Beyond the Veil

 Passage from THE MYTH OF DEATH, chapter 3

 

… Death looks gruesome from the point of view of the body or the ones left behind, but to be out of our body-mind is a really enjoyable state. We should rather use the term “afterlife,” or more precisely: “life-continuation.” Life and death walk hand in hand. It is simply the voyage beyond the horizon. We only seem to disappear to those standing on the shore. They may see a door closing, you have just moved into another room.

Fear lives in the gap between “us” and “something else.” So as we become familiar with something that is at first foreign to us, we become at ease with it. We have all experienced this: with a new person, a new place or a new country. So, in familiarizing ourselves with the topic of our “life-continuation” we become a lot more comfortable with the whole idea. You may feel a bit peeved that you have to leave home, but how often have you moved house? Life goes on.

Take it from a brain scientist. In her book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, Jill Bolte Taylor describes the insights that followed from her stroke:

  

Death is not an end, it is an expansion. It is not a sleep, it is waking up.

It is shedding the layer that separates us from the whole, to reveal that which we have always been. It is the rediscovery of our expanded self.

 

 

                                                            ~Above passage from THE MYTH OF DEATH      Read the chapter »

 

Passage from BEYOND THE VEIL, chapter 4

 

… Finally I got up, a bit wobbly on my feet, and sort of floated indoors. I felt almost weightless, walking lightly across the vibrant grass where every blade stood out clearly. The room was dimly lit. Fruits were glowing in a dark corner, as if from their own inner light. I curled up on the sheepskin in front of the fireplace, transfixed by the flames flowing, dancing and caressing the wood. I sank inwards. Words seemed to emanate from the fire. “You are not Amber… of these parents… this address… You are the spirit inside of you, immortal, everlasting.”

I closed my eyes and felt myself dissolve, gently shaken apart. Everything I thought I was floated away. I was not solid, or separate, anymore. As though a vast space opened up within me, my being expanded, spanning all dimensions back to source.

I felt myself a part of something indescribable, infinite, otherworldly, endless, eternal. An inseparable part of the All, and all that is. What a beautiful feeling! So relaxing, so familiar. Of course, this is who I am! It is who I have always been, and will always be. I didn’t know how I could possibly have ever forgotten the obvious: I am an energy stream, a vibration. I am flowing, fluid, like colors swirling and patterns dancing, touching and shaping other streams around me. We are all related, all connected and inter-twined, as we blend and merge and intermingle.

When I opened my eyes everything else was fluid and seamless too. I could sense the aliveness in all around me. The cushions, the candles, and even the walls lost solidity, shifting as though made of jelly, their once limited and fixed boundaries flowing outwards. My friend had put on the Moody Blues and the familiar songs took on a totally new dimension. Time expanded. Each song seemed to last an hour. I could hear every note, every instrument, their harmonies enhanced by their individuality, and I drifted on them to divine inner spaces.

I thought my body was probably dying. I remembered an aunt saying how at peace she had felt as a child when she was drowning. The mushrooms must have been poisonous! I felt I should be, maybe, more worried, but I realized dying didn’t matter, I was still me. Simply without my body, my borders and my concerns. Not only was I still very much alive, I was fully reunited with the totality of my being. It felt much more like I was being born.

… I wondered why there is so much separation made between the states of being alive here and being alive on the other side.