Chapter 2: A Prayer Answered; Now What? Life After Death

God not only heard the prayer of a "sinner" like me, but He answered in no uncertain terms. In response to my prayer, and my request to help God (instead of the other way around) the Light of God enfolded me with such Love and a loving caress that the words come to mind: " and I will pour out a blessing upon them that they will not be able to contain" . Was I somehow unique, a freak of nature? It seemed so natural and yet so unnatural as this sort of thing had never happened to me before. Was this what it was like for St. Paul when Jesus met him on the road to Damascus and blinded his eyes with the Light of his magnificence? There were certainly similarities but there were differences also. God is no respecter of persons and He has no favorite sons. It is written in scripture that God has written his laws in our inward parts. I felt a quickening within me that there are no words to describe. Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." What were God's plans for me now? I had certainly "asked for it".

There are parts of us that lay dormant, like a woman when she conceives a child, that become quickened when the occasion arises. Parts of the woman that were dormant become quickened at conception and progress throughout pregnancy. A muscle that she barely knew she had forms a womb to nourish and protect the child developing within her. When it is time for the child to come into the world, that muscle takes over to expel the child from the womb. Previously she had no knowledge of that muscle or how to use it but it was there and it, and her body, "knew" what to do. It is a miracle and a process of nature that we sometimes take for granted, and that some have come to despise. Looking back, with years of experience behind me, the only way that I can describe what happened to me with the Light of God is to say that Christ was quickened in me. Christ in me would know what to do. I had to trust the process. It was not all revealed at once, it would be revealed over time. I had to follow the mandate in Luke 11:9 "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

I had asked God to show me how to help Him solve the problems of the world. This was no time to become a hermit or to seek a cloistered life. It was necessary for me to remain engaged with the world through outer work while at the same time performing the inner spiritual work to liberate a planet and a people. I tried to follow the principles set forth by Christ and Buddha in seeking Right Livelihood, and multiplying my skills and talents. I needed to stay in school and get my degree.

In all of my years in school when asked the question: "what do you want to do in life, what profession, what career?'; I had no answer. I was in college as a Business major because I wanted to learn how to run a business; I did not know which one or what it would involve. I had been a Drill Instructor, now I was a Computer Operator on IBM 360 Series computers (you find these in Computer Museums now). Now I had new decisions to make and I needed to understand what had happened to me and what I was supposed to do. Using the analogy of the pregnant woman, I needed to understand what the process was all about.

I had a knowing within me that I would not find the answer in orthodoxy alone. Nevertheless, I started taking Religious Studies courses as electives. One of the courses was squeezed into an unusual two month winter break. It was taught by a man from India and the subject was Houston Smith's book "The Religions of Man" published by Mentor Books. We were required to visit a Church, Synagogue or Temple that was different from what we normally attended. When I was in High School I babysat for a young boy. "Out of the blue", his mother contacted me and invited me to attend his Bar Mitzvah which I was most happy to do. In the hills above Hollywood, I visited the Vedanta Society and experienced a Hindu ceremony.

Our University also had an "Experimental College". Anyone could obtain classroom space for free and present a lecture or a course on any topic. I attended as many different lectures and courses as I could. One lecture was given by Shafica Karagulla, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, on her book on"Higher Sense Perception, HSP" entitled Breakthrough to Creativity.
After the lecture we had a question and answer session. People were pressing all around her asking questions rapid fire. I wanted to know if it were possible for people to develop higher faculties. I could not get the question asked but held it strongly in my mind. Suddenly she turned to me and answered the question in the negative. Then she paused, stunned, because she realized what had just happened. She knew that she had received my question telepathically.

The Light had sensitized or activated certain spiritual faculties within me and I was experimenting. I was able to "read" or sense things in people. I was able to contact souls who had passed from the "physical" screen of life and who were now on the other side of the veil. A mother and daughter, both of their names were Mary, wanted me to contact their husband/father to tell him how sorry they were for how they had treated him. They had me go into the school library to a section I had never been to before, and take a certain book off of a certain shelf, and turn to a certain page, and read a certain entry. It was kind of a Who's Who book. I called the phone number listed in the book and got a nurse. I explained why I was calling and who I wanted to talk to. She declined to let me speak to the man who was now very old and frail. I contacted other "departed souls" and found that for the most part they were very confused, disoriented, and not very spiritually developed. I later learned why they are confused and why it is not a good idea to "channel" spirits or to participate with others in such activities. I will explain more about this in later entries.

The Ascended Masters sponsored the Spritualist Movement of the 1800's to let people know that there is life after death. I proved that there is life after death for myself by contacting those whose bodies had "died" but their souls were very much alive. Because of this I could understand people who had "near death" experiences and could validate their stories for myself. Some of the more interesting and well known cases are those of Danion Brinkley, Mellen Thomas Benedict and Betty Edie.

Another Experimental College course that I took was on Self Hypnosis. Again, I had to learn the hard way that any form of hypnosis is dangerous to the soul as it violates certain protections set in place. Dr. Helen Wambach wrote a book entitled "Life Before Life" and the book "Mass Dreams of the Future" was based on her work. She originally set out to debunk the idea of reincarnation but instead scientifically proved that it was real. There is life after death and there is life before birth; the life of the soul is a continuum. To Dr. Wambach's credit, she had the "sense" to ask permission of the person's Higher Self before revealing details of past lives under hypnosis.

I had a voracious appetite and "need to know" for all things spiritual. I read many books and talked to many people. The least helpful people turned out to be ministers in Christian Churches. They were like blind leaders of the blind. They could quote chapter and verse but they had no understanding of the words they were quoting. In my last semester in college I had a Religious Studies course on the Bible. When I did an exegesis of a biblical passage, the Holy Spirit revealed things that astounded my professor and fellow classmates. There was a two week seminar at a local Junior College on religious leaders and spiritual communities from around the world. I ditched my regular college classes and attended the seminar. Remember, this was my last semester in college and I going to graduate in June. It was hard to maintain an interest in the subject of "business", it seemed so mundane and unimportant.

For a long time now I kind of felt like "The Lone Ranger". I did not meet anyone else like me or who knew what I knew about God or Spirituality. This also took a toll on my wife. She had filed for divorce a year earlier. I left her lawyers office in Pasadena, CA sad and depressed about losing my family. My son was four years old and my daughter was two and a half. I headed for the freeway. I saw a hitchhiker and decided to take him wherever he wanted to go. He wanted to go to San Francisco. This was 1974, during the Carter Administration, and we were on a kind of gas rationing system based on odd or even numbers on our license plates. On the road I talked about my spiritual experiences and books I had read. It turns out that the young man was on his way to Canada to be with people who were experimenting with sleep deprivation as a kind of spiritual experience and he wanted to stop off at his home first. He invited me to come with him. We slept on the side of the road that night and I took him home the next day. While he was visiting his family, I visited the graveyard across the street. I got the sense that if I went with him I would be running away from my destiny. I returned to Los Angeles, somehow able to get gas even though I had the wrong license plate number for that day.

Now it was a year later and my wife and I had to appear before a magistrate for the Final Dissolution of Marriage. The appointment was on a Tuesday during Easter Vacation. I had seen a poster on the bulletin board in the hall by my classroom. It announced another seminar or Conference at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles that was to take place on Wednesday, the day after the Final Dissolution of Marriage meeting on Tuesday . Actually there were two posters. The first one had a picture by Dore of Angels encircling a cross and it said that the conference would be on angels, auras and other topics of interest to me. Because of the pending divorce I procrastinated registering for the Conference. The second poster convinced me that I just had to attend. It was a picture of a woman standing on top of Pikes Peak and flashing the Victory fingers. At the meeting on Tuesday I felt as if my life had ended. On Wednesday I felt as if my life was just beginning; I had found what I had been searching for over the past two years.

Chapter 1: My Encounter with the Light of God in 1972 and My Early Years Leading Up to It.

I had a fairly normal childhood attending Public schools in the Los Angeles City School District. I played Little League Baseball and Pop Warner Midget Football and had a leadership position in my Sea Explorer Scout Unit. In High School I played "B" and Varsity Football in the Fall and during the Spring I was a pole vaulter on our track team. I was active in student government and I was a Math Major preparing for College. I had my share of problems with authority figures and other students. I had to learn that the only way to handle a bully was to stand up to him and challenge him, and I had my share of fights, especially in Junior High School. My reputation preceded me into High School so I was usually able to talk my way out of a fight. In Junior High I worked with my mom on the John F. Kennedy presidential campaign. I was waiting for my Second Period History Teacher to arrive when his assassination was announced. My History teacher never came back to school. It was worse than having the air knocked out of you. Nothing was the same again.

Religion was not a big factor in my life although there were occasions where I tried to learn more such as when I took catechism classes at the Lutheran church we attended (but that didn't last long). While sitting in Church, I would sometimes have a strange feeling that I should be at the Altar doing what the Minister was doing. I couldn't explain it, but that is where I felt I belonged. My mother had her astrology done and all that the astrologer would tell her is that one of her children would be religious, possibly in the priesthood. She did not know who of her six children that would be and I never discussed my feelings with her. When I was in my early 20's I had my own astrology done and it showed that I was a very old soul and that the dew drop was about to merge with the Ocean. I had no idea what that meant.

I graduated from High School in June of 1964. I attended a year of Junior College and during the summer break of 1965 some friends and I decided to go to Hawaii to surf. I liked it there so much that I decided to stay. I got a job as a Desk Clerk at a hotel and did the night audit. The Viet Nam War was heating up and it didn't take long for the Draft Board to find me. I got drafted into the Army and reported to Fort Bliss Texas in January, 1966. Brrrrrrr. Shock and cold.

During Basic Training I gave in to some indoctrination program and signed up for Officer Candidate School (OCS) because I had some college. Later, I changed my mind and dropped it. This messed up my Orders for where I was supposed to go after Basic so I was held over for a couple of weeks while they tried to decide what they were going to do with me. They were going to send me to Fort Knox, Kentucky for Advanced Training in the Armor School for Tanks and then to OCS in Armor. They decided to send me there anyway for the Advanced Training. When that was done I was again held over for a few weeks until they finally decided to give me three choices. One: I could go directly to Viet Nam. Two: I could go to Germany to train with a unit that was preparing to go to Viet Nam. Three: I could go to the Non-commissioned Officer (NCO) Military Academy to train to become a Drill Instructor. This was a new program and they were about to graduate their first class. They were sending all of the experienced NCO's to Viet Nam and they needed people to train the troops. They figured that if they could turn a soldier into an Officer in six months that they could turn one into a Drill Instructor in six weeks. This meant a promotion from Private to Corporal upon graduation and no Viet Nam. I became a Drill Instructor.

I was an assistant to a Staff Sgt for one eight week Basic Training cycle after which he was sent to Viet Nam and I was on my own. I was in charge of a WWI era 2-story wooden barracks and up to 50 trainees and all of their weapons and equipment. The cracks in the walls were like mini windows. When the temperatures got down to 4 degrees F., the water in the butt cans would freeze solid by morning. I was a Drill Instructor for eighteen months and trained eight groups of men. We often had back to back eight-week training cycles where we would graduate one class on Friday and pick up another one on Monday. The Army had a program called McNamara's Hundred Thousand. They were trying to train men as quickly as possible and they were not very selective in who they drafted. I had everything from poorly educated wino's and hoods off of the street to stock brokers with advanced degrees. I became the Company First Aid NCO and Weapons NCO and was the go-to guy for all problems after hours. I also had special Riot Control training because of the campus unrest concerning the war. Two months before my honorable discharge from the Army in January, 1968 I earned the rank of Sgt. E-5 and the Good Conduct Medal with Letters of Commendation through the entire Chain of Command from the Secretary of the Army on down to our local command.

I went back to Los Angeles and got a job. What a let down and culture shock that was. I thought going into the Army was culture shock. I went from having great responsibility to performing a routine and very dull task. My best buddy from the Army got out two months before I did and one night he called to offer me his old job as a courier for a conglomerate company. At night I could train to become a computer operator as he did and I did eventually become a computer operator. In January of 1969 I went back to college, Los Angeles City College, on the GI Bill by working at night and going to school 3/4 time during the day. In the summer of 1970 I got married and started raising a family.

One day at school I noticed a lot of students milling around. Some students put on a mock play of students being killed at Kent State. From my second floor math class I could observe about a dozen people seeming to stir things up and manipulate the crowd. They were hard core and disciplined and reminded me of Che Cueverra. My military training in counter insurgency tactics helped me spot them. All of a sudden about five of them came rushing toward my building. I could hear them running up the stairs and they burst into my classroom. They were looking for someone that they thought was taking pictures. My teacher sat frozen behind his desk. I immediately walked to the front of the class and commanded them to leave telling them that what they were looking for wasn't here. To every one's surprise, they immediately left.

On another day I was sitting in the Student Union trying to study. Two guys at a table next to mine were talking about stuff that I had never heard of. I thought to myself that in all of my 23 years or so I had never heard of this stuff. They were talking about a book called "None Dare Call It Conspiracy" written by Gary Allen as a Doctoral Thesis to prove that there was no conspiracy. During his research he had to change his mind because he had uncovered proof that there was a conspiracy to undermine our Constitutional Republic, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, our Free Market Economy, our Money and all that America stands for. I had a pretty developed sense of patriotism and this really stirred me up. I got the book and read it. My own research for speeches in Speech Class confirmed some things and uncovered others. I used articles from easily obtained weekly magazines such as Time, U.S. News and World Report, Life and others. In one speech I kept calling my fellow students "comrades" because as I explained at the end of the speech, I wanted them to start getting used to the term. It kept their attention during the speech. I found out some awful stuff about Fluoride and how they used it during the Watts Riots to calm the crowd. They put the Fluoride into the water system because Fluoride makes people passive, apathetic and willing to accept authority. Think about that!

I received my Associate in Arts degree in Business in the Winter of 1971 and transferred to San Fernando Valley State College which later became California State University, Northridge before I graduated. We soon had a second child and it was rough. I was gone all of the time between work and school and then had heaps of homework on the weekend. My wife also worked. There was a lot of stress in the family and at school and at work. I kept thinking about my experiences, the assassination of Kennedy, my years in the Army, "None Dare Call It Conspiracy", problems at home, problems at school, problems at work; it all became an overwhelming burden to bear. I worked alone at night as a computer operator and one night in 1972 I collapsed to my knees. A friend in Junior High School had taught me the "Hail Mary" and I knew the "Our Father". These were the only prayers that I knew and just kept saying them over and over for a very long time. Eventually I just started talking to God and laying all of this stuff out to Him. It just didn't make sense. When people have a problem they look for and get a solution. For some reason no solutions were coming forth and it seemed to be getting worse. Finally I just told God that if there were anything that I could do to help Him solve the problems on earth then please show me what to do.

Immediately the room became brilliant with an indescribable Light unlike any light I had ever seen. Was it a hundred or a thousand times brighter than the well lit room that I worked in? There was no comparison to it. The Light was pure Love and brilliant as the sun but it did not hurt my eyes. I felt a sense of Peace come over me. I knew my prayer was heard and God was answering; He would show me where to go and what to do.