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Acknowledgments Acknowledgments I want to thank Joya Birns for her support and help with pre-editing; Daniel Reynolds for his encouragement; Linda Smith, Carol Wolfley, Sheila Saunders, Paul and Alex Jackson for reviewing sections of the manuscript and offering comments and insights. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION p. 1 CHAPTER 1: GLOBALIZATION, WILLING OR NOT p. 7 Economic Globalization p. 8 The Birth of Civil Society p. 17 CHAPTER 2: OF LIFE BEFORE BIRTH p. 20 Our Birth is But a Sleep and a Forgetting p. 24 Children Who Return p. 29 Trauma and Liberation p. 39 United Through the Centuries p. 47 CHAPTER 3: THE SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE p. 60 Edgar Cayce’s Revelations About Karma p. 61 Rudolf Steiner, Herald of a New Science of Karma p. 73 The Soul’s Journey After Death p. 78 Meeting Our Shadow With Compassion p. 95 CHAPTER 4: OF LIFE AFTER DEATH p. 111 After Death Communications p. 112 Meeting With the Light p. 126 Is it Always the Light? p. 138 CHAPTER 5: A PARADIGM SHIFT FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM p. 149 Another World Immediately Beyond the Physical? p. 150 The Spiritual Experience of the New Millennium p. 155 The Emergence of the Divine Feminine p. 159 CHAPTER 6: THE EXPERIENTIAL PERSPECTIVE p. 185 Bill W. and the Story of AA p. 186 Bert Hellinger and Family Constellations p. 201 The Revolution of Hospice: Saunders and Kübler-Ross p. 214 Communicating With Honesty and Empathy: Nonviolent Communication p. 232 Prayer and Spiritual Healing p. 246 The Emerging Field of Experiential Spirituality p. 263 CONCLUSION: ANOTHER GLOBALIZATION IS POSSIBLE p. 273 New Initiatives p. 274 Global Alternatives p. 280 Civil Society and Experiential Spirituality p. 289 Argentina’s Horizon of Hope p. 292 Horizons for a New Culture p. 310 APPENDICES p. 315 1) Pre-birth Memories: An Account p. 317 2) A Biography of Rufus Moseley p. 320 NOTES p. 331 BIBLIOGRAPHY p. 351 INTRODUCTION I’ve tied the ends of the earth together, Lift now the lid of the jar of heaven. Close those eyes that see only faults, Open those that contemplate the invisible So no mosques or temples or idols remain, So “this” or “that” is drowned in His Fire. Rumi Do our individual meditations or prayers have repercussions upon our social life? Do our spiritual experiences affect our immediate circles and beyond? Can we really find a link between our personal sphere of action and the social arena? Aren’t these two areas—the per- sonal/spiritual and the social/political—traditionally separated from each other, like faith and science, in a way that justifies perceiving the spiritual person as someone who is remote from daily cares, or at least socially uninvolved? In calling this book A Revolution of Hope, I challenge these as- sumptions. In so doing, I join a growing group of leaders, entrepre- neurs, social activists, and visionaries who inform their daily choices from a wellspring of spiritual/religious commitment to their inner self. For them, the spirit is the indispensable springboard of their work and their lives, not a separate realm of existence. Before moving into the exploration at the heart of this book, I will offer a preamble on the state of the world from the perspective of the globalization of economics that parallels, and makes manifest, the global consciousness shift happening at present. This will be a brief survey of the major trends in world affairs and their implications on the political, ecological, social, and hence spiritual dimensions of life. The bulk of this work is divided in two parts. First, we will ex- amine how the spirit seeks to be acknowledged in our lives, and look at the realm of spiritual experience. A peak spiritual experience can stimulate the complete reshaping of our being, serve as a milestone that puzzles us, or go almost unnoticed and remain buried for years. It can be the door to an entirely new perception of reality. The conun- drum of such an experience is that it belongs to a world that our every- day language and faculties of understanding entirely fail to grasp, let alone convey to others. And yet this is only an apparent dilemma, as we shall see. 2 REVOLUTION OF HOPE The second part of the book will look at practical applica- tions—the many ways social renewal is already happening before our eyes, in small, almost imperceptible doses, apparently too little to make an impact. And yet there are already many of these practical ap- proaches that together form a whole, with certain identifiable charac- teristics. Recognizing the strength of the parts and their link to the whole is what gives hope a tangible dimension. The bridge between the two parts of the book is formed by an acceptance of the reality of the spirit—particularly the journey of the soul after death and that part of our soul that C. G. Jung called the “shadow”—as it is possible to understand in a phenomenologi- cal/scientific way, deprived of dogma. Through this lens, the variety of spiritual experiences now surfacing on the horizon of consciousness can coalesce and reveal their ultimate direction and meaning. Finally, we will return to the larger picture to explore what both spiritual and experiential perspectives can contribute in terms of a modern alternative to the present model of globalization. Beyond the Veil of Our Daily World The contribution I want to offer the reader is the realization that spiri- tual experience is the basis for renewing ourselves and injecting new culture—in fact, new concrete spiritual reality—into a dying material- istic culture. We invite the reader to realize the strength that can come from an understanding of a spiritual reality of hope emerging in our time, together with the life-changing practices that can lead us toward the creation of a new culture. Understanding and practice together can create an unshakable inner reality of hope; knowledge and discipline can mutually support and strengthen each other in a synergistic fash- ion. The reality of spiritual experience, whether it concerns the time before birth or after death, is slowly gaining leverage. Bestsellers, such as Return from Tomorrow, Saved by the Light, and Embraced by the Light, portray biographies of individuals who have acquired unshak- able certainty about the existence of the light beyond and of the source of an unconditional love. Recent movies, such as Groundhog Day, Run Lola Run, Next Stop Wonderland, and Sliding Doors portray “multiple alternative” scenarios—a first layer in the understanding of the theme of destiny or karma. Others portray experiences at the intersection of INTRODUCTION 3 the physical and the other world, such as Fearless, Resurrection, The Boy Who Could Fly, and What Dreams May Come. We are also surrounded by growing numbers of claims of all kinds of supernatural experiences that obviously challenge credibility. How can we find our way between the genuine and the sensational? How can we remain scientific and discriminative in a field that obvi- ously goes beyond the classical definition of science? Is there a way to follow an “Ariadne’s thread” that allows us to detect the reality of life before birth and after death in our own life? It is my claim that we can, at least to a great extent. We will proceed in stages to build an understanding of the ex- periences beyond the veil of our daily world. We will look first at what has been done from a scientific perspective. Although the classic sci- entific approach soon finds obvious limits in the spiritual field, it will help us in our preliminary steps. Many people have reviewed their ideas and enlarged their horizons from the weight of this evidence alone. The “inner world” of reincarnation has become a reality for those individuals who have been able to remember in great detail dra- matic events from their previous lives; so has the “outer spiritual world” for those who have had a near-death experience. More and more books are published every year on these topics. By looking at the most precise biographical and descriptive sources, we will further see that threshold experiences do not happen randomly. They are subjected to their own laws and inner logic. Our approach will be phenomenological. According to this view, there is no need to look beyond phenomena. While a single phe- nomenon may seem unique and isolated, others may present another facet of the same motif and offer a clue to a solution of the mystery. From the sum of secondary complex phenomena we will try to move towards primary—primordial—phenomena. Secondary phenomena are, in this respect, like variations on the main theme of the primary phenomena. Although “primary” invokes the idea of something sim- pler, in this instance we are moving into the sphere of what, in a Jungian fashion, we may call “archetypal phenomena.” Thus, primary may be simpler, but in no way simplistic. In fact, this next level can be reached only with the help of a combined spiritual and scientific ap- proach to spiritual phenomena. What lies beyond our immediate level of perception is the level of concrete reality of other individuals who 4 REVOLUTION OF HOPE have gained access into spiritual realms. This is similar to what hap- pens when what a child cannot understand eventually becomes a part of everyday knowledge later in life. Thus, experience from the higher ground of primary spiritual phenomena is the only way to shed light on secondary phenomena. In so doing, two results should be achieved. First, the mass of information we present in this discussion should begin to order itself around certain sets of themes—the primary phenomena.
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