dying to really live

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Dying to Really Live

The first book of a trilogy chronicling the

real life and death experiences of Duane F. Smith

Volume I

Copyright © 2014, Duane F. Smith

All right reserved

Duane F. Smith

Foreword

This book is the first of a trilogy of books about my original

NDE and the five times my Soul Guides returned me to the

Afterlife for further instruction. It is the story of what I saw,

learned and did, during and between those six trips. It also is about

my struggle to learn the art of Inner Guidance, enabling me to do

finally what I was sent back to accomplish.

This first volume, Dying to Really Live, tells of the events

leading up to my original NDE and what it was like to die. It is the

story of those I met the first time I went to the Afterlife and what

happened while I was there. It is also the story of my why I was

reluctance to return to this life, as well as why I finally did. And

how, at first, what I found here, was a bit like the paraphrase of an

old, post WW I song,”

How ya gonna keep’em down on the farm,

once they’ve seen gay Paree.”

However, once I did begin to internalize something I learned

over there, things quickly got better. What I learned was that,

Heaven and Hell aren’t places; they are a state of mind, and what

we experience is a choice, in this life or afterward.

Since the first volume covers universal principles of life and

death that should be free to all, I’m being told to give the first book

away, to anyone interested, allowing the reader to decide if the

trilogy is for them, or not, before buying the other two Volumes.

Volume II, Beyond Death and Back, available immediately

after Volume I, is the continuing story of what I experienced, and

learned, during the five times my soul guides took me back to the

Afterlife, in the two years following my original Death.

Volume III of the Trilogy, Living in a New Tomorrow will be

available following the publication of Volume II and is about one

of my last major learning assignment, to write of a what is ahead

for humans in a few areas, such as:

How a small change in our schools will empower

every child to reach his or her God-given potential.

If God Lives within us all, what is the purpose of

allowing “our” body to suffer sickness?

How individual mastery of Inner Guidance is the key

to happiness, and what’s ahead.

How God’s perfect plan of creation will bring the

return of the Edenic Millennium to earth far sooner

than most think possible

How a Great Soul Divide ahead will be different than

organized Religions, believe.

How we can achieve Heaven on earth as we wait for

the unfolding of God’s perfect plan.

By Duane F. Smith.

To follow the future writings of the Author or to follow his blog,

Go to the Author’s Website, http://www.DuaneFSmith.org

http://www.duanefsmith.org/

Contents

CHAPTER 1 ................................................................ 9 FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE

CHAPTER 2 .............................................................. 13 THE EARLY YEARS

CHAPTER 3 .............................................................. 18 MY EARLY LIFE CHANGES

CHAPTER 4 .............................................................. 22 GIVING UP ON LIFE

CHAPTER 5 ............................................................. 26 A LIFE CHANGING COINCIDENCE

CHAPTER 6 .............................................................. 32 WAITING TO DIE

CHAPTER 7 ............................................................. 34 DÉJÀ VU OR SOMETHING ELSE

CHAPTER 8 ............................................................. 39 MY LIFE CHANGES AGAIN

CHAPTER 9 .............................................................. 45 THE 4 HORSEMEN COMETH

CHAPTER 10 ............................................................ 51 LEARNING TRUE GRIEF

ABOUT VOLUME II ................................................. 58

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ............................................. 60

A SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT ........................... 64

9

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Chapter

1

FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE

“The world is a fine place and I would hate,

very much, to leave it.”

Ernest Hemingway

In my late 30s, my life took an unexpected turn. Just when it

seemed to be coming together as planned, something seemed

vaguely off key. It was nothing I could put a finger on, just a vague

feeling that I had missed a turn somewhere. Then, over the next

year or so, I slowly entered what St. John of Cross, a Carmelite of

the 16th Century, referred to as “The Night of the Soul.” Later, I

would realize this was the beginning of a new phase in my life.

At the time, my business and professional life had progressed

to the point where my wife and I could afford what we thought, at

the time at least were the things for which we had dreamed,

worked, and planned. These were all the things we assumed, and

society had taught us, would bring us happiness. Early in my life, I

had watched people who had money and nice things and decided I

wanted to be rich. I assumed that people with boats, cars, airplanes

and all of life’s toys had to be happy, right? So when I was young,


FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE

10

when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d

always replied “a millionaire.”

Now, our wonderful little family consisted of two pre-teen

daughters, around whom our lives revolved, the family dog, and

independent cat. We were happily ensconced in a beautiful old

Cape Cod, our home in the idyllic Shakespeare mecca of Ashland,

Oregon. In our garage were the requisite “his and her” Mercedes.

Mine was a sedan and hers a sports model purchased for her last

birthday. Out at the airport were two airplanes just looking for

ways to prove their worth to the family, one for local flying and

one for long distance. With a posh ski area just a few miles outside

of town and sailboat for the lake, we seemingly had it all. I had to

be happy, right?

It was icing on the cake that my “other family,” kids from the

experimental program where I taught school after getting out of the

Army, were mostly doing well also. The program had been for kids

who struggled with school and often had challenges at home. For

quite a few of the students, our classroom had become somewhat

of a surrogate family, and many had stayed in touch. Even the most

broken of the bunch, a little girl named Teresa, seemed to be on

her way to getting her life figured out. As I looked at my life, I

seemed to have it all, and what I didn’t have was within easy

reach.

Early in my life, I had discovered the power of goal setting

and in my late 30s I had achieved almost all of my life’s goals –

yes, even the millionaire part, several times over. We had been

building bigger houses and took longer and more extravagant

vacations. For several years now, I had felt we were just one step

away from happiness; just one more “something” and we’d finally

be there, we’d be satisfied and happy – ready to really enjoy life.

All the same, even the last six-week family vacation in

Europe, although perfect, still hadn’t scratched the itch I always

felt. Now, I began to suspect that the next bigger and better

“something” wasn’t going to do it either. And, of course, it never

did. In fact, what made it worse was the growing realization that I

DYING TO REALLY LIVE

11

really didn’t have any idea what real happiness was, or how or

where to find it. I had come to realize that happiness was more

than another new boat or bigger, faster airplane, or longer vacation

somewhere. Then, when my wife began talking about how our next

new house needed to be smaller to be perfect, I knew she was

sensing the same unspoken frustrations as I was.

About this time, to make matters even worse, something that

had started out as a minor health annoyance took a turn for the

worse. Fortunately, a doctor from The Stanford Medical Center in

California took on my case. After a thorough examination, he

seemed optimistic. He said they were developing a new operation

and it was going to be the breakthrough they were seeking in the

treatment of my apparently untreatable condition. Furthermore, he

said they were about to do another test-case operation and thought

I might be an excellent candidate for the new procedure. While

characterized as major surgery, it could offer significant relief if all

went well. And if it didn’t work, my prognosis wasn’t good

anyway. To my wife and me, there was no question of our decision

because, without the surgery, where would I be?

More testing began and I was poked and prodded everywhere

and relieved of bodily fluids I didn’t know I had. In spite of what

the doctors had said, once all the tests were completed, it seemed

the prognosis wasn’t so bright after all. The doctors, as a group,

felt that my condition had already deteriorated too far to survive

the operation.

Furthermore, even if I were willing to risk the new procedure,

no doctor wanted to operate on a man who they felt might just die

on the operating table. Clearly, though they didn't admit it, they

didn’t want to jeopardize their whole program, and new

experimental procedure, by having one of their first with the

patient dying in the process.

Their advice to us was go home and get my affairs in order as

I had, at the most, only five months to live. I was only 41, and

someway it really didn’t sink in at first. We knew we had hit a

rough patch of sailing in our life, but we didn’t really realize what

FIVE MONTHS TO LIVE

12

was ahead.

So, I suppose that was why their verdict had less impact on me

than I would have expected. Maybe it was because of the bone-

numbing fatigue I was feeling, after months of little or no sleep.

Maybe it was because, in some vague way, the fatigue aligned with

other feelings I was having. While I wasn’t actually ready to give

up, even before I realized I was in trouble, I had been wondering if

what we had was all there was to life?

But, as time went on, I did begin to give up. I remember

thinking that a thousand years from now, it wouldn’t matter

anyway; dead is dead. Then, I gradually became used these new

feelings. Partly, perhaps, because the detached feeling of being so

very tired made life seem devoid of meaning. It was as if part of

me was dead already, but I was still walking around. So the days

went on, and death became more inviting all the while.

13

Chapter

2

THE EARLY YEARS

There is no place so magical as

this world to a small child

Born on a farm along the banks of Williams Creek in rural

southern Oregon, I lived for the first six years of my life in a small,

white house happily nestled under spreading oak and willow trees.

We had a small farm halfway between two general stores in the

wee hamlet of Williams, Oregon. Across the main road from our

house was a small sawmill where my dad and granddad, along with

10 or 12 hired men, cut lumber for the war effort. In those days, if

you owned a mill you also owned the timber, did the logging and

hauled the logs to the mill. After cutting the logs into lumber, you

hauled it to the railhead for shipment to some Army Depot.

Until I was six, the farm and sawmill were my playgrounds

and the universe, as I was amazingly free to roam them at will.

When the war was over, we sold the mill and moved to a ranch not

far away.

My earliest memories are of waking up in my attic bedroom

above the kitchen as the cozy smells of bacon, eggs, and pancakes

came wafting up the narrow stairway. Then, the sounds of my

granddad’s booming laughter would rattle through the house as he

and my father came into the kitchen from the barn. Each morning

before breakfast, they milked and fed the cows and harnessed the

two teams of horses, used later at the mill.

I would descend the stairs wiping the sleep from my eyes,

where my granddad and best pal, Amos, would scoop me up and

hoist me to his shoulders. He wasn’t actually my granddad. He was

my dad’s uncle who raised Dad, but he was my favorite

THE EARLY YEARS

14

“granddad.”

Overall, as a child I was lucky to have two loving grandfathers

in my life. Amos, a big-hearted man whose laughter was

infectious, always dressed in clean bib overalls, except when he

went to church, which wasn’t often. He was a natural magnet for

kids and dogs everywhere he went, a regular Pied Piper. He was a

larger-than-life person in a small community and I adored him. He

also seemed to have a special affection for me, maybe because he

had no children.

Amos had a large impact on my world and helped shape the

person I became as well as the values I embraced. He was someone

who paid little attention to money, but seemed to have a natural

ability to make it by the wheelbarrow load and gave it away as fast

as he made it.

In retrospect, my other granddad, on my mother’s side, was

one of the oldest souls I ever met. If he wasn’t a real, honest-to-

goodness saint, he didn’t miss by much. With his bemused,

enigmatic smile always playing across his face, it seemed

impossible for him to see, or believe, any bad in any person or

situation. Only much later did I come to realize what he already

knew before I was born, what would take me 40 years, and a Near

Death Experience, to begin to parse apart.

Later, I realized these two men were part of, almost, a magical

force at work in my life – the first of a number of elderly men who

were always in my life, at the right place and the right time. At that

tender age, I had no way of understanding how lucky I was to have

two such grandfathers living around me as I grew up.

My memories of those early mornings were always about the

same. I would eat my breakfast with my dad and granddad as Mom

plied us with course after course, fresh each morning, while my

dad and granddad were out tending the livestock. She saw it as her

duty to ensure that her family wouldn’t face the day on an empty

stomach. There was always plenty of fresh-squeezed juice, real

oatmeal, pancakes, ham or steak, eggs, biscuits and toast, topped

off with something baked, maybe a cinnamon roll or coffee cake,


15

and plenty of milk fresh from the barn, with a cream line partway

down the pitcher. That was the way breakfast was in those days. It

had to be substantial in the days before machinery replaced muscle

power. Men consumed piles of food when it was available, and

you rarely saw anyone overweight.

The time-period was in the mid-1940s, during World War II,

in an era when men did hard physical labor 10 to 12 hours a day.

Having three hearty meals was just a normal part of the day. My

mother saw it as her part of the daily workload to prepare, from

scratch, three full meals with all the requisite baking. In addition, if

she needed a chicken for dinner, she would catch and kill it, and

then scald it in boiling water to pluck its feathers before cutting it

up in frying sized pieces so that we could have fried chicken for

dinner. Often, mother would milk the cows when dad had to be at

the mill or in the woods.

In his later life, my father never understood why people joined

health clubs to “work out,” being from a generation when men did

eight to ten hours of demanding physical work, and then had

several hours of chores at the barn when they got home.

After breakfast, my dad and granddad would follow the path

across the field and climb the stile straddling the fence alongside

the highway. Across the highway, the path led to a log pond where

it became a series of chained-together floating logs hewn flat as a

walking surface. Once on the other side, they entered the mill and

began the second part of their day.

Back at the house, I would finish my breakfast and then get

dressed and hurry after them, following along the path they had

taken over the stile, across the road, and to the log pond. Here, I

would pick up the little pike-pole one of the men had cut off for me

and cross the log bridge. When I arrived at the mill, I would

usually go underneath it where my Uncle Harry already had a

roaring fire going in the steam boiler. He was “getting up a head of

steam” as we called it, so that at 8:00 he could blow the whistle

and start the steam engine, which drove the saws and moved the

log carriage back and forth across the saw blade.

THE EARLY YEARS

16

In that era, if something moved, it took horse or man-power to

do it. If they wanted a log rolled over or a piece of lumber moved,

it was done by the muscle power of either a man or a horse. The

steam engine, which seemed as large as a locomotive to a five-year

old boy, but was the only source of power in the mill, other than

muscle power. While there were a few electric light bulbs in our

home, at first, there wasn’t even an electrical line to the mill. But

when more lumber was needed near the end of World War II,

Uncle Harry rigged a single-light bulb over the Sawyers station so

that we could see before full daylight or as the light faded at night.

This way, the mill could operate a few more hours each day, doing

its part in the war effort.

The underbelly of the mill fascinated me. I wanted to know

what made it all work. But, after a while of watching and asking

Uncle Harry all the questions I could think of, I would go on to

other parts of the mill, driven by an insatiable boy’s curiosity.

For the rest of the day, I usually had free run of most of the

mill and mill yard, though certain places were absolutely off-

limits. I was never to go near the burning sawdust piles and was

amply supplied with stories of young children falling into their

smoldering craters of burning sawdust.

Later, as an adult, I question whether I would have allowed a

son of mine such freedom at such a young age. I questioned for a

while whether my parents had been negligent or not. It was only

later that I realized my parents weren’t negligent; I had probably

just fallen in the crack between Mom’s world and Dad’s… at first

anyway.

Mom sent me off to the mill to go to my Dad, assuming he

would keep an eye on me, which he probably did. Then,

sometimes, he would send me back to the house. But sometimes I

would stop and see Amos along the way. As time went by, Mom

probably thought I was with Dad and Dad would think I was with

Mom. After a while, they decided, since I hadn’t been killed yet, I

must be fairly safe. Soon, I was free all day long.

Now, as I look back, it is easy to believe something or


17

someone was watching over me. I had been given so much

freedom, at a young age, in what was a potentially dangerous

place. However, I believe it was with this freedom that I learned to

get myself out of the little jams and troubles I managed to get

myself into later.

I suppose it’s like the way the few remaining Native American

families would fireproof their babies. As infants, their babies were

allowed to crawl unprotected around a fire. At first, they were safe

because they couldn’t move much. As they became slightly more

mobile and were able to inch slowly toward the flame, they

naturally learned that it becomes uncomfortably warm at some

point, and so they stopped. In time, they become more mobile and

braver. Inevitably, they occasionally got a red spot or even a small

blister here or there. But eventually in small, age-appropriate doses

they fireproof themselves. The children who get into trouble are

those who are hovered over, or are overly protected around fires

and not allowed to experiment or play with it.

Because of my freedom to roam, I developed confidence in

my own abilities and a healthy dose of self-respect for life, which

was to carry me through the spirit-crushing experiences in store for

me as my dyslexic tendencies came to the surface.

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Chapter

3

MY EARLY LIFE CHANGES

On every life a little rain must fall

I entered school on top of the world, eager to learn to read. In

an era before teachers knew of dyslexia, my natural confidence and

verbal abilities carried me well until fifth grade. My teachers

seemed to accept me and my odd style of writing. I had developed

a method of printing because cursive writing was impossible for

me. My fingers just wouldn’t cooperate. I did my homework as

required, and usually received As or Bs in most subjects.

Nevertheless, in the fifth grade, my charmed world came crashing

down around me. Here, I met a teacher who was a real life changer

– in a negative way, or so it seemed at the time.

I remember her as a self-righteous, frustrated woman who

thought the way to motivate children, little boys in particular, was

to shame them into better performance. Her way of inspiring and

motivating me was to hold up my struggling attempts at writing in

front of the whole class, ridicule it, and then post it on a special

bulletin board for all to examine as an example of what she didn’t

want. If her efforts created a negative reaction, the pressure was

only increased.

Her favorite punishment was “detention sentences” for work

not meeting her “standards,” and mine never did, try as I might. As

a punishment, she would write a sentence consisting of 30 to 35

words in length on the blackboard, tailored to admonish me for the

error of my ways and sloppy penmanship. (Penmanship loomed-

large in her mind, and with no messy printing allowed!) For the

first offense, she would have me copy, in longhand, 100 of these

sentences, all to be written during my recesses or noontime. For a

young boy of 10, who struggled to shape each letter individually,


19

one at a time, the punishment of a hundred such sentences, seemed

like capital punishment. In addition, any sentences not completed

the first day carried over to the recesses of the next. Sometimes she

would reject the whole assignment if she thought my penmanship

looked like I “wasn’t trying hard enough.”

By the time I completed the first 100 sentences, I usually had

earned another 200 or 300 sentences. The magical life I had

experienced until then began to turn gray and dark. But, the worst

of it was that it all seemed to be my fault. Maybe I wasn’t trying

hard enough or maybe I was lazy. My older sister had been in her

class a few years earlier and received straight As. One thing I

heard too much of was “why can’t you be like your sister? You’re

capable, you just aren’t trying hard enough; you don’t care.”

To make matters worse, often I would grasp an assigned

problem and figure out my own way to the answer, only to be

accused of copying the answer from someone else, because I

hadn’t done it the way the teacher thought it was supposed to be

done. When reports from my teacher came home of my “not

applying myself” and saying that I was copying the work of others,

I began to question myself, to think maybe it was all my fault.

Maybe I wasn’t working hard enough and I began to question why

I couldn’t do things “right;” I begin to wonder what was wrong

with me.

For a while, I would start each day determined to try harder

and work harder. However, try as I might, I just couldn’t make the

letters on the paper come out right or in their proper order, and

often I couldn’t come to the right answer, in the same way other

kids did. And, my right answer would cause me further grief when

I couldn’t always articulate the often circuitous way in which I

arrived at my answer. To make matters worse, by the time I had

struggled over the paper for hours, it was smudged, messy, and

many times ripped from the erasing. Often, I couldn’t even read

my own writing, no matter how hard I tried or how determined I

was to do better. Slowly, I began to give up.

Whatever the cause, as I gave up to the shame and anger, it all

MY EARLY LIFE CHANGES

20

turned into resistance, and then rebellion. By the sixth grade, I no

longer even did classroom work unless the teacher stood over me

and forced it. Homework was out of the question.

Looking back on it now from a metaphysical viewpoint, what

happened to me at the time was perfect, considering what it would

head me toward, later. However, I certainly could not see it at the

time. While this teacher triggered my anger and rebellion, she also

sent me in the direction necessary to have the experiences for

which I had come to this planet.

While writing, grammar, and spelling were nearly impossible

for me, reading came easily. Because of my good verbal skills and

reading ability, I was carried on through the grades into high

school. In high school, the results of my written work were much

the same. Classes that required writing continued to be extremely

frustrating. Math, science, and physics were easy for me, but I still

had trouble seeing how others got the same answers that I did.

However, I would usually receive As and Bs for my work in those

classes, if the teacher wasn’t big on homework. However, my

attitude problem carried over and I refused to do anything outside

of the classroom. If I couldn’t do it during class time, I didn’t do it.

Somehow, I was able to graduate on time, albeit in the bottom

third of my class. Moreover, since I came from a family of Scotch

and Irish forefathers who were either hellfire and brimstone

preachers or schoolteachers, there was no doubt that I would go to

college. That concept was so thoroughly ingrained in my

upbringing that I really didn’t even question the idea.

Nonetheless, after a short stint in college, my inability to write

and study, along with my partying, finally caught up with me and

when the dean asked me to leave for the second time, I knew

something had to change. By now, my father also realized the

futility of attempting to have me reinstated, yet again, and quietly

said, “Son, I think you better go into the Army and grow up.” Little

did he know at the time that what he said was received with a sense

of relief and would lead me to exactly where I needed to be for the

next of a series of life lessons, setting a pattern that would be


21

repeated over and over in my life.

The Army appealed to my sense of adventure, so I agreed to

“Join the Army and See the World,” as was the recruiting slogan at

that time. However, I left college for the Army feeling like I had a

big “D” for “Dumb” branded across my forehead; feeling like

maybe I was the dumbest person in the world. I guess I knew

innately that I wasn’t actually that dumb, but I had no idea how to

do some things the way others did and my self-esteem had been

beaten down and was about as low as it could go. But, looking

back on it, I can say that I hadn’t lost my fighting spirit; that would

come later in life.

22

Chapter

4

GIVING UP ON LIFE

Sometimes a person can be lost in the deluge

To my wife, as I lost my interest in life, my changing attitude

felt like abandonment. Of course, it is easy to see why she would

feel that way. Nonetheless, I was unsure what to do about it. She

felt we should be fighting harder somehow, but I didn’t know how

to do that. We were already in the hands of the best medical team,

working on the cutting edge of this recently discovered new field

of medicine. Moreover, they were in contact with similar medical

teams all over the world. Who were we supposed to go to? Perhaps

some rumored South American healer or witch doctor? The only

consolation I had was that she and the girls would be in good

financial condition.

Over the years, I had morphed from building student

apartments to commercial office buildings, which were all on long-

term leases. They were easy to manage and my attorney would

handle whatever my wife couldn’t or didn’t want to deal with.

Always a bright woman, she had actually become very

knowledgeable of the business from managing our student

apartments. Strangely, I kept thinking she might be better off

without me; she could then get on with her life. In spite of it all, at

some level neither of us really understood the finality of what was

happening in our lives or inside my body. I wasn’t sick; I was just

tired, in a way that was hard to explain.

I was suffering from an extreme case of Central Nervous

System Sleep Apnea compounded by a second form, Obstructive

Sleep Apnea. The first form of sleep apnea occurs in only 15% of

sleep apnea cases and is akin to Crib Death in newborn infants. For

some unknown reason, at least at that time, with this type of apnea,


23

the body just forgets to breathe during deep REM sleep, a critical

part of the sleep cycle. The trachea is a bundle of muscles held

open by muscle tone. When some part of the autonomic nervous

system “forgets” to maintain muscle tone in the trachea, the

trachea simply collapses. Breathing through a collapsed trachea is

a little like trying to breathe through an old-fashioned paper straw

that collapses when saturated. The unknown part is the reason why

the autonomic nervous system fails to keep its muscle tone in the

trachea to begin with.

There is a second form of apnea, Obstructive Apnea, usually

caused by obstructions in the throat, which block air passage

during normal nighttime relaxing. With this form, it is obvious

what the problem is, with just a simple examination. Now, doctors

can usually relieve this type with surgery, however at the time, it

was this surgery, they were attempting to develop. But Central

Nervous System Sleep Apnea usually isn’t so easy to detect during

an autopsy. Both are deadly, and I had them both.

This was in an era before medical advances brought us the

lifesaving C-Pap machine. These compact little “breathing

machines” save thousands of lives each year by simply putting

positive air pressure into the trachea. It works on the principle that

blowing through a collapsed paper straw is easy; however, it is

impossible to suck air through a collapsed straw.

People with sleep apnea usually develop a condition called

Pulmonary Hypertension, which is a deadly form of high blood-

pressure in the circulatory system, which serves the heart and lungs

with the normal blood pressure in the rest of the body. This is why

people with sleep apnea usually die of a heart attack or stroke.

However, this is also why there are no telltale signs of their

impending fatality. I looked dead-tired, as if I might be dying to

get some sleep . . . and I was.

I spent most of my time falling asleep and trying to breathe.

Yet, there was almost an unreal quality to it all. I could be talking

with my wife at the dinner table one moment, and suddenly fall

asleep with my face landing in my plate of food. Driving was out

GIVING UP ON LIFE

24

of the question when I started wrecking cars faster than the

insurance company could, or would, repair or replace them. Being

tired from the lack of sleep is uncomfortable. Being tired from lack

of sleep over days or months is torturous. During the Korean War,

both sides used sleep deprivation as a very effective way of

breaking men down and getting them to talk. Even today, it is one

of the most powerful ways to get information from prisoners.

In some ways, I guess we kept expecting a miracle. However,

I did begin putting my affairs in order. I spent many hours in a

semi-awake state, looking back over my life, trying to understand

where I had gone wrong. How could I have all of these “things,”

after having accomplished all that I had, and not care particularly

whether I lived or died? Was it a lack of sleep or something else? It

was hard to say and at this point it didn’t seem to make much

difference.

26

Chapter

5

A LIFE CHANGING COINCIDENCE

Sometimes we think we are in control of our destiny

As with many young men who struggle in school, the Army

proved exactly what I needed. And now, looking back from a

different perspective, I can see the perfection of what led up to me

finding a place in the Army. Furthermore, the Army was where my

self-esteem began healing. And it was where I began to question

some of the false assumptions about myself and schools that I had

learned from my time in the school system.

Probably, the first morale-booster was the induction process,

and the testing done by the Army before any training began. At the

time of my enlistment, I found out that half the draftees called up

for testing fail the Army’s entry-level testing. It seems half of the

draftees couldn’t pass a high school equivalency test.

After three days of rigorous testing, to my surprise, I scored

reasonably well. In fact, in a few areas, I ranked in the 97

percentile. However, in one area relating to Language

Assimilation, I failed miserably, ranking in the lowest three

percent of those taking the test. Apparently, this was the same part

of the intellect, which tripped me up in school.

However, perhaps the largest boost to my morale was

something else the Army does well; that is, to get things mixed up.

For some odd reason, I found myself assigned to the University of

Maryland as a Teacher in an experimental program. It would be

years before I realized that this stroke of fate was again an

intervention by Providence, assuring I was in just the right place,

providing just the learning I needed, for the role I had chosen to

play in this incarnation.


27

The Army, in conjunction with the University of Maryland,

was experimenting with a group of draftees who had managed to

avoid school altogether. The Army drafted 350 of these men who

lacked any formal schooling and were assumed to be illiterate. They

(the Army) were interested in seeing how quickly these men could

be educated to high school equivalency. They had already attempted

a similar program on groups of high school dropouts and those who

couldn’t pass the entrance tests, but that had failed miserably.

The University of Maryland had designed a program they felt

would work, where the other programs had failed, for one reason

and one reason alone. These men were interested in learning,

whereas the dropouts already knew they hated school and weren’t

interested in more of it. They had developed an attitude toward

school similar to mine.

It was my good fortune to be at the Army base where the

University of Maryland planned to work with one of their

experimental training groups. Then something happened that was

to shape what I thought and believed about education, and it

changed my life forever.

I had gotten to know the sergeant in charge of the University of

Maryland’s on-base learning center. Then, for some reason, he

asked if I would be the math instructor for 30 of the men in one of

their test groups. When I tried to tell him that I wasn’t qualified, he

just said not to worry about it. But when he told me I would be

removed from the KP roster and and guard duty, I went along with

the ruse.

However, what he knew but I didn’t, was that the instructor

didn’t have to know the subject. The material put together for this

program would do the teaching. The instructor was only someone

to sit in the classroom and hand out the material, plus keep an eye

on the clock. For that, apparently I qualified.

The first surprise was how regular and normal these

supposedly illiterate men were. In general conversation and by all

appearances, they were just like everyone else I knew, but

apparently the Army seemed to call everyone who hadn’t attended


28

school illiterate. By that definition, I didn’t miss it by far. In

addition, many of history’s great thinkers and leaders, including

many of the founders of our country, would have been called

illiterate.

The next thing that surprised me was how simple and logical the

material was and the way it as presented. They called the method

Programmed Learning, and the men took to it immediately. In

essence, the workbook would present a single fact or piece of data in

a sentence or two. Then the next sentence would ask them a question

about what they had just read. Whether they answered the question

correctly or not determined which line (lines were all numbered) they

went to next. If they got the answer wrong, the material was

presented in a different way. If they got the answer right, they were

presented with new information. And so it went: a fact or two and a

question, a new fact and a new question. Sometimes there was a

picture and question; sometimes a short story and a question. So they

worked their way through the material at their own individual pace,

with plenty of breaks and no pressure, in a relaxed and congenial

atmosphere.

There was little need for me to do anything, but hand out the

day’s workbook, occasionally show a movie, and stand there

looking wise. The key was the material and how it was presented.

The fact that I wasn’t qualified to teach math didn’t matter because

the subject matter wasn’t dependent on me as a teacher. The

material, and its arranged was the key. It was simple and direct, and

the men loved it. Was it because these men had something I had lost

by the fifth grade? That learning was fun, exciting, and interesting.

The men didn’t even want to quit at break time! But then, they

hadn’t been put through this same math day after boring day. Maybe

that was why this program had little success when used on high

school dropouts.

Dropouts had resisted it from the very start. To them, it was

just more of the same old BS so they wouldn’t give it a chance. As

we know, there are none so deaf as those who will not hear.

I worked with these men an hour a day, and the rest of the day

they took other high school equivalency classes. As the days


29

turned into weeks, probably what impressed me the most, was the

sheer excitement and enthusiasm they had for the material that was

rather basic.

As they went down the page or through the material, the

questions would include not only what they had just been given, but

a review of the material in the paragraph above, and sometimes

there would be a question or two on material earlier in the

presentation. The farther they went, the more comprehensive the

tests became, but it didn’t seem to bother them. The magic seemed

to happen because of the immediate need to repeat information they

had just learned in the previous few minutes. Maybe that made it

easier to remember later because, in a couple of minutes, they were

asked to repeat it again. By the time they were asked to repeat it

three or four times, it seemed it was locked in their mind.

The results didn’t surprise me. By the time, we reached the end of

the 90 days allotted for the class; 92% of them had passed. These men

conquered the equivalent of 12 years of math while, at the same time;

a full range of other subject materials also. They earned a high school

GED diploma, covering grade 1 through grade 12, in just 90 days.

And, that was the way they felt too, like they had conquered

something. I don’t believe I have ever met a prouder bunch of GIs.

They had just slayed a large, personal dragon, in 90 days.

The men were normal in all respects: they had listened to the

news as they grew up, traveled, and been part of the workplace.

They were not illiterate as the Army had assumed. In fact, most of

the men found the material relatively easy. As these men were

assimilated into the larger part of the Army, I know they felt really

great about what they had accomplished. And, I felt really great

about my little part in their success.

During that time, I was left feeling cheated and conned. If these

men could get the equivalence of a high school education in 90 days,

it made me question the 12 years I had spent in dull, boring classes.

When I thought of what I learned in my 12 years, I didn’t seem to

have anything these men didn’t have, except a bad attitude and

hatred for schooling.


30

But those 90 days were pivotal in what was to come after the

Army. In addition, they did a lot to restore my belief in myself and

to shape my future attitudes toward education, for now I knew

there was a better way. Later I was to discover that this was part of

the reason for which I came to this planet.

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Chapter

6

WAITING TO DIE

There is a time when death comes as softly as a dove in the night,

whispering sweet things to those who wait.

At the time I got the bad news from the medical team, I had

never heard of Sleep Apnea as it was a new condition on the

medical horizon. However, they told me it had been eroding my

health for a long time, making me a prime candidate for a stroke or

heart attack.

During the first night I spent in the sleep lab, I stopped

breathing over 200 times for durations of up to 3 1/2 minutes at a

time. One can do the math. During the seven or eight-hour night it

doesn’t leave much time for breathing or sleeping. Any joy in my

life was long gone and matters only got worse with time. Sleeping

in a bed was impossible. The only way I could get any sleep was

upright in a chair. My life became a gray haze of pain and

hopelessness as I waited for the end. Eventually, I came to terms

with my death, if for no other reason than the sleep it promised.

By this time, I was beginning to make peace with the fact that

this world could go on without me. I knew my wife to be tough,

resilient and a hard worker and with what we had already

accumulated, she and the girls would be fine. After a brief period

of mourning, they would get on with their lives without me. By

now, I had “put my affairs in order” as my doctor had advised.

Since I held no spiritual beliefs, it was easy to imagine it would all

be over soon and I could finally sleep for a long, long time. It was

amazing how appealing that thought had become.

In my more lucid times, I seemed to derive pleasure from

drifting back through old memories of earlier days when the future


33

ahead of us was bright and life seemed alive with promise. It

seemed that, looking back on my life, all the years I had been so

focused and sure of my goals, I really didn’t begin to understand

what was and wasn’t crucial. In fact, now as I was facing death,

most of what I thought was important now proved trifling and

insignificant.

During this time, sometimes on the edge of sleep, an odd

kaleidoscope of old memories about three seemingly unrelated

experiences kept swirling through my mind. It was like, “Hey, you

need to look at these, they are important.” But why, after all these

years, would these three experiences keep bubbling up and how

could they be important now? I had no idea. However, because

they were always there, just on the edge of sleep, I found myself

using them as a distraction, as an escape, and then wondering how

they could possibly be relevant to what my reality was now.

The three recurring thoughts were, (1) the 5th-grade trauma

when my education came to a screeching halt because I could not

“learn” the way other kids did. (2) my realization in the Army, that

education did not have to be painful after all. And, (3) my

epiphany when I later became a teacher myself and was able to test

child-directed learning with excellent results. I finally realized that

these three events were, in fact, related to one another and that

each of them had been essential for my life journey and part of the

purpose I was here to accomplish.

34

Chapter

7

DÉJÀ VU OR SOMETHING ELSE

We never know when true magic is afoot

It was also during my time in the Army in the sixties, 15 or 16

years after WWII, when I began to experience incidents that I later

realized were beginning cracks in my cosmic egg, and were the

beginning of my remembering who I really was and my reason for

being on this planet.

After splitting with the church of my childhood, I hadn’t given

much thought to spiritual matters, at least not beyond the message

spoon-fed to kids in Sunday school. However, in Germany, I kept

having soul shaking incidents of déjà vu, which left me seeking

answers to questions I had yet to formulate and would never find

answers to in the old Southern Baptist Church I had known as a

child.

While in Germany, I encountered situations that my Sunday

school teacher could never answer. Why, at six in the morning,

would a 20-year-old GI carrying all his military gear, suddenly be

crushed by waves of fear and grief by just stepping off the night

train from Bremerhaven to Frankfurt, on his second morning in

Germany? Why, later would I suddenly, without a thought, dive

for cover at the first sight of a German Army Tank, while on

NATO Maneuvers?

Why did I keep meeting German citizens 10 or 15 years my

elder who seemed very beyond familiar, and we would realize that

we both felt inextricably drawn to each other. Many times we

could barely understand the other’s language, but draw was there.

Moreover, why did strangers often seem to appear out of

nowhere, offering help just when I needed it most? Furthermore,


35

why did a series of seemingly random, albeit synchronous, events

keep happening to me, which now, 40 years later, define my life?

At the time, I didn’t think much about these incidents. I just

relegated them to some little used part of my mind where I stored

things that really didn’t make sense. It was only later, as they

began to stack up that felt compelled to consider them. Now I

realize that those people were part of a larger soul group, from an

earlier German life. But, I was far from being ready to understand

or believe such things at that time. That understanding would come

in another 25 years, when I had seen this world through a far

different lens; acquired from an after-this-current-life perspective.

Since then I have wondered what my years in Germany would

have been like, had I realized that my feelings of Déjà Vu were

correct. I had been there before. However, at the time, I had no

answers.

Considerably later, it became apparent that this was all

preparation for what was ahead. It was a way to open my mind to

new information on a topic I had trivialized and thought irrelevant,

at least to life as I knew it. However, in many ways, those three

years in the Army and Europe were essential to who I was and

what was to become of me.

However, perhaps the most important of all the serendipitous

things that happened occurred after my scheduled tour in Europe

was completed. Just before my departure date, the Berlin Crisis

flare-up extended my stay in Germany by six months.

It was during this time that one Friday night another Sergeant

and I went out on the town to bury our sorrows over having our

tour of duty extended an extra six months. Late that evening, as I

was driving back to the base, my friend wanted to stop for a late

night pizza and one last beer. I tried to dissuade him as I didn’t

need another beer, and wasn’t hungry at the time. I just wanted to

go to bed. However, my friend wasn’t to be denied, so I agreed.

Little did I realize that was a life altering decision!

While we were eating our pizza, I noticed a pair of beautiful

dark eyes from far across the room. Somewhere deep inside, I

DÉJÀ VU OR SOMETHING ELSE

36

knew that something was happening at that deep level. In a

moment, the girl waiting for me back home lost all her charm to a

girl I hadn’t even met.

That evening I asked around and found that this girl’s parents

forbade her even to talk to GIs. Because of that, it took me nearly

two months to even meet her, let alone get a date with her.

However, I knew from that first night that the die was cast. Once

again, something larger than I, was at play. Had not a whole series

of events lined up in just the right order, at the right time,

everything in my life would have unfolded differently. And,

without some of the events that it all led to, my Near Death

Experience would have just been my Death, after which I would

have never returned to the life, and this book you are reading

would never have been written.

At the time, I had no way of knowing that a late night, spur-of-

the-moment decision to stop for pizza would change my life

forever, and now 50 years later, the ripple effects of that quick

decision, are still altering my life. However, since you are reading

this book, that decision made so long ago, will now alter your

future in some small way, whether you agree with its topic or not.

Let me explain.

After reading for a while, you may decide to stop and go to the

store. At this point, when you choose to stop reading seems your

choice and an arbitrary one at that. However, depending on your

whim you might or might not meet an old friend on the way. You

may talk with them for a few minutes, or longer. Either way, the

whole of the rest of your day will probably unfold differently, than

if you had stopped reading five minutes later. . . or earlier, and

missed your friend. In addition, when we “accidently” bump into

different people, we also change their seemingly random patterns

also, and eventually they affect everyone they meet. Some may

avoid an accident they might have been envolved in, and some

may have an accident they wouldn’t have had, had they been a

minute earlier or later. And the ripple effects continue, outward,

forever.

Consider this if you will. Eventually, your seemingly


37

insignificant choice of when to stop reading affects everyone

around you. Furthermore, it is not only when you stop reading; it is

the 10,000 other little snap decisions we make every day, without

thinking or noticing. Each starts a ripple effect that eventually

come back to us. It has been said, by someone far wiser than I that

the sum of our life is the quality of all of our little decisions we all

consistently make.

We all put a great deal of thought in our major life-decisions.

However, the actual essence of our life is built on the thousand

small choices we make daily; choices that are made by our-ego-

driven monkey-mind, OR, from a place of quiet consideration and

inner guidance.

God created us in his image, as infinitely powerful beings who

change the world with each thought, or action. And, our choices

are the only thing we mortals do, that lasts forever. We live with

the results of our little choices for the rest of our lives and on into

eternity. One can’t help but wonder what this world will be like,

when we all are operating from a conscience place of inner

guidance.

When I was in the Army in Germany, I believe that I and I

alone controlled my choices. I no longer believe that. I have come

to realize that thousands of minor synchronous coincidences every

minute of our lives shape our choices. I have come to understand

that we all are far more powerful than we realize. Every little

decision keeps on affecting us, and those around us, for years,

either positively or negatively. As my old, new age friend says,

what goes around, comes around and pats us on the back, or bites

us in the butt.

39

Chapter

8

MY LIFE CHANGES AGAIN

To really live you must almost die –Gary Cooper

Six months after finally receiving my discharge from the

Army, I went back to Germany and married that wonderful

German girl. Now, again with the hindsight of an after-life

perspective, I realize she was the reason I had gone to Germany in

the first place – to meet her. Then, after a time there, we returned

stateside, settling in a small college town of Ashland, Oregon,

where I worked at various jobs and eventually decided to finish

college.

I migrated to the Psychology Department, probably in an

attempt to understand what was wrong with me that had made

grade school so difficult for me. I eventually ended up in the

Education Department. Here, classes in early childhood

development and alternate methods of learning started to shed

some light on my problems.

While in college, I started a small construction company and

began converting old houses into student apartments. By the time I

graduated, I had accumulated a number of college rentals and a

nice monthly cash flow. In addition, I was still adding extra

apartments as I could afford it. Nevertheless, the itch to teach was

growing. I began thinking of turning the day-to-day operations of

my small business over to my right hand man. I just wanted to

teach long enough to test some of my theories. So, with a diploma

in hand, I started looking for a job. Of course, once again, at that

time, I had no idea that providence was shuffling me to exactly

where a higher part of me wanted me to be. Of course, all the

while, I thought I was operating strictly on my mortal mind’s free

will.


40

Soon, I was a first-year teacher with a room full of fifth

graders. I immediately began implementing a rather unproven and

unorthodox bag of tricks. Out went the desks; in came worktables,

a few old sofas and rugs, as well as an ancient, but working,

refrigerator and hot plate. By Christmas, the principal had enough

of my methods and made no bones about it.

One afternoon, the principal, along with the superintendent,

paid my room an unexpected visit. As they left, the superintendent

asked me to come to his office after class. With that, I knew my

days as a teacher at that school were over.

After school, I packed up the few personal things I would take

with me, some mementos of the kids, and a few pictures and put

them in my car.

I entered the superintendent’s lair like a condemned man,

where his secretary eyed me as she spoke into the intercom. Then

she gestured down the hall and I took that to mean I was to walk

the last mile alone.

The superintendent met me at his office door and motioned for

me to sit in the chair in front of his desk as he took his oversized

chair behind it. He sat there and just looked at me for a few

moments as if he wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed. Then he

threw me a curve ball saying, “What are you going to do next

year?”

Being just before Christmas, I assumed he meant in January

after he had fired me. “Well,” I said, “I own some apartments and a

small construction company, so I will go back and build some

more apartments.”

With that, he sat and looked at me some more. I wanted to say,

“Come on, let’s get on with this. Fire me and get it over with.”

Instead, I waited and he finally said, “If you could do anything

you wanted with a classroom of kids, what would you do?”

I didn’t know where he was going with that question, but it

didn’t sound too promising. I assumed he was talking about my

unorthodox approach to teaching and wondered just how weird I


41

would get if I had the chance.

Tentatively I said, “You mean with a class?” He nodded, and I

jumped in. At least I would get in a few jabs on the way out the

door. My grade school memories were popping up again. I had a

lot of heat built up around the topic of teachers, schools, and how

they operated and I let the Superintendent have it with both barrels.

For the next 25 to 30 minutes, I went on about all the things I

believed kids could be doing, indeed should be doing, in school

instead of what they were doing now. There was no stopping me.

The superintendent sat through it with a bemused, enigmatic

smile as I rolled out all my guns. I had waited a long time to tell a

teacher-type person what side of the toast the butter was on, and I

was going to make the most of it. I wasn’t delivering my tirade to a

teacher; I had hooked a superintendent.

He let me rant on, and when I finally stopped, he just sat there

looking at me with that damned enigmatic smile. After several

minutes, he quietly said, “You got it.”

Then, it was my turn to sit there. I had no idea where this

conversation had gone, but it had definitely left me behind. “I got

what?” I asked in surprise.

The superintendent looked at me as though he were a patient

man dealing with a slow child and said, “If you come back next

year you can have a class of kids and you can do all those things.”

I looked for flecks of foam around the corners of the man’s

mouth. Nothing he said made any sense, as I was scrambling to get

a handle on where this conversation had gone.

I guess he could see the bewilderment on my face, so he

simply said, “If you will finish this year and then come back next

fall, you can have a class of kids you can work with in any way

you want.” Then he went on to say, “But there is a caveat; most of

the kids you get will be ones who are bored or failing. You’ll get

the three kids out of each of the fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade

classrooms. Some may be bright but bored, some will be

troublemakers, and some are just kids the teachers have given up.


42

The teachers won’t care what you do with them in your class, if we

do it this way, and it will keep the principal off your back.”

That afternoon, instead of getting the ax, I met a person who

would change the direction of my life once again, placing me

exactly where some higher part wanted me to be. Nevertheless, I

had no idea that what I had just signed on for, was for the rest of

my life. Or, that its influence on my life would last long after I left

teaching. Here was a man giving me a chance to prove what I

thought schools could be, instead of what they had been for me. I

now wondered if I could really help kids who struggled, as I had.

Was it really possible that most rebels and renegades were actually

just dyslexics, ADDs, and ADHDs as I now suspected? Suddenly I

wasn’t so sure, now that I was faced with the reality of putting up

or shutting up. But I felt that this man was also offering to help.

What we discovered during the next five years was gratifying.

However, when a community to the north hired Henry, as I new

knew him, to start a Community College based on the same

principles we believed in, it all changed. He invited me to go with

him to help him build the college and become the Director of Adult

Education. However, it would have met uprooting my family and

taking the girls out of school. So instead I left education, stayed in

our beloved Ashland, and continued developing.

What I had no way of knowing was that my tenure working

with kids who struggled in school was yet another unfolding event

leading up to the underlying reason some deep part of me chose

my Near Death Experience. There, I would learn the real reason

why I had chosen to be a teacher in this incarnation, long before I

was born.

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43

45

Chapter

9

THE 4 HORSEMEN COMETH

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, in the distance? Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot, were they

deaf that they did not hear? Alfed Noyes

One early morning, as I sat struggling to breathe just before

dawn, I sensed the end was near. It no longer made any difference;

all I wanted was relief. Then, suddenly, somewhere between

snatches of sleep, one moment I was gasping for breath and in the

next I was falling through space. And I just kept falling, tumbling

through a black sky. Gripped with paralyzing, stark-naked terror,

instead of waking up, as I had in other “falling” dreams from the

past, I just kept on falling and falling, tumbling out of all control as

I fell.

As I tumbled, I became aware of a soft light in one part of the

black sky. Some part of my attention was drawn to the light and

whenever I could glimpse it, the attraction grew. As I struggled to

keep the light in my vision, I noticed that seeing it calmed me. The

more I focused on it, the calmer I became. Then I realized I was

falling towards the light. The closer I came to it, the brighter it

grew and the calmer I became. A warm feeling began in the pit of

my stomach and spread upward through my entire body as deep,

warm peace settled over me and the tumbling slowed.

On the distant horizon from where the light was coming, I saw

what looked like a line. As I drew closer, the line grew in size and

I realized it was a line of people walking toward me, silhouetted by

the light. I knew them all. Some I knew from my life on earth: my

grandfather with my favorite dog Butch, his tail, wagging in

greeting, and my othe r wise old granddad with his bemused, wry

grin. There was my sweet old Aunt Eleanor and favorite Uncle,

Sidney. There was a man who lived on a ranch up the river from us

THE FOUR HORSEMEN COMETH

46

who had always been nice to me. Also, there was a school teacher

and various people who had played a part in my life, but had gone

on ahead.

Then, there were the others.

They were entities I had known and loved in other times and

other places, not in my current life. In addition, there were entities

who were also part of my soul group (souls we had reincarnated

with over and over), but not of this earthly world, however, who

were as much a part of my extended being like those of this Earth-

experience.

As we all met, I was flooded with the most intense feelings of

love I had ever known. As it flowed through the core of me, in a

very small way it was a little like the “going home feeling” I had

experienced on Earth as a young man returning home after being in

the Army in Europe for three years. I remembered as I drove up

that old familiar road to the ranch where Mom and Dad waited that

I had experienced a similar warm deep love. However, to compare

that feeling from then with this now was like comparing a drop of

seawater to the ocean itself.

Now, wave after wave of intense love rolled over me like the

waves of a great flood itself. It was a happy, joyous love full of

anticipation, closure, and promise. No words were exchanged, just

thoughts moving instantaneously, with perfect clarity, from one

mind to the other without the ability to withhold or judge anything.

It was all an expression and celebration of love that would on

earth, have been unfathomable. It was between members of an

ancient soul group, celebrating my return home once again.

As I was shown around, it was explained how most of our

celestial, eternal knowledge is blanked-out during our short life

spans on Earth. We must temporarily forget most of what our

higher self already knows so we can believe in the roles we have

chosen to play in our different lifetimes. Furthermore, they said

that it would take a while for our memories to all to come back.

They went on to say that life on Earth is a little like an extended

visit to a big theme park, with thrilling rides and various


47

adventures. And brother, sometimes it does get scary, but we

humans wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, why else would

we leave the celestial realm, but for excitement, adventure, and

entertainment?

As one entity jokingly said, if the eternal, the God part, grows

tired of singing and playing harps, thousands of other universes

exist for our amusement and entertainment. The God part of us is

there providing choices for all eternity – and eternity is a long

time.

As my orientation went on, it was explained how on this

celestial side of the veil anything we want is instantaneously

provided. We just need to feel a desire to have something, and it is

fulfilled. But there lies the reason for all the realms outside of

Heaven. Having everything we want, all the time, develops within

us a need for variety and change, for a challenge. It would be like a

card game where everyone is always dealt a perfect hand. Soon

the game would become boring and we would look for another,

more challenging one.

Somehow, all this sounded familiar. And, to familiarize

myself with the process, one of them asked me to think about

something I really wanted. Thinking back on it, what I chose

seems odd for such an esteemed place, and such an occasion, but

suddenly I had an urge for a piece of my mother’s famous

homemade dark chocolate cake, with her special fudge frosting. As

soon as I thought of it, my mother was handing me the biggest

piece of dark chocolate cake I had ever seen. Dare I say it was

heavenly?

Although she appeared there with us, I knew some part of her

was still back on Earth because she was not one that had gone on

before. My guess is that she, at that same moment, was probably

asleep, dreaming of lovingly making her son a piece of her divine

chocolate cake.

After what could have been a few minutes or hours of

orientation, a deep silence began descending over everything, and

an all-encompassing “Presence” overshadowed the soul group and

THE FOUR HORSEMEN COMETH

48

its members faded into the background. It was a little like being in

a supermarket where music is playing in the background as you

shop when the volume fades and a voice overshadows the music

saying, “Shoppers, on aisle #7, there is a great special on Red

Delicious apples.”

As everything else faded, a voice, which really wasn’t a voice

at all, said in resonating tones, “Welcome home, son, you have

done a great job and welcome back.” I was bathed in yet an even

deeper, more profound sense of love and acceptance which kept

just grew stronger until the voice went on to say, “But as long as

you still have a warm body back on earth, would you like to get

‘another one’ out of the way?”

I knew instantly what was being asked, even though at the

time of my death I hadn’t believed in any form of reincarnation, or

anything else religious or spiritual. In spite of that, I instantly knew

I was being asked if I wanted to get more life lessons out of the

way.

Now my Sunday school teacher had always told us that there

is no pain in Heaven. I can tell you now, at least in that case, she

was wrong. I can still hear the agony of my echoing “Nooooo,”

still rattling around somewhere in those Celestial Realms.

I knew in my heart of hearts, in the deepest core of my soul,

that after escaping “the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of

God,” as one poet put it, I wanted to stay. After experiencing what

I was experiencing, in no way did I want to go back to that place,

any time soon. They could have any part of my “unused ticket,”

they wanted. I was finished with that petty, trite, hellhole of a

world-game, even though I had people there whom, in earthly-

terms, I had loved as dearly as earthly conditions allow, or at least

as well as I knew how to love at the time.

From that vantage point, I could see how trifling the world I

had left was. Here, on the other side, I would always be with souls

who have all loved me forever and will do so for eternity. Plus I

knew that momentarily, the loved ones who lagged behind on

Earth would join us. It might be years to them, but it would only be


49

moments in reality. Time is funny that way.

Then “the Voice,” with a tone of infinite patience and wisdom,

went on to say, “One of the reasons you went to that planet to

begin with was to bring your daughter on board. She has some

very important work to do. Would you leave her fatherless, at her

young age?”

What can a father say? Even if I had seemed to detach already

from that life, apparently there were deeper cords than I was aware

of and I knew instantly I would be returning whether it was what I

wanted at this moment or not. Then, as I went out of the door,

metaphorically, “the Voice” continued, “Since you are going to be

there for awhile, there are a couple of things you could do while

you are there.” However, it would be a while before I knew

anymore, and several years until I knew what the statement meant.

51

Chapter

10

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF

The darkest part of the night comes just before dawn, when no man

yet knows what the day will bring.

Humans, for the vast majority, believe grief comes with death.

In my case, true grief came with my return from death.

As soon as I realized I was returning, I was instantly back, in

my body, in my chair, clutching at my throat, trying desperately to

breathe. When I finally got my first gulp of air, devastating grief

replaced the joy and euphoria I had been experiencing. I had left

the place of purest, profound love, only to be back in what I had

seen as a sad, tired world, a great part of which seemed to be full

of loss, pain, and fear.

I don’t know how long I sobbed in my grief, but eventually

my wife heard me when she got up and rushed downstairs, fearing

something tragic had happened. As I struggled to tell her, it

brought it all back and I sat there choking on my sobs. Gently, she

took my hand and with a look of caring concern, put her finger to

my lips. She seemed to understand it wasn’t a death in the family

or other tragedy and said, “I’m not sure what happened, but it must

have been profound.” Then she just sat with me in comforting

silence.

What happened over the next few days is a blur. Every time

my mind went back to it and where I had been, waves of grief

came over me. I had no interest in anything down here, but I knew

I was here for a long time to come. I alternated between anger and

despair. Nothing seemed to ease the pain, and I couldn’t see how

anything ever could, except my going home again. I would have

considered suicide but, someway, I knew that was not an option for

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF

52

me, anymore. After all, I had already been there and accepted an

assignment that precluded any going back for some time.

What I didn’t know at the time, was that I would shortly begin

to understand why life on earth had been so painful for me, as it is

for so many others. I would learn that Heaven wasn’t a place at all,

but a state of mind. It was a state of mind that I could learn to

create here, or I wait until I died to enjoy. The choice was mine.

However, until this became part of my knowledge and

understanding I was back in, what seemed to me to be, a wretched,

timeworn old world.

Furthermore, I soon would understand that everything our

egos create turns to dust eventually. And, there is only one thing

we do that is lasts forever. That is any choice we make.

Furthermore, it is the choices we make, good and bad, added to our

bliefs we hold about the reality around us, that create the quality of

our lives while we are on earth.

However, in the time I was figuring all that out, In addition to

the loss of the celestial joy I had experienced, I also had another

grievous loss with which to contend. I had lost many deeply held

personal beliefs that made my life here on Earth make sense. Prior

to my death, I was comfortable with the general belief that after

death, oblivion ended it all, forever. So, holding that belief, all I

had to do was worry about my life prior to death itself. After death,

nothing mattered anyway, right?

Prior to my NDE, one of the tenets I loosely subscribed to was

one commonly held by many young American males: “He who has

the most toys when he dies, wins.” According to that belief, I had

been doing pretty well. I now knew that none of those things

mattered and most of the things I had accumulated meant nothing

at all.

Now, this world was as empty and hollow as the proverbial

tinkling brass of the Bible. What did that leave me? I suddenly had

nothing. Even what I had learned in Sunday school was far, far

short of the mark and of no help. Worst of all, while I was over

there, they gave me nothing to replace my earthly beliefs with,


53

except a knowledge, I would go home again, someday in the

future. In the meantime, I had no idea how to play this now new,

old game,

To give you an idea how I felt when I got back to this life,

let’s say I had been a poverty-stricken man living in a poor ghetto.

Suddenly the Fairy Godmother appeared and transported me to

Paris. Suddenly, I had great wealth and the ability to speak perfect

French. In Paris, I was presented as an esteemed part of society and

they accepted me as such.

For a year or so, I fulfilled every indulgent whim and wish;

then, suddenly I am sent back to the ghetto, broke and no longer

able to speak French. In addition, when I got back I was unable to

speak even my native language.

That’s the way I felt – utterly hopeless, destitute, and lost. In

addition, I now felt a far greater despair than when I had known I

was dying because I saw no end in sight. As I sat in blackest

despair, for some reason my mind kept returning to memories of

my earlier years. How could that life lead me to this? At the time I

had been surrounded by loving people, some of whom I now knew

were actually spiritual guides. I had been unquestioningly loved

and nurtured and I loved in return. What kind of a cruel God would

lead a person from that beginning, on to the privileged life, only to

then allow them to experience celestial ecstasy and send them back

to this? At least now, for some reason I was able to breathe when I

was asleep.

As you can imagine, my rejection of this life had a profound

impact on those around me. Some just thought I had been playing

football without my helmet, but for my wife, I can only imagine

the rejection she must have felt. And, my girls, to this day I am not

sure what they thought. Luckily, they were in high school and

absorbed in their teen culture and it seemed to lessen the impact.

However, as days turned into weeks, the self-pity seemed to

wear itself out. I had been over all of those questions before and

none of it changed anything. The only thing that did change was

that the same kaleidoscope of old dreams and memories that had

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF

54

haunted me prior to my death came back to haunt me again. This

time, they seemed almost a welcome relief to the litany of woe and

self-pity I had been wallowing in. Furthermore, it was beginning to

dawn on me that this whole experience wasn’t about me dying or

returning, it was about something far bigger, and three memories

held the key as a place of beginning. It was all connected in some

way, and understanding that part would lead to more and my real

purpose for being back.

The first of these old dreams was about a year I was in the

fifth grade with my old nemesis. Even later as an adult, whenever I

thought of her, my mood would darken and I’d find my fists

clenched and my pulse pounding. Strangely enough, while this

dream always started out that way, since my NDE, it would begin

that way and then morph into a situation where she and I would be

laughing and working on something, as if we were planning

something together, as equals.

The second dream that kept recurring was about the Army,

when they miscast me as a teacher in the program for illiterates. In

this dream, I kept morphing from the teacher into a role of one of

the students, enjoying school. Of course, the dreams of those times

were a kaleidoscope of happy faces and experiences. In the

tortured time prior to my NDE, they had just been confusing and

seemed meaningless. Now they seemed meaningful, but I didn’t

have any idea why.

It was the third of these dreams that seemed prophetic. It was

all mixed-up with warmth and good humor. There were memories

of doing something meaningful, something important. I was

always with my old friend Henry the Superintendent, in our

experimental classroom for renegades and misfits. In the dream,

we were discovering and doing something important.

Sometimes, I would tie these three dreamlike fragments

together and for a brief moment, they would remind me of

something I had just experienced over there. For that moment, a

touch of relief from the suffering I was now experiencing would

bloom in my mind, but it never lasted.


55

In life, a great many people experience the death of others as

inconsolable loss and desolation when they lose those they love.

However, we can’t tell from this side how it is experienced by

those we lose. In my case, and I expect in most cases, death had

been only a small bump in the road. What I was now experiencing

on my return was true desolation and loss, loss of an indescribable

celestial love that I had found and now lost.

About the only bright spot in my return was that for the first

few weeks following my NDE, for whatever reason, I wasn’t

bothered with the sleep apnea. Whether it was just a period of

grace or something else, I don’t know. However, in time, my

breathing problems came back with a vengeance. I had no idea

where to turn, so I went back to the original doctor who had treated

me. I told him I was ready to sign any kind of a waiver, but I

needed that operation. Apparently, by now the operation was no

longer experimental and they willingly consented to the treatment.

While the operation was a success, initially the cure was

almost as bad as the problem. Their only solution at the time was a

dire form of throat surgery where the interior passages of the throat

and trachea were completely restructured. In my case, after the

cutting and reshaping was completed, it took 48 stitches to put it

all back together. The stitches became important when I awoke, as

I had been told that as soon as I could swallow normally, I could

go home.

When I woke up, I discovered that swallowing was a luxury,

not just the normal activity it had been prior to surgery. The pain

was excruciating. Swallowing was something I actually planned

for in advance; minutes in advance! At the time, although I hadn’t

realized it before, swallowing was something I found I could do

without for extended periods of time, and drooling was preferable

to swallowing, at least then.

However, regardless of how painful it was after surgery, the

relief it offered to my sleep apnea was immediate, and for a while,

I slept up to 20 hours a day. I guess I had a lot of catching up to do.

As my sleep deficit dissipated, I began to realize that the reason I

LEARNING TRUE GRIEF

56

had not wanted to be on earth after experiencing the after-life was

more the way I had been living my life, not Earth-life itself. Now, I

realized I had the tools to make life anything I wanted it to be.

Slowly, over time, life began to improve once I came to

realize that how we experience life is somewhat like we experience

Heaven when we arrive. At first, Heaven is exactly as we expected

it would be. In the same fashion, life becomes what we expect it to

be. If I didn’t like my life, if “things” weren’t giving me the joy

and pleasure I was hoping to find, then I would have to make better

choices and look for where joy and happiness really reside. The

great shift came when I first realized the goal was happiness, not

things. Somehow, I had equated “things” with happiness. My

freedom came what first I realized, happiness was a state of mind,

and if I could be happy, things were unimportant.

Therefore, I set out changing what I wanted out of life.

Happiness became the goal, instead of things, and I already knew

how to achieve goals. I just used the goal setting techniques I had

used to get all the material things I had thought would bring me

happiness.

With that realization, I began looking for what actually

brought happiness, instead of what I had thought brought

happiness. Perhaps one of the most profound truths I received

during my trip to the other side was the realization that our essence

are feelings, not things. That doesn’t change because we

temporarily live in a material universe, and material things are a

novelty at first. However, this novelty wears off over time, as our

soul matures.

If I could feel euphorically happy, would it matter what I was

doing? After all, wasn’t that the real difference between how I had

felt “over there” and how I had felt before I died – just feelings. I

began to understand what the old Tibetan Lama, meant when he

said, “Happiness in chains is preferable to torment, while free.” I

was finally realizing that he was saying that happiness is not

dependent on circumstances.

Now that I had the key to experiencing Heaven on Earth, all I


57

had to do was to learn to apply it, and that was a choice. But, that

is the subject of the next book,

<><><>

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Now, turn the page for a few words about the 2nd

Volume of the

trilogy, Beyond Death and Back

http://www.amazon.com/Dying-Really-Live-Thought-Until-ebook/dp/B00MWARI9C/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=1-3&keywords=duane+f+smith

http://www.duanefsmith.com/#!send-video-to-a-friend/c1orj

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r6wPeIErAU

58

ABOUT VOLUME II

Beyond Death & Back

Unique Near Death Experience with

Multiple return trips to the other side

Volume II chronicles what the Author saw and did on his five-

return trips to the the Afterlife, in the two years following his

original death. In it he also deals with his disappointment

immediately following his return to this life, and what he learned

about happiness. You’ll also learn about his struggles to follow his

inner guidance, in doing those assignments he was sent back to

accomplish.

To be order a copy of the second book in the trilogy, Beyond

Death and Back, Click Here


Go to the Author’s website http://www.DuaneFSmith.org

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http://www.duanefsmith.org/

60

About the Author

Duane F. Smith’s unusual background and life experience

provided a unique perspective about the time we chose to be on

this planet. Born dyslexic himself, he found his early schooling a

challenge. Barely finishing high school, he left to join the Army

and had his life changed forever.

In the Army’s infinite wisdom, this man who had, himself,

struggled in school was assigned to teach in an experimental

program designed by the University of Maryland, for the Army.

The University had developed a teaching technique that they called

Programmed Learning and were experimenting with 350 illiterate

draftees who, for whatever reason, had never attended school. The

University had designed the program to take these men from

grades 1 through grade 12, thereby allowing them to qualify for a

high school GED, which was the minimum standard required to

serve in the Armed Forces. However, the goal of the program

defied any conventional logic at the time. The program was to take

these men from the 1st

grade to passing a 12th

-grade equivalency

test . . . in 90 days!

Surprisingly, the program worked, with over 90% of the men

receiving their GED in the allotted time. It was this experience that

left the author angry and frustrated about his 12 boring; torturous

years wasted, accomplishing the same goal. The experience also

convinced him that there was a better teaching method than the

one-size-fits-all, method being used almost exclusively at all

levels.

After the Army, he moved to Ashland, Oregon, and there

began renovating old houses into college rentals. Meanwhile, in an

attempt to understand why his school had been so hard t for him,

he enrolled in a psychology class at what is now Southern Oregon

University. Eventually, he received a Master’s Degree in

Education, with a focus on early childhood development.


61

Later, during a minor recession, when no money was available

for building apartments, he decided to teach for “a year or two."

While not sure teaching was his life’s work, he hoped to be there

long enough to see if some of his theories about alternate methods

of teaching, worked, and he quickly found a teaching position in a

local school.

However, within a few months, when he was about to be fired

by his principal for unorthodox teaching methods, he came to the

attention of Henry O. Pete, the extremely innovative school

superintendent of the district where he was teaching.. They soon

found they each shared a belief that there was a better way.

Together they developed an experimental program for putting their

theories into action. In it, a blended class of 4th through 6th

graders were allowed to work at their pace and in their areas of

interest. They became to refer to their method as Child-Centered,

or Child-Directed, Learning. As the program thrived, they began to

unravel a puzzle on which they both were to spend most of their

lives pondering and studying.

However, after a few years, a new community college was

forming in the town to the north of where they lived, and that

group hired Henry to be its Founding President, and develop its

curriculum based on his learning theories. Henry asked the author

to join him in his new endeavor, as the Director of Adult Education

at the new college. However, the author made the decision not

uproot his family to follow Henry, and he left education. At the age

of 30, he went back to his thriving apartment development

business. With the fledgling base his company had built while he

was in college, the business had thrived. In a few years, it seemed,

to the people in the community, that he had it all. Furthermore, to

add to his feeling of success, the kids from their original program,

with whom they stayed in contact were, doing well.

At this point, an ongoing, medical problem worsened, and the

author underwent the most profound of life changes. At the age of

41, a doctor from Stanford Medical Center gave him five months

to live and sent him home to “to get his affairs in order." He

eventually had what some refer to as a Near-Death or After Death

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

62

Experience. Regardless of what one calls it. he died, crossed to the

other side and then returned to his body. However, in his case, in

the following 18 months he was taken by his soul guides, back to

the other side on five separate occasions, and he didn’t even

believe in God, when he died. What he experienced and learned

was almost beyond words. And, it was here that he learned that as

many other people who were surviving NDEs, were being sent

back to tell their stories, to let people know that one’s death isn’t

the end of anything, it Is just the beginning of another adventure.

Suddenly everything in his life changed, and his priorities

shifted. Gradually, he was once again, drawn back to his

fascination with the mind/brain connection, and how it affected

how children learned. In time he realized that many new

discoveries in that field verified much of what he and Henry

discovered in the classroom, years before.

Feeling compelled, he began writing about what they had

discovered about the learning process, over the years. Renegade

Teacher, his 1st book, is about their original program, what

worked in the classroom, and what didn’t. Then, he

wrote Renegade Class, the story of what became of the kids from

the first book, over the next 40 years. When those were published,

his guides to him that it was time to write about his trips to the

afterlife.

First, he wrote Dying to Really Live, about his original Death,

being on the other side and then of his return. Then, he wrote

Beyond Death & Back, the story of his five trips to the other side

and what he saw, learned and did, and what it lead to when he

afterwards. When he had finished his 2nd

book, he began writing

Living in a New Tomorrow, about what he has been told to expect

in the coming decades. It is about education, why, if God lives

within, does he allow sickness in the body he shares. Then, it tells

of the Great Divide which is ahead for us all.


63


Go to www.NDESurvivor.org

http://ndesurvivor.org/

A Special Acknowledgment

Perhaps it was the old Jewish Rabbi who, after reading a

rough draft called to say, “This book must be finished and

published,” then,came from California, to my home in Oregon, to

work with me on the manuscript. Or perhaps it was the editor and

publisher who drove from San Diego to Oregon to help work out

the rough spots, or perhaps it was the Mormon philosopher who

said, “Now I understand some passages from the book of Mormon

which have always eluded me.” Then again, perhaps it was the

born-again, retired teacher of dyslexics who, after reading the first

draft said, “it needs work, but it must be published for the sake of

our kids.” Regardless of whom they were, each appeared just when

they were needed, just as it should be.

Therefore, thanks to Rob Schlosser, Joan and David Vokac,

Joe Holley, Sandy Spaulding, Peggy Hill, Dianne and Jim Sesma

and the others, who helped in ways beyond my abilities. Then there

are my old friends, Dee and Barb Selby, who put up with me when

I am sure they would have preferred that I wasn’t quite so focused

on my book. Furthermore, a heartfelt thanks to my two wonderful

girls, their husbands, and my grandkids that I have sometimes

neglected in the process of writings. To them all, I owe a debt of

gratitude. Also, a special thanks to Peggy Mitchell whose

understanding and critical eye helped me work through the rough

spots.

Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Rebecca Howard, Ann

Scornavacca and finally Dr. George, the editors who followed

behind this amateur writer, proofing and editing with infinite

patience, as needed.

dying to really live

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