those frequencies on which it manifests. We live in the dimensions of familiar space and time, hemmed in by the peculiar limitations of our sensory organs and by our perceptual scaling within the spectrum from subatomic quantum up through the entire universe. Those dimensions, while they have many things going for them, also shut us out from the other dimensions that exist as well.
The ancient Greeks discovered all of this long ago, and I was only discovering for myself what they’d already hit upon: Like understands like. The universe is so constructed that to truly understand any part of its many dimensions and levels,
The universe has no beginning or end, and God is entirely present within every particle of it. Much—in fact, most—of what people have had to say about God and the higher spiritual worlds has involved bringing them down to our level, rather than elevating our perceptions up to theirs. We taint, with our insufficient descriptions, their truly awesome nature.
But though it never began and will never end, the universe does have punctuation marks, the purpose of which is to bring beings into existence and allow them to participate in the glory of God. The Big Bang that created our universe was one of these creative “punctuation marks.” Om’s view was from outside, encompassing all of Om’s Creation and beyond even my higher-dimensional field of view. Here, to see was to know. There was no distinction between experiencing something and my understanding it.
“I was blind, but now I see,” now took on a new meaning as I understood just how blind to the full nature of the spiritual universe we are on earth—especially people like I had been, who had believed that matter was the core reality, and that all else—thought, consciousness, ideas, emotions, spirit—were simply productions of it.
This revelation inspired me greatly, because it allowed me to see the staggering heights of communion and understanding that lie ahead for us all, when each of us leaves the limitations of our physical body and brain behind.
Humor. Irony. Pathos. I had always thought these were qualities we humans developed to cope with this so often painful and unfair world. And they are. But in addition to being consolations, these qualities are
Another aspect of the good news is that you don’t have to almost die to glimpse behind the veil—but you must do the work. Learning about that realm from books and presentations is a start—but at the end of the day, we each have to go deep into our own consciousness, through prayer or meditation, to access these truths.
Meditation comes in many different forms. The most useful for me since my coma has been that developed by Robert A. Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. Their freedom from any dogmatic philosophy offers a distinct advantage. The only dogma associated with Monroe’s system of meditative exercises is:
Robert Monroe was a successful radio program producer in the 1950s in New York. In the process of investigating the use of audio recordings as a sleep-learning technique, he began to have out-of-body experiences. His detailed research over more than four decades has resulted in a powerful system to enhance deep conscious exploration based on an audio technology he developed known as “Hemi-Sync.”
Hemi-Sync can heighten selective awareness and performance through creation of a relaxed state. Hemi-Sync offers much more than this, however—enhanced states of consciousness allow access to alternate perceptual modes, including deep meditation and mystical states. Hemi-Sync involves the physics of resonant entrainment of brain waves, their relationship to the perceptual and behavioral psychology of consciousness, and to the fundamental physiology of the brain-mind and consciousness.
Hemi-Sync uses specific patterns of stereo sound waves (of slightly different frequencies in each ear) to induce synchronized brain wave activity. These “binaural beats” are generated at a frequency that is the arithmetic difference between the two signal frequencies. By using an ancient but highly accurate timing system in the brainstem that normally enables localization of sound sources in the horizontal plane around the head, these binaural beats can entrain the adjacent Reticular Activating System, which provides steady timing signals to the thalamus and cortex enabling consciousness. These signals generate brain wave synchrony in the range of 1 to 25 hertz (Hz, or cycles per second), including the crucial region below the normal threshold for human hearing (20 Hz). This lowest range is associated with brain waves in the delta (< 4 Hz, normally found in deep dreamless sleep), theta (4 to 7 Hz, seen in deep meditation and relaxation, and in non-REM sleep), and alpha ranges (7 to 13 Hz, characteristic of REM or dream sleep, drowsiness at the borders of sleep, and awakened relaxation).
In my journey of understanding after my coma, Hemi-Sync potentially offered a means of inactivating the filtering function of the physical brain by globally synchronizing my neocortical electrical activity, just as my meningitis might have done, to liberate my out-of-body consciousness. I believe Hemi-Sync has enabled me to return to a realm similar to that which I visited deep in coma, but without having to be deathly ill. But just as in my dreams of flying as a child, this is very much a process of
To use the word
Just as my awareness was both individual yet at the same time completely unified with the universe, so also did the boundaries of what I experienced as my “self” at times contract, and at other times expand to include all that exists throughout eternity. The blurring of the boundary between my awareness and the realm around me went so far at times that I
An analogy I often use to demonstrate my consciousness at that deepest level is that of a hen’s egg. While in the Core, even when I became one with the Orb of light and the entire higher-dimensional universe throughout all eternity, and was intimately one with God, I sensed strongly that the creative, primordial (prime mover) aspect of God was the shell around the egg’s contents, intimately associated throughout (as our consciousness is a direct extension of the Divine), yet forever beyond the capability of absolute identification with the consciousness of the created. Even as my consciousness became identical with all and eternity, I sensed that I could not become entirely one with the creative, originating driver of all that is. At the heart of the most infinite oneness, there was still that duality. It is possible that such apparent duality is simply the result of trying to bring such awareness back into this realm.
I never heard Om’s voice directly, nor saw Om’s face. It was as if Om spoke to me through thoughts that were like wave-walls rolling through me, rocking everything around me and showing that there is a deeper fabric of existence—a fabric that all of us are always part of, but which we’re generally not conscious of.
So I was communicating directly with God? Absolutely. Expressed that way, it sounds grandiose. But when it was happening, it didn’t feel that way. Instead, I felt like I was doing what every soul is able to do when they leave their bodies, and what we can all do right now through various methods of prayer or deep meditation. Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it’s the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal—and loving us without conditions. We are connected as One through our divine link with God.
34. A Final Dilemma
I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be.
