Читать книгу Close to the Bone - Jean Shinoda Bolen - Страница 23

Life-endangering illness can have the effect of thinning the veils between this world and the otherworld of the spirits. People tell me such things as having had vivid, distinctly remembered conversations with figures they clearly saw and yet knew were not part of their ordinary reality, or of feeling the comforting presence of people who had died even though they neither heard nor saw them, or of telepathically communicating with an otherworldly figure when they were gravely ill.

Less common and more dramatic are the stories told by people who were near death when they met otherworld figures who told them that it was not their time. Two different women have told me of having an old, apparently Native American woman appear to them when they failed to respond to medical treatment and were dying; her appearance was an intervention that changed the course of the illness. One of the women had a fever of unknown origin that broke as a result of this visitation or vision. The other realized that she had been misdiagnosed, and efforts on her part led to a correct diagnosis of Lyme disease and proper treatment. Both women recovered and in their respective ways, became involved in bringing alternative medicine into more mainstream awareness. Illness brought them close to death and a nonordinary reality, which was both a turning point for the illness and the inspiration to help others after getting well.

At his memorial service, Gary Walsh, a San Francisco therapist turned activist, who organized the first candlelight AIDS march and debated Jesse Helms, was vividly present on film. In a videotaped interview done a few days before his death, he told us about being visited twice by a man whom many in the audience had known, a man who had recently died. While Gary was physically wasted in appearance, he was assertive, clear, and utterly convincing. He asserted that he was not asleep and that he was not hallucinating when this man appeared in his room and told him not to worry, that he would be there when Gary died and crossed over. Gary demanded in a prove-it-to-me tone that he appear to him one more time. A couple of days later, again when he was awake and mentally clear, this man appeared again, very briefly and impatiently, reiterating that he would be there when Gary died and obviously put out at having to make this extra visit, because he “had other things to do.”