CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Lifting the Veil

The year was 1997. By that time, I had been a pastor for twelve years. They were twelve long years of trying desperately to keep my spiritual quest alive.

The only thing harder than finding time to meditate was keeping my spiritual quest a secret from the churches I served as pastor. At best, my search would be misinterpreted. At worst, it would be labeled demonic. People would think I was crazy. Because my experiences were as precious to me as life itself—because they were life, a taste of heaven in an often-dreary world—I simply couldn't risk having them treated roughly by people who didn't understand.

Yet the distance between the heaven I'd glimpsed and the life I was living every day continually weighed on me. I longed to collapse that distance, to find the exquisite joy of meeting Abigail or the beauty of the world beyond pain on a regular basis, in daily life. Yet I didn't know how. More important, I couldn't talk to anyone except Jacquie and a few close friends about what I was seeking. I was the pastor, after all. I was the one others looked to for help in their own quests.

A LIFESAVING GIFT

Then one day, out of the blue, someone offered to pay my way to The Monroe Institute. It was a dream come true. The Monroe Institute would provide me the gift of being surrounded by kindred spirits for the first time in years. What a relief it would be to speak openly about my quest!

I signed up that same day and then waited, like a kid on Christmas Eve, trying to pass the time.

I left for Virginia a day early and booked a room in an inn nearby. The next morning, my whole body was trembling in anticipation.

It was fall and the leaves were radiating a panorama of color. Turning into the driveway that was marked The Monroe Institute, I felt as if I were entering hallowed ground. Coming through the front door, I was flanked on the right by a portrait of Bob Monroe and, on the left, by a painting of his wife, Nancy Penn. I felt welcomed into a family that was both mysterious and thrilling.

Everything was silent. The morning sun was peeking through a skylight. In my enthusiasm, I had arrived so early that I woke the leaders out of bed. Bleary-eyed and blinking in the light, they told me in a perfunctory manner where I could find my room. Then they went back to sleep.

The program wouldn't start for another twelve hours. It didn't matter. At some core level, I was home.

My room was anything but ordinary. There were no beds in sight. In an otherwise rectangular space, two cubicles, large enough to lie down in, were tucked into the corners. Their exteriors were covered in pine tongue-and-groove paneling. There was a square hole in one of the walls, just large enough to crawl through. Pulled to one side was a curtain so heavy it felt as if it were lined with lead.

Peering inside the opening, I could see a neatly made bed, a set of stereo headphones, and a control panel full of buttons and knobs just begging to be fiddled with. I pushed one knob and blue light flooded the chamber. Another one gave red light. Another gold. There were speaker volume controls, toggle lights, and a few other controls. I had no idea what they did.

This setup was what Bob Monroe called a CHEC unit, short for Controlled Holistic Environmental Chamber. I crawled inside and lay down, pulling the curtain closed, so I was in total darkness. I played with the lighting and finally opted for the blue color. I tried on the headphones and adjusted my pillows. The silence was delicious.

This CHEC unit would be the place where I slept and listened to the tape exercises that comprised the bulk of the course. Lying there, I could hardly stay still, as a thrill of energy rippled through my body. It seemed like forever before the first activity would begin. But I had waited ten years for that moment. I told myself I could wait a few more hours.

I wondered if the trainers would be able to read my aura. Or if they could peer into my past history. Secretly, I hoped this experience would show me that maybe I wasn't crazy after all. Maybe there really were unique ranges of perception hovering just out of my view.

TABLE COMMUNION

Dinner came. We gathered and had introductions. The air was buzzing with anticipation. I met kindred spirits, people from around the world who, like me, had felt a strange hunger for years. At dinner that night I experienced true communion, the unity of our shared desire for mystical experience. In this place, there was a refreshing freedom to express all of my deeply held longings. In that group, the spiritual domain seemed less distant, perhaps even within grasp. How much within my grasp I could have never guessed.

Logistics were followed by a short lecture. When they finally asked us if we were ready for our first tape, there was a gasp of relief and exhilaration as we all shouted in unison, “Yes!”

Little did I know that the kingdom of heaven was about to explode into my awareness.

MIND AWAKE, BODY ASLEEP

The Monroe Institute seemed like the modern version of the ancient mystery school. In my room, I was able to crawl inside my very own personal crypt, specially designed to quiet external annoyances. It was all so strange and yet so luxurious. Sensory deprivation can be a true joy in a world that is relentless with noise.

The process at the Institute consisted of climbing onto our bed, placing the headphones around our ears, and listening to a recorded meditation. The sounds on the tapes would lead us to certain meditative states.

Our initial destination was a state that Monroe called Focus 10. The numbers associated with the focus levels were somewhat arbitrary; they didn't indicate higher or lower states, but were simply different destination points.

Focus 10 was described as “mind awake, body asleep.” Years before, I had ordered some Monroe audiotapes to try at home. A friend I'd once shared a Focus 10 tape with had reported, “You know, Paul, it was the strangest thing. I was listening to the tape and I was really disappointed, because nothing was happening. I was about to rip off the headphones, when suddenly I heard someone snoring. It was loud and annoying. I couldn't figure out how that person had gotten into my bedroom. Finally, I realized that the snoring was on the tape. I had gotten a bad copy. Some technician had fallen asleep while making mine and hit the record button! I was pissed! But I listened a bit longer and was shocked to find out that the snoring was coming from me!” Such are the strange experiences of the mind awake, body asleep state.

Another friend was quite amazed at how relaxed she could get in Focus 10. She told me that as much as she enjoyed the tape, what she really wanted was a tape for “mind asleep, body awake…and cleaning.”

Although I had become somewhat familiar with Focus 10, now the experience was different, more vivid. Once my body quieted down, a parade of clear images started across my field of vision. It was exciting, but also frustrating.

These images seemed to be shy. I could see them on the periphery, but the moment I turned my attention toward them, they vanished. I felt I was chasing butterflies.

To make matters worse, the parade flitted by so quickly that I barely had time to register the individual vignettes. As if I were awakening from a dream, the images would simply melt away by the end of the tape, or they would quickly be displaced by the next vision.

Soon, however, the images began to slow down. Gradually, they took on a lifelike quality that was distinctly different from daydreaming. As I think about it now, they seemed to have the power to draw me into the action, so that I could interact with what was happening. I could do this while still remembering that my body was quietly resting in CHEC unit #1 in the Nancy Penn Center.

MEMORY AND THE BODY

Early in the week, I had signed up for a massage. Because our bodies hold memories, working with a therapist can release issues that have been blocked for a long time.

The therapist asked what I wanted to focus on and laid out options for different kinds of massage. Because at the time I believed in “no pain, no gain,” I asked, “Which one hurts the most?”

She replied, “Postural integration.”

In truth, it was only a little uncomfortable, at least physically. The real surprise was when I began to cry, for no apparent reason, while she worked deeply into the hip I had fractured in the fall from the roof. I suddenly began feeling sad about my father.

The truth was, I had never really processed the shock of my dad's death. He had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for twelve years.

Six months before he died, when I was still in Muncie, I visited my parents in Arizona to see how things were going. It was clear that caring for Dad was becoming more than Mom could handle. He was agitated all the time, wanting to know what he should be doing. The only peace came when he would finally go to sleep. But even then, he could wake up in the middle of the night, shouting out our names, calling for help. The nights became a maddening procession of catnaps and sleeplessness. How has Mom been able to do this alone for eleven and a half years? I wondered to myself

Finally, we decided he had to go into a nursing home. Taking Dad there was the blackest day of my life. Feelings of betrayal swirled like a tornado through my mind. Watching him thrash and struggle in his new and confusing environment was like watching a caught fish flopping around in the bottom of a boat.

I tried desperately to think of another way. Maybe I could bring him home with me. Maybe I could add on another room. Maybe…Maybe…Maybe…Finally, the orderly looked at me and said kindly, “It's OK. Let it go. You've done everything you can.”

Six months later, I would be standing at my father's bedside watching him breathe his last breath. Once we moved him there, his deterioration was shocking. It was hard to escape the notion that our decision to place him there had ultimately killed him.

A PARTING REQUEST

On the night of his death, I stood over his bed, watching his breaths grow ever more shallow and far apart. As my eyes drifted to his uncovered legs, I was surprised to see they weren't the legs of an old man at all. They were muscled and firm. What's more, they looked a lot like mine. His hands too were my hands; his arms, so similar to mine that I did a double take.

Suddenly the space between us collapsed. With a shudder, I wondered for a split second which one of us was in the bed. What is the dividing line between parent and child?

The ancient Hebrews didn't believe in life after death in the way we've come to see it. If a person were to survive physical death, it would be through his or her offspring. The ancestor was literally brought to life each time a descendant spoke the ancestor's name. Musing over the connection between my father and me, I couldn't help but wonder if the Hebrews didn't have a deeper understanding of death than we do.

Having read the literature on near-death, I was convinced that Dad would be going into a world of great wonder. I leaned in close and began to tell him what he might see. Finally, I whispered, “When you get there, will you promise to come back and let me know what it's like?”

He opened his eyes for just a moment, glanced in my direction, and nodded in the affirmative. He then drifted into unconsciousness. Those were the last words I spoke to my father.

After he died, I'd gone through the usual stages of grief—surprised at odd moments when the line of a song or a snippet of memory would dig an aching hole in my belly. Occasionally, I would let loose in a torrent of tears. Eventually, time had covered over the sharpness of the pain, and my grief lay in the past.

Now, as my massage session continued, I was caught up once again in feelings that had been long buried. “Ah! So it's still there! And it still hurts!”

Apparently, I was getting my money's worth from the massage session. I had been presented with sufficient pain.

A MASSAGE AND A DEAD MAN

Back in my CHEC unit for the next tape and once again in Focus 10, images flowed past me, many of them having to do with eating. In the Old Testament, eating was often associated with the idea of knowing. To ingest food is very much like incorporating experience. It's only when we take something in experientially that we truly understand it. It then becomes a part of our being.

Suddenly the scene of my previous massage came into view. Only this time, I was watching it from an upper corner in the room. I could see my body and the therapist working on me. But to my amazement, there were other hands working on me at the same time. In fact, there was a whole circle of figures gathered around me.

Who they were, I couldn't really tell. There was only one person I could make out clearly, and even then, I could only see his torso and arms, not his face. His chest was hairy and strangely familiar. It was the same chest that had swung me back and forth through the waters of Lake Erie as a child, laughing, almost dancing on the water's surface. Then—on the count of three—that same chest would launch me or my friends high into the air, as if we were astronauts blasting off, our arms and legs flailing as we screamed in delight just before splashing down.

It was the same chest that I remember, as if it were yesterday, hanging on to the edge of our ski boat, after diving for a swim in the cool waters. The sunlight would glisten off his balding, sunburned head as he swam out to teach yet another of his children to get up on one ski.

When I saw that chest, I knew that my father had kept his promise to come back. There were no words; there was no acknowledgment of recognition. He was just there working.

To say that my father's presence was disconcerting is an understatement. Now that I was embarking on one of the most wondrous adventures of my life, I wasn't at all sure I wanted to invite him along for the ride. This was my time, not his.

THE VISE OF ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE

I felt lingering hurts and resentments from earlier years with my father. There was the time when Jacquie and I were preparing to leave for seminary and were trying desperately to finish the house we had begun building. Even at that time, early in his journey with Alzheimer's disease, Dad was having a great deal of trouble staying on track. He wanted to help with the house, so I'd give him simple things to do—things that he couldn't screw up too badly.

At one point, I wanted to cut a hole in an overhang for a light. Dad wanted to cut the hole, so I went over it with him several times, to be sure that he understood where to cut it. Then I walked away for a moment, and when I returned, he was cutting random holes all over the brand new plywood. Whole sheets were ruined.

I was furious. I wanted to scream and curse him. Just as he would've done when I was a child, I wanted to shout, “I STOOD HERE—NOT FIVE MINUTES AGO—AND TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THE VERY THING YOU'RE DOING! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?”

It all bubbled up—all the times he had screamed at me for making a mistake. All the times he had spanked me for “my own good” as a child. Seething with a white-hot rage, I prepared to say things I would regret for the rest of my life.

But there was another emotion—just as strong as my anger—that kept me from saying them. There, standing before me, was not the able man I once knew, but some shadow figure, staring back at me, haunted and confused. If I lost it in a rage, whom would I be angry with? Alzheimer's disease had stripped him of so much that there was nothing left. I knew, deep down, it wasn't his fault.

And so I bit down hard. With every muscle tensed to the breaking point, I turned and walked away.

And yet at other times, he was able to express a tenderness that was unbelievably compassionate. Like the evening I announced to my parents that I was taking my family and going to seminary

We had been living together with them on a farm we mutually owned. It had been my mother's dream that she would spend her later years surrounded by children and grandchildren. Our going to seminary meant that we'd be leaving the farm and moving away. The shattering of her dream was more than she could bear. She left the room, sobbing.

My father and I sat at the kitchen table in silence. We could hear Mom's muffled cries coming from the bedroom. Slowly, he reached over to my hand and cupped it in his.

Gently he said, “She'll be OK. Give her time. It's an honorable thing you're doing.” It was the closest I had ever come to receiving a blessing.

When I finally graduated from seminary, I was ordained in my new church in Muncie. My parents came from Pennsylvania for the occasion. When the service was over, he came up to me. There were no words between us. He just looked into my eyes, took me into a hug, and sobbed on my shoulder. We stood there for the longest time, holding one another. In that moment, I knew that the man I had wanted to please all my life was finally intensely proud of me. No one could have given me a greater gift.

When I realized, after the vision during my massage, that Dad was still involved in my life in some unseen way, even after he had died, all of my conflicting emotions surged to the surface. Suddenly, I was thrown back into a turmoil that I had earnestly wanted to leave behind. I had come to The Monroe Institute to explore heavenly realms—not be locked into the hopeless morass of emotions connected to my father.

WELCOMING ON THE OTHER SIDE

It wasn't long, however, before there was a new twist. Soon we were introduced to Focus 12. This is the state of expanded awareness in which you can perceive beyond the limits of the five senses. As so often happens when you move into different states of awareness, the images can be very fleeting.

It's like running along a roadside. There's a hidden world of insects, vegetation, and animals right at your feet, yet you can see it only if you stop and intentionally look.

One day I was, more or less, jogging along in Focus 12 when suddenly I saw beings of light. They barely made an impression on me at first. But something inside me called out, “Wait! Weren't those beings of light? That's not something you see every day. Let's stop and have a look.” They were working with someone who had just died and was beginning the journey into the afterlife. Having read Robert Monroe's books, I was familiar with the concept of rescue-and-retrieval work.

In some of his forays out of his body, Monroe occasionally would encounter people who had recently, or even long ago, expired. Some of these “newgoners” weren't aware they had passed away and, so, were locked into make-believe worlds that mimicked the physical world in which they had lived. Sometimes it was very difficult to convince them of their own demise. If it could be accomplished, then Robert would lead them toward new afterlife destinations. Over time, he came to understand that he had been doing this kind of work for a long time in his sleep, though he hadn't been conscious of it.

Having read about this far-fetched idea in advance, I wasn't startled to see beings of light engaged in the same kind of work. They motioned for me to come over. When their circle parted, I saw a man who was obviously stressed so much by the journey that he was barely conscious. His body sagged under its own weight like a wet dishrag. There didn't seem to be an ounce of energy left in him, and he could barely hold up his head. He was far too weak even to speak. His skin was ashen.

Then I looked at his face. I could barely believe my eyes. It was my father, who had died six years before.

TIME WARP

I knew instinctively what I had to do. I scooped his frail body up into my arms and began walking with him. Speaking words of assurance, I explained to him that he had just come over from dying and that he was entering into a wonderful new environment. There were many here to help him in his transition, and they would bring him to a place of healing and refreshment.

As I spoke, he nodded weakly, still unable to say anything. After a while, the beings of light came back to me. They said, “We can take him now. His relatives are coming to meet him. They will take him to the next place. You have done a great service.”

It didn't seem like such a great service to me. It had just seemed natural, even though I wasn't aware of ever having done anything remotely like it before.

Then it hit me. Years before, I had been at my father's bedside, coaching him into the next world. In the intervening years, I had wondered, with regret, if I weren't somehow to blame for his death by putting him in the nursing home. Now, as if to heal impossible wounds, I found myself on the far side of death, welcoming him into the very place I had told him about on his dying day.

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS

The images of eating that kept recurring as I listened to the first few tapes began to take on a new depth of meaning. Eating is about the knowledge that comes from personal experience. But even more, it's about an intimate communion that happens when we're sitting at a table with those we love.

Jesus often spoke of the kingdom of heaven as a great banquet that would gather together those spread all over the world. Could it be that this gathering reaches even beyond the bounds of death? Is the veil separating us from the deceased so ethereal that it has no power other than what we give to it?

In the Presbyterian tradition, we have a wonderful celebration that bears witness to this idea. It's called All Saints’ Day. During this service, we call out the names of loved ones who have recently died. It's a ceremony of remembrance. It's a way of bringing them back to life for a time.

We also share communion. But on this day, the emphasis is on the gathering of the “church above with the church below.” It's recognition that those who have passed on to another life are still very much with us, and we're nourished in countless ways by their presence.

When I was working with Ron Naylor in the Muncie church, we would sit behind the communion table together. During the All Saints’ service, he would often lean over to me and whisper, “I can feel Jennifer here.” He would then name other people who had recently died whose presence he sensed.

During those first days at The Monroe Institute, as I held my newly deceased father in my arms, six years after his death, and helped to birth him into a new world, for the first time, I began to sense how vast is this table, this banquet, of the kingdom of heaven.

If the workshop had ended there, I would have been satisfied. Little did I know that things would get “curiouser and curiouser” still.