A HTSL&D Interview – Link to Celestial Broadcasting

Here's a cover rough that didn't make it to press, it must've taken a wrong turn...  

Listen to this fun and informative hour-long chat with Peter Kelly, about the nature of life, death, life after death, consciousness, Love, and much more, on "Peter the Healer, Celestial Broadcaster," only on BBS Radio. We go deep into 'death,' and have a good time doing it!

Our Heart is Your Home

"The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the eye...by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him."

Black Elk

Our hearts pump blood. They have to, or there's no show, right? That's what hearts do, but that's not all they do.

Our heart is, in so many ways, at the very center of our lives. It is the seat of our emotions – we actually perceive feelings in, or through, our hearts. Our hearts sustain us, direct us, comfort us. Our heart is an accessible storehouse for our feelings. It's an inspiration through it's action. We don't beat our heart – it can beat without us. In short, our heart creates, forms, and maintains what constitutes the very core of our lives.

I switch to a collective possessive form referring to "our heart," because it's part of the consciousness we share, our collective consciousness. It's part of our shared intelligence, our Eternal, Universal, or Divine intelligence. People who don't share this concept, we perceive as being "heartless" – tragically disassociated from Love, from those aspects of human life that are the most fulfilling and rewarding. They are also most capable of violence. Of selfish and pointless destruction – or of simple pettiness, shortsightedness, and lack of empathy. It's not because they aren't thinking, more often it's because they're thinking too much. With their heads.

"The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think that they are mad."

I asked him why he thought the whites were all mad.

"They say that they think with their heads," he replied.

"Why of course. What do you think with?" I asked him in surprise.

"We think here," he said, indicating his heart.

Pueblo Indian, Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake) to Carl Jung,

from Memories, Dreams, Reflections

As with everything, to find a better way to think about it, we do need to think about it with our minds. It's a bit of a leap, because our minds often don't understand what our hearts are doing. In fact our hearts have (or should have) a kind of unassailable authority over our minds. We think we should do what our minds tell us to do, but we know we need to follow our heart. By this I don't mean our passions or cravings – not lust, or ambition – but the simple, intuitive intelligence that mysteriously arises from our heart.

As is the case with most mythical, mystical, intuitive, and indigenous knowledge, Science is slowly catching up –providing us with "real proof" of what's long been known to some to be the cognitive and controlling facilities of the heart. Unlike any other part of our bodies, the heart contains a similar intricate cellular structure as the brain; the same neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins, and support cells. The heart is directly linked to the brain, and can control it's electrical activity. Along with being able to independently learn, remember, feel, and sense, the heart can directly enable the brain to acquire certain perceptive abilities, to inspire types of thought, as well as determine our emotional experience.

Medical Science now agrees with "a thinking heart," a heart with a brain, or that is itself a different kind of brain that unites body, mind, and emotions. Exactly how it does this is a mystery to medical science, but for centuries it's been known in Hindu Bhakti Yoga, and Tantric tradition that the fourth heart chakra is the center in humans of the higher self's true intelligence; connection to the field of higher intelligence; the seat of Divine Consciousness; of healing, of compassion; of wish-fulfillment. The spirit brain. The true source of your life's authentic direction, free from all that messy karma our minds can make for us. Our head thinks about our self too much, our heart thinks of others first.

Listen to your heart, to our heart, and let it have the last word – after the barrage of words your mind thinks up. (Some of the worst things I've ever done I thought about a lot first - but I should have listened to my heart). Regard your head as just another (albeit im-portant) extremity, packed with senses perfectly suited for the physical world. Consider your intellect as a ladder, used to transcend itself. But know your heart as the brain that connects you to The Eternal Intelligence that constitutes your true center. Let your heart do all the important thinking for you. It's where your home really is.

"Though the inner chamber of the heart is small, The Lord of both worlds gladly makes His home there."

 Mahmud Shabestari

Check out this site for more information about Heart/Mind science!

Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

On "Proof of Heaven," and the Skeptics' Hell

There's been quite a hub-bub of late around the release and promotion of Dr. Eben Alexander's excellent new book Proof of Heaven, in which he recounts his own Near Death Experience, and ventures to defend the existence of life after death – even scientifically – supported by his own impressive credentials as a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon. It's much less surprising that a man of science may personally discover our underlying spiritual reality in a transpersonal experience, than that he'd immediately attract a swarm of agnostic skeptics when he speaks out about his discovery.

Notable among the skeptics is Sam Harris; philosopher, neuroscientist and renowned man of reason. His arguments disputing the authenticity of Dr. Alexander's afterlife experience are intellectually cogent and compelling, but undermined somewhat by a mildly pejorative tone – a tone that may suggest his own personal conflicts.

There simply seems to be two distinct kinds of people when it comes to issues of transcendent or "extra-dimensional" awareness – those who have had profoundly transformative spiritual experiences, and those who haven't.
  

For those who have, like Dr. Alexander, there's no longer any need for argument; it's made redundant by the expanded awareness of an intuitive, universal intelligence beyond the limitations of their own thought, beyond their own personal powers of "reason." Those who have not had such a transformative experience simply lack the essential evidence necessary to credibly comment on the authenticity of such realizations by others. They are subject to the limitations of linear, serial (left brain) thinking, and it's tangential, unidimensional conclusions. The "God Part" of their brain hasn't been fully activated, you might say, and so (scientifically) all spiritual experience remains anecdotal.

Denial is the acceptance of ignorance as truth, through force of will, and that force usually issues from two rather self-centered mis-apprehensions in the case of NDE skeptics, one being the old Descartes before des horse, that "I think, therefore I am" assertion that the rational thought process is the medium of all profound truth, and that in it's absence there is only delusional imagination and self-serving ignorance of a sort determined by the mechanical nature of the brain.

That very aspect of human thought betrays it's own presumption, though. It's in the nature of the egoic intellect to reject what  it has had no experience of – as well as to often reject even what it has experienced, if it fails to conveniently fit it's egocentric story of self. The reasoning in such cases is not really based on what's empirical or not, but on underlying issues, and obstacles, of a psychic nature. Like all of us, I'm sure some of the worst decisions Mr. Harris has ever made were very well thought out, while some of the most elegantly effective issued from a source completely outside (even opposite to) the limitations of his dogma and intellect. Keep this in mind: Thought requires consciousness, but consciousness does not require thought. I am, therefore I think is really closer to the underlying truth.

The idea that we can only rely on what investigative science can prove is as archaic as a flat earth, as all major scientific conclusions have only been reliable in that they reliably change, being solely determinable by our capabilities for observation as of today. That's (arguably) where the greatest weakness is in Dr. Alexander's rationale – in his effort to substantiate his experiences in a smaller context that's not equipped to support them. Stringent scientific observations and theoretical analysis of quantum physics indicates relationships between consciousness, matter, and dimensionality that are at odds with concepts of non-faith-based empiricism. Nevertheless, your smartphone and microwave still work pretty well.  Which leads to the second misapprehension:

The presumption that the brain is [not-so] simply an electro-chemical cellular conglomeration whose various states of activity indicate it's capacity for intelligence on different levels – the generator, not the receiver, of consciousness. The observation and benchmarking of where those points of activation are, and what therefore becomes possible within those boundaries of "life" and "death" have to be questioned at least as much as the mass testimony of thousands of NDE survivors through the ages, perhaps justifiably moreso. 

For example, Mr. Harris questions whether or not NDE survivors brains (specifically Dr. Alexander's) are actually dead – entirely devoid of any activity whatsoever – which is a good question all right, but can he demonstrate when that NDE "magical imagination" might begin in subjects who do not survive; and how long it continues in the absence of brain activity? Where exactly is the tipping point of death – especially when it's not entirely known exactly what the brain (or mind) does, and can do? Where is the range of the control group? Can he reliably postulate the moment that an authentic experience of death occurs or doesn't, without resorting to traditional standards of "when they're really dead"? And most importantly here, can the objective observation of a possibly biased observer completely invalidate another individuals personal experience of a different state of being? As has become the establishment norm, 'scientific reason' refutes spiritual experience without any actual evidence whatsoever to support its claims.  

This establishment 'scientific' presumption also describes con-sciousness as being the product of billions of individual cerebral generators, rather than the (scientifically) more likely definition of it as a shared transpersonal field of energetic, evolutionary intelligence; related to the observable quantum or "zero-point" fields. 

There are children who begin writing music at age two, and go on to compose symphonies by five or six. Do their little brains just "snap-to" extra quick, and process all that information at a phenomenal speed, or do they tap into a profound, existing intelligence that informs, enlivens, and animates the consciousness we are unavoidably all a part of? 

Documented beyond apocyrphy are cases of people who have such remarkably specialized intelligence that they undergo study to determine the neurological nature or source of it, only to discover that their brain physiology indicates that they should be absolutely incapable of such intelligence; or of much intelligence at all, for that matter (literally). Then there are people who have perfectly fine brains, but their egoic self-definitions insist that they are intellectually superior in a way that entitles them to judge all varieties of mysterious, "non-intellectual" experiences. These are often the same people that overlook evidence of transpersonal communication, but are still willing to accept quantum uncertainty and entanglement...And then there are questions of animal consciousness – don't get me started.

All of it is clearly a mystery, and so why shouldn't it require experience of a mysterious, mystical nature to better understand the underlying truth of it? After all, I might remind the skeptics that everything we think and know is the result of this little layer of consciousness wrapped around a little planet, floating though limitless outer space.  The original ground of that unimaginably "magical" context needs to inform all of our subsequent intellectual tolerance for what and what is not possible. In fact, it seems far more reliable to assume that Love and Magic are the mediums for this adventure of life than coincidence, reason and intellectual rigor.

In the blog refuting Dr. Alexander's experience, Mr. Harris seems to concede to the necessity for such a mystical experience in order to support his dogmatic criticisms.  He tells a story about a psychically revealing dream he had, before he went to Nepal. I am interested by his approach to conscious realization here. My personal transformational experience came about as a result of years of meditation and study, following my having survived three NDEs. I have no doubt that, given the spiritual depth of the land and its people, a trip to Nepal may inspire significant transpersonal realization. In fact, I think I would have much rather gone to Nepal myself than where I had to go, believe me.  

Equating one particular type of alternate consciousness to another to support an argument seems a bit non-scientific for a man of reason, but using some reason may help describe the difference that I, Dr. Alexander, and millions of other human have realized in our "extra-life" experiences from what Mr. Harris (or any of us) get from dreams. In dreams, I'd suggest our psyches create an entire imaginary world featuring our selves at the center, and so I believe them to be the product of a constrained personal subconsciousness. The suggestion that Mr. Harris was not the center of his dream was his near-transformational moment – a moment of brief realization of the larger consciousness enjoined in NDEs.

My near death experience realizations were of that also, times ten – that I am a part of a larger unified consciousness and intelligence that exists outside (or within... or without...or throughout) my fragile, expendable human body. I had no body, per se. I did not sense the passage of time, or even think sequentially, but instead simply coexisted with knowledge and being. I experienced profound and continuing Love as the medium of continuing Life. Mr. Harris would insist, I'm sure, that I was not dead, and I'd agree completely.  

Mr. Harris, for one reason or another, is compelled to define the transformative experiences of others. Dr. Alexander is spontaneously, intuitively, compelled to share an essential truth that he was surprised to discover for himself, precipitated by one major, transformative spiritual experience in his life – his "death," and subsequent travel into the "afterlife" potential of consciousness. By the expression of their needs you can recognize the degree to which they experience these different levels of consciousness.  Either contained by the harsh demands of their own intellect, or alive in a kind of heaven, guided and inspired by the intelligence of that larger mind, and liberated by the grace of their spiritual source.

How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) is due out early 2018, from Llewellyn Worldwide, is available now! with How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, both are based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor, and are available everywhere – but ask for them at your local bookstore! 

Tales: Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! Finding Your "Right" Brain.

......................................you see, meditation is not boring!

It's easy to see how someone might think that sitting in meditation would be a terribly boring thing to do, sitting there, doing nothing. Trying to think of nothing. Trying to think of not thinking. Of course, that thought (like most of them) couldn't be farther from the truth.

When we just sit at first and try not to think, we naturally fail, and so we start thinking of all sorts of things. Everything comes up. Everything. Like: What your father said to you twenty-five years ago. The money your Ex still owes you. That guy who was on Oprah. When will the landlord finally fix that leak upstairs? Things in the Mid East will never get better. Is there an asteroid heading directly for Earth? What are we having for breakfast?
 

That's one of the really great things about just sitting in meditation, thinking about nothing is an endlessly interesting and entertaining thought show, and we have the best seat in the house.

All these different crazy kinds of thoughts occur in a serial fashion, that is, one after the other after the other. One leads haphazardly to the next, sometimes connected by the barest thread that only makes sense right at the moment it connects. A few more turns of the wheel down that road, and you can't even remember how you got there, or why. Because there is no why.

How you got there is simply caused by the incessantly demanding nature of your "thinking organ," your brain, which like some kind of wild, prehistoric shark, insists on relentless movement, the continuous exercise of thought, that overlying process that we often confuse for ourselves. Descartes was a little off on that one, "I think, therefore I am." We are, whether we think – or not.

Thought requires consciousness; Consciousness does not require thought.

"Serial" thought, the kind most of us often find ourselves and our identities tied to, is an apparent function of our Left Brain, the left hemisphere of our thinking organ, which is our serial processor. It's job is to process, process, process in that con-tinuous shark-like motion, joining one thing to the next, relating each significant fact (or not so significant lie) to another. Often, the best we can manage is to discipline our mind to think things that we want to think about. Like to focus our thinking on problems that need solving, say building a bridge, creating a Unified Theory of Everything, or figuring out how to get the TV remote to work. As long as it's something we want to think about – hopefully something productive, or creative, or at least painless.

The simplest form of this discipline is the common self-request, I don't even want to think about it.

When we sit, all we're really trying to do at first is to witness this serial inner monologue, try to wear it down a bit, until it gives in. Or best of all, to side-step it completely. That's the best way to put it, because it describes what the (very appropriately named) Right Side of our brains are doing while all that exhausting thinking is going on. It's functioning concurrently as a parallel processor, connecting everything to everything, simultaneously. Processing our entire sensory experience holistically, with a kind of quantum perception, which for the most part appreciates Life. It's the part of our brain power that gets short shrift because of the sequentially demanding nature of contemporary life, but you're using it every time you find love, beauty, melody, serenity, and joy.

As we sit longer, we try to engage our Right Brain experience, and to live in it for as long as possible. When, in this state, we're collecting beauty, creative energy, and Love in our hearts, suddenly, your serial thoughts no longer have all that urgency. Life can be experienced in a more realistic way when we are in this way less realistic, because we recognize that the moment is always fine, as it is, not full of demanding or threatening "realities." Nothing really needs to happen right at the moment, unless the doorbell rings, your butt is getting wet, or the kitchen is on fire.

This escape from serial thinking, to the Right Side of our brain is a much more pleasant state of affairs, when we can experience a presence for life that's only possible when we give the crazy person in our heads the day off.

In the popular myths of religion, this is the same experience that was reached by Buddha, when Mara the Tempter assaulted him with all the allures and fears of the world (see illust. above); or by Jesus, when he was in the wilderness, and Satan offered to make him the King of Everything.

Neither of them even wanted to think about it.

"What have you gained from meditation?"

"Nothing at all."

"Then what good is it?"

"Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana."

The Buddha

Visit other postings about meditation. And check this talk by Jill Bolte Taylor!


Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore! 

To Be the Right One of the Two of Us

Watch this remarkable talk, linked from TED, by Jill Bolte Taylor about our dual thought processes, and finding nirvana. Ms. Taylor is a neuroanatomist and brain function researcher whose experience of her own stroke (which took eight years to recover from) led her to these incredible realizations. It's very similar to the Buddha's Fourth Dhyana, or state of nirvana, as described (for example) in the forward to Eknath Easwaran's excellent translation of The Dhammapada.