Introduction
Fast Times, Fiery Dreams & the Race Against the Clock

THE JOURNEY ACROSS FOREVER is a collection of essays and personal stories intended to inspire. It is offered in a spirit of positivity to all who are questing for answers to the most compelling and profound questions a human being can ask.

Are there easy answers?

No, there are not. We know this for certain, for we humans have been struggling to survive on this earth for untold millenniums and often suffering through mortal toil and deadly violence in the pursuit of those answers. Unfortunately, for millions of people in the past and the present, life has been a living hell. It has been a horror show of desperation and terror.

Only, yes, there have been pleasures, as well, and millions have had tremendously exciting times and many a happy and loving day in their lives. Some people have even enjoyed phenomenal riches, have achieved unmitigated success in various careers and have managed to win fame, acclaim and the devotion of admirers worldwide.

Even so, every person not currently walking upon this earth has died, no matter their wealth, their achievements, their place in society, nor anything else.

Maybe, just maybe, however, the Essential Self – the “psychospiritual complex’ or “soul” does live on in some “Great Beyond” as many of us have come to believe and as so many spiritual teachers and wisdom masters throughout the ages have insisted is actually the case.

We hope so, of course. Most of us do want to live on. The question is where do we go in all reality when the soul slips the mortal coil? Where is this “otherworld” we hear about and is there really a “heaven” and a “hell”?

Christians worldwide certainly believe that the answer to that last question is an absolute yes.

Quite intriguingly, Eastern sages are inclined to agree, but in a very different way. Buddhists and Hindus believe that as the poet, John Milton, once put it: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”

The consensus seems to be, then, that there is indeed a heaven and a hell of sorts and, of course, we all want to arrive, post haste upon our earthly exit, into the former and definitely to avoid, at all costs, the latter. We want to enjoy lives of the purest pleasure, not lives of suffering and pain.

The good news is this: it is entirely possible to achieve such an objective as many a wisdom master has made quite clear. To do so, one does not need to become a perfect saint, however, nor live a life of strict adherence to any particular religious creed, nor set of doctrines. One need only become spiritually liberated, which is to say free of the chains and shackles of the delusory thinking that is so often imposed upon us by leaders who are themselves deluded, and do good in the world. Quite possibly the word enlightenment is simply a label for learning to think for oneself and gaining control over one’s life.

What do I know to speak out on such a topic?

The best answer to that question is quite illuminating. As the Zen master, Suzuki Roshi, once put it (and ever so succinctly): “Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an enlightened person. There is only enlightened activity.”

What that means is that we can say anything we wish, but it is what we do that counts and not just in our better moments. This is about what we do over and again. In biblical terms this accords with the aphorism that by our fruits are we known. In my particular case, the metaphorical fruits are the ideas and insights offered on the following pages. These must speak for themselves.

All I will say at this point, therefore, is that after decades of probing the mysteries and enigmas of life as we perceive them here on this earth, I know that the soul seeks its secrets and the body its amusements, its perfect fleshly miracles and its shameless naked amazements. I know that we humans love our pleasures and loathe our pains; that not only do most of us want to live long lives, we want to live forever.

The bad news, of course, is that we quite obviously do not live forever; not physically.

The good news is that the Essential Self, which each of us is in all reality, may indeed be eternal in nature.

What is the difference? The word “forever” is a time-based concept, whereas when we speak of the “eternal”, it refers, in essence, to a dimension that is beyond, or outside of, time. The way to understand life in its fullest measure, therefore, is by delineating what belongs to the physical realm and what transcends physicality. This means that we must make a choice every time the path we are on comes to another split in the road. Either we go the way that remains, ever and always, focused solely on material ends in a world of flesh and bone, of concrete and stone, hoping that it might lead at last to some form of physical immortality instead of oblivion, or we choose to go the way that leads into the more ambiguous, subtle domain of the metaphysical realms, placing our hope of continuance in what is known as “spiritual immortality”.

Either way, we stake our very future on that choice, but only one of the two choices holds real promise, despite the astonishing advancements made in our genetic sciences in recent decades.

I came of age in the Sixties and the Seventies, which was a highly charged, beautifully liberated and genuinely positive era. It wasn’t that way for everyone, of course. Many people experienced tumultuous and tragic events. The Vietnam War had America deeply divided over whether it was a just conflict or quite the opposite. As a young man in the prime of my life, however, I was under the spell of surging hormones, a natural predilection for expanding my horizons in every possible way, not to mention beneath the sway of a countercultural attitude that came to me courtesy of certain writers, artists and rock stars whose books, paintings and records were irresistibly influential. Astrology was also popular at the time and there was great talk about a New Age being born: the Age of Aquarius.

Taken altogether, these enchantments were so compelling at the time that I was fully convinced that a New Age was indeed in the offing. As if to make the argument even more convincing, there was mass cultural upheaval and spectacular displays of defiance against the old order out on the street and in the news on an ongoing basis. I will speak more about this on the pages that follow, suffice it to say at this juncture, therefore, that certain seeds were planted within me at that stage of my life that have continued to grow over the decades and are still growing. Along the way, quite fortuitously, they have enriched me immeasurably. That growth, I believe, has delivered up a myriad of ambrosial fruits that to me have acquired the taste of nothing less than the nectar of the gods.

I understand that this could be perceived as pure hyperbole or rank exaggeration on my part. Then again, this perception might well be founded on insights of genuine authenticity, in as much as words can express concepts which ultimately transcend words and labels.

The problem for all of us, of course, is that even after some five thousand years of civilization, humanity has yet to reach any form of unanimous consensus on what actually constitutes “truth”.

One can only try one’s best, therefore, to ask the right questions and make the most informed decisions of which one is capable. This is precisely what these writings attempt to do. As the author of this work, I will look at what orthodox religion and scientific materialism have bequeathed us over the centuries, as well as many subjects which fly in the face of these twin cultural skewers; namely, the enigmatic nature of consciousness and spirituality, the possibility that we are all “psychic” to some extent and the fact that “paranormal” events do indeed happen, even though conventional thinking tells us that such events are impossible. Then there is the UFO to ponder as it flashes past us with its mysterious occupants. Because these strange vehicles sometimes defy the very laws of physics, they force us, ever and always, to ponder the imponderable and broaden our horizons to a fantastically astronomical level. Finally, and crucially, we will look at the implications of those reports which come to us from the realm of the Near-Death Experience and consider what we might reasonably expect once we pass from this world into the dimension known as the “Afterlife”.

We shall not look at any of these topics in a dry, academic manner, however, for the dynamic phenomenality of life stimulates me too much for that. What I shall attempt to do on these pages, therefore, is carry the quest for insight onto a higher level of contemplation. The effort here will be to tease out the meaning of the human experience in its fullest potential, for what I presently perceive is that we live in a multidimensional spectrum of reality that is so profoundly rich in nature that one can only approach it with the most magical, poetic prose one is capable of conjuring. Virtually every aspect of our vast universe astonishes, from the microscopic to the macrocosmic, when we look deeply enough into it. To me, life is electrifying and is meant to be explored with eyes wide and minds amazed. The mundane and the miraculous, the profane and the sacred, in my view, are complementary aspects of life and what distinguishes them from each other is simply one’s personal perception and the subsequent interpretation of that perception.

That interpretation, by the way, can mean the difference between living one’s life with a sense of clarity, joy and positivity or in a state of obliviousness and delusion.

What I am offering the reader of this book, therefore, is a ride on the fire-wheel of wonder; a magic carpet ride if you will. The attitude here is that if a person can transmute the mundane into the miraculous, then one has already become the ultimate magician. If one succeeds in becoming such a thing, epiphanies and revelations are sure to emerge.

The intent, again, is to inspire, not convince, for conviction should not come from what others say. It should come from one’s own life experience. The reader of these pages, therefore, should take what is written here as a speculative viewpoint, but one drawn from a lifetime of experience and decades of contemplation.

What I am hoping is that, you, the reader will ultimately be inspired to do whatever you can in order to gain insight into the events that will ultimately constitute the story of your own life as I have done here. One of the first tricks in this process is to depersonalize the narrative. Reflection beyond that can come at every phase along the way and, if one is wise, one will indeed contemplate, ruminate and wonder deeply and repeatedly as life meanders along.

The answers are ultimately within, after all. They are within each of us. The stories and insights which others offer us can, at best, only fascinate. As a result, we must take our chances and seize the proverbial day, make mistakes along the way and learn from them. We must enjoy victories where we can but hold fast to that pivotal point within by carefully observing the enchanting profusion of curiosities before us. These will ultimately prove to be illusory as I hope to show, but beautifully so. It is what we make of them that determines our lot in life.

Know, however, that virtually everything is at stake as we proceed: our bodies, our minds, our souls, our very place in the greater scheme of things and, crucially, the future of humanity itself and the fate of the very planet upon which we live. As we humans face a “brave new world” of technological sophistication, it is obvious that we are clearly not medieval in our sciences, yet millions of us are still medieval in our spirituality. Why is that? Why are so many people still caught up in the strains of sectarian bias, nationalistic fervor and the racial prejudice of our forebears when these biases so often bring violence and death in their wake? Is the dopamine rush these things generate that powerful and pleasing? Should these strains not have been left behind centuries ago?

I believe so. Humanity, after all, is now on the cusp of going interplanetary as these words are being written and the technology already exists for creating a habitable base on the Moon and sending an exploratory expedition to Mars for the purpose of setting up a colony there. Meanwhile, there are countries on this planet with sectarian and tribal peoples still throwing stones and rocks at each other and beating each other over the head with sticks and clubs. Tragically, there are people starving to death in many countries, while others sit in royal splendor in majestic mansions enjoying culinary feasts and sipping the finest wines on the market.

We need to do better, therefore, and we can do better. It all begins with an evolution in thinking and an “Aquarian revolution” may certainly be pursued if we choose it and call it that. All it takes is enough people to redefine the times and humanity’s place within it. This, by the way, is precisely what so many young people in the Sixties and early Seventies sought to do and it succeeded in one respect, however short-lived its overt presence on the world stage. It planted the seed in millions of minds that our higher ideals can indeed turn into a cultural movement of great magnitude and scope.

We might well be at a pivotal, transitional time of positive seismic change once more, which is encouraging, especially when we consider the present state of what some are calling the “apocalyptic” politics of the day, especially in the midst of a global pandemic, not to mention the cataclysmic challenges of climate change in the form of torrential rains, floods, tsunamis, typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados and massive, unbelievably catastrophic wildfires. We have nothing to fear by breaking free of the past, though, and moving on into more enlightened times. The planet needs us to do that, our children especially. We adults must lead by example, not by preaching and pontificating, however, and using the disturbing language of those who are still wrestling with the demons of the Dark Ages. We must do this even if we feel at times as if we are flying by the light of a planet going up in flames. As Mahatma Gandhi suggested so wisely and to the point: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” To these words of wisdom, I would simply add that being the change you want to see in the world involves a choice and that choice is to pursue your change in a spirit of love or with a sense of fear. Does the choice promote inclusion or exclusion, kindness to self and others or greed and self-interest only, harmony in the world or hostility? The former ultimately leads to positivity and beneficence, while the latter leads to detriment and a dystopian future for humanity.

The good news is there is every reason to believe that death is not the end for any of us and that our lives will continue in bountiful ways if we can but learn to be kind and compassionate to each other. Those reasons fill the pages ahead and have the potential to bring a smile to every face. Perhaps, as the poet-mystic, Walt Whitman, once wrote: “All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” Whitman tells us that it is just as lucky to die as to be born and “I know it” he says. Almost universally, yogis, mystics and those who have returned to this earth from some “otherworld” after a near-death experience agree wholeheartedly with this perspective. They cease to fear death and “know” beyond the shadow of a doubt that life goes on in bold and beautiful ways.

So let us proceed now and do so with boldness ourselves, remembering along the way to keep a keen sense of humor at all times, for we must foster a lightness of being within if we are to succeed in raising ourselves up. What is to be gained is a sense of liberation, illumination and spiritual immortality sooner rather than later, which is precisely what humanity needs in order to activate the next phase of its own history in a loving and positive way.