Notes

Standing in the Spiritual Heart
An Interview with Laurie Conrad by Diana Souza. Ithaca, New York.

Q Laurie, the initial question Let me ask - I'd like to know everything you mean by the phrases "standing in my heart" and "I looked within and found him in the spiritual heart". You wrote: "I was standing in my own Heart. My Heart was throughout me in the area, surrounding me. I possibly could do little more than look around the area at all that has been manifesting from my Heart, intrigued and wondering."

A The passage you just read was about my experience with the sage Paul Brunton, almost thirty years ago. When I say "I looked within and found him in the spiritual heart"... There's the physical heart that beats and gives us life, and there is also a spiritual Heart where clairvoyants often go to find their images. You can say that it is where the soul, the individual soul has its mysterious connection to the Divine, to God.

So the divine images, the images which are directed at the soul by the Divine, are first received by the soul in what I would call the spiritual Heart. I am not the only real person to utilize that term -- I didn't come up with that vocabulary. The spiritual Heart is really a mystical term.

Once the clairvoyant or mystic is clairvoyantly seeing into other realms or tapping into the near future, or seeing or likely to other places on the planet during waking state consciousness or in dream state, they are often looking in the spiritual Heart to get these images. I believe that many, if not most people have these experiences during dream state, they're just not aware of it. But clairvoyants can go there while in ordinary waking state consciousness to get these images of other realms or other areas on earth or the near future.

Q The average reader is going to wonder how your heart could possibly be in the room all around you?

A Well, I believe I wonder about this myself. It is section of that grand mystery of Life. I have had an identical experience with music, where I will suddenly be in my heart, standing in that mystical Heart, and the notes to my pieces will be all around me. So I suppose that I go to a similar place when I'm interpreting Chopin or writing my music. I have no idea that we can really explain these things. When you meditate, if you meditate, I think it really is easier to understand this. In fact, it may be very difficult to explain or describe it for people who do not meditate.

The spiritual Heart is generally believed to be situated in the seat of the soul. In my experience, it is roughly where in fact the physical heart is, and much more in the heart of my body. The soul itself is indeed beyond the limits and boundaries of our physical body, we can not even begin to imagine the grandeur of the soul. So my personal self, alongside my individual little mind - was sitting for the reason that room with the fantastic sage Paul Brunton. He was near the end of his life on earth and he was fully enlightened. A Christian may possibly say that he had reached sainthood. In the Indian traditions, they might say that he was fully enlightened. In his presence, I did so have this big mystical experience, where I experienced the contents of my heart all around me in the room - as though I were in a very deep, advanced meditation or contemplation.

I had only been meditating, I think, for a couple months when I met him. So that it was an extremely memorable and fortunate experience.

This human body that people are in, when compared to soul - and the physical brain in comparison to Consciousness Itself - are minuscule in comparison. So, I might have already been permitted to experience my Heart around me, filling the whole room to instruct me this. I would have been given the knowledge so that I possibly could see and recognize that we are all so much larger than we believe ourselves to be, that the Soul is immense. There are other meanings to this occurrence as well, meanings that we wouldn't normally have time for in this interview. It had been a mystical experience. It's not something we humans can easily find words for.

Q Additionally you said that you first met the Dalai Lama in your dreams, before you even knew who he was. Later you met him personally. Tell us your impressions of the Dalai Lama. Anecdotes...

A Our Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Well, he could be an extraordinary person. I have seen him and met with him in a group setting many times. Among the first items that struck me is his incredible love of life - and his tremendous joy. The following point that I noticed was his extraordinary earnestness and seriousness whenever he speaks about prayer. He and his monks are constantly praying for the world. He is an extremely humble and holy man. And I really like that juxtaposition of those two attributes of his personality, the humor and the holiness. He could be reported to be the incarnation of Compassion, and everything that he says and does revolves round the higher Compassion.

When he speaks concerning the higher Compassion, it is always combined with Wisdom - the Higher Wisdom which roughly corresponds to the Wisdom of the Catholics along with other religions: that we aren't your body, that the material world isn't Ultimate Reality. This higher Compassion is not the ordinary, sentimental emotion most people call compassion; Paul Brunton would call that emotion, or the sentimentality of empathy, the lower octave of true Compassion. The Dalai Lama would say that true Compassion also includes this higher Wisdom. Through the use of Wisdom, we would have Compassion for every sentient being, every being on earth - just because they are in the body, and therefore, suffer. That is the true Compassion. This Compassion would also include the view that you stop people if they're behaving badly, because in their bad behavior they are hurting themselves among others. So, in this definition of Compassion, Wisdom stands in the backdrop in a loving, detached way. The Witness position, let's say, of Paul Brunton, when we have the ability to clearly see what's truly best for everybody in the situation. That is true Compassion.

Overall, we humans come to the planet mainly from our personal thoughts and lower emotions. The big Teachers, like the Dalai Lama and the sages, the saints - all of them are trying to get us to come from the higher position, the bigger octave of all personal emotions. Brunton speaks about this at length in his Notebooks, and the Dalai Lama also offers written many volumes of books.

For anecdotes, I wouldn't even know where to start. Mainly I remember his laughter, his joy. Next the sacredness that he brings with him. The clarity of his mind. The first time I was in exactly the same room with him, I clairaudiently heard a very low tone all around the room, vibrating the entire room - perhaps it was the power of his very being, or his mantra, his inner prayers. I had not heard that phenomenon before that day, nor since, not during his presence.

Q I remember a tale you told concerning the Dalai Lama coming and clearing an area where he was going to speak, with a storm?

A Yes, that has been in Boston, when he spoke at Harvard. A friend and I were staying at Mataji's ashram for a couple days. I really believe Mataji took over for Ramakrishna. She had an ashram near Boston, and we had made a decision to stay there instead of at a hotel in Boston. We'd come to hear the Dalai Lama when he spoke at Harvard.

I have no idea what year this is, but it was many years ago. website was among the Dalai Lama's first visits to the country. Mataji sent three folks ahead, to arrange a gathering between her and the Dalai Lama right before the lecture. She had never met him. So she sent us ahead to speak to his entourage, and arrange it. I usually thought this unusual assignment was a ruse of some kind - Mataji was fully enlightened, she did not need to send three young human seekers to arrange this meeting with the Dalai Lama. She and the Dalai Lama were perfectly in a position to arrange it themselves, through non-verbal communication, mentally. As it turned out, the young woman driving us there had met Paul Brunton in dreams throughout her childhood - when i had visited with the Dalai Lama first in dreams as an adult. In those dreams, Brunton instructed her. She found out who he was years later, when she saw his photograph in a book. That was probably why Mataji sent us ahead together, so that my friend and I would meet this young woman and hear her story. Also that I'd experience the storm, to 1 day tell the story in this interview. Mataji, like Paul Brunton, was perfectly able to see into the future.

Regardless, the three of us all got into just a little car, a vintage, very beaten down car that we hoped would get us there. And we did make it happen early enough to set up a meeting between the extraordinary Mataji and the saintly Dalai Lama.

Directly after we had finished speaking with his people, they readily agreed to the meeting, and we were very pleased and happy that our mission have been accomplished so easily. I went outside by myself to wait for Mataji to reach. It was a lovely, calm, early fall day. Sunlight was shining and there I was, on the beautiful Harvard campus; I had never been there. Students were sitting beneath the trees studying, or strolling to or from their classes across the paths. I walked from the lecture building door a little way and happily stood there, consuming the beauty of the scene. Suddenly, an enormous storm came up; an intense and surprising, shocking wind. Students' papers were flying everywhere, branches waving everywhere, the trees were almost bending. I tried to take shelter against an enormous tree near the door, wind and leaves flying, students now scurrying across the paths, bent over against the storm, trying to retrieve their scattered papers. It had been quite something. It felt like I had inadvertently stepped into a vacuum cleaner or perhaps a washing machine.

It probably lasted for about two or three minutes. Then the storm stopped just as quickly since it had arisen. I said to myself: "Good Heavens, what was that?"

Then I laughed. I realized that it had been probably the Dalai Lama purifying the grounds of Harvard before he arrived. And that's still my view. He's an extremely powerful being, the Dalai Lama. He's got tremendous power. Yet, with regard to his teachings, probably his biggest message to the world is kindness, to be kind to others. And when you have followed the messages from Our Lady, the Madonna, to the world - She's been appearing in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia for nearly twenty years to six visionaries - She also says to lead a kind, simple life. She says that we should make an effort to pattern our lives after St. Therese of Lisieux. And St. Therese of Lisieux never even left her convent! She had the simplest of lives. She had, at most, just a little table in her convent cell and a bed. Perhaps a chair. At one point she had a vase in her room, but she thought she might be getting too mounted on it, so she asked them to remove it. She basically did her daily work and chores at the convent and was kind to the other nuns. Yet she became one of the greatest Catholic saints. In Medjugorje, Our Lady said basically: pick the journey and lead a kind, simple life.

The Dalai Lama is currently a celebrity, he could be an extremely famous man. He's got written books and lectured in lots of countries. He is world known. And he is still one of the most humble and simple of men. They say he has one pair of shoes and two sets of his maroon robes. He remains completely untouched and unspoiled by the planet. He considers himself a monk, yet he is both temporal and spiritual leader of his country. But he lives like a simple monk. So, in that sense alone, I think he is an unbelievable and saintly man, and a job model for humanity.

Our interview couldn't be long enough to essentially discuss the Dalai Lama. When I first saw him personally, I inwardly told Our Lady that I felt as though I had met Her Son. I felt as if I had seen Christ on the planet, that I had paid attention to Him speak.

Q Modern psychiatric science probably wouldn't be too friendly within their evaluation of mystical states and the saints and persons who experience them. Many modern psychiatrists may call what you make reference to as "inner vision" and "movies in my own head" as delusional. How do these mystical, inner visions and movies be differentiated from the vivid imagination?

A That is a very astute question. And I believe, in my case, most likely the biggest "proof" an experience isn't just imagination or delusion is easily inwardly saw a place, and then I later saw that exact place in a book or magazine or in waking state consciousness. Or if I had a vision of the future, it then happened just as I had seen it unfold a couple of days or weeks later, which luckily it always did. If I clairvoyantly saw a lost animal in a specific spot, the animal was found there. When I clairaudiently heard Our Lady's voice talking with me, my little dog Guinivere heard it also - she was still sitting on the street corner, searching for the individual behind the voice despite the fact that I had already walked on half of a block. The majority of my experiences have already been validated the following on the planet earth plane. So if I had an inner vision of somebody doing something or saying something or knowing that they were in trouble - I would find out later that yes, that had, actually, happened exactly as I saw it. THEREFORE I actually was very lucky in that way. Personally, I had many validation. Otherwise, I would have wondered myself if my experiences were just imagination or hallucination.

This is an interesting and important topic. In case you are having high mystical experiences, you are being thrown into another, higher consciousness. You are already probably more sensitive than a lot of people. And if people let you know that you are crazy and they keep telling you you are crazy, you may just begin to think that you are. But there are also those people who are delusional. One easy way to determine the truth of these clairvoyance would be to see if the predictions become a reality. The saints were never wrong.

In the Catholic Church, visions and clairvoyance will not cause you to a saint. And the Church is extremely careful about testing and evaluating such abilities. First, they go through the general behavior, virtue and rationality of the person. Many visions cannot be verified. A few of the saints have observed their guardian angel. How do that be verified? Is this person rational the rest of the time? Do they appear to have a hysterical nature? Do they see or predict things that can be proven wrong later? The Catholic Church observes see your face carefully and analyzes their entire life on earth, which I think is quite wise.

St. Teresa of Avila, in her books, her Autobiography and in THE INSIDE Castle, speaks of the things. She says that ordinarily she actually is no imaginative person. Therefore, it appears unlikely that her visions would be produced by her very own mind, by her imagination. But she also says that when we have visions of any sort, we should categorically discount them, just to be on the safe side, just in case it is the imagination or Old Nick producing them. She also says that if it is a true experience, you will just know it. Part of that knowing is something intangible that may not be verbalized.

Part of it's the stamina of the mystical experience. It will stay with you for the rest of your life, word after word, image by image. That has always amazed me. But those who have had mystical experiences agree that this is true.

In the same way at the birth of Christ, once the angel appeared to the shepherds, a lot of the children that Our Lady, the Madonna, has seemed to throughout history are shepherds. As in Medjugorje, in these current visions of Our Lady on the planet. (She says they'll be Her last appearances on earth.) The kids in Medjugorje were on the way to manage the sheep when Our Lady first seemed to them. In Fatima, the kids were tending the sheep when the angel first seemed to them. And of course, Christ is named the Shepherd, and we have been His flock. Throughout history, She's mainly appeared to children shepherds and shepherdesses. In one instance, the kids were very uneducated, they could probably neither read nor write. They spoke a local, rural patois, and Our Lady gave them an extremely long, complicated message beautifully stated and using words they did not even know. The kids repeated it verbatim afterward, without changing a syllable, even years later. This again shows the power of true mystical experiences, that they are indelibly imprinted on our consciousness. That is quite different from our ordinary experience.

Q How can we start to see the inner purpose of nov a sparrow? You had an accident that nearly ended your daily life. It has partially disabled you. And it even erased for a while your clairvoyant abilities. Yet you say you don't believe in accidents. In view of the destruction and disability it brought into your daily life, if that accident was Divinely orchestrated, then what possible purpose could it have served to improve your daily life and consciousness?

A That is another deep question, and not that simple to answer.

Q The fall of a sparrow?

A Yes. That was from a quote from Christ Himself. He told His disciples that each hair on our head is numbered and that there is Providence in the fall of a sparrow. Now the scientists agree, they call it DNA, the tiny chart of our life in those strands.

Definitely, I believe my car crash was Divinely orchestrated. If there was negative intent, which is also possible, certainly God allowed it. And in my own belief framework, if He allowed it, it would be allowed for the purification of my soul - and/or for the souls of others, or for the sake of the world. Our life on the planet, in my mind, is a continual deepening.

A continual deepening of being and understanding. Certainly, I would also hope that it's a deepening of holiness; and there are certain experiences that we receive to help deepen wisdom and strength.

It has been a lot more than fifteen years since the accident, and I certainly have had enough time to think about why it might have already been permitted to happen. Personally, I might prefer that I either didn't have to learn those lessons or that I could learn them another way. But I'm certainly not likely to question the greater vision that God and the soul possess. Luckily, the tiny person, the person in your body, Laurie Conrad in this instance, was not in charge the day of the accident. Or any day. God and the soul are in charge. We can start to see the poverty of our very own judgment even within our own lifetime on earth: items that we wanted so very badly whenever we were young now seem so undesirable, as well as harmful. Has that ever happened to you? Well, I look back and just inwardly say: "Thank God you did not get what you wanted". Because either it was not good for me or something much better came along. So, even within the time frame of our earthly existence, we are able to commence to have that summary of events and the value of events, even as they happen. How could we possibly second guess the wisdom of the soul and of God? You cannot. If I look within with total honesty - that is always the best way to reflect on events - as hard since it has been for myself and the ones around me, a few of the biggest lessons of my spiritual life probably came because of this accident.

Well, I possibly could say, I think, that whenever I was flat on my back those months and years, it had been the very first time that I felt union with the Higher Love, the Love from the universe. That the universe, the full total of the Hearts of all creatures that populate the universe, does indeed hold this extraordinary Love for every and all of us. And yes, of course, it is the higher Love, the Divine Love from God expressing Itself through all the souls of most creatures - nonetheless it is also from all those combined souls and the universe itself. I was shown this in a vision of sorts, and I can still view it hung in my mind's eye, such as a little movie. A cosmic Love. It is the Divine Love from God, but gleam cosmic or universal love that I felt pouring into me and around me. It had been as if every creature on the planet wished me well, was sending me love and healing. And that, I think, in my vocabulary, will be a high mystical experience. To believe that universal Love from all creatures. And it is there for all those, every moment of each day. We are not conscious of it, aware of it. And I was aware of it because I was knocked flat on my back for such a long time with a certain sort of injury. I have the sensation that anyone who is that seriously injured, or that seriously ill, is considering that opportunity.

I remember reading, long ago, reports and stories that said people who have polio, in iron lungs, sometimes experienced an incredible peace. I think it might be similar to what I experienced. In spite of the terrible difficulties and the horror of it, I also felt the deepest peace I had ever felt in my own life. Granted, I knew how to meditate, I have been meditating for quite some time.

And I mainly meditated while I was lying there half conscious and feeling half alive. But, I believe that even if I did not discover how to meditate, I would have been thrown into that beautiful inner place anyway. And it was an extraordinary peace and love coming in, even concurrently that the vehicle, the body was dysfunctional and miswired. I had fairly severe head injuries. I could not understand what people were saying if you ask me or really speak for nearly per year. I had amnesia. You may already know, I still can get into a semi-coma state easily overload myself with work or ideas, as I did this past week.

At that time, following the accident, the body, the automobile was totally dysfunctional - but this other place was so vast and so deep, so filled with Love. And I don't know if I would have ever experienced it without that accident.

I believe another invaluable lesson or virtue I learned after my accident was the difference between humiliation and humility. In the monastery they ask for poverty, chastity and obedience, which is another way of saying humility. When I was first injured, it had been very humiliating. Not for long, because the emotion was too difficult for me to bear. I had been a smart, capable, respected and independent person with a big career - and all that changed in an instant. Suddenly, I couldn't do anything, not for myself or others. I couldn't dress or feed myself. I couldn't sit up. Doctors discussed me as if I had not been there. I could not necessarily speak or understand what people were saying. I could not form words interiorly, which means I could not even pray. I had forgotten the majority of my own personal history and when I tried to walk I fell over. Six years later, I was still crossing the road following grade school children with little bright-colored back packs slung on their backs because I couldn't tell where the cars were. I couldn't play concerts for seven years.

And so I had to rapidly learn how to inwardly stand in another place, a place which I would call humility, being humble. And what I mean by that is being humble before God - because humiliation only comes when we compare ourselves to other humans. Comparing ourselves to others could be neurotic, and it could be dangerous. Humiliation is more than counter-productive, it really is ruinous.

But when you're truly humble, you are just simply kneeling before God. And when I just humbly knelt before God inwardly and said to myself: "Well, I am terribly injured and God wants this from me", the energy of the Divine came through me, the Power of the universe came through me - and suddenly I felt stronger and more peaceful than I had ever felt.

When it comes to healing others, following the accident, I now did not even have to receive healing requests consciously, to ensure that visitors to be entirely healed. Prior to the accident, I often had to work quite diligently and pray much to acquire miraculous healings for others. I think this new, more automatic healing for others began because this higher, divine Love, healing energy - whatever you want to call it -

Q Presence.

A The Divine Presence was now coming through me. I was just naturally radiating it, because I was so filled with it.

So there have been tangible rewards. I was now feeling a remarkably deep peace and Love and strength - among others were being spontaneously and miraculously healed without my even working at it consciously. This is still true.

But this difference between humiliation and humility is, I believe, very important for everyone. And we have to learn it, I think, if we wish to stand before God. Or we could say, in order to stand in your higher self, stand with the soul, in a continuing way. Not just the mystical glimpse occasionally that you might be given in meditation.

Laurie Conrad may be the Writer of two books: "Realms of Light: Clairvoyant Experiences of Life After Death" and "The Spiritual Life of Animals and Plants", both collections of true stories. "Visits With Angels", another volume of true stories, is scheduled for publication this year 2010. She is currently working on a new book, "We Meet in Dreams/ THE REAL Nature of Dreams", also scheduled for publication this year 2010. Website: http://www.figarobooks.com
Homepage: http://74novosti.ru/user/dunlapwinstead84/