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>>Life is a journey.

We are born.

Our lives are lived.

Then we die.

No one can live forever.

Or can they?

The goal of this film is to try to understand

the basic fundamental questions,what happens when we die?

What is the purpose of life?

As we set out to find the answers,

we began to see that we wereon a journey, an adventure.

Like any journey, wediscovered we were on a path.

To help answer these questions, we

set out to talk to 12 expertsin the field of energy

and consciousness.

>>Do I, this thing I know as me right now,

survive physical death?

Meaning all of my memories,all of my experiences,

all of my friends, allof the relationships I've

built, the last person I makelove to, will all of that

go with me when I leave?

And so there's two things there.

Either it's lights out.

Or the thing I know as me continues.

And I don't think the answerlies in just two things.

>>I use an analogy of a trainride where all of humanity,

6 and 1/2 billion of us, are on this train.

And we're all heading tothis unknown destination.

And we're on this 75 year journey.

And think how insane this is.

We're all collectively onthis journey for 75 years.

And we don't have a clue where we're going.

I mean, would that be acceptablein any aspect of your life now?

Would you leave the houseand not have a destination?

I mean, we wouldn't acceptthat on a day-to-day basis.

But yet we're accepting thatfor our entire life journey.

>>I have a feeling that it's like taking off

old clothes that don't work anymore,

clothes that don't fit you any longer.

You just let go of the body.

And what's left is the realyou, your spirit, your soul.

[music playing]

>>The place where I would like to begin

was when I was seven years old.

And my father died.

He had a massive heart attack.

And he never came home.

And so that was when my spiritual journey

began, when I was seven.

And that's at least 42 years ago.

I wanted to know where he was.

Why did he leave?

And what happened?

So I'd ask a lot ofquestions, lot of questions,

to my grandmother, who was very spiritual.

She would say to me, don'task so many questions.

You're going to make yourself crazy.

But I would ask questions quietly.

I never felt that my father was gone.

Everyone else cried except for myself.

Everyone was crying.

I felt like he was still there.

And he was.

>>My first experience in really being

able to see where a soul maygo was when my mother died.

My mother and I always hadthis psychic connection

even though she lived in Florida.

And I was up here.

She would play solitaire at 4:00 in the morning.

And I'd be doing my cards.

We just had this connection.

And right before she becamereally ill, I kind of knew it.

She didn't ever want to know that you

could know these things.

It was too superstitious for her.

But when she passed, I wasn't with her.

She was in the South.

She was in the South having her funeral.

And then she was coming up for another funeral.

The night that they burned her ashes,

I didn't know it at the time, but I dreamt.

And I saw her.

And she was in her apartment in Florida.

And she was looking in her apartment.

She went all the way in the stairs

where you do your laundry,walked around, walked around.

And then I saw this light.

And the light overtook all of me.

And it was the most sweet feeling

I've ever felt in my life,of sweet, sweet love.

And I didn't know what that was.

It was amazing to me.

So after that time, I startedreading, started reading

Kubler-Ross, and, again,trying to put things together

to say what just happened.

And that was my first experiencerealizing that when you die,

there's this beautiful thing that

happens, which I didn't know.

She taught me that.

She showed me that.

And that was her gift to me.

>>It's been my experiencethat before we transition,

our guides and spirit guides andwhatever else we believe exist

on the other side begins our preparation.

When I work with people or I'm around people,

I see very clearly awhite light around people

before they're ready to transition.

It's happened to meseveral times in my life.

I saw it around my grandfather before he passed away.

And when I had a conversationwith him, he knew what it was.

And he knew it was his time to go.

And it surprised him that I could see it.

And I didn't know what it was at that time.

That was the first time thatthat had happened specifically

so close to somebody transitioning.

It was very, very clear, the white light

that was around him.

And he died five days later,passed away five days later.

I've seen it a handful of times since.

It's mostly around peoplewho are terminally ill

or are just elderly.

I don't see it around peoplebefore something tragic happens

to them.

But I do see it around people who

are at the end of their life spans.

>>Once I went into the intensive care unit

and I worked more deeply in the psychic world,

I was able to be around people who were dying

and see where they went.

And it's very interesting.

Because during this period of time,

I was pretty much with everyone who died.

I got assigned to them.

And if I wasn't assigned tothem, the head nurse would say,

would you go help Mary in room nine?

And that person was about to die.

So I was meant to do this for awhile.

This one person that died,which was really quite amazing,

was a composer.

And it was change of shiftsso the night shift and day

shift were there.

And we happened to bewith him as he was dying.

And they were used to me by that time.

And I said, OK, everybody,hold hands around him.

And I heard his soul.

And he became the music thathe played his whole life.

It was amazing.

He became the music.

That's who he was in his most unified self.

>>When I am sleeping, often souls come to me.

The soul of my father-in-law,who passed on some years ago,

came to me in a dream aboutsix months after he passed.

And it was a wonderful experience.

Because I missed him terribly,loved the man dearly.

And he came to tell me that heunderstood and that he loved me

and that he was going on his way.

Often that happens to me where I get

to confer with someone who is no longer here.

And they have something to tell me.

And it's so wonderful to get those messages.

>>When my father, who I was very close with,

a wonderful, wonderful being, had passed away,

and this is around the time where

I was kind of gettingguided, pushed, and shoved

to move away from anesthesiaand keep going on my journey.

And I was still working.

And I was still trying tomove through this life.

And I didn't know what was going to happen.

And I was in a great dealof pain and self-hate,

huge self-hatred, felt completely worthless.

It was very hard.

And I finally hit whatyou would call, I suppose,

a dark night of the soul.

Something just spoke through me.

And I set out in my room.

I spoke out and said, God, I need help.

I don't think I'm a bad person.

I don't know.

But I can't take this anymore.

And I need help.

And I was crying and pounding my fists.

And I went to sleep.

And I've dreamt a lot in my life.

And it's always like a movie set,

lots of characters, lots going on.

In this dream, it was like white screen.

And my dad showed up fromstage left, tie, jacket,

looking very dapper and quite alive.

And I looked at him.

And I said, Daddy, you're dead.

I said it very quietly.

Because I didn't want anyone to know.

Because I wanted to hang out with him.

And he said, I know.

And he called me Booper, whichis what he used to call me.

And I was like, no, but you're dead.

He goes, I know.

And we hung out.

And I don't really remember what was said.

I know he held me.

And at the end, I knew it was time to complete.

And I said, so if things getreally, really bad again,

will you help me?

Can you come to me?

And he said, yeah, sure.

And I work up the next day.

And my entire energy and mind was shifted.

And the thing that I was facing,within a day or two, completely

resolved.

>>I did have an experience withmy mother after she passed.

It was a year after she had died.

And I kept gettingguidance to call my message

machine at home.

And I called.

And my mother's voice wason my answering machine.

And she just kept saying my name over.

Well, it was so much out ofmy paradigm at that time,

and it totally shocked me, that I erased it.

And since then, I've learned that there

are people who claim to haveexperiences with contact

of people on the otherside through fax machines,

through computers, through allkinds of technological devices.

And so that kind of opened something up for me.

I went, that was not my imagination.

I don't know what it was.

But I'm just going to hold thatas a little piece to go forward

with.

>>I had, for instance, an experience

of finding myself, movingalong in this other dimension.

And I say moving.

Was I in my body or out of my body?

I don't really know.

And it wasn't significantto me at the time.

But I found myself moving along.

And off to my left, all of a sudden,

there were these beings of light.

And they were gathered around in a circle.

And I almost went right by them.

I was kind of, oh, well, that's something.

You don't see that every day.

So I thought I'd go over and investigate.

And so I peeked over the shoulder

of one of these light people.

And I looked down.

And there was some guy downthere that had obviously

just crossed over from being dead,

from going through the process, and now

was on the other side of something.

I didn't even know where I was.

The closer I looked though, the more

I realized that that person thatwas down there was my father.

Now, my father had died about seven years

before that of Alzheimer's disease.

And he had gone through aprocess of gradual degradation.

He was a brilliant guy.

And it was really tough to watch him

lose so much of his essence, tothe point where he didn't even

recognize us anymore for the most part.

I was with him the night that he died.

And I whispered to him thenight that he was clearly

passing away.

I said to him, Dad, whenyou get to the other side,

will you come back and tell me what it's like?

And it was just one of those moments

of a little bit of clarity.

And he looked at me.

And he nodded.

And so I never would havedreamed that I might actually

be in a position to be welcominghim over to the other side.

But yet here I was.

I was looking at him.

And I instinctivelypicked him up in my arms.

And I started carrying him.

And I was telling him that,Dad, now you've passed over

and that your family'sgoing to come and get you.

And it just seem so natural.

And again, I never wouldhave dreamed that any of this

would be possible.

I couldn't have made it up if I'd tried.

And after awhile, the beings of light came.

And they took him away from me.

And they said that his family is coming.

And he's going to be all right.

And we can care for him now.

And I came out of that experience

so-- there aren't words totalk about something like that.

Because you try to tell somebody about death.

And they weren't there.

And it's just words.

But to me it was soprofound in so many ways.

Because it wrapped up so much emotion

that I had around his Alzheimer's and seeing

him pass.

It opened up the possibilitythat maybe the range

of experience in the physical world

is not so separate from the world beyond

and that maybe we have capacities

of moving between those two worlds in ways

that, unfortunately, we maybe knew at one time.

But we've lost the capacity to do that.

>>My wife has had actuallymany profound out-of-body

experiences.

The day her father died, she was on the couch.

She was exhausted.

Her mother called her and told her.

We're in another state.

And to make a long storyshort, this is about 2 o'clock

in the morning.

And she lays down.

We had just made a flight to go back

to Baltimore to attend the funeral.

She lays down.

The next thing she knows, she has

this spontaneous out-of-body experience.

And she finds herself in herbasement of her mother's house.

And there is her father therewith, of all people, my mother.

And her father, who wasvery sickly, couldn't walk,

was in very bad shape.

He was dying of cancer.

He literally jumped up and clicked his heels,

she said, and was showing herhow vibrant and alive he was.

He was proving to her that,look, don't grieve for me.

I'm feeling great.

And, of course, out-of-body, people

communicate not by words.

They communicate by thought transference.

It's just normal communication.

And, of course, he communicatedhis love for his daughter.

But most importantly, he was making it very clear

that he was doing great.

And he was glad to be where he was.

And my mother and my wife's father

were basically having a party.

For lack of a better word, they were

having a party, a very joyous party.

And so my wife, after that, she immediately

come back and was like, oh my God.

But all the fear-based ideas just were gone.

She was just ecstatic.

It was a confirmation to herthat everything is just not

only good, it's great.

Her concept of death was justso negative, so restrictive.

There's very few positives inour culture attached to death.

And here she learned, I think, a valuable lesson

that it's not a negative event.

It's a very positive event.

It's an uplifting event.

He was free from the painof this physical body.

And he was finally free to enjoy himself.

So to me, I thought it wasquite a remarkable experience.

And I think it must have been a great lesson

that she needed on some level.

>>My uncle had cancer.

And I offered to send him Reiki.

He lived in Poughkeepsie.

And I lived in Saratoga.

I offered to send him Reiki every day.

And we agreed on 8 o'clock in the morning.

8 o'clock in the morning, hesat down in his living room.

I sat down in my Reiki room.

And I sent him Reiki.

He was an engineer.

The stuff didn't particularlymake sense to him.

It was fine.

He liked it.

But he wasn't really sure much was happening.

But he was willing to sit andlet me send him Reiki every day

at 8 o'clock.

So we met at 8 o'clock in the ethers.

And I sent him Reiki.

This started in August.

In November, I sat down to send them Reiki.

For three days in a row, I felt so ecstatic.

I was feeling such euphoria.

I was convinced he was healing.

A few days later, one of my cousins

called to say that they hadjust been to the doctor.

And dad had six months to live.

I was confounded.

But I was so sure some healing had happened.

And then I remembered.

Healing isn't always physical.

So I thought something healed for him.

I don't know what.

Then in January, he was in the hospital.

He was very ill.

And I went to Poughkeepsie.

And I was giving him Reiki inthe ICU, quite late at night.

And he was dosing.

And then he'd wake.

And we'd chat a little bit.

And I felt comfortable to tell him

what I had experienced in November.

During this time when I was feeling

this ecstasy and this euphoria,I heard his wife's laughter.

She had died three years before.

He adored his wife.

And I was hearing her laughter.

And it was so exciting.

And I told him about this.

And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I knew I was soaking up something wonderful.

So even though he said that he didn't

feel Reiki when I sent itto him from a distance,

at that time something changed for him.

And he died.

Healing doesn't mean curing.

Healing can be spiritual.

It can be emotional.

It can be psychological.

I don't know what healed for him.

But something did.

And the gift he gave me was telling me

he knew something good had happened.

His daughter and I liked totalk about our understanding

of metaphysics.

So we would tell him thingsthat we'd been reading

and what we thought mighthappen for him when he passed.

And he listened.

He always was open to listening.

It didn't make sense to him particularly.

He didn't even tell usthat it didn't make sense.

Three days after he died, I sat down

to meditate in my Reiki room.

And I closed my eyes.

And it was as if he wasright there in front of me.

It was very real.

He said, I want to tell you,everything you and Betsy said,

I didn't understand.

It didn't make any sense to me.

But you were right.

And I saw him with his beloved wife.

They were all dressed up likethey were going to a party.

And they were in the prime of their life.

They looked beautiful.

They had their arms aroundeach other's waists.

And they were spinning in a circle

with their heads thrown back.

And it was a picture of utter bliss.

What a gift he gave me.

It was very sweet.

So yes, I believe there islife after death in some form.

Whether it includes bodiesor not, I don't know.

I think I saw their bodies because that's

how I perceived energy.

That was something that I would understand.

So it was given to me in that form.

>>If you can love the memoryof a parent and that helps you

and it gives you solace, then that's beautiful.

But you are not separate from that being.

And you do not require that being in order

to be your true essence and your true self.

>>No one is ever trulyseparate from anyone else.

Isn't that a wonderful thing to know?

We don't lose anybody.

>>According to a Galluppoll, approximately 8 million

Americans claim to have had a near-death experience.

Lindsey Sass, a wife and mother of two children,

is a woman who had a near-deathexperience after she was struck

by lightning on July 19, 1997in Greenwood Lake, New Jersey.

>>Myself, my ex-husband, andmy niece, all three of us,

were struck at the sametime at my son's swim meet.

Luckily, I landed on the grass.

My husband was on the street.

He landed on his head.

He was screaming in pain.

>>And I saw my niece there.

She was flat out.

I thought she was gone.

>>Over the last 30 years, the United States

has averaged 62 reportedlightning fatalities per year.

>>I had had a heart attack.

The pain was incredible thatwas searing across my chest.

And a man had run over to me.

I couldn't move.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't talk.

And he said, you were struck by lightning.

When my senses started to come back,

I said to him, help me up.

He said, no, no, no.

Lay there.

I couldn't move my right arm.

I had some movement in my right leg.

I could move it enough to stand up.

But my right arm, I couldn't move.

The chest was numb.

A lot of it was very intense.

There was a lightning streak,like you see in the sky,

up my right arm where it had entered.

So he lifted me up.

But as a mother would do whenshe sees her children may not

have anything, any love or protection,

your adrenaline starts to pumpas if you could lift a car off

of your child.

There was something very mysterious going on.

There were so many angels.

There were so many, hundreds ofthem that I could comprehend.

And then I went.

And I went into the car with this woman.

And I turned to her.

And I said, it's OK.

The angels are with us.

I found myself in the car.

The paramedics, who were someparents on the swim team,

came up and told me just to rest and relax.

It was very incredible.

After I was struck by lightning, the veil

between the physical worldand the spiritual world

seemed to have disappeared.

>>A near-death experienceis the sensation

of detachment from one's body, the presence

of a tunnel of light, the apparent viewing

of one's own body from on high,and similar manifestations,

experienced by people whose heart and brain

have temporarily ceased to function.

>>The spiritual experienceof the near-death,

in words, because it's so, so profound.

The English language, or thelanguage of the human being,

doesn't have the right vocabulary

to describe it enough.

>>During a near-death experience,

the physical body is temporarily dead.

It's often for less than two or three minutes.

But the heart may stop.

So I just want to make this clear.

Near-death experience involves the termination

of the physical body.

>>When you die, you go into a reality frame

that's not the same as the dream.

It's not the same as really the out-of-body.

You go into this realityframe that was made especially

for people who are justtransitioning from this reality

frame to another, because thesepeople have special needs.

They're very confused.

>>Everything went black.

I felt myself floating out of my body.

I felt this tremendousspace of void, of emptiness,

of total nothingness.

>>So you die.

And suddenly, you're someplace else.

It's like going to sleep in your bed

and waking up in a foreigncountry, in a strange house.

It's that kind of a thing.

So you tend to be a littlestressed and a little confused.

>>As I was floating out, I saw my father,

who died when I was seven.

I recognized his smile, his energy.

I felt I knew it was him.

And he guided me towards the light.

>>And in that reality frame,you may be met by loved ones.

You may have all those things going on.

>>I felt myself floating up and out.

And he was guiding me.

And I saw thousands of lostspirits, thousands of them.

And I felt totally connected tothem, as if they were family.

I felt their loneliness and their lostness.

>>A lost soul is the disembodied spirit

of a dead human who is unableto function in the spirit world

without help.

>>Many of them either had atraumatic death experience,

died in battle or died in an accident

or in a fire or something.

Many of them don't make it to the light.

Or they feel like they haveunfinished business here.

So they can't quite allow themselves

to go beyond where they're stuck.

And sometimes it's a lack ofno one has ever said to them,

there is life after death.

So they don't really look for anything else.

>>I was feeling the peace.

And it was pulling me up.

I was not lost.

I already had my spiritual belief systems

before I was struck by lightning.

>>So if you have a verystrong belief system this way,

that belief system will becomea hook by which they will

manipulate you to get you torelax and let go and go on.

>>There was a conference.

And we discussed what was going on.

And they brought myattention down to my body.

>>You get taken to almost like group sessions

where things are explained to you.

They're trying to tell you something

that makes you feel better,that lets you relax,

that lets you get the idea that now you're

aware in this different reality system.

>>They explained to me, throughenergy and thought form,

that it would be verydifficult on my ex-husband, who

was my husband at thattime-- now my ex-husband--

that it would be very difficultfor him if I didn't go back.

I still felt some resistance.

Because there's no physical pain.

There is no emotional pain.

>>Out there, I call it out there.

We don't feel the physicalbody holding us back.

There's no denseness of the physical body.

>>I saw my body in this contorted position

on the ground under this very large tree,

which attracted the lightning, and still

was resisting going back into my body.

And then they brought my attention again.

And we talked, as I rememberit through thought forms,

about my children, my three-year-old,

who was in the car alone,and my 11-year-old,

who was on the dock.

So I came back.

I saw a large vortex, a tunnel coming down.

And I felt this tug, like there was

a silver cord to my stomach.

Once I was in that energyfield, I remember thinking,

how fast I am moving through this.

There was no going back.

So it's still difficultfor me to talk about this.

Because I was home.

That was home.

And the Earth is a place, I havefound, that we come to visit.

>>So it really is whatever is inyour mind, your state of mind,

at the point of leaving your body is really

going to determine what happens next for you.

But there is no death really.

I mean, the soul is an eternal thing.

>>Once you move from what wemight call believing that,

because I read it in a book orI heard an inspirational speaker

one time or I went to church every day,

once you go from believingthat to knowing that,

your fear of loss of thephysical body simply vanishes.

>>This body sitting hereis not all there is to me.

I do have a mental body.

It's where all the thoughts come in.

I have an emotional bodywhere all the feelings exist.

I have a physical body.

I also have extensionsof myself in other places

and other planes.

We are much more than we appear to be.

That I know for sure.

>>Once you answer the question for yourself,

again, I am more than my physical body

and not say, well, what is it then?

Are you this?

Are you this?

Just experience foryourself that very notion,

I am more than my physical body.

Because at a core, heart level, a knowing level,

I am more than this.

The loss of this means nothing.

>>Lindsey's near-deathexperience showed us we are

more than our physical bodies,which may lead one to believe

that consciousness liveson and cannot be destroyed.

This gives hope that there is something more

after we leave the physical body.

Call it spirit.

Call it soul.

Call it consciousness or energy.

It will continue forever.

>>Everything is made up ofenergy, absolutely everything.

>>When we talk about life after death,

what we're really talking about is energy.

We're talking about the energy that we

are that comes into consciousness

and forms itself into a being in order to heal.

>>The word "energy" comes up asa grand explanation in healing,

in an explanation of the universe.

>>Yes, this is very slow moving molecules.

None of this is solid.

>>So my experience of my handas solid, it isn't really.

It's just my experience of my hand.

And that's a grand understanding and a way

in which we can explain itto ourselves in our heads.

>>Physical form breaks down to energy.

We're all energy at a basic level.

So energy doesn't die.

It just simply changes form.

>>People would say, well,that's life after death.

Well, it's not so much life after death.

It's just life continuing.

It was just conscious to begin with.

It's still consciousness afterwards.

The death thing is just a point of view.

It's just looking at aparticular data set and rule

set.

So the consciousness doesn't really

die and get reborn or anything.

The consciousness is continuous.

It just continues on.

It's just now in a different reality frame.

So you just switch frames.

>>If it's lights out, so what?

It's not like you'regoing to be there worrying

that it's lights out.

See?

I told you it's all dark.

There's nothing here.

Because if you're therethinking about that, well then,

you're still there thinking about that.

>>When you let go of this character

that you're playing in this virtual reality

is that your awareness returnsto a larger reality that's

not as constrained as this one.

>>My kids used to ask me, Daddy,what is it like when you die?

I mean that, obviously, is something

that comes up with your childrenwhen they're growing up.

And my answer to them was, imagine

you're dreaming at night.

And you have a dream lifeabout you're doing this.

You're running.

And you're playing and so forth and so on.

And then when you wake uphere in the morning, what

happened to that person in the dream?

Do you remember everything that went on?

If time passes, do you even remember

what the dream was about?

And they would say, no.

Or I remember I was and uh-- [sighs].

Gee, I can't remember now.

It was really a neat dream.

But I just can't quite remember it.

And I said, well, that's whatdying is going to be like.

>>All the details, they justkind of melt away like a dream.

So when you wake up on that other side,

this lifetime, this experience packet,

starts to fade like a dream.

Now, it's fairly clear at first.

But the further you get awayfrom it, the dreamier it gets.

And it kind of fades away.

>>But for the most part, you'll become

involved in wherever you are.

Just like when you wake up at night

from your nighttimedreams, you wake up here.

And those things just go away.

And you're into your day.

And that occupies who and what you are.

>>When you die, people think, oh, I'll

go meet up with Uncle Fred.

And he and I were buddies.

Well, Uncle Fred's moved on.

After Uncle Fred's been gone fora pretty short period of time,

all of the details of this life just go away.

He's not sitting around piningover things that happened here.

People have a hard time.

They think, well, my children,my wife, my lover, we

want to go on forever.

Well, it's not like that.

You can have those memories.

They're memories.

They're still there.

It's in your data.

It's not like it's lost.

>>And you might remember afew really important things

that went on here.

>>The big picture stuff youdid, the things you did right,

and the things you didwrong, that stuff sticks out.

Because that's stuff to workon or to get lessons from.

>>But we're standing inside the system

that we're trying to explain.

So I'm not so sure that we aren't

trapped by our own limited observations.

How can we get outside ofthis system to explain it?

That's one of the issues that many people

have with the quantummechanical explanation of things

is because we're inside the system

trying to explain thesystem of which we are part.

We, as scientists, cannot beseparate from the experiment

itself.

>>Most people have had a person in their life

die or know someone who is grieving

the loss of a loved one.

So how do we go on after someone dies?

Why does it have to happen?

Is our death preplanned before we're born?

Is there a life plan?

Maybe death is not an accident or tragedy

but happens specifically for certain reasons.

>>The old saying is, oh, someone died?

There's someone coming in.

I'm just in awe of how the universe is

able to hold us and createand destroy and create

and destroy and hold thatwith love the whole time.

>>In 2005, there were 2,448,000deaths in the United States.

In that same year, there were 4,140,000 births

in the United States.

>>I don't like the word "death."

I don't believe it exists really.

It's been my experience,too, that death is final.

And I don't think anything is final.

Nothing in nature is final.

It just keeps transitioninginto some other form.

>>But it's a continuation,like the physical world,

in many ways, for most people.

It depends on the evolution of the person

and how, let's just say, attached

they are to their old form-based image.

>>It's a sad thing to lose somebody.

It's emotional.

It's a tragic thing.

But you have to kind of step back eventually,

when there's been enough healing done,

and think about the thingsthat it has taught you.

There is always a lesson in something, always.

It's just about digging deep enough to find it.

Last year, I was diagnosedwith severe blood clots.

And they went to my lungs.

And I was admitted into theICU for a period of time.

And it was one of the worst cases

the doctors had seen in a long time.

And I was told that I basicallywasn't going to make it.

The only thing I had going for me was my age.

So when I sat there and they said to me,

you have 48 hours, 48 or 72 hours.

That's going to be it.

You're either going to make it.

Or you're not.

It was very black and white.

It was a very interesting andlife-changing point for me.

Here I am in the ICU with thetubes and things attached.

And family coming in andcrying and just very emotional

about it.

But I realized that, at that particular moment,

I absolutely had to stay in the present moment.

If I went out of the presentmoment into the future,

worrying about my children'sfuture without me there,

my vibration would lower.

And I would get worse.

My vitals would change.

If I went into the past, which I did have to do.

I'll be honest with you.

I did have to go into the past.

Because I did have to come to terms

with my experiences oflife up until that point.

And I made a definite decision at that point

that I was going to dieconsciously, if it was my time.

I was kind of having theseconversations with spirit

at that time where I hadjust been to Egypt six months

before that.

And it had become very clear to me

that part of my life destiny,my life plan so to speak,

was to bring groups of people back

to experience these places around the world.

And so why now, six months later,

spirit, are you asking me to leave?

It didn't make any sense to me.

But at that particular moment what

was most evident at that point,if it were my time to go,

that it was the experiencesthat I remembered.

It wasn't who I've studied.

It wasn't my accomplishments.

It wasn't what I had done material-wise.

It was what had I done on a level

where I was present in my relationships?

It was about, who have I loved?

Who have I experienced life with?

You shed things that you have probably

held on to your entire life when you're

faced with your own death.

I made a promise and a pactwith spirit at that time

that, OK, I'm going to stay.

I was very determined.

And I'm going to stay.

And I'm going to do what I have to do here.

And that's important for everybody,

whether you're faced with death or not.

You wake up every day.

You go to work.

You pay your bills.

You come home.

You watch TV.

You go to sleep.

Is that what you're here for?

Is that what your destiny is?

I don't think so.

I think every single humanbeing on the face of this earth

has a plan, has a purpose.

And it's divine.

When we lose somebody tragically,

it's really hard to understandhow that would be a lesson

and how that would be a good thing.

It's not necessarily thatthe event itself is good.

But the lessons that it takes us through,

we can't experiencenecessarily any other way.

>>I think illnesses can bean opportunity for change,

an opportunity for learning.

They could be challenges that sometimes

occur because we haven't listened

to the less extreme signalsthat have given us opportunities

for learning the same things.

>>Many times children whocome into this world who

die of cancer in their childhood,

they often were souls thatvolunteered for that so

that the people around themwould learn compassion,

would learn to gettogether for a common good.

>>Picking a particular set of parents

is maybe more complex than wecan comprehend with the brains

we have right here.

But I would say that that's probably

part of that, of that makingthose decisions about who

you're born to and why you're born that way

and what kind ofexperiences you're having.

>>I think that many times within a family,

when there is a tragic death, there

is something to be learnedby the other family members.

They learn to value each other more.

They learn things about compassion.

They learn things about forgiveness

that they couldn't learn any other way.

It's the hard lessons that we often learn.

We learn best by stumbling and falling.

We learn best by the painful things

that we go through, not by thesunny days and the flowers.

>>Maybe there is a lesson ineverything we experience here.

The experiences may be our opportunity to grow,

which sometimes means death.

Death may be the best teacher in our life.

The idea of soulcontracts may be a new way

to look at death as ourally rather than our enemy.

>>I read a book years ago byNeale Donald Walsch called

"The Little Soul and the Sun."

And it's about a little soulthat's up in heaven with God

and wants to come to Earth and wants

to experience forgiveness.

And another little soul says, I love

you enough to go to Earth with you

and give you this experience.

So I will have to take ondarkness and heaviness.

And I will not remember who I am.

But I will give you something to forgive.

In that instant, I healed.

I recognized the truth inthat, that the people who

may be the most difficult in my life

have been willing to take on this heaviness

so that I can learn.

What a gift.

>>Groups of souls, soulfamilies so to speak-- they

call them monads-- often incarnate in groups

to help each other.

They sit down.

And they plan out the lifethat they need this next time.

Let's say they need to learn compassion.

So their fellow souls in their soul family

say, you know what, I'llvolunteer to be your Mom.

Because I have to learnsomething about mothering.

And another one says, I'll volunteer

to be your best friend.

And I'll betray you.

They volunteer to do various roles

in this play of this next lifethat you're going to live.

They're all going to get something

from it, some learning.

And so are you.

>>Certain soul group members take

on that role of going through certain things.

Because remember, when you transition,

your energy, regardless of how it happened,

you go back to your source.

And you start again.

And the ones that are left behind

are the ones processing that lesson, perhaps

to a bit more extreme.

>>We learn by not onlylearning through our actions.

We learn by being.

We learn by becoming thatwhich we wish to learn.

And it sounds bizarre.

But it's so effective.

That's the only way you know something

is to experience it, to be it.

>>And all of thosevarious roles that we play

teach us something about the human experience,

about the soul experience.

And we kind of have to play all those roles

to reach the point of enlightenment.

>>I think our soul isreveling in the opportunity

to try on different suits of clothes, if you will,

different bodies, different experiences.

And it's all in itsjourney back to wholeness,

back to being complete.

>>We have to know whatit's like to be a murderer,

to be murdered, to be hated, tobe loved, to be compassionate.

A complete and totalawareness that we're all one,

that there is no separation, that you

can love the poor soul that's in the gutter,

the drunk, that you can love the murderer.

You can love every onejust as if they were you.

That, to me, is theultimate in enlightenment.

>>So we make the soul contract as a spirit.

Then, we come in through the act of conception.

We dream our life in the womb.

And when we come out into thephysical plane, we manifest it.

>>On average, 3,000 peoplecommit suicide every day,

the global mortality rate ofone completed suicide every 30

seconds.

One of the most perplexing anddifficult deaths to deal with

is death by suicide.

It is difficult for those left behind

to put the pieces together, tofigure out why this happened.

>>Suicide's a bad idea becauseyou're leaving opportunity

behind.

You don't pass go.

You don't collect $200.

You just start over.

And that's a waste of your time and effort.

It's a very traumatic way to go.

When you go to suicide, you're usually

a very traumatized, self-focused.

Because before you get to that point,

you have to be veryself-focused to get there.

Now, I'm not talking about somebody

who's about to die with aterrible, painful disease.

And they want to end it a month early

because it's very expensive.

And it's just torture for them.

Or they're drugged up.

That's different.

I'm talking about asuicide where somebody just

gets fed up with life or whatever.

And they want to end it all.

Very bad idea.

You're so traumatized.

You're so self-focusedwhen you get to that point

that it makes yourtransition very difficult.

It damages your psyche, your consciousness

to some degree in that it makes it easier

for you to do that again the next time.

>>So it can get into a cycle where

people get to a toughspot, suicide's the answer

because they've done that two or three times

already in various lifetimes.

So it's not a trend youwant to start to begin with.

Secondly, it wastes the time you have here.

You've already spent 20 or 30years, or at least 15 or 16

years, getting through the stuff phase.

>>It takes you probably 30 or40 years to get to the point

that you've worked through all the stuff

that you have to work throughto where you really start asking

big picture questions, towhere the quality of your being

and your life start tomake a difference to you.

When you're 25 years old, you don't

think about the quality of your being.

You think about the weekendand where you're going to go

and the fun you're going tohave and your relationships.

And you're so filled withliving this physical life

that the bigger dimensions to itgenerally aren't much in focus.

So you have to go throughmaybe 30, sometimes 40, years

before you really start to care about,

what's the significance of me?

What am I doing here?

Why am I turning this crank?

What's the bigger purpose?

And those questions start to bubble up.

Well, that's not the time to leave.

That's just the time to get to work.

>>Each suicide intimately affects

at least six other people.

>>We grow through drama.

Call it good, bad, or indifferent.

We create drama for training,for learning purposes.

It's even the purpose for wars.

People learn through drama, through conflict.

That's just the state of consciousness we're in.

>>And the Earth is a place, I have found,

that we come to visit.

No one stays here.

No matter how attached a person is,

this is a school wherewe come to learn lessons.

>>It's a decision to come into the physical plane.

It really is a decision to come here.

This is a schoolhouse.

We're here to learn something.

We're here to evolve our spiritthrough certain experiences,

through certain lessons that we've learned.

>>There's something that'sbuilt into this world that

is kind of unique, I think, in many ways.

We live in a world of contrasts, meaning

there's dark and light, maleand female, and big and little,

up and down.

And those contrasts, in someways, can be sort of painful.

Because some of that feels good.

And some of it doesn't.

But I think all of that works together

in a way that sort of crafts oursoul in ways that we might not

be able to do in differenttypes of environments.

>>You have to grow up.

You have to lower the entryof your consciousness.

You have to evolve.

If you're here and untilyou evolve to the next step,

you're still here.

And until you evolve to thenext step, you're still here.

So just dying doesn't changea whole lot other than

put you in a different reality.

Let you plan the next thing.

Then you go on.

So it's not really the big, oh, after I die,

I'm going to go meet Gabrieland do this and do that.

And you have all of these expectations.

And I'll know everything.

All the secrets will be revealed to me.

It isn't like that.

There's no free lunch.

You don't grow up just because you want to,

just because you think it would be nice

or just because you've switched reality frames.

>>Some say, before enlightenment,

chop wood, carry water.

After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

Well, you do your job.

You live your life.

You serve the purposethat you're here to serve.

And you do it selflessly.

You do it lovingly.

You enjoy it.

We're not here to suffer.

There is a beautifulmantra, Om Namah Shivaya.

Nothing is mine.

Everything is thine.

Everything is here for me to use and enjoy

but not to possess nor be possessed by.

So we are here, Om Namah Shivaya,

to live this beautiful placewe've all manifest into.

How lucky are we?

And how lucky are we to have people in our lives

to love and to care with?

>>It really all comesback to being about love.

Everything is based in love.

And we separate ourselves from it.

Our ego's job is to kind of keep us separate.

As I'm trying to come to the understanding

that I'm really not separate, the ego's

apt to freak out, give me all kinds of reasons

to believe that I'm separate.

Well, look at this.

Look at that.

Of course you're separate.

You're separate.

You're unique.

You're distinct, whatever.

And my soul is striving throughall of this to reach oneness.

My ego is having the opportunity to morph,

to take on a different job.

I've asked my ego if it wouldn't like

to help me to rememberthat I'm part of the whole

rather than needing to be separate.

>>What is it that you believe?

What were you taught as a young child

about what happens when you die?

Do you still carry those same beliefs?

Or have they changed?

Many people rely on religion or beliefs

to help understand wherethe soul goes when it dies.

Many of us hold onto those beliefs.

However, can these beliefs sometimes

limit us from exploring other possibilities

as to what happens when we die?

>>Seminary was a process of dismantling

a lot of my beliefs.

Before I went to seminary, I hadmy beliefs pretty well in mind.

I usually say that mystory begins in many ways

when I fell off of the roof of an underground house.

This was back in the 1970s.

And my brother and I had a construction company.

And this was the first energy crisis.

And so people were exploringall kinds of different ways

to save energy in buildingand in cars and whatnot.

So my brother and I thoughtthat underground houses

were the wave of the future.

And one day we were building a home.

They're made out of concrete.

And I was up on top of the roof.

And we had just poured the concrete roof.

And I was pulling on a form board.

And all of a sudden, it gave way.

And I found myself falling off of the roof.

And I didn't even have anytime to adjust to the fall.

And I slammed into a pile of gravel.

And I didn't know it at the time.

But I ended up fracturing my hip.

They put me in physical therapy.

And I found out that, whenI was in physical therapy,

that I was in extraordinary pain.

And so the doctor came by one day.

And he looked at me andsaid, you're really hurting,

aren't you?

And I said, yeah.

And he said, well, let's takesome more x-rays of that hip.

And so when they did,taking at an oblique angle,

they did find that there was a fracture there.

The doctor comes in and says, I'm

going to be off work for six weeks

and that I would be in traction.

And so I went into thisspiral of pain and anxiety

at that time, pain because thehip was pretty excruciating.

So I just kind of went spiraling downward.

And all of a sudden, I popped through

into an entirely different reality.

And in this reality, all ofthe pain that I had in my hip

completely disappeared.

The anxiety evaporated.

I found myself surroundedby complete peace.

After awhile, I was also standing

in front of this being of light.

And we were conversingabout my life without words.

And I came out of that experience so stunned.

Because I had no ideathat another reality like

that even existed, much less the idea

that you might be able to experience it.

Well, I had beenwrestling with an issue of

whether or not I should go to seminary.

Because I really felt a call to the ministry.

And, of course, my immediate reaction

was, well, this is the voice of God.

And I need to go into seminary.

So I took my wife and, atthat time, two children.

And we went to Princeton Theological Seminary.

And I went through the three years of training

to get my Master's Degreethere and then became

a Presbyterian pastor.

But as the years went on, I began

to realize that the realpurpose of that experience

was to give me a taste of something

and to create a hunger forsomething that I knew that

deep down in my bones that I had to understand

and to explore more fully.

That hunger was so intense.

It was even more intensifiedas I went into the ministry

because there weren't a lotof people who were speaking

about that kind of thing,at least in my church.

And so I found myself in thisstate of tension, if you will,

between where I really wanted to go

and what I really wanted to explore

and the appearances that I had to keep up

in my role as a pastor.

I went into what was thencalled the world's largest

bookstore in Toronto, Canada.

And when you go into this place, there

are books just as far as the eye can see.

I mean, literally millions of books.

I wasn't in there but two minutes

when, all of a sudden, onebook jumped off the shelf.

And it was Bob Monroe'ssecond book, "Far Journeys."

When I started reading that thing,

I simply couldn't put the thing down.

It was so stunning to me.

Here, for the first time, was somebody

who was talking in a contemporary sense

about the experience I hadwhen I fell off the roof.

12 years after I read thatbook, I had my first opportunity

to come to the Monroe Instituteand go through the program

here, in the Gateway Voyage.

And to my utter amazement, that world

that I experienced when I fell off the roof

opened up in space all over again,

which was both gift and curse.

Because on the one hand, itwas a rediscovery of something

that was so dear and sowonderful and powerful for me.

On the other hand, itonly increased the tension

with my role as a pastor.

I left the church and thepastorate in the year 2000.

But two months after I walkedout of the door of the church,

I got a call from the Institute here

asking me if I would like tobecome a residential trainer.

But the real force that has had an impact

has been this kind of work, this kind

of exploration of altered perceptions,

the metaphysical world.

And again, for me, themost compelling component

of all that is the experiential domain.

>>Religion is a viable way togrow but without the dogma,

without the creeds, withoutthe arrogance, without the,

I'm right.

You're wrong, that sort of thing.

And I think a lot of people who are

truly spiritual andreligious, they see that.

They see value in the words of Buddha.

They see value in the words of the Dalai Lama.

They can see that these things are all

headed in the same direction.

They're talking about love, peace, giving.

They're not into the, I'm right.

You're wrong.

If they are, then they'rejust not very evolved.

And they're not very spiritual.

No matter how religious they claim to be,

they're doing something else.

They're feeding their ego, feeling superior

because they're right.

And everybody else is wrong.

Well, feeling superior'snot on your way to success.

>>There's a difference betweenbeing religious and being

spiritual.

Being religious, you have a certain set

of ideologies and beliefsystems that you absolutely

don't go beyond.

And most of the time, beingreligious means, in a sense,

that you judge other people fornot believing the same thing.

I disagree with that aspect of religion.

>>Obviously, we can go around the world

today and see all sorts of people wanting

to kill each other over religion.

Where's the spirituality in that?

Well, there isn't any.

So religion and spiritualityare two different things.

They can travel together.

They can travel separately.

Religion can be anti-spiritual.

It can take you in the opposite direction.

And it does that, if yourreligion is basically

your dogma, your belief system.

That sort of stuff has no value.

It has negative value.

>>If you examine the profoundspiritual experiences

of all cultures, you willfind that the common element

in all religious text is that someone

went beyond their physical limits.

Someone had the courage and the foresight

to reach out and spread their wings

and explore beyond the narrowlimits of their physical body.

That's what made the differencebetween a great spiritual

leader and those that are justwant to bes, that are just

parrots repeating someoneelse's written word.

>>What their true teaching is, not

what maybe we pulled out of it in order

to have power or control or out of fear.

I don't believe that any of these great beings,

these great sages, were sayinganything other than, go within.

Be the love that you are.

Realize it within every being.

And treat everyone that way.

And it will be brought to you.

>>Religion is a way that you can grow.

It's not like beingreligious is a false path.

That's a path that's called the path of surrender

where you give yourself up to the larger thing.

That's kind of the religious path.

A lot of Eastern religionsare on a path of surrender.

All aren't.

Some are.

That, though, hasnothing to do with dogma.

Dogma is a different kind of thing.

Dogma is a bunch of belief systems.

It's ritual and other things.

And there's very little value in dogma.

So the religious path, the path of surrender,

is a valid way of growingbut only in as much as you're

thinking in the big picture.

It's about love.

It's about others.

It's about service.

It's about growing up.

It's about who you are inside.

It's not about raise your right hand

and swear that you believe these things.

You don't get any credit for believing anything.

It's not about belief.

It's about who you are.

>>For me, there's a big difference

between belief and experience.

Belief is something that youconstruct maybe independent

of experience or maybe you takethe experiences of your life

and you try to put them togetherin some kind of logical way.

And then that becomes a beliefthat you hold pretty dearly.

And it's sometimes very difficult

to give those beliefs up.

Because we're very, very attached to them.

But when you begin to actually move

into these other ranges ofperception, when you begin

to move into other ranges of experience,

it's a different categoryof knowing than belief.

Belief is largely about speculation.

I think maybe it's like this.

But when you move into experience,

then that becomes a partof your sense of knowing.

>>We all come in with certain frameworks of beliefs.

And sometimes those can act as boxes,

which are limitations for us.

And when we can have thesepersonal experiences, then

somehow there's a new crack in the box.

Or the lid's lifted a little bit.

And then we start to expand andopen up to new possibilities.

>>Most of us have bought intoa belief system at a young age.

We have been spoon-fed.

And it doesn't matter what it is.

But we've all been spoon-fedsome kind of religious belief

system.

And most people accept what they're given.

>>Belief is a trap.

Anything that you believe is a trap.

If you are interested in an area,

don't believe something about it.

Go find out about it.

Go do it and experience it.

Find out.

>>So the courage comes inbeing your own scientist.

>>We have the capability to obtain the answers

for ourselves.

We don't have to be dependentupon belief systems.

We don't have to bedependent on the concepts

and theories of others.

We have the ability to becomeexplorers ourselves and obtain

the answers to the big questions.

Where do we come from?

What's our purpose?

Where are we going?

Why are we here?

I mean, these are the big questions.

>>If I had to leave a partingword with everybody, I'd say,

start going.

This is your opportunity.

You have opportunitiesto grow every single day.

You don't have to go out and find them.

You don't have to take a training course.

You don't have to read a book.

You don't have to go find a group.

You don't have to do any of that stuff.

Opportunities are in frontof your face every day.

You just have to take them.

>>As a final message, it'dbe nice to be original.

Would it be plagiarizing to quote Bob Monroe?

Would it be plagiarizing tosay what Bob Monroe said?

"The only way to know isto find out for yourself."

You can read about this.

You can talk to other people.

You can watch videos.

You can go to lectures.

But the only way you're really going to know

is to find out for yourself.

>>You got to get there on your own.

And don't say, well, I don't know how.

How do I go?

I need to do something.

All you have to do is makeeach choice a better one

in your interaction with other people.

Make each choice come from love and caring

about them and not about you.

That'll be a hard enough challenge.

>>And it's up to us to do it.

We have to devote the timeand the energy to do it.

We have to go beyond just being the pawn.

We have to get to the pointwhere we make a decision like,

I am not going to be the pawnof anybody else's philosophy.

And I'm not just referring to religions.

I'm talking about politicaltoo, all aspects of our life.

I'm going to be a free thinker.

I am going to be an explorer.

I am going to find out the answers for myself.

I'm no longer going to bedependent on this crap I've

been fed from childhood.

That is a critical point in thedevelopment of each individual.

This is where the path begins.

[music playing]

>>Secret of the universe is to grow up.