Death is the fundamental mystery of life, just as life is the fundamental mystery of death. Most of us in the Western world would agree that death is the fundamental mystery of life, if by mystery we mean the unknowable. But mystery has not always meant the unknowable. At the very roots of Western culture there existed the knowledge that the mysteries of life and death could be known through direct inner experience. Birth and death were experienced as the yin and yang of Life. To live life fully, one had to be initiated into the mystery of death.
Our ancestors developed techniques that allowed consciousness to shift its focus from the outer material form to the inner force that creates that form. In the early shamanic traditions as well as the later Mystery Schools the round dance was one of those techniques. Since the circle reflects the deep unity of birth and death and the interconnectedness of all life, this circular, spiral dance was considered one of the most sacred rituals. The outer dance symbolizes and focuses the inner movement of consciousness as it spirals down into the depths of our own individual being. At the center of our deepest selves, we experience the ecstasy of surprise and love-and we remember who we are. We confront the Divine, the Cosmic Mind, the All-not as Other, but as Self.
We are the force that creates the universe, that dances the eternal dance of birth and death. A Mayan oracle states that 'Polarity is the loom on which reality is strung.' To be alive is to be both this loom and the weaver of its realities. This sacred fabric requires the threads of birth and death, light and dark, joy and sorrow. When we hold the threads of death in one hand and the threads of life in the other, we begin to experience their deep unity and the radical creativity of each. Birth always moves into death and death always flows full circle back into life: this is the Miracle of Death.
When we experience this great mystery, we know what Gandhi meant when he said that 'Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state.' This knowing transforms us and it transforms the world. There is nothing but Life and, in the words of the classical scholar, Carl Kerényi, we are 'the nucleus of the nucleus' of that life. Those in the ancient world who experienced this could say with confidence and joy what we have forgotten:
"Death is the fundamental mystery of life, just as life is the fundamental mystery of death."
Forgetting this mystery is the true fall of consciousness. The circle collapses into a straight line of beginnings and ends, of birth as a miracle and death an absurdity that robs us of all we have ever known and loved. We forget who we are and the great mysteries of life are reduced to the unknowable. And we fall into fear, materialism, and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness.
For years I studied and taught the myths and symbols and mysteries of ancient cultures. And for years I longed for this kind of experience-even while I doubted its reality. I grieved that I and most of the people I knew had not had such powerful, life changing experiences. Where, I wondered, were the great shamanic poets and musicians whose magic words and vibratory power could open the doors to the heart of the universe for us?
Meanwhile I feared death. Perhaps the universe was, after all, exactly what I had been taught-empty of love and consciousness. I wanted to know; I had to know. The intensity of the longing could no longer be contained. I went to Peru to work with shamans, to meditate in their sacred places, to do everything possible to open myself to deeper orders of reality-if, indeed, there was anything other than the material world. Not much happened while I was there-or so it seemed. Yet one evening after I had returned home, I was lying on the bed listening to music when my world was changed forever.
I began to laugh uncontrollably. Some long forgotten memory began to flow through my body. Before it reached rational consciousness, I already knew it, knew it in my body, and the cells were laughing with memory. I saw a rather unclear figure move swiftly toward me with definite purpose. I knew she was Paccha Mama, the Old Woman of the Mountain, the Source of all Being. In less than a second she was no longer to be seen, but I felt her presence and I was back at Machu Picchu. I was up above the mountain looking down at what I knew was my dead body wrapped in canvas and tied with rope. It was on a hospital gurney that was being pushed quietly and quickly by four spirit-like beings. I had no remorse about my death; I simply knew I had to die. And, after all, I was consciously participating in that death. Suddenly I saw that I was being pushed toward Huayna Picchu. I was elated. I was to be allowed to enter the holy of holies. The ancient ones would speak to me, mysteries would be revealed to me. Finally, I would know! But, just as suddenly, the beings stopped at the entry into the sacred mountain.
In a flash everything changed. What my body had known from the beginning had finally reached the rational mind. While my body laughed, the images had moved in linear fashion to communicate with the brain. Now all of me remembered. What a joke I had played on myself! I was the mountain, the ancient ones, the Old Woman, the mystery, the Source. I laughed uproariously. Never had I laughed like this before. It was a molecular laugh, a laugh that vibrated in my cells and shot straight through my toenails, skin, and hair. This was gnosis, that knowing for which no proof is asked because the experience is the knowing-to question it would bring forth more uncontrollable laughter. There was no egotism in the experience, simply memory of who I am, who we all are.
Then I saw myself sitting in a forest, and I was surrounded by deer. I heard myself say, 'But I can't create a world!' And a voice answered, 'You just did create a world in which you cannot create! We can do nothing but create.' I knew this, remembered this fully and completely. And with this memory, I flew past Huayna Picchu and spoke my creation: 'Then I will create better games, games where all our children will be healed, where all our children will live in a world of ecstasy, joy, love, and peace.' As I spoke, I myself was in a state of ecstasy. I knew our world did not have to be as it is. I knew it is what we have created. In the moment this did not make me sad. I was experiencing what we can do, not what we have done. There would be time for sadness later.
I continued to lie on the bed for a long time. I was in awe of the universe. Paccha Mama, the Earth Mother, Matter herself, had responded to my deepest aspiration to understand her essence. She led me back to the heart of Nature in the sacred mountain where I confronted the Cosmic Mind, the All, not as Other, but as Self. Here, the very heart of matter revealed herself as Spirit.
As the visions continued, I tried to tell them to my husband, Istvan. He was a businessman who had always been respectful of my interests, but they had never been his. I remember so vividly his attempt to listen to me one morning as he gazed at me across the Los Angeles Times. When I asked him why he was not interested, he said, 'I know you are telling me something that is important to you, but I have never experienced anything even remotely similar to what you are talking about, and I just can't relate to it.' As Istvan returned to his newspaper that morning, neither he nor I could possibly have imagined how our lives were about to be changed.
One evening sometime later we received news that my mother had been hit and killed by an automobile while she was crossing a street. A year later Istvan and I experienced the death of our only child, our son Pisti, who was killed in a car accident at the age of twenty. Then two years later Istvan was killed in yet another car accident.
I had lost all that I loved most in this world.
Two weeks before Pisti's accident Istvan was working in his office at home when suddenly he 'saw' Pisti's car beside a freeway. He knew Pisti had been in a terrible accident. Superimposed on the car was Pisti's body. Istvan knew that Pisti was dead because his car and his body were in two different dimensions, one superimposed on the other.
Then Istvan heard Pisti say, 'Dad, I will be out of the house for a little while.' Only later would we discover what Pisti had meant.
One week after Pisti's memorial, he did return. Istvan's visionary experiences with Pisti's consciousness were so powerful that he, too, was now radically changed. After Istvan's first experience, he said to me, 'I had no idea what you were talking about earlier. I will never look at the Earth in the same way again.'
And he didn't. In fact, he became an anchor for me during the two years of visions with Pisti that followed-visions not only about our own personal lives but also about the Earth. During the time of our greatest sorrow, we were experiencing a joy that was beyond birth and death.
When Istvan attempted to explain his first experience with Pisti, he said, 'There is really no way that I can even begin to put in words what really happened. I wasn't even here. I shot out of my body and flew through the universe at an enormous speed. I was inside what felt like a huge funnel, and as I was flying toward the central point of it, I saw thousands of images speeding past me. Slowly, things began to slow down, the images disappeared and what had been the receding, central point became a small circle of bright light. Gradually the circle became larger as it moved toward me. Then the light formed into an image. When the image was clear, all movement stopped. There was complete silence. I could see that the image was Pisti sitting in a yoga position of meditation with his head bowed in a reverence so deep that it penetrated my whole body. In one hand he held the Earth.'
At this point Istvan broke down and could no longer speak.
Later he tried to explain how powerful the experience had been with Pisti. He felt the vastness of the universe was present in that moment and was reflected in the intimate and loving relationship between Pisti and the Earth.
'I realized,' he said, 'that love is the key to everything. Pisti explained how respect allows us to be more conscious of love, but I have to say that I never experienced respect like I did today. It has a completely new meaning for me. I respected myself and everyone and everything to such a degree that the whole world was sacred.'
But, he said, it was painful to experience how we have forgotten this relationship and how this forgetting is destroying us and our Earth. He explained how he had seen a large ring of pollution around the Earth, but he didn't just see it, he experienced it. His consciousness moved into the pollution. The moment he entered it, he became aware of a pain in his heart that began to intensify. Everything felt constricted, disconnected, and mundane. He felt separated from Pisti, the light and the deep reverence he had just experienced. There was only a terrible aloneness, emptiness and fear. He knew that this pollution was a result of the separation he had just experienced.
Suddenly he was no longer in the ring of pollution. He was once again in the light, with Pisti, and permeated with a deep sense of the sacredness and interconnectedness of all life. Then Istvan remembered that Pisti had died.
'But,' he said, 'death didn't mean the same thing anymore.' He felt Pisti say, 'Birth and death are events in time and space.' Then Pisti showed Istvan a circle of light. As Istvan looked at this, his mind felt intensified far beyond anything he had ever experienced. There was no end and no beginning.
'Dad,' Pisti said, 'there is nothing but Life.'
Pisti's presence in our lives was similar to that of the ancient Bard-the shamanic poet and musician whose magic words and vibratory power could open the doors to the heart of the universe. One evening I dreamed I saw Pisti dancing wildly and yet effortlessly out of the North and into the room where I was sleeping. His arms and legs, hands and feet were flying through the air in perfect harmony with a music I could feel but could not hear. His every muscle vibrated with this unheard music. When I was able to see his feet more clearly, I realized that he was dancing in the snakeskin boots he had liked so much. I began to feel the pure joy his presence brought into the room, and, as he continued to dance, I felt him say, 'Dance life in snake boots!'
I knew that 'dancing life in snake boots' meant dancing the dance of Shiva, the dance of birth and death.
'Live each moment fully,' I had felt Pisti say, 'then let it go.'
I thought about what it really means to live each moment fully with open hands, to love deeply and, at the same time, to be able to relinquish it all. The only reason I could even begin to do this was that I had experienced Pisti's love and consciousness after his death. Only in this way could I know that there is no separation and that love and life are indestructible.
Later, not long after Istvan's death, I remember crying out to him, 'Why, Istvan, why did you have to go too?'
I felt Istvan laugh and say, 'Kicsi, I didn't go anywhere. I'm everywhere, nowhere, and right here. I'm simply in another dimension. Let the body go. I'm not in that body. I don't need it anymore.'
I agree with the British existentialist psychiatrist, RD Laing, that there cannot be a more 'desperately and urgently required project for our time' than the exploration of the inner world of consciousness. The consequences of our limited vision now threaten the existence of all life on our planet.
Again and again Pisti communicated with the greatest urgency that our world was dying, but that a new planetary consciousness was emerging. The human soul is no longer willing to accept aloneness, emptiness and fear. The collective longing for a more loving, creative world is now so great that this longing is exploding into new forms and the extraordinary-the miraculous-is beginning to enter our lives.
Istvan and I knew that our own experiences, along with those of many others, were just such extraordinary events. Millions of people are experiencing death as a birth into other dimensions of reality through Near-Death Experiences. In fact, people around the globe are experiencing many different types of events that shatter the foundation of our old worldview. Cutting-edge scientists are discovering a conscious, creative universe in which life is eternal and evolving. In almost every field of inquiry vast, new realities are being discovered. We are beginning to develop an imagination worthy of our universe. We are calling a powerful new future to ourselves.
One evening not long before his death, Istvan and I were talking about the incredible nature of all we were experiencing. Istvan stopped eating and looked across the table at me. It was one of those moments when individual consciousness pauses and deep Mind flows through and astonishes both speaker and listener. We both felt the numinous power of his words, and in that moment we knew that the Earth is awakening to this Divine Game:
'Death is as Divine as Life.
Hold them in both hands.
Play with them.
Balance them.
This is the Divine Game.'
