TWELVE

“ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE”

Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.

Walker, you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.

ANTONIO MACHADO

This book has described some of the many ways in which humankind has cut itself off from its original matrix of the heart, and thus no longer serves as the heart’s new way of thinking any more than it serves as nurturing caretaker of Sophia, Earth’s Spirit—both of which we are designed to do. We are equally involved, along with Sophia, in the reality states brought about by such a threefold interaction of the mind, heart, and Spirit, on which both we and Sophia depend. The results are in turn dependent on us, in a mirroring loop of intricacy and balance, though trying to spell out such effects may at times sound like fantasy.

I have also suggested that fields of potential can be intelligent, creative, non–temporal-physical, and apparently permanent in whatever formations those fields bring about, or are brought about by. Such fields are then available to us so long as we interact and participate with them, personally and at times universally. Recall the round volume of sound experienced by Mozart, “called up” in effect, and replayed by my university pianist-professor two centuries later. Such “calling up” may be the mode for a viable, functional matrix-of-mind as needed by minds like ours when, on losing our physical matrix and plunged willy-nilly into a nonphysical realm, we might find ourselves in a matrix of like “called up” order.

To speak of evolution’s “work-in-progress,” then, is to point out that such work is ongoing, very much present with us, available, with conscious study and attention, to our entering into—even now, in our ordinary makeup. That is, from this somewhat latent capacity we can establish the foundation or general outline of a non–temporal-spatial yet stable “next-matrix.”

That some semblance of such a future state must be established in our current one is rather like the strange loops in brain development, as discussed in the early chapters of this book. Even more potent, perhaps, is the resemblance to an evolutionary blueprint of possibility, as in a gene, which can act as a guide or outline for a creation of our own, although no content can be genetically included, and we must seek out or create our own. This may very well be the way our next level will open to our content search, since such forms may always be opening and filling with such content.

Transcending Hope

One might think that through this evolutionary potential to override our limitations, hope should “spring eternal in the human breast,” as long quoted by romantic optimists. Yet my late departed friend, George Jaidar, spoke of hope as our great enemy, our nemesis and downfall. Jaidar’s observation was not calculated to win friends and influence people, nor pack the halls with New Age enthusiasts. Didn’t Dante’s sign at the entrance to hell read, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”? To make such a cheerful title here to welcome a reader to this closing chapter is hardly calculated to please a publisher either.

I took years discovering what Jaidar meant—that giving up all hope is the way beyond despair, the dead end to which hope always leads. Hope and despair are a negative strange loop, each giving rise to the other in a deadlock. Hope cloaks and hides a hidden agenda within our mind, an ace up the sleeve we secretly carry that qualifies the openness Spirit must have to move into our present. We are then left with some variation of our past, rather than that which makes all things new, as our Great Being described. Our life preservers sink us.

Alert to such false hope, then, we turn yet again to mind—fragile to establish initially, but subsequently more powerful than the simpler awareness of lower species, from which mind-as-self-awareness initially arose. This self-aware mind is itself fragile in comparison with a higher form of being—emerging in us now—which can go beyond any limitations and constraints at that new level. This is evolution’s work in progress: a matrix for mind when the body goes. Were we humans to have hung on to our mammalian system in fear of losing it, we would have lost the only way to move beyond it. And the same holds for movements beyond this current phase of ours, in which many might be called and few chosen, since the necessary selectivity is still at work.

Heart Instructions

The ramifications of Steiner’s speaking of “the heart teaching mind a new way to think,” will give some understanding of the next level of this work-in-progress. This is “work” with which we must be involved, since we are an integral if not major part of it, as well as recipient of it. Bear in mind that this matrix-goal is always “in progress.” Our wisest of sages observed that “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” as have the animals. In giving up a “place to lay his head” he moves beyond the need for such a place. This is the gist of evolution’s work in progress within us, always preparing to move us beyond. Were such progress finalized, giving us a “place to lay our head,” there would then be no evolution or creation, only stasis and stagnation. In true creation, only the movement of relationship exists.

So work-in-progress-toward is what our life is about. This hardly proves to be “work” in our victimized sense, but a joyful discovery, as observed in toddlers, if allowed. Constant astonishment always leads beyond itself, so “toward-which” the design can go is never completed, but open-ended. We are always toddlers on some level, by which our universe expands in its ever-moving-toward.

Bear in mind that matrix means “source” and, as with our word “mother,” implies nurturing or caring for. In our case some universal or higher nature of heart is, by default, our nature as well, and we recall Darwin’s claim that such nurturing, expressed as love and altruism, gave rise to us, lifting us out of our animal heritage: or is trying to.

In pursuing Steiner’s proposal of heart teaching us a new way to think, we find that our current thinking, such as it is, can (and must) be an active and integral part of that learning. Since we are equally heart with intelligence, as well as brain-mind with intellect, we can only begin in this place and at this time—Now—to open to a conscious awareness of the process leading beyond.

Illusions of Paradise

Our religious reifications of what “should” happen after the death of body-brain might imagine a stable, paradisiacal state, which, could such anomaly take place, would be as static and immobile a state, fixed and frozen into itself, as Dante’s seventh circle. What is found, however, in our pursuing this next matrix for the mind is that the pursuit is all there is. Like Abraham’s movement, following the dictates of Spirit to move—within that movement the whole issue lies. In the movement is the ever-present answer.

So that next level of the mind’s matrix is not only the matrix that the mind must have on leaving this current physical one; we must be actively involved in the unfolding of this new thinking itself. Such involvement-action is not only critical to establishing such thinking, it is part and parcel of that next move and our ability to take part in it. It is like Roethke’s “walking by falling forward,” with its corresponding question: Where is there to go? The answer emerging is: “Keep going.”

As Shakespeare said, “If you would possess a virtue, you must first assume it.” Acting as though you possess some capacity plants the seed of that virtue in us, if only in imagination. Acting out our pretense can bring about the ability-soil in which the seed can grow. The model, imperative to any new growth, is formed by our action, as is the growth that follows.

All of which is to say we must actively enter into the creation-formation of the matrix for the mind needed when body-brain-heart must be gone beyond. Even from our first attempts at such an opening of heart’s new-mind, that state or capacity plays a role in maintaining our mind’s integrity, itself needed in such movement-pursuit. This integrity (or coherent wholeness) must be firmly rooted in our current situation—our physical matrix—if such integrity of mind is to later hold in the often disorienting and fragmenting transition from our current matrix into a nebulous, intangible, and unknown one. Among other things, this surely means we must work toward restoring the coherent governance of fore-brain and heart, and cease to live according to the reflexive whims of the reptilian hind-brain—which, like it or not, is in fact the way most of us currently live.

Instructions from the Non-Ordinary

Herein may lie the greatest value of the paranormal or non-ordinary episodes that have filled history. They are like Eureka forecasts awaiting an actual breakthrough into realization. There are several ways in which paranormal phenomena might be engaged in creating a matrix for the mind following the death of body. Consider the numerous examples given in just this book—Kekulé, Mozart, and von Halle among others— wherein the mind’s reach is far beyond current or past scientific validation or public acceptance. Any of these effects occasionally breaking through to us, even in the great welter of noise and incoherence at every hand, would almost surely always be available to a mind already lifted outside this maelstrom of our overactive ordinary reality. Mind separated from the brain-body could easily “tune in to” areas of resonance with which the mind had already established resonance in ordinary life.

Resonance is not limited to or necessarily dependent on electromagnetic fields as found in the body-brain. There are many ways in which we attract forces, resonances, or field-effects to us automatically. Many of the mind-disciplines found in ashram life, Sardello’s exercises in becoming aware of Silence, walking a labyrinth and so on, can set up resonances—and the intent of such pursuit can be broadened. The Monroe Institute discipline leading to a phenomenon called the Park, detailed later in this chapter, is quite striking in this regard.

In my twenty-second and twenty-third years, I experienced brief periods of physical immunity to fire, pain, or harm—exhilarating and having no after-effect. Similar episodes had led to my discovery and practice of unconflicted behavior, with its suspension of ordinary cause-effect within a select and narrow range. I have touched on this possibility in several writings, most recently in The Biology of Transcendence.

Concretizing a Non–Temporal-Spatial “Illusion”

Further possibilities of nonordinary openings can be traced out in the documented account of mutual lucid dreaming practiced by two college students in San Francisco back in the 1970s. Although the couple was involved emotionally, they lived separately, at home with their respective parents. Becoming interested in lucid dreaming, they read up on the subject and, following standard procedures, were successful in the pursuit. They dutifully made copious notes on their adventures, sharing and discussing them with each other at length. (Such sharing tends to concretize nonordinary or dreaming experiences. Back in my academic days, six of us teaching in two adjacent colleges found, in conjunction with Jung’s dream practices, how these experiences grow and expand the more attention paid to them.)

After a time, it occurred to the couple to try such lucid dreaming at the same time with the intent of meeting each other in that state. And indeed they worked out the procedures and found themselves together, equally present and freely conversing with the other, in the strange lucid dream settings that formed. In the private other-world they had experienced separately, such dream-settings, while vivid, were unstable and easily faded, as dream states ordinarily do. In their shared, mutual-dreaming states, however, not only did they perceive each other as they ordinarily are, they conversed, exclaimed over, and discussed what was happening at each moment. Everything in this shared dream world was stable, tangible, and totally present to all their senses. Their ordinary “wake-state-minds” seemed intact, even as they moved together into a series of purely imaginary realities.

Any particular locale they explored would continue to extend spatially, beyond and in front of them as in natural settings, no matter how far into such a world they moved. (It took awhile for them to relax into these states and not be apprehensive, as at first.) Their verbal and separately written individual reports of their shared experiences agreed point by point.

The most intriguing aspect of all was finding that the particular state-environments they explored together were permanent, and could be called up again at a later time and entered into, just by remembering and thinking of the event, whether brought up again by both of them together, or either one alone. Each time, this apparently stable yet dreamed state was found and entered into exactly as they had left it previously. Consensual agreement on or within a nonordinary state could give that state the same stability and apparent permanence as our ordinary reality.

Hold to this particular aspect of their adventure, and recall our discussion of field-effect and the odd fact that apparently any field aggregate brought into being can become a stable organization when shared with others, and take on permanency. The key given by the young couple for such possible entering and experiencing of shared fields should be obvious, and it lends to our knowledge of the open-ended possibility for matrices of the mind beyond physical worlds. Remember, so long as the young couple in the above example experienced their states alone, the states were neither stable nor permanent. Shared—which means equally created—the states were “there,” wherever “there” might be. Thus, “when two or three are gathered together,” a third force may be called into the situation to add a stabilizing factor. David Bohm intimates that in true dialogue between two people, such a third force is automatically present.

That on being shared, such states take on the permanence and stability of a consensus reality suggests that such a consensus between two or more perceivers on what is being perceived enters into the possible stability and sustaining of such a nonordinary state. So the proposal of bringing about or aiding in bringing about, a nonphysical “matrix formation,” available in a non–physical-temporal state, is certainly feasible. The word matrix means “source,” after all, and generally implies a supportive or nurturing state associated with our heart, where source can be fluid and nondeterminate.

In summary: Odds are strong that a nonphysical mind-field can be called up in a physical state, which is at a considerable remove from the nonphysical mind-field. In which case, why should the nonphysical mind-field not be called up far more easily by a mind in a nonphysical mind-state to begin with? Rudolf Steiner proposes that making a thorough account of our life gives us an ever-more stable frame of reference, a solid foundation from which to function in ordinary life, or the nonphysical domain, as the case may be. Robert Sardello suggests starting such a discipline by a nightly review of each day’s events, recounted to oneself in as orderly a fashion as our memory allows—and such memory involved grows stronger with usage.

The preceding suggests that our ordinary daily reality may be maintained by consensual agreement as well. Such agreement, inherited and brought about in every new life, would continually strengthen the field-effect of consensus reality. Each infant-child and creature, in creating its own structures of knowledge as outlined previously, would automatically increase and stabilize those “aggregates” of phenomena involved, in an akashic field or otherwise, as Steiner and others have discussed. Needless to say, such stabilization would feed back directly into our ordinary experience of consensus reality, making it stronger as well.

Perhaps, as proposed in that strange and disturbing volume called A Course in Miracles, this field-effect and the strange loop of Creator-and-That-Created, brought in at infancy and etched into our neural patterns, is far more plastic than we are led to believe, and can be changed by a change in our attitudes and practice at any age.

Possible Signposts in Evolution’s Unfolding

A number of experiential strands of nonordinary phenomena are similar or resonant enough with this proposed non–physical-temporal state to suggest, in substantial though hypothetical fashion, a general direction, which our creative evolution brings about, if we allow it.

First, on being separated from our physical origins, we are left as the mind only. The critical issue would lie in maintaining the integrity of that mind—its unity and coherence within itself—when all ordinary reciprocal checkpoints of orientation are not there. Consider the problems the mind faces, and the peculiar solutions it sometimes creates, on prolonged sensory isolation. In an earlier work I reported the experiences of two coal miners trapped in a small airspace deep in the Earth for days, and the quite transcendent, near-mystical states they eventually shared. John Lilly, in his flotation experiments, kicked into a more intense frame by ketamine, experienced a wild and varied array of such imaginary but tangible states. Jean Houston brought about astonishing experiences in her (drug-free) mind-altering devices two decades or so ago (which I dutifully, in my skepticism, underwent—and was astonished by the richness opening to me). These in turn bear similarity to controlled forms of lucid dreaming, which are of an even more intense reality since experienced in an awake, not sleep, state.

Indications are strong, however, that on leaving our shared physical matrix, the mind tends toward dissolution, as originally threatened people in long isolation in flotation tanks, for just such lack of contact with a stable point of reference. Claims have long been made that some minds, on separation from the body, find themselves literally “homeless” and wandering in confusion. A sister of mine gave every indication of being in such a limbo off and on for several days ahead of dying, and for quite a few days after death. An episode in which I was intimately and emotionally involved, her after-death appearance was remarkably bizarre, and I wanted very much to help, but had no idea how, other than meditating on the issue.

“The Park”

Robert Monroe’s Experiments in the Afterlife

Since 1974, the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, has offered programs exploring various aspects of mind and consciousness, particularly the lucid dreaming and afterlife states. The “rescue project” at the Institute claims to have found souls, minds, or psyches “stuck” in a non–temporal-spatial replay of the physical event (accident or violence), which ended their life. Because of this constant replay they fail to become aware of having died. The Institute’s rescue squad interacts with such detached psyches, first explaining their dilemma to them, and then getting them involved in moving on by furnishing that isolated self a reciprocal point of awareness, sufficient to enable them to relate and indeed move on. I didn’t place much stock in such dreamlike reports, which first struck me as illusions of genuine ego-enhancement on the part of the rescuers, but later saw how the general gist of the gesture-venture could occur after its own fashion.

Thousands of people have taken these Monroe training programs in subsequent decades, and, hardly incidental, the consensus that formed further strengthened such nonphysical field-effects and our possible entry into them. Aspects of that field apparently became stable and permanent, inherent within a common consensus. But we should remember that such “entry into fields” is a strange loop, and plays a part in bringing such field-effects about.

One memorable experience of Monroe’s was finding himself in what he described as the Park, a tranquil field-state populated by souls or psyches of once-living people. In his training procedures for others, the Park became a milestone and indicator of progress, which thus became a commonly experienced event in those undergoing Monroe’s training system, taking on greater permanence and strength (recall the mutual lucid dreaming of the young couple in San Francisco). And the more people who experienced the Park, the more stable and available that Park became—as with any field-effect.

Most significant of all, people discovered that in that Park they could “call up” the spirit of some departed person—generally someone quite close to them in life. Or, as it might be, some past but close person in their memory might be automatically called up by a previous relationship, when such opportunity arose (that is, those called up may have been tuned into and quite ready for such a call).

Since I live an easy walking-mile west of the Monroe Institute, I was visited by any number of enthusiastic, at times ecstatic people who had experienced not only an out-of-body state, but this very Park and the possibilities it afforded. A doctor friend from a nearby university hospital took the Monroe training program and found himself in the Park—and in the presence of his first great youthful love, killed in an auto accident at twenty-two years of age. The good doctor sat in my living room telling me about it soon afterward, weeping copiously over the impact of the encounter. He reported her as vividly alive, their conversation spontaneous and genuine. She was as real and lovable as he had known her, and looking about twenty-two, the age when she died (this aspect of looking the same age is a variable, and not necessarily a common factor). The good man came back time and again to take in the Monroe experience (originally a pricey eight-day marathon), drawn by his encounters.

Equally intriguing was a sixty-five-year-old globe-traveling engineer from Florida whose wife had died some six months previously. Unable to cope, the man was on the verge of emotional collapse when friends told him of Monroe’s training, which he sought out and took. And indeed the engineer found himself in that Park, where he did indeed meet his wife, both rejoicing in their reunion, the good man weeping as heartily in recounting this to me as the doctor had, and also signing up for repeats of the course.

Dark Shadows

A further intriguing and disturbing aspect of Monroe’s personal experiences, which he described at some length, was finding that immediately on leaving his body and world he encountered a demonic realm, a space or state filled with demonically driven homeless soul-mind-spirits who were terrifying, and literally tore at Monroe to pull him into their maelstrom of anger-hate and hellish makeup. Monroe managed to reject any trace of fear, hold his integrity of mind intact, and pass quickly through this dimension without harm. And I know of no reports among the thousands taking the Monroe program in the ensuing thirty-five or so years of participants having to experience this frightful passage, which, actual or not, in itself is indicative of field-effect.

This feature of a demonic realm, coupled with the problem of holding the mind’s integrity on separation from the physical, might account for the practice by Tibetan lamas of gathering in a circle around the bedside of a dying brother and chanting continually for varying lengths of time. They may in effect pool their spiritual strength, and through their joint intent direct it toward the dying one to help him hold his own integrity of mind through that same or some similar barrier, as he goes through his transition from this world to the next.

This notion of demonic “disincarnates” also brings to mind reports of an incident in the closing hours of life of my great hero-teacher-guide, Baba Muktananda. Shortly before he left his body (for which departure he had carefully planned long in advance) he called in his trusted attendant Noni. He reported to Noni that three demons had just intruded on his presence, against which he had to summon his will and strength to dismiss. Seriously offended by such intrusion, Baba exclaimed to Noni, “What could those demons be doing here? How did they get into such a holy place?” (And Baba’s ashram was indeed a holy place, it seemed to me, about the last place one would expect demons.) Following this encounter and report to Noni, Baba resumed his meditation posture and died quietly a few minutes later, having, in effect, cleared his path of possible debris. Such debris may lie deep within a person’s memory, long since covered over and forgotten, but would, through “field-effect” attraction, be activated in our closing hours to clutter up the scene.

A final variation on this phenomena was given in the closing hours of my first wife’s death, in her thirty-fifth year (near half a century ago), a process that extended over many hours and was as seriously moving and impressive to witness as it was shattering and heartbreaking to me. Throughout those last hours she was quite lucid, excited over Jesus sitting at the edge of her bed, while the room, she reported, filled with a brilliant gold light. At length she reported that Jesus, holding her hand, beckoned her to follow him, and she, grabbing my hand in turn, urged me to go with her into that golden light. (I, alas, in a heart too hardened and encased to see either Jesus or that gold light was left with only my massive pain at her approaching departure.)

At that point, however, she suddenly exclaimed, “I’m scared . . .” which was hardly in keeping with the rest of her experience. Whereupon she promptly dropped off into a brief, momentary sleep—but quickly awakened and reported that she had just dreamed that she was surrounded by a bunch of Baptists, who were fixing to pop her into a huge witch’s cauldron. One would have to know her childhood history as an Episcopalian to understand why Baptists, buried somewhere deep in her unconscious, populating some dreamed demonic state, now briefly intruded on so beautiful a golden-lit realm. With that report to me, she quietly and peacefully drifted off again into a sleep from which she didn’t awaken.

She made several “paranormal” appearances in the days following her leaving, all concerning our seriously damaged infant, born during my wife’s last long illness, and the focus of her mind for weeks preceding her death. Two of these after-death events took place as I held the child, followed by two visible, and one sensory-felt visit she again made to her child—these latter at my wife’s own mother’s home, where her mother had taken the helpless grandchild to care for her.

On the distraught grandmother’s vivid account of this final appearance-felt state, reported to me immediately after by telephone, I was reminded of my wife’s encounter with her childhood memory of Baptists and such, which apparently had cleared her way shortly before leaving—as with Muktananda, a grace given for a grace-filled spirit.

As a final postscript here, I was reminded of a comment made by my greatest hero of some two millennia back, when, facing his own departure, he said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” a simple ontological fact of our endless falling-forward, a “place” opening for my wife in those golden hours before she finally took his hand, there quite ready for her, at that last breath.