing Director of Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory where she has led its transformation into an award winning non-profit environmental center and public aquarium. Rudloe has made a career of exploring the sacred nature of the relationships between people and the creatures of the sea. According to Rudloe, in her book Butterflies and Sea Wind: "Our place in this life, our only place, is wherever we find ourselves in each instant. An effort is made and results arise. The energy will go where the energy needs to go. The only thing to do is live life without any resentment toward life and to pay attention to whatever teachers arise."

What do YOU think?

Artwork by Shirley Rappaport Many thanks.

Service to Your Race

Race is one of the inescapable aspects of who we are. We are born into a race and it influences who we are always. Even if we manage to mature beyond an ethnocentric world view, we will eventually see it in our societal relationships. There are those who believe that some races are superior to others. Can we live without "racism" in our lives? Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

According to the philosophy of Ken Wilber's Integral Psychology, Worldcentric is better than ethnocentric which is better than egocentric. Each may be appropriate in certain circumstances, but there is no question as to the hierarchical ranking of increasing capacity for consciousness, care, and compassion. The author Nikos Kazantzakis suggests the following spiritual exercise: Your first duty, in completing your service to your race, is to feel within you all our ancestors. Your second duty is to throw light on their onrush and to continue their work. Your third duty is to pass on to your son the great mandate to surpass you." What do YOU think?

A Time for Soul Searching

What, exactly, is our soul? What does it do, and how does it effect our daily lives? Christians think of the soul as that eternal part of ourselves that exists before we are born and lives on after we die. Eastern traditions see the soul as a vessel for karma, our identity, which forms each lifetime as we reincarnate. The Hermetic teachings maintain that through forgiveness, our karmic debt (formed by error and transgression) is released. Through forgiveness, the soul transcends the level of cause and effect and allows the soul to be directed by spirit. This is often achieved after a dark night of the soul, where soul and spirit are purified by facing, embracing and releasing all the good and evil within. What do YOU think?

Awaken to Multidimensionality

There is much discussion about the notion of human multidimensionality. What, exactly, does it mean? We know that physically, our world consists of three dimensions. The first dimension begins with a point in space, the second, a line between this and another point, the third, allowing depth - length, height, depth. The fourth dimension is said to be time, and if we add time to the first three dimensions we can measure a three dimensional object as it changes over time. Time is the dimension of changeability. Scientists tell us that there are an infinite number of dimensions and each dimension is infinite. There are those who believe that the fifth dimension is compassion and that bringing the highest form of feeling into our dimensionality allows us to embrace all dimensions, infinitely. What do YOU think?

The Relationship Between Judgment and Conflict

Judge not, lest ye be judged, as has been taught so many times. Just what is the relationship between judgment and conflict? Do we bring conflict into our lives when we judge others and our experience?

When you judge another you are drawn into the vibration of conflict. If you judge someone, they will see you, they will judge you because you bring yourself into the vibration of that which you are judging. If you let go of all judgment all together and simply be, then you will not be in conflict. How does this occur?

Gregg Braden suggests: "Through the connection that joins all things, scientists have shown that the "stuff" that the universe is made of, "waves and particles of energy," responds and conforms to the expectations, judgments and beliefs that we create about our world. In a world where an intelligent field of energy connects everything from global peace to personal healing, what may have sounded like fantasy and miracles in the past suddenly becomes possible in our lives. There is one small catch, however. Our power to change our bodies and our world is dormant until we awaken it. The key to awakening such an awesome power is that have to make a small shift in the way we see ourselves in the universe. We must see ourselves as a part of everything, rather than separate from everything. Beyond merely thinking of ourselves from this unified view, we must feel ourselves as part of all that we experience. With this one little shift in perception we are given access to the most powerful force in the universe, and the key to address even the seemingly impossible situations in our lives."

What do YOU think?

Fearful or Fearless?

You need only watch the evening news to see how fear driven humanity has become. So much of what the media presents displays and exacerbates our fears that we have to wonder, how much of our daily individual experience includes fear? Do we need fear? Can we live without it?

Many of the world's finest minds have chimed in about fear. Heidegger brought these fears to the center of his existential philosophy. He argued that the basic anxiety of [humanity] is anxiety about being-in-the-world, as well as anxiety of being-in-the-world. That is, both fear of death and fear of life, of experience and individuation. Marcus Aurelius thought that if you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. President Roosevelt taught us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. The Buddhists think that mindful meditation relieves us of our fears.

Some consider fear to be paradoxical: Fear is what keeps our boundaries. If we do not listen to that fear, that knowledge that there is something imminent that is not us, we will face the second type of fear, the fear that destroys all boundaries.

What do YOU think?

Reaching The Source of All Creation

Most of us feel that there is a source or creator or God or ultimate order to life. Connecting to this for some of us, is fleeting, takes effort and may even be something we think very little about. How do YOU connect with the spirit within you? How often do you connect? How does this connection effect your life?

A Vietnamese spiritual leader, Ching Hai, touches on this by answering the following:

Q: What is the first step one must take toward reaching God?

A: We must pray that if God exists, please guide me, please help me. And stick to your religion and pray to that religious head that you believe in to help you. If you're Christian, pray to God, pray to Jesus, Santa Maria. If you're Buddhist, pray to Buddha, to Bodhisattvas, Quan Yin Bodhisattva, Amitabha Buddha, etc., to help you. That's the first step.

The second step is, we must lead a virtuous life as prescribed in the Bible and in the Buddhist scriptures or in any other religious scriptures. I haven't seen any major religion which teaches people to do bad things. So follow your own religious ethic, as the second step.

The third step is, we must find someone, and very importantly, who has known God, who has realized God, to show us something, to share with us the wealth that he or she has got. Just like if we want to speak English, what is the first step? Prepare the money for it, so that the teacher will accept you and then go and find a teacher -- one who can speak English. If you find one who speaks Spanish, then no good. It's very easy.

What do YOU think?

Molly Brogan

Together We Create a Planetary Smile

Since 1998, Princeton researchers have been collecting data on internet activity and its relation to global events in an effort to demonstrate that across the world, humanity is connected and evolving together. Complete information of the project can be seen at http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others who have been collecting data from a global network of random event generators. The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of physical random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years. The data are transmitted over the internet to a server in Princeton, NJ, USA, where they are archived for later analysis which is expected to show anomalous deviations associated with Global Events when there is widespread participation or reaction to the event, and we can expect large-scale coherence and resonance.

The purpose is to examine subtle correlations that reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. We have learned that when millions of us share intentions and emotions the GCP/EGG network shows correlations. We are driven by that evidence to infer that something like a "consciousness field" exists, and that intentions or emotional states which structure the field are conveyed as information that is absorbed into the distribution of output values of labile physical systems. We can interpret this as evidence for participation in a growing global consciousness. Our thoughts and feeling can make a difference. It suggests we have the capability and responsibility for conscious evolution. We make the world we live in, and if we Do No Harm, we can help create a Planetary Smile. What would it be like to gradually recruit pretty much every person on the planet to join in a planet-wide smile? I can imagine the Earth herself would feel that, and it is easy to imagine that we all might be changed just a little, for the better, by such a shared experience.

The category of events that have that have the greatest effect on global consciousness are: celebration; spiritual event; terrorist attack. One interesting analysis showed that terrorizing and/or Partisan events that evoke openness or concern have the same kind of impact, as do meditations and catastrophes. In other words, events that seem to be the opposite in value, can have an equal impact on the consciousness field. Our participation is important, all of it.

What do YOU think?

When This Life Ends and the Next Begins

What are your thoughts on life after death? What happens to "us" after we die? I think it is safe to say that we have all wondered about what happens to us after we die at sometime in our lives. Much of what we believe is gleaned from our religion or culture and there is a wide variety of scenarios to choose from.


The Bon religion of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism both maintain that crucial moments of transition are charged with great spiritual potential, especially the intervening moments between death and rebirth. This intermediate period, called bardo, is a state of suspended reality in which the deceased are presented with a series of opportunities for recognition of the true nature of Reality. If the deceased persons are capable of recognizing the confusing and often frightening bardo visions as simply their own mental projections reflective of the previous life's thoughts and deeds (karma), the ongoing cycle of birth and death will be overcome. Failure to recognize these appearances, on the other hand, leads eventually to rebirth and further suffering in cyclic existence (samsara).


Neville Goddard, 20th Century mystic, recounts his ideas about the life/death transition at the time of his father's death: "Saturday when I learned he had made his exit I thought of him constantly and I filled my very being with thoughts of my father and all he represented in my world. And then the whole night began to unfold and everything with which I had crowded my mind during the day now became objective. I saw my father as he was at sixty and the peak of his power, and all his children and grandchildren. I saw everything, and now I know there is no death and that he is moving into the world that he himself has created."


What do YOU think?