Chapter One

Many Lives

Things can happen to us in our lives that defy all logic: something in a sentence, a daydream, a vision, a visitation; it could be that you suddenly find yourself in the presence of angels. When it’s happened you ask yourself how long it lasted. It could have been minutes in our linear time, or just seconds. We think in such linear terms, but we are not linear. Our lives are not linear.

Sometimes we can go through months and months, with time just passing by. Then suddenly there’s a flash. The detail of those months might be lost and forgotten, but that flash will stay with us for ever.

We’re so interested in time, so caught up by time. We use a linear notion of time to try to pin down the magic of existence. Time stretches and loops. Our lives stretch and loop. Our existence is magic.

The question that dances like a firefly in my mind is: are we following a pre-written chronicle of our lives that’s unfolding as a surprise to us but that is as planned as a Disneyland ride? Or do we have free will, and a set of lessons to learn, which, if we don’t get them the first time, will come back in a different form until we do?

My life has been a magic ride that could only have happened because I was born on the very day and at the very time I was. I don’t think it was an accident that I was a child in the 1950s, that I lived the 1960s, had children in the 1970s and then came to represent, through my part in The Colbys, the 1980s. Are we just watching the unfurling of the inevitable or are we able to change everything, about ourselves and our future? I’m not one of the great thinkers; just someone experiencing and looking, and finding it all so incredibly interesting.

Everything in my life has been of its time. I went from a little deaf girl in Start-rite sandals in the 1950s to a voraciously inquisitive young woman in the 1960s; then from an actress and film star to a desperately struggling single mother in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the on-screen characters that I was best known for stood for that decade, while in the 1990s I went on a journey which, some years earlier, three psychics had, quite independently, told me I’d follow.

I had already started that journey way back. I don’t even think it had started in this life. Like all of our lives, if you could line up each moment and look at them as if through a prism, taking them in from different perspectives, you’d see there were no contradictions; you’d see how it all connects. Just like a good haircut, everything joins up.

Angel Friends

Flying has been a theme in my life for ever. As a very young child I can remember walking along the back of the sofa and thinking that if I carried on walking I’d be able to lift off straight into the air. I believed I could fly.

The idea of having wings wasn’t strange. Angels were not alien.

Every night as a child I’d go with my two angel friends and we’d fly around and do good deeds for people. They were my night-time friends: two fairy angels. We might see an old lady who needed her shopping carried, or a cat stuck in a tree that needed rescuing. We were good flying people. I thought they lived in my pillow because they came out and played when my head was resting on it.

A memory-trace carried with me into this life from before I was born, perhaps.

Mary

Being Church of England was just who we were as a family, it went with being English middle-class residents in a safe, comfortable, quiet and leafy suburb – in Barnet, North London. ‘The nearest I want to get to church is the garden,’ my father used to say, ‘and I’m very happy to tend it.’

My mother was a spiritual person by nature. She maintained her own faith, which included a belief in an afterlife. For her, the C of E was good for christenings, funerals and weddings but it wasn’t where her spirit really lay. She was far more open and investigative; spiritually restless. Unlike people who suddenly take up a definitive religious position just before death, my mother let it all unravel. When she was dying I asked her, ‘Do you know where you’re going next?’ With a child-like twinkle in her eye, she replied, ‘We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?’

Our parents sent me and my older sister Diana, who we called Didi (pronounced dye-dye), and my younger sister Jenny to a Catholic convent for our primary education. It was run by an order of French nuns. Our parents’ decision to send us there was totally pragmatic. They knew we’d get the best education at the convent; at the very least, we’d learn good deportment and French.

I hated it at first; with its strict rules and regulations and a uniform that was meant to be kept neat and tidy at all times. In winter we would wear a scratchy green tunic, shirt and tie. The tunic was only cleaned once a term, and by the time the holidays began it was egg- and paint-stained. My tie would be tied just once at the start of term and then hung in a loop on the end of the bed at night, so all I had to do was slip it over my head each morning. I remember the desperately cold winters of the 1950s. So cold, we always dressed under the bedclothes. In the summer we’d change into green checked cotton dresses; our white knee-high socks held up by home-made elastic garters.

I enjoyed the religious aspects of the convent. The day was punctuated with prayer. There was chapel in the morning, prayers in between each class and at the end of the day, and we said grace before lunch. There were statues of Our Lady and of Jesus Christ throughout the school. A crucifix hung in each classroom and paintings depicting scenes from the Bible were hung on the walls. As a young child I was in awe. I took it all very seriously. I treasured my blue plastic rosary kept in a little blue egg.

During break I’d retreat to my secret places of sanctuary. In the winter months, or when it was raining, I’d slip into the little side chapel. I’d make the sign of the cross, genuflect and take my place in a front pew, then spend the rest of our 20-minute break-time praying. I didn’t pray to Jesus or to God, but to the Virgin Mary.

When the weather was fine I’d skip down a path in the school’s garden to a small grotto where there was another statue of Mary. I was entranced by her blue-and-white dress and the calla lilies that she held. I was drawn to her. I felt that we had a special relationship.

The Holy Trinity didn’t work for me: there was a God in the clouds who spoke with a voice of anger and judgement; then there was Jesus who seemed to have a nice life but then died in agony for our sins; then there was this bird that was called a ghost that radiated light and that people wore on badges. I didn’t get it. Mary wasn’t angry or judgemental like God and I didn’t really understand what sin was, especially mortal sin. I couldn’t understand why a baby who hadn’t been christened wouldn’t go to heaven. The bird didn’t seem like anything you would want to talk to and God seemed so fierce. Not like Mary.

In the chapel, which was a place of silence and reverence, I never spoke out loud to her, but in the garden I would. I’d chat to her about so many different things, and she’d speak to me. They weren’t conversations I was having with myself in my mind. I remember them as dialogues; they were real. I talked to Mary and she talked to me. I could see and hear her. Mary was my friend and I loved her.

I didn’t know why sometimes I couldn’t hear things properly but I could always hear Mary. I loved the peace and calm of her grotto and the chapel; away from the babble and confusing noise of the playground.

The nuns had noticed that I spent a lot of time in the chapel or down the end of the garden in Mary’s alcove. Late one afternoon, after I’d got home from school, my mother received a telephone call from one of the Sisters suggesting, in a softly spoken and gentle way, that they believed I’d be a good candidate for conversion. I think my mother was a little surprised. She was aware that I’d shown an interest in religion but thought it was just a passing phase. She also knew that the nuns were always on the look-out for new recruits and wasn’t at all comfortable with the idea of me being corralled into committing to a faith I knew little about. Far too elegant ever to offend anyone, however, and also of the belief that you should never argue with those of the cloth, especially nuns, my mother listened till the Sister had finished, then simply said, ‘That sounds just lovely, Sister, and I expect that you are right, and if Stephie does want to pursue this when she is a little older then that would be simply wonderful!’

They didn’t call again.

Curiosity Saved This Cat

When I was a teenager I was out most evenings. On Mondays I’d go to the church youth club and jive to Everly Brothers’ and Bobby Darin records. On Tuesday evenings we’d all meet at the Black Horse pub and then go to Barnet Jazz Club, where they had live music and we could spend the evening long-arm jiving to Acker Bilk and other traditional jazz bands. On Wednesdays we’d head to the further education college for more dancing, and come Friday we’d be at the Finchley Jazz Club for short-arm jiving. The only night I didn’t go out was Thursday. I stayed in to wash my hair. Saturday morning it was up the Devon Café, at the far end of Barnet High Street, to find out where the party was Saturday night. On Sunday afternoons I would spread all my books out over the dining room table and do my homework for the complete week while listening to Radio Luxembourg.

When Geoff, my first boyfriend, came along, I calmed down; my parents saw the advantage. My reports improved, I started to read and develop an interest in culture and art; if only, at first, to be able to keep up with Geoff in conversation. Geoff and his friends opened my mind to a whole new realm of concepts and ideas and I was there, absorbing it all. I was learning from them all the time: what to read, what to question and what to think. In many ways my relationship with Geoff was as much an education as it was a romance. He and his friends fed my hunger for knowledge. I was very lucky; I wanted to learn. I wanted to know everything. It was just what I needed.

Things do seem to happen at the right time.

New words like ‘hypotheses’, ‘philosophy’, ‘agnostic’ and ‘atheist’ came into my vocabulary. Suddenly, talking to… wait a minute? The Virgin Mary? Put those childish things behind you and think about ‘logic’. If you can’t see it – does it exist? Reading about Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung; discovering that there were societies which had abandoned religion for ideologies of human communalism. I was ready to challenge everything, and I wasn’t afraid of anything. Searching, questioning, examining; I had no fear in rejecting what had gone before.

My Versailles

At the age of five I won a fancy dress competition playing a Spanish señorita. Someone put a fan in my hand. It felt as if it was an extension of my hand and completely natural. I knew exactly how to use it. Some people can hold a musical instrument and feel its essence, its inner quality; whenever I held a fan I could tell if it was weighted properly – whether it was good or not. I have always known the art and language of the fan. It’s a very slight talent, but it is mine. Where did it come from?

Fan work on the phone – appearing in The Rover with the RSC (1988)

When I was 13 I spent the summer in France with Geoff and a group of his friends. It was 1960. We’d hitchhiked down from Calais to the Côte d’Azur and spent five glorious weeks on the beaches of the Riviera in a world so far removed from dowdy postwar England. When our money ran out and the summer was drawing to a close, we headed back to Calais. En route we stopped off at Versailles.

One of the largest palaces in the world, I was immediately struck by its scale, beauty and grandeur. At the same time, it wasn’t unfamiliar. Reaching the entrance to the magnificent gardens, which led to the palace itself, I broke away from the others and began to explore on my own.

As I made my way along the main walkway, past the fountains and avenues of trees, I could see groups of tourists following a circuit around the gardens and into the palace. I began to follow them, and found myself going in another direction, along a wall surrounding an ornamental garden to the right of the main palace building. I wasn’t sure why I was heading that way, I just seemed to be drawn in that direction. As I approached an archway leading into the garden a guard halted me in my tracks, holding up a hand to stop me from passing.

‘Vous ne pouvez passer par là!’ He said officiously, blocking my way.

Without thinking, I replied, ‘Mais je prends toujours cette route.’

The words ‘But I always go this way’ just fell out of my mouth. I’ve no idea where they came from. The guard gave me an incredulous look as if to say ‘Who on Earth do you think you are?’ I turned and walked away. Rather than head back to the front of the palace building, though, I found myself retreating back to the garden, but this time by another route. I wasn’t sure what I was doing or where I was going. For some reason I felt I had to be there.

This time there wasn’t anyone to stop me. As I walked into the garden I noticed a side entrance to the palace. The door was open so I went inside. I noticed the floor of the room I’d stepped into. It looked remarkably old and worn to me. I was alone in the room and, as I took in my surroundings, my eyes were drawn to the bust of a man resting on a cabinet. It was a very modest figure of a naval officer. I felt the colour rise to my cheeks as I looked at it. I felt an overwhelming sense of connection to the man that the figure depicted. I knew this man. I didn’t know his name and I also didn’t know how I knew he was an officer in the King’s Navy. What I did know was that I had loved that man.

Surprised and taken aback by the strength of the feelings and thoughts that had surged up inside me, I stepped outside again. Standing on the gravel path, I thought I’d head back to the main garden and look for the others. All at once I found myself looking up towards a window on the third floor. ‘That’s where I used to be,’ I thought. ‘That’s where I was. I used to live here.’

Images started to tumble into my mind and in a flash my awareness shifted and I was no longer there in the present day but in another time, and as another person. I was a member of the court of the King during the ancien régime. I wasn’t part of the inner circle of servants and maids-in-waiting but for some reason had been sneaked into the King’s apartments to watch his petit lever. I’m not sure in what capacity I was part of the court but there had been an occasion when I had been part of the select few who watched the ceremonial custom of the King waking and dressing in the morning. I’d seen him stretching and yawning and going about his toilette. I had been there.

The vision passed. I looked around. I was standing alone by the door I’d gone through, hearing a murmur of visitors’ voices coming from the front of the palace. I made my way back around the building and began scanning the groups of people for Geoff and the others. As I stood there, calmly looking for my friends, I felt my awareness changing again. Looking at the magnificent palace in front of me, my sight began to blur and a new set of images began to form in my line of vision.

I could see myself sitting at a rickety table in a wood-panelled room, playing cards with a group of gentlemen. The cards are long and thin and rather unusual-looking. The room is filled with a dusty light and the smell of sweat, pomade, body odour and cologne. I’m in my early twenties, delicately powdered and wearing a slightly worn, faded pink brocade. The men I’m playing with are engaged in a philosophical debate that I’m listening to but not expected to take part in. There’s a small, thick drinking glass on the table; blown rather than cut, and with tiny bubbles in the glass. Around me I can see people with powdered wigs and walking sticks, and women with fans showing cleavage. I’m not wearing a wig and I’m aware that my dusky pink dress isn’t as fine as the dresses worn by the other women in the room. I’m neither a servant nor a whore, but I’m not very high up on the social ladder. I’m some kind of courtesan; a girl brought into the salon to entertain gentlemen, play cards, enjoy a glass of wine with them, and flirt a little. The whole scene is pervaded by a relaxed atmosphere, with an air of genteel entertainment and pleasure. A door opens to my left, through which a grand and glamorous, tightly-corseted and white-wigged lady enters. That’s where the vision ended.

I can’t say how long it lasted; maybe it was just seconds, a matter of minutes, or maybe longer. All I knew was that what I had seen was as real as the world I came back to. I had been there, in that salon. Whether or not it was the same person who witnessed the King’s petit lever, I have no idea.

The thing about these moments is that they usually come complete in themselves, and without answers. Yet somehow they are answers in themselves: answers to questions that run through our lives that are sometimes as trivial-seeming as why a five-year-old girl would know how to wield a fan, perfectly. And of course, the floor of the room with the bust looked rather sad and old and worn in 1960, compared to how it would have looked 300 years earlier.

The amazing thing was, from that moment I instinctively knew information and facts about French history from that period. When I heard it, the name Madame de Rambouillet was immediately familiar. I knew she had been the woman that had walked into the room at the end of my vision. It was in her salon that I had been playing cards.

Some time later, after a French history test at school, my teacher came up to me. ‘How did you do so well?’ she asked. ‘I know you did absolutely no revision.’

‘I didn’t need to,’ I replied. ‘I already knew it.’

Inevitabilities

Things often happen when you least expect them, catching you totally unprepared. They can be a bit shocking. I call them inevitabilities.

April 1991, six o’clock in the morning; I’d just arrived to work at a studio in Los Angeles. Walking across the parking lot my eyes suddenly met those of a guy dragging cables across the tarmac. In an instant we both knew we had to talk to each other. A spontaneous wave passed between us and there and then we gave each other a hug. It was like a lightning strike; a bolt of energy between us that came as if from nowhere. I could see he’d been totally shocked. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before.

We met later and I asked him what he’d felt. ‘Relief,’ he said. ‘In the instant we saw each other I thought, “there she is”.’

I later discovered he was a cameraman-director, but that day he was working on an infomercial for a friend. What he’d felt, and seen, completely corresponded with what I had.

‘We were children,’ he continued. ‘We were a little boy and girl running down a hill. There were windmills in the background. We’re dressed in old-fashioned clothes. There’s a carriage and we’re parted and the wheels are very big. We never see each other again.’

It was exactly what I’d seen: the scene was 17th-century Flemish, and the carriage’s wheels would have seemed big – we were children. I looked at him. ‘And now, here we are… ’

It led to three years together and a lifelong friendship.

I know that we come in and out of each other’s lives across incarnations, and sometimes when we meet people again who we’ve known in a previous life, we go through the opposite relationship dynamic with them. You might meet the same soul again that you’ve had a relationship with in a past life but you may well not have the same relationship with them this time around. Sometimes you might be drawn together again to pass on, or receive, a message.

A few years ago I met a man at a friend’s party. I didn’t find him attractive but I knew there was some kind of connection between us that I had to explore. I found him perfectly amicable and felt comfortable in his company, and over the period of a few weeks we went out together a couple of times and started to get to know each other. During one of our dates I suddenly had a vision. When I experience these visions, although it appears out of focus I can still see the room I’m in or wherever I happen to be, but the vision is completely there in front of my eyes, like it was in Versailles.

My vision was of a sweet working-class couple on a tandem bicycle in a country setting, arriving at their destination and then having a picnic. The boy was dressed up in a brown suit and wearing a cap. The girl was wearing a pale blouse and a long skirt, slightly hitched up. The historical setting was pre-First World War. I have no idea if people rode tandem bicycles then but that’s what I saw them on. Their picnic was modest but full. They had little pieces of cotton with beads covering their food dishes.

Dramatically and violently I’m pulled out of that scene and thrown into the trenches during the First World War. I can see dressed legs and bits of body flying through the air and blood spattering. The boy who had been on the picnic is there; covered in blood, in anguish and totally disillusioned. He’s about to die.

So, there I am, having this terrifying vision. I’m huddled in a corner, frightened. I’m in war. I’m in the trenches. I’m weeping. I say to the man I’ve had a few dates with: ‘You don’t have to be here any more. You must know that in this life you don’t need to be frightened. It won’t happen to you again.’

I have no idea what happened to the girl. I assume I was her, but I didn’t ‘get’ her – I got the boy. To the best of my knowledge the man I was with had been the boy I’d seen in the vision, who had died in the trenches in the First World War.

It was as if I was the messenger from his guardian angels sent to tell him that he didn’t need to be afraid any more. He’d carried that sense of terror with him from that incarnation and it continued to disable him. He was being haunted by a basic fear of everything. I had to tell him it wasn’t real; that it was from a life before this one and that he should drop it.

For me, the amazing thing was that after that there was absolutely no chemistry between us. For him, I was completely insane. He thought I was frightful, but I didn’t feel responsible for how he felt. Our connection was about the message I had to give him.

From the moment we met I knew there was something between us; I just didn’t know what it was, and I had no idea it was going to happen like it did. I knew our connection wasn’t on the level of an intimate relationship but I had to follow my feeling, in the same way that I had to follow whatever it was that led me to that room in Versailles. I just needed to give him the message that he need no longer be permanently suspicious and frightened.

For some reason I’d never been to Egypt. Something had stopped me from going – a feeling inside. I hadn’t wanted to go. When I eventually went with my friend Lisa Voice, I really felt nothing for the pyramids, but when I saw the temple of Abu Simbel in southern Egypt, even though it had been displaced – moved from its original location when the Aswan Dam was built – I immediately felt at home. I wasn’t a Cairo kid or a Luxor baby; I was from the outer territories. When I looked at them, the hieroglyphs didn’t seem alien. I’m never going to be able to translate the Rosetta Stone, but I could read them. They made sense to me.

It is thoroughly disappointing that I wasn’t Cleopatra. All I can say about my Egyptian incarnation is that it was lowly and fearful. Unlike other incarnations, I have no sense of detail, just a sense of wariness about it. The only thing I feel is that I was an Israelite, in Egypt as a slave.

My having resisted going to Egypt before, despite having had plenty of opportunities, suddenly made sense. Particular people and specific places resonate with us as echoes across our many lives.

Lisa Voice and me in Egypt

The Answers Are in Our Pasts

When I was 36 I ‘died’ and was brought back. The experience was profound. It changed the course of my life. Up until then it had been a head-on rush: a brazen and fearless adventure in which I’d gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows and back again; powered by adrenaline, sheer will, focused intention and hard work. From my earliest childhood I’d launched myself headlong into the wonder of life’s possibilities, and up to the point of my near-death I’d been physically driven. If there was a wall to climb or a window to climb out of, I was onto or out of it. As a teenager I just upped the pace and by the time I was carving out a successful career as an actress in my twenties and thirties I was skiing down mountainsides, leaping off cliffs, diving, running, jumping; all the time thinking, ‘If I die now I’ll die having the most fun.’ And then I did die.

After my near-death I went to see three psychics. Each of them told me the same thing: that up to that point I’d been living very much on the physical plane but the second half of my life would be far more focused on the spiritual. I took what they said; particularly since each one had given me the same message but, at the time, I didn’t know how it would pan out.

Not so many years later, what they’d said all began to fall into place.

I went to Hollywood in 1985 and was very soon on the spiritual journey they’d described, but I felt frustrated with myself. I didn’t seem to be able to find a spiritual home; somewhere I could settle. I couldn’t understand why I seemed to be such a dipper and diver, so I went to see Dr Ron Scolastico, a spiritual counsellor. Entering a deep trance state Ron accessed what he called The Guides. Before going into trance he’d told me to think about the question I’d come to him with, and not to tell him what it was but to keep it in the front of my mind. He began speaking in a very odd voice and, as I later said to myself, if I’d just spent $75 watching someone act it was money well spent because he kept it up for well over an hour. I don’t think he was acting, though. I genuinely believe that he was channelling – that his Guide was speaking through him. He had absolutely no idea of my question but the answer I got from his Guide was bang-on-centre-target.

Ron’s Guide described a tall and gaunt woman living in Roman times in the latter years of her life. She had a high social status and had lived well and comfortably. Coming to the end of her days, her entire life had been dedicated to worshipping various gods. But a deep sense of regret pervaded her spirit because she’d realized that her life’s dedication had been to false gods.

I have no doubt that Ron’s Guide described a past incarnation of mine; one that the second half of the incarnation I’m in now will resolve. The message I received was that this half of my life would be about my finding my own belief system. It didn’t contradict anything that I’d been told before; it just affirmed what I was doing. It wasn’t as if there were mixed messages coming from the other side so it made me feel good. It made me realize that I have spiritual purpose – I just don’t have spiritual form. After that I was able to put my jackdaw’s approach into a context that went beyond this life, and I stopped worrying about it.

I’m a spiritual bungee jumper. A jackdaw, collecting brightly coloured stones in a deep, medieval suede bag. It’s my way.

Friends and Other Relations

My best friend Colin and I have accepted that we’ve been in and out of each other’s lives so many times that we don’t bother to think about it any more. It’s just a given. In one life or other we’ve been in every relationship possible. Like with the man who was in my vision of the trenches, when I met Colin I felt no attraction towards him whatsoever on an intimate level; and he the same towards me. Unlike the other man, with Colin the connection wasn’t immediate. Different recipes require a different setting on the cooking timer.

I’d already been living in California for a few years when I met Colin – set up on a blind date with him by mutual friends. We were both free and single and, when our friends put two and two together, on paper at least we seemed to be the ideal match. But we were instantaneously apathetic towards each other. There was no way I was even vaguely interested, and I’m sure he felt the same. My daughters Phoebe and Chloe, however, were very keen on the idea of Colin, especially Chloe, since she’d heard that he kept horses. To her, the fact that he had 17 of them made him the most eligible man on the planet.

‘Go on three dates with him at least, and after that if you can’t do kissing you can start seeing other people, but you have to have three proper dates first,’ they insisted. ‘With lipstick on, Mummy!’

So Colin and I went out three times but there was no kissing and, rather than dating Colin, I started seeing the seemingly unsuitable young man I’d met in the studio parking lot. Our lives are the way they’re meant to be.

Jude

Similar to the way Colin and I have cropped up in each other’s lives across many incarnations, I know it’s been the same with my grandson Jude. There was a time when I really wondered what my relationship with Jude should be. I loved him so deeply, as I’m sure every grandmother loves their grandchild, but he was also in a precarious situation because my daughter Phoebe and his father were divorcing. I wanted to know what my position should be in the midst of it all.

During a past-life regression I got that I was standing outside a tepee. My feet were hurt; I’d been on burnt ground. I was Native American and there was an attack coming. Everybody had to leave, but I was an old woman with damaged feet and I knew that I couldn’t go as I would have held the others up.

One of the young warriors rode up and acknowledged me. ‘You have done good work,’ he said. ‘You are a good person. I see you. I appreciate you.’ It was enough for me. The young warrior was Jude. He had seen me and that is all I am meant to do for Jude in this life: see him and make sure he feels acknowledged and recognized for who he is. Maybe that’s all a grandmother is meant to do anyway.

My life and Jude’s have intersected in other incarnations, but this is the most important realization for our lives now. All I have to do is make sure he knows he is truly seen as himself, that he also knows he is truly loved, and that I’m always here for him.

Jude and me, photographed by Judy Geeson

During this past-life regression, I also experienced the old woman’s death:

I get a wound in my side. The others have left and there are people, other Native Americans, attacking. Some are wearing navy blue cavalry uniform dress coats; maybe there are white men, too, but I can’t see any. I’m aware of charred ground, a battle, blood, a wound in my side, a spear; I’m in pain, it’s awful, then I can no longer feel any pain.

I’m rising up like a figure in a painting by Chagall; being drawn back inside the tepee I’d been standing outside but rising up towards its apex. I rise through the top of the tepee and pass Buffalo, Fox and Wolf and all the totem animals, and then further up through something that’s like a chimney. I’m no longer old. I’m just hanging in space and young. Then upwards again, and I’m in a flawless scene: two black-and-white pinto ponies are peacefully grazing on lush green grass close to a perfect wigwam. Above me, puffy white clouds hang in a blue crystal sky. I look down at my immaculate moccasins. I have black plaits with beads. My partner is on the horizon. I realize I’m in the Happy Hunting Ground because I’ve died the death that I would have expected, being that person, and gone where she would have expected to go. As soon as I realize this, the scene begins to dissolve.

And it’s OK that it melts away. It’s lovely but we don’t need that. Now I’m simply in the Presence. There is great belief: perfection that no words can really describe.

And there’s golden light, but solid like a huge curtain. Every single cell is shining and shimmering and being renewed. Every bit of light is individual but all in the same mass. You might see it as sinewy, or like a cape made up of strands of really soft, pure gold thread – each like the double helix of DNA, with energy of golden light secured to it.

It’s the soul bank, where our spirits return after passing for cleansing, renewing and restoring: a total meltdown of everything; yet it’s not a meltdown. I can’t tell you what it is. Little wonder gold has deep spiritual significance: refined gold ore as the earthly representation of the heavenly golden light.

Then I think: there’s so much free will in life, I thought it was going to be limited by rules. In answer a Pegasus – a white horse with enormous white wings – appears before me and tells me:

I wrap you in the blanket of love

But I will not bind you with the comfort or constraints of obligation.

You might be glad to begin a task but the real truth is you don’t have to do anything,

And you are allowed to choose.

The only absolute is that love comes to you, and is the only motivator

If it’s not motivated by love – what’s the point?

Everybody comes to the same conclusion – there is only love. There is only love… or fear. At the end of your life you get the scene, images and people that mirror your background and expectations. We get the death we expect. Surely that’s where heaven and hell come from. If you’ve been a bad person you’ll have a terrible time. You create your own heaven or hell. We go to the energy we know. I know, because I died in this life… and then I came back. More about that later.

When we stop looking for the logic in things, we open the door to the fantastic and magical. Miracles will follow close behind.