I never was much for possessions.  I was always trying to unload them, simplify my life by lightening the load.  Long before that zen-like simplicity thing became trendy I had a flat with one couch, one table, two chairs, a bed and a chest of drawers.  One bookshelf and one compact quality sound system.  Once in a while I’d buy flowers for the table.  I’d long left my parents overstuffed suburban villa, which yes, did have a lovely back garden, if you could ignore the endless lawn furniture and statues of herons and what not.  Bit of a tech whizz, just sort of fell into my lap after college, I was able to stay at home, computer bound and work my special magic with a minimum of interference.  Bit of a loner you’re thinking, well yes, but more iconoclast than hermit.

     Hiking on weekends was one of my loves.  You are on your own for sure, but meeting other hikers for a chat was a pleasant distraction. We shared a love of nature in all her splendor and a quick mug of tea in a tin cup sitting on rocky outcrops suited our shared solitary natures.  I enjoyed being healthy but stopped short of becoming a fitness freak.  Plumbing the dark depths of the internet to uncover hackers and their ilk under contract to various, how shall I say, legitimate organizations, kept me neurotic enough.  But busting bad guys made me feel good.  I’d just submit reports and others would take over so I never had to get blood on my hands.  I slowly become part of that worldwide network of private citizen investigators who could be relied on to dig out the lies of governments, criminals and fake NGO’s.  Hacking the hackers if you like, though it was more complex than that.  Some of it paid well and some was pro-bono. A bit like that BellingCat site you may have heard of. Some of the rewards were so good I gave it away to charities. I didn’t need it. I had a life and my past-times. Hiking, Beethoven and 19^th century novels. Well, that’s the short list.

    Okay so I dated some.  Women seemed to take pity on me.  Not that I played the part.  Professional career types, already busy with the schedules and details of their lives, but somehow thought I needed looking after.  I thought I liked looking at them.  And being with them.  But living close, nah.  Too much stuff, too many things, too many family complications.  Sisters, mothers, ex’s kids at the other end of the country.  Furniture, clothes, things.  Yuck.  I tried to be caring compassionate and all that, but the devil was in the details and I didn’t care for him.  Give me the simple life every time.

     You wouldn’t think with all my experience that a fall, just one simple trip, could take it all away.  But if that rock is in just the right place for your head to make contact and start the internal bleeding you don’t notice till it’s much too late, then it’s curtains pretty much.  I lay down a little dizzy and woke up floating about, admiring the summit I’d been headed towards.  I’d been there before, many times, but somehow it looked so much more, hmn, precise and kinda glowy.   So that’s what an obe is like, hmn.  I’d always wondered.  Like some dog off the leash I looked about, sensing, sniffing, analyzing.  Was I seeing into things?  I’d look at something, a rock, a bush, a tuft of grass, and kind of fall into it, helplessly, giddily.  Textures would take up my visual field and then I’d pull back, the detached observer.   I’m saying that now as I’ve had ages to figure it all out, but back then I was, you know, dizzy with sensation.  Maybe I’m a dreamer dreaming: that was one thought.  Another thought was my current investigative project.  Suddenly I was in front of my screen, which was definitely turned off before I left but was now actively online, and was examining a series of images. The ones I’d been searching for but not finding the day before.  I wondered if my thoughts were calling them into existence.  Was I creating my own solution to the mystery I’d been asked to probe?

     Some radicals in my field had been pushing that recently and stirring up some debate on various forums.  Previously it had been the cloud, and now I can see from my new perspective it’s A.I., but then it had been our hidden intentions creating responses.  Some thought it stoner crazy and the stoners figured it was more or less right on.  They were the kind of folk who were sure the mushroom had made our perceptible world from the beginning.  Terence McKenna disciples no doubt: you get plenty of them in our bubble.  It’s very nature seems to attract them: geeky eccentrics that turn out to be stoners too.  Every one of them can tell how Karry Mullis was high on lsd when he had the insight that lead to his discoveries that paved the way to his Nobel.

     But I was jolted away.  A shock to the system, unlike the drift into floating from before, which was soft and dreamy.  There I was  being dragged down the slopes by two strangers it would seem.  T’was a bumpy ride but I sensed they were doing their best.  Into the back of their small car and off.  They were panicked, I was calm and as we say unruffled.  That body on the back seat, all achey, was it me really?  I was peering down from above, like I was a mystery project I’d been asked to examine.  Sounds all too cute I know but as the months and years rolled by in this timeless realm of magic I could not get away from that thought:  I was the mystery project I’d been asked to examine.  For example, who exactly had done the asking?

     If you have come across the reports of the ndes that modern medical science have made so easy you’ll know the rest:  Hanging about the hospital as the staff did their best to save me, despite ‘me’ watching on and thinking Nah, revive that lump, don’t bother, this lightweight version is way more fun. And when those vital signs slumped and the team exhaled sighs en masse, I was freed, well, to fly about really.  Like one of the Netflix docs where wildlife and one-of-a-kind environments are examined and celebrated for their unique, you know, contribution to, ecological diversity I guess, and the cameras rove all over from continent to continent seeing both the big picture and the tiny revealing detail, I found, after a bit of experimentation I could do the same.   Yup, I could be a camera, one with many lenses.  I was making own doc without financing or crew.  Sure, I know where I got the idea.  Those streaming nature shows had been my favourite down time escape from the sleazeballs of the internet.  I screen some of them twice, three times, each in some bliss of wonderment.  I never seemed to tire and if I did figure some break was due, I sprawled on some beach and merged with the surf.  In this new life of light as a feather flight that sort of thing was easy.  Merging, I couldn’t seem to stop myself

     Three interruptions I can recall, though there might have been more.  First an immediate presence as my mother received a text about my hospitalization and passing.  They were on vacation, the Azores I suspect as that was their favourite, a self-catering cottage near but not on the beach and every amenity they fancied nearby, and I’m standing there watching her weep and my father trying to console, not his strong suit but bless him he would always try, and I’m more or less helpless, feeling foolish and yeah maybe guilty.  You know, maybe I shouldn’t have died and been so pleased with myself.  Maybe I should have stuck around for them.  Well I didn’t and I couldn’t so what to do?  Disappear was the first answer and that lasted till the funeral, which was over the top emotional distress.  All these people, relatives I’d completely forgot, two ex’s that I figured were glad to be shed of Mr. Privacy, three school chums that still lived in the old town by my parents, on and on.  Exactly what I’d tried to avoid.

     Well I excused myself from that before the glue could dry.  Psychic glue I guess.  More travelling followed on that, more blissed out happiness in the bosom of nature.  Bosoms really.  Which moves me to incident number three.  Ottilee, who I’d been seeing off and on for some months.  A consultant who travelled the length and breadth of European capitals bestowing her somewhat rare gifts to those who felt her advice more than necessary.  She never did detail the category of her wisdom and I satisfied myself that it was all legal and moral and you know, not endangering the lives of innocents.  We spent weekends once in like two months, and yeah, it was full tilt intimacy and dining but It felt like she wanted to party hearty with an uncomplicated guy who could float his own boat without whining.  But there she was, sad and looking mournful on her couch, reenacting our frenetic coupling as best she could.  Wow, talk about being magnetized!  I felt drawn, not just to her but into her and we blended just like old times.  All perspiration and moaning.  It was all I could do to get away.

     Freed to one of my fave beaches, I sat under palms on silky soft sand and breathed a sigh, equal parts satisfaction, relief and guilt.  I hadn’t realized we were that tight energetically.  Time to recover.  After a  while I see a guy walking towards me, stopping every few steps to pick up what I assumed were shells to admire them.  When he dropped beside me and introduced himself I felt suspicious, as if I was about to lose something that was precious to me.  Turned out to be my beloved privacy.   As he chattered in a friendly dudes-on-vacation manner my vague distrust grew into something more defined.

     He hadn’t seen me at the vacation village and wondered if I was camping out alone.  Frankly he’d gotten tired of all the tourist chatter and wouldn’t mind doing something like that himself.  I was sorry to disappoint him, I was not the audacious loner he thought.  In fact, I was to tell the truth, lost.  Maybe he could tell me where I was?  A small relatively unknown island near Bali.  Exclusive you know?  Reserved for the rich.  Of course that’s actually the dead rich who haven’t quite got with the program yet.  I felt smart for a second:  Let me guess you’re one of the program operatives.  He grinned: Yeah I got that right.  So what did he really want with me?

     To give some assistance.  What to me? What if I didn’t need any assistance?  Yeah, and you handled that funeral really well didn’t you?  Yeah, I guess I kinda shrunk from that one.  So what?  Who cares?  Life, that life, will go on.  Every one of them is all wrapped up in their own issues.  Little knots of concern that they’ll soon slip back into.  So I was a distant loner, it takes all sorts, and at least I didn’t interfere, I respected privacy.

     Because I needed to protect my own?  Let’s face it, he went on, that’s the issue here.  Protecting yourself, your precious self.  I chuckled:  I don’t think I like you any more!  Taking your toys and going home are you?  I called him a smug bastard.  He laughed like he didn’t give a shit.  Then he said yeah you’re right I don’t give a shit.  Keep flying about, that free spirit thing has a lot to recommend it. 

      Oh he approved did he?  Indeed he did.  Freeing oneself from attachments was an accomplishment that few could manage, but in order to feel the full benefit you needed to have attachments in the first place, which I had carefully avoided.  Now I really didn’t like him.  I stood up and began to walk away, all pouty and actually forgetting I could fly away.  He called, That’s right, run and hide!  I’m not hiding I shouted without turning around.  Hiding out in the open, best way to do it.  The I turned back, thinking sticking out my tongue might be a fine riposte.  But he was gone, disappeared.  No dignified exits for him, whoever he was.  I recalled a really cool waterfall I’d found before and went back to the image, which of course morphed into a 3-D movie when I got there, one that I just walked into and became part of.  I’d figured that little trick out before, without really knowing how.

     Resting in nature, relishing its manifold beauties, feeling at one with all that was around me, wasn’t that the zen pinnacle I’d sought out, sort of, over the years?  You take yourself everywhere, only to discover that wherever you go there you are.  It’s all you confronting yourself, if only you could see the mirror in everything.  What book did I read that in?

    A while later, I know I say that often, but time in this space I so elusive.  Everything is a while later.  I was one a rocky incline, a steep one, looking down into a boiling bubbling volcano, the sort of place where danger lurks for all crazy adventurers.  The sort of place I’d fantasized about when watching docs on the flat screen.  Something I neglected to mention when Itemizing my precious scarcity of possessions.  Okay so I lied.  You can handle a little exaggeration, especially when it’s supporting my fake self-image.  Right?  Captive audiences are the best, though I’m baffled as to how you all became one.

     Back to the volcano:  right there hypnotized by the whole thing really, the heat the steam, the dire threat neutralized by death, I caught myself going back to my ex, Ottilee, to be fair and politely human, and the narrow escape I made, not from her clutches, but the heat of our coupling, the sweat of our merging.  How it pulled me back to its source.  I was there on her couch but she was not.  But the memory was and it quickly became real, a bubble of intensity which tempted me to stay.

    I think I slept there.  A warm darkness enveloped me, that I know.  When I stood and walked, I thought about the funky café down the block we used to repair to when intimacy arrived at exhaustion. Immediately I found myself there, sitting by the window overlooking the canal with its parked barges and willow trees.  The place was abuzz with friendly chatter and my latte tasted great.  I thought about going up to order and there it was by my hand.  Ghosts get the best service I tell you.  I figured Ottilee was somewhere on her travels.  One thought said Hong Kong, another said Singapore.  Given the shit that had been going down in the Kong I figured Singapore had to be it.  There’d been talk of expansion into the East a while back and she seemed keen on the challenge, though not so much on the flight.  Tall long-legged gal, she suffered, even in business class.  She used to joke about the benefits of lording it over the execs but having to pay the price in the long run.

     Yikes I was getting a bit overfond of my old life, all that cuddly convenience, though it was only every couple of months, so I called up an old desire:  The Berlin Philharmonic.  They must be playing something, right?  I arrived, in seconds it seemed, at a performance about to begin.  A fabulous seat. Holee, Mahler’s Ninth, I picked a good one!  Or did I pick?  Ideas, where do they come from, I mean really.  You might think having all those extraneous burdens lifted would make that sort of computation easy, or at least easier.  But no, not really.  Yeah the idea was mine, I would own that, but the appearance was still mysterious.  Curiosity more than unease I suppose and the dense forest of Mahler’s imagination swamped me. 

     After the sound bliss was over, I sat there, the ghost unseen by the cleaning staff, feeling the music in and around me still.  I’d been inclining towards Mahler from my preferred oasis of Beethoven for some time while I was still in the land of the living, but now I knew I’d arrived.  I wondered briefly about the composer and how little I actually knew about his life and career’ other than the usual cd sleeve notes.  Not that I was encyclopedic on Ludwig.   You guessed it: that bit of wonder seemed to take me, in a flash that was barely a flash, to a small rehearsal hall, where I hovered at the back as a small orchestra was going over thirty and forty second sections of an obviously longer composition.  A handsome youngish man conducting and refashioning his instructions as they went along.  About the forth time through I thought I was getting the gist of it when the conductor announced a short break.  I didn’t actually hear a voice but it was obvious from hand gestures.  The musicians sat back to relax and some sipped at water bottles.  Well some things never change I thought, wondering if plastic disposal was an issue here.

     The conductor strolled over in my direction, looking for all the world like a young Dirk Bogarde and then I caught myself I was projecting some vague memory of Visconti’s Death In Venice.  The gentleman smiled and place himself carefully on a couch beside me.  The structure of his face had shifted quietly and he now looked, well, like himself.  He spoke:  Thank you for taking time to come by and listen.  May I ask for your reaction?  The musicians I’m afraid are much too respectful.  I stumbled into an explanation of how I  had just come for a performance of his ninth and was still kind of blown away.  And how did I get here?  I fessed up: I just kind of thought about him and suddenly I was here.  He nodded, I see, it can be like that here.  I myself have to rub out thoughts of Bach and Mozart to move ahead.

     I so wanted not to be a disappointment to the great Gustav and blurted that the segment I heard was a challenge to my assumptions, although I had admit I did not really know what those assumptions were, other than the accepted notions of the late romantic period.  I added that I was not any kind of academic or musicologist, merely a music lover.  He nodded with a smile and suggested that I might care to continue with my active listening and maybe venture a reaction later.  I said I would be glad to, praying that some random thought would not remove me from the premises in the meantime as it had brought me here without warning.  He smiled, indulgently I thought, and said yes you have to watch for that here.  He patted my hand affectionately and stood up to return to the small podium.

     I attempted several times to steady my flitting imagination but was only partially successful.  I’d be someplace else, a surf-saturated beach, a bird-chatter-infested-rainforest, and then the Oh shit moment and I’d be back listening to another series of fragments being rehearsed.  One of them was quite a length and I found myself falling into it and losing myself despite the iconoclastic nature of the harmonies, if I might be so bold.  The analytical function said Schoenberg and Stravinsky but I knew I was reaching.  I’d avoided most of the 20^th century’s orchestral gymnastics despite Debussy and the likes of Gershwin and Copland and knew I was unqualified.  But I knew he would like an honest answer.  So I formulated the following: Probing the unanswered questions of accepted harmony while formulating a more user friendly palette than the Second Viennese school with textures only hinted at by Debussy and Takemitsu.  That lasted about two minutes before its inherent pretentions surfaced.  I would say no such thing.

     When the time came and he sat beside me again during what appeared to be the end of the day’s labours, I offered that I had been challenged to re-assess my status as an active listener.  But did I enjoy it, he insisted.  I chuckled.  I enjoyed my discomfort and made it my own.  That he liked and thanked me and hoped I might return for further listening.  I promised I would and wondered why more did not take advantage.  He said that the burden of respect was too much for some.  The concert performances were well attended however.  I made my exit with that respect in mind.

    Back at Ottilee’s fave café, the ghost at the window admiring the view, parked next to the people actually sitting there sipping their Merlot and snacks.  Waiting for her return from Singapore perhaps?  Would she even resume that habit of ours?  I felt she would after that erotic encounter, the one I was barely able to escape.  Not from her clutches, as the bachelor might boast, but from its embrace, the blending of the two, the lovers looking to lose the attachment and failing miserably.  But I didn’t want the misery, I wanted freedom from all that, and she likely did too, the career girl carving out her empire of influence.  Did she miss me or the hot relief I provided?   I opted for the latter, thinking it could be supplied by another candidate.  Yet I should have known.  Pondering on the issue sent me packing to some high rise hotel where she was studying reports and making notes.  Singapore in seconds or even less.  I watched and wondered.  Would desire catch me by the tail and send me spinning into her again?  Time passed, room service appeared with a tray that was picked at in desultory fashion as files got shifted from one pile to another.  Then a bath, all bubbles as she liked it.  Then a bathrobe and a glass of white.

    Then the bed and the beginnings of sleep, aided by self pleasuring.  And that’s where I come in.  I could see another me in her aura and I joined it with pleasure.  She opened her eyes and saw me.  A little gasp amidst the moans.  Oh my god it’s you was the expression I felt without voice accompaniment.  Yes it is I my dear Ottilee.  I have not disappeared.  Can the ghost and the girl continue?  Right then I was hoping so.  After the sweet ructions she slept and I thought I saw her dreams.  Can ghosts do that?  Flying about the globe had seemed miraculous enough, sufficient reward for the bouts of suffer, but this immersion, quite beyond those bouts of sweaty thrashing I had so loved before, was a refuge.  A nest, a home.

     I stretched on her suite’s couch thingee, pondering all that I had flown into.  I attempted to order the experiences into a semblance of, I dunno, something or other.  A maze, a jigsaw puzzle, a film urgently requiring an editor?  That guy who sat beside me on the beach returned.  Just walked in through the door.  That’s right, through the closed door.  I looked up and smirked: So you’re a ghost too then?  More of a traveler than a ghost, he intimated without speaking.  Well, travel was no stranger to me.  Yeah, but I do dimensions as well as the earth.  Oh, says I, silently, do tell.

     There’s maps to the afterlife and I know them all, was the opener, and it went from there.  A detailed guide with sage advice.  Apparently there were places not to miss and places well worth avoiding.  Places?  Well, communities, landscapes, seascapes, institutions of culture and technology, temples and cathedrals of a grandeur unimagined, architecture that dwarfed anything from Dubai, souls whose radiance would sweeten whatever bliss I thought was possible.  Quite the sales job I tell you.  We nattered until Ottilee rose for work and continued after she left for what I assumed was appointments.  There was serenity to her demeanor that I felt, well you know, at least partially responsible for.

     One issue I certainly wondered about, and then came out and asked, was why me?  It seemed I was worth the trouble.  As a techie loner in front of his screen most of the time when not hiking, I did not feel to be in that class.  Surely a philanthropist or activist investor, environmental crusader, or even that rarity, the democracy loving politico, would be more worthy of his attentions?  Someone who might be able to implement his wisdoms in some practical manner to benefit mankind?  Or was he all about changing the world one citizen at a time?

     His answer quite deflated me:  Yeah I guess.  Then he said:  That disappoint you?  I couldn’t resist: Yeah I guess.  I mean couldn’t your sage advice be better used elsewhere by someone who would engage with society.  You know, more than me.   He assumed a pondering pose, as if my comment challenged him unexpectedly.  I figured he was zooming me.  For fun likely; it had to be as profit seemed unlikely here, wherever here was.  Okay he grinned you guessed it, I’m here for you.

     The question would be: Why?  His grin took on the shade of smirk.  I’ve been assigned to you.  By whom may I ask. 

     By the system. 

     The system huh?  Surely not that network of notoriety I was paid to probe on earth. 

     Your work there was noted and appreciated.  And no the system is not the network.  The system is disinterested in the cheap thrill of power and control. 

     Then what would be its interest then? 

     The advancement of education and experience, The encouragement of both the turtles and the hares. 

     Sounds like a fascist think tank gussied up as some earnest non-profit.  

     And there you would be wrong. 

     Maybe you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes. 

     After you’ve been here a while you learn to see though all appearances. 

     And that takes how long? 

     Depends on how fast you want to adapt. 

     What if you want to ignore and just be happy in the bosom of nature?

     Private nirvanas are all very well.  But while they increase the world’s store of serenity, that invisible shelf that many may take from, they do so slowly, rather too slowly for our brotherhood.

     Sounds like you’re wedded to your agenda.

     Perhaps I come across as the true believer.  But there is no corporation, no ladder to climb and no rabbit hole to fall into when the glamour rots.

     He was beginning to intrigue.  So it’s a system without tentacles, no seductive entrapment.

     I suppose you could say selfless service to humanity was seductive to some. 

     And you think I am a likely candidate?

     In a word, yes.  You drifted away disgusted some centuries back.  To be honest I was a little disappointed myself.  Our mystery school lost its vision and imploded.  The usual ego problems.  The disciples vying for the master’s favour.

      The king’s obsequious courtiers?

      Sure, but we passed on the king thing a while back.  Now it’s the shared vision.

      Forgive me if I ask, who does the sharing and who decides what is to be shared?

      Everyone really.  Up to the individual as long as they think they are an individual.  But the energy of selfless service has a mind of its own.  It has a habit of remodeling.

     Sounds coercive lulled by the camaraderie of coziness.

     Much like the camaraderie of high-minded citizen hackers?

     Maybe, we sure thought we had righteousness, if not god, on our side.

     And the good guys you were, exposing fraud, corruption and all the crafty propaganda built around it.

     So this is the all new good guys brigade and you want me to sign on the line?

     Hardly.  I want you to see our selfless agenda in action.  Okay but I’ll need to be convinced.

     Tell you what, I‘ll the situations speak for themselves.

     Can I take time off to park myself in my fave nature spots?

     Sure, I fact I’d like to come along of you don’t mind.

     Sounds like you’ve been coming all along.

     Observing from a discrete distance, yes.  Interfering no.

     You want me to put Ottilee aside?

     Absolutely not.   Serving the divine feminine is one of our current projects.

     Sounds a bit pompous.

     Well we are committed to erasing the centuries long patriarchal repression of anything other than the baby making function.  Not to mention sexual servitude.  The fulfilment of the female gender’s full potential is long overdue.

     So, long story short, I was given a guided tour of the afterlife, which is like, about a hundred times bigger, wider, deeper than most might imagine.  Layered too, if I can ever explain that.  Layers and sub-layers.  More dead people than you can shake a stick at.  More everything.  Mountainous hiking trails to die for.  Of course as he reminded me, too bad you’re already dead.

     Sure doesn’t feel like it.

     That’s what everyone says.

     You’re experienced in these matters I take it.

     Yeah, been around the block more times than I care to remember.

     But you don’t come across as, you know, weary.

     It’s a temptation that’s easier to resist than when one is so-called alive.

     Gradually as we traveled about, seeing this, being there, doing that, I came to understand what he was on about.  There’s a light hearted joyfulness about being in these realms that renders boredom and all that been-there-done-that attitude redundant.  Every little thing seemed fascinating.  Being dead, one they’d gotten out of the denial that I’d slumbered in, seemed to give folks a whole new set of attitudes, ambitions and unfortunately, the same old doubts and believe it or not, fears.

     You’ll be wanting examples.  Once I’d pushed through that awesome sensual merging to telepathic communication with Ottille she did too.  In what she remembered as lucid dreams I’d tell her of my travels.  She’d forget about 70% but even that 30% left blew her away.  At some point she said, we have to stop all this, it keeps coming up during the day and I can’t focus on the business at hand.  She told me that she contacted a psychic to ask if her memories of us making love almost every other night was a sign of oncoming craziness.  Would she soon be hearing voices?  The psychic checked into it and felt that it was actually me, the dead me and not some fake, and that she was safe from more malicious spirits.  Why?  Because someone had put a protective energy bubble around her, something that wandering spirits were too weak to put a dent in.  As you might have guessed that was me under guidance doing that.  He told me it would be a good idea and knew how to make one that would last.

     You might call Ottilee a high value consultant, on tap for a number of regulatory and investigative operations, all of whom kept as low a profile as possible as they sniffed about for scam artists of all shapes and sizes. Forensic accounting was just the beginning.  She’d made a niche for herself long before I made an appearance and when I queried her on it she’d admitted it had all fallen into place bit by bit, contact by contact by recommendation.  She’d turned a corner and suddenly there was a line up of offers, most of whom were ponying up more to skip the line.  She loved being in demand after years of scraping a living together.

     Our odd, there-but-not-there relationship seemed to suit her.  As it did me.  My astral wanderings, not through as many varied communities as beauty spots, had shown me  a roller coaster of opportunities for a man without anchors, but I felt our bond transcended that level of frivolous fun loving.  That guide had gotten to me somehow.  He chuckled when confronted, Yup that’s what we’re good at.

     I was going to say, you can guess the rest, but as I cannot do that myself, not really, and maybe I don’t want to, why should I expect that of you?  Suffice to say, perhaps, that every type of human behaviour continues here, from the selfless to the selfish, from indulgence in pleasure to indulgence in anxiety, reaping the rewards of faith to reaping the karma of cruelty.  My guide made sure I got a glimpses of it all.  So what’s different then?  The possibility of redemption for some, the leap to enlightenment for others, the chance for rebirth if that turns your crank and believe me it does for some, anxious to get back to all that ego inflating action.

     Yeah, it’s another world for sure, with its own beliefs and paradigms, but yet it’s all so human.  Predictably human., though my guide assures me there are higher realms where angelic behaviour is the norm.  When he gave me a glimpse I couldn’t really focus on anything but blinding radiance and he said yeah okay we’ll get back to that later.  So far not yet but I’m sure it’s on the agenda.