How Green is the Valley of Spiritual Understanding

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Readiness to understand the "Above" is shown increasingly to be ever-present

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How ever-present is the readiness to understand the "Above," to be enlightened by the understanding of the higher realms in which we live.

Just yesterday I was talking to a friend, a beautician, almost forty, who has been eagerly seeking (as are so many others) to find the right man; to settle down; to have babies. How disappointed she has been over and over again. Yesterday, when I met her and asked about her latest boyfriend, she said, "No more! But I don't care about all that." I was, for the moment, sad and disappointed for her. That changed quickly. She said, "I have given all that up. It began with stopping smoking, believe it or not. I have tried so many times to stop. I have tried everything: I have tried the patch; I have tried Wellbutrin; I have tried hypnosis, and I failed. Finally I said, 'I give up.' I looked up and I said to God, "If You want me to stop smoking, help me to stop smoking." That was that. Nothing happened. I went to a party some time later and I was having a little bit of trouble with my sinuses. I drank and smoked like everybody else. I smoked too much. The next day my sinus began to hurt and hurt, and it was intolerable. I went to the doctor and got help. But after that when I tried to smoke, it was no longer a pleasure, and I gave it up. I had surrendered, and I am surrendering to God, including about men. I feel SO good, so on a high, so different."

I told her that this business of surrendering, really letting go, that she had discovered and that she had done, was a very high thing. Even her being on such a high was part of her being at a higher place. And I added in a slightly sanctimonious way, "You are in a profession where people who come in are so preoccupied with themselves that they would hardly be open to your telling them that, would they?" She said, "Oh no! I told my story to many, and they said that they have had times like that, too."

There are other instances:

A patient of mine, an iron-worker who in the course of therapy was very open to the idea that he may have been a Roman warrior in a past life. Without any suggestion by me, he began to talk about information he had picked up about the soul waiting to occupy a body, just the right body, in order to carry out its life mission. When I talked to a group of retired physicians about Mind and Supermind and coming up into spiritual realms, I thought I was taking an awful chance. But several gathered around telling me about an experience such as being able to predict, with a feeling of great certainty, how a baseball game would turn out, including the exact score, and so it did. "I have had experiences like that over and over," this doctor said, "but I have never understood where they came from."

And another patient, a 90-year-old, a surgeon who had had considerable fame, responded to the poem, "Nurse Look At Me" which speaks of the eternal "I" (youth) inside, was touched, and wanted a copy of the poem. He wanted to believe in the immortality that we are. This readiness to believe, in itself is recognition of what is already known inside.

To counter these stories, here is one about a righteous Jew who prayed many times a day, and was sure that God would always protect him. A flood came along and threatened his home. Police came to evacuate him, but he refused, saying God would save him. The flood waters rose and he went to the second floor. Rescuers came in a boat and wanted him to come in, but he refused, saying God would protect him. They left and the waters rose. He went to the roof and a helicopter came and wanted to pick him up. But he refused persistently, saying that God would protect him. The waters rose and the religious man drowned. When he went to heaven and came face to face with God, he complained, "Oh God, I pray devoutly. I have been so devoted to You, knowing you would protect me, but you didn't." God answered, "I sent to the police to warn you; the boat to take you, the helicopter to raise you from the waters, but you didn't hear me."

And so it is, that this knowledge of spirit and spiritual realms is all around. But we don't listen to it, because we have been taught by society to doubt; to be afraid to talk about it, to ignore it. Yet how green is the valley of Spiritual Understanding and how evolving and rising is our understanding of it. It is our job, as we begin to understand more, to talk, to spread knowledge, and to affirm the experiences of the beautician, of the retired physician, of all those around who have been taught to smother and to doubt this gift of understanding the spiritual realms we carry.

And marching forward, step by step with all of this, are two other factors. One is the emerging interest shown in television and motion pictures in things far beyond those we would have conceived, permitted, taken seriously in the past. And so there are shows on aliens and ET's and happy meetings, and signs and insights and appearances of the dear departed. True though it may be that some of these presentations are distorted, and even degraded by human understanding, they nevertheless carry a message, and reveal a growing interest by both producers and audiences. And a happy development it is.

Then, again, step by step, there is the march forward of science, as has been described in previous issues. The magnetics of the body as described by James Ochsman, PhD in Energy Medicine: the Scientific Basis. This shows the healing powers of the hands as they were described in the Bible, and as they are revealed in Reiki and Therapeutic Touch. There is also Professor Bill Tiller, showing the validity and power of the subtle realms, the thought realms, the power of the mind that changed the very environment of the room in which the healer works. And the works of Professor Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne showing the power of the mind to move objects—and this in a staid and steady university, Princeton. And works by Michio Kaku in his books: Hyperspace and Visions, both of which describe the parallel universes in which we live, with wormholes (transmission lines) from one to the other. All this runs parallel with ancient spiritual teaching of how we can move into other worlds as we enter the subtle realms. These are worlds without time without space, without the rules and walls that surround us in this heavy, material macrocosm. Now there is a book called Zen and the Brain by a neurologist, James H. Austin, M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. Austin was trained by great Zen masters during three years of sabbatical. Here he combines a profound knowledge of the Central Nervous System with the experiences and teachings of Zen. He has shown the communication between the hard-wiring of the brain and the subtle realms of the On-High. And now we hear about the "Fifth Brain" that resides in the heart. This is described by Joseph Chilton Pearce, who has gathered extensive neurological knowledge that teaches that the heart is a fifth brain, and that it communicates and conveys its love to all the other centers.

To sum all this up is a Mind over mind—a great one and an active one hovering over the scene. This is illustrated (as Joseph Chilton Pearce points out) by the Idiot Savant who looks at a parking lot of cars, thousands of cars, and can identify each by type, body style, year and make. Not only can he do this by the models of the past, but even includes those that are fresh off the line. This means that the Idiot Savant is tapping into a Mind over mind, a great mind which is active, which is dynamic, which is ever-forming and ever-acquiring. It is not only a matter of tapping into knowledge acquired and written somewhere in the heavens (the so-called Akashic Records), but of a Mind which goes beyond records, which is truly current and even more than current. It can see into the future.

And this is a mind into which we ourselves are tapping as our whole society opens to an ever-increasing view of the green valley of spirituality. This is That into which we open when we have insights that arrive on television, on crop circles, and visits from the departed. This is a Mind to which we reach when we carry on experiments and validations that have been illustrated by those such as Bill Tiller and James Ochsman, Joseph Chilton Pearce, and Robert Jahn.

The valley is green and the valley is wide, and the vision is ever-increasing.