Dying at the Top of the Mountain

 

July 17

I’m generally not too comfortable with talking about my psychic experiences, but at this age, I suppose it really doesn’t matter that much anymore.

I had to think the experience I had yesterday morning over and ultimately label it psychic, although one could call it spiritual. Another friend asked me if I was channeling, and I’m not sure, because I’m a bit unclear on exactly what channeling means. Even though I’ve heard of it on many occasions.

What happened was that Mme. De Salzmann said something to me in person. Now, of course this sounds peculiar because everyone knows she died many years ago. But, as I have most definitely learned through personal experience, dead people aren’t dead and they’re not gone. They’re just not in our realm.

Mme. De Salzmann has visited me twice before. Both times it was in dreams and she appeared very vividly. The first time she gave me an instruction to use the prayer, “Lord God our heavenly father, I call to thee from the depths of my iniquity. I have not delivered myself sufficiently unto thee. I know not how.” I’ve been using this prayer every morning in my morning prayer practice ever since she gave it.

The second time, many years later but not so long ago from this perspective, she came to me in a dream and challenged me on the quality of my work, asking me, “how many mountains have you climbed lately?” I took it quite simply as an admonition that I had not made enough real effort in ordinary life, and I redoubled my effort.

Yesterday, she came to me not in a dream but in broad daylight while I was doing yoga, and explained something. It was quite simple. What she told me was that life is a mountain we climb; and that our aim must be to die at the top and not at the bottom. This was a deep organic insight she implanted in me, much like the prayer.

My presumption is that she told me this because my work since her last visit has been satisfactory enough to deserve an insight. At least I hope that is the case and that she’s not wasting her time on me—if she is it is wholly my own fault. I think it’s important to report it, because she well knows I communicate with others on matters of the work on a regular basis and I believe she wants this to be heard. 

The point is that we all die. We all reach the end of this life. In the sense, however, that she meant to explain it, death is not a going down, a winding down of the body into disability where everything ends at the bottom of the hill in a meaningless expiration date. It is a climb upwards towards something of great value and immense importance; and death is not the nadir or the bottom of life, it is the pinnacle.

This is worth much contemplation, I think.

My friend Philip asked me if this was channeling; and I don’t believe it was. Mme.’s presence was rather a visitation. I say this because when the presence of someone who has passed on comes during the day when you are a wide awake like this— and this has only ever happened to me a few other times in my life  — it’s as distinct and clear as meeting a person you know on the street. You know exactly and at once who’s visiting you — even if it’s someone who you have never personally met. 

This happened to me, for example, right after I started dating my wife Neal; over a period of perhaps seven days, her father, who died when she was 21, visited me repeatedly to check me out and I felt his presence in the room over and over again. Once he’d had me under observation long enough and was satisfied that I was acceptable, he stopped coming and never came again. But it was quite uncanny the way I felt him in the room while he was there. So in a peculiar way I’ve actually met Gerard Harris, even though he’s been dead for, I believe, about 50 years.

The other time I had a visitation like this was with the Virgin Mary, and I've already spoken about that briefly, but enough, in other places.  

The angelic visitations I’ve had were nowhere near as personal and of a distinctly different order. I get the sense that the angels are quite different creatures than we humans. Because of this they’re much more frightening at first encounter. One wonders whether they actually know how to confer with us without scaring our pants off. I guess they can’t help it.

Anyway, this question of visitations, whether by angels or people who have died, is of interest to the extent that we operate on this plane under the influence of forces we have almost no understanding of.

In the meantime, I report the question of dying at the top of the mountain for everyone to consider quite carefully as a part of their effort to move forward into age with intelligence, sensitivity, patience, and dignity. How we begin and live life outwardly almost doesn’t matter; but how we end life inwardly is everything.

Readers who visit this place on a regular basis know that my mother was given a tremendous gift of grace at the end of her life and acquitted herself at the end of her life with considerable dignity. This shows that help is sent for many of us. 

And it is a cause for great hope.

On behalf of our search for inward relationship,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola magazine.