HALLOWEEN - What Does It Mean?

All Hallows Eve (or Halloween, as it is more commonly known) is - according to Bel Mooney, writing in Saturday's Daily Mail - 'about death, mourning, darkness and remembrance. And that, Bel says, 'is why the festival speaks to our innermost selves, even if we don't realize it.'

She continues: 'Even in a secular age, the subconscious mind tunes into the spiritual at this time of year. Children dressed as witches and skeletons and parents laboriously carving out pumpkin lanterns are connecting to our ancestors and enacting the deeper meaning of October 31.

It is not hard to see how the idea of the dying of the light prompts thoughts of death. The Celts believed that on October 31 the border between our world and the 'other' world is especially thin. As plants died away, they believed that revered ancestors reached back through the veil separating them from the living.'

Whatever your beliefs, I wish you a Halloween that's as spooky (or not) as you want it to be!

PROOF OF HEAVEN

Can there be proof of heaven? I think there can, having recently read a very interesting story about a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon – Eben Alexander – who, in common with lots of scientists, used to be a non-believer.

But that was before contracting a rare form of bacterial meningitis, when he fell into a coma lasting seven days. After confounding the doctors who became increasingly convinced that he would never recover, Dr Alexander now claims he was somehow transported to a ‘place of clouds’.

He tells of a beautiful blue-eyed woman answering his unspoken thoughts, of ‘transparent shimmering beings’ gliding over an idyllic landscape – and of an all-powerful divine presence flooding him with intense, unconditional love.

He describes being a ‘speck on a butterfly wing’ along with millions of other butterflies in a swirling ‘river of life and colour’. They fluttered among trees and flowers that exploded into bloom as they passed.

He saw, below him, waterfalls, pools and ‘indescribable colours’, while above him were clouds – ‘big, puffy, pink-white ones showing up sharply against the deep blue-black sky’.

Dr Alexander goes on to describe flocks of ‘transparent, shimmering beings’ making arcs of gold and silver across the sky and incredible hymns and chants reaching him from these beings – ‘higher forms of life’ which he could only conclude were angels.

Throughout, he was acutely conscious of being loved and cherished forever and now remembers being ‘flooded with a vast and crazy sensation of relief.’

There is much, much more to his story, which he has written about in Newsweek and also in his book Proof Of Heaven, to be published next week. I really recommend reading it!

DOG'S GRAVESIDE VIGIL

I recently read an amazing story of a dog's graveside vigil that has lasted (so far) for six years!

It seems that German Shepherd Capitan ran away from home after his master died in 2006. A week after the death, when the dead man's family went to pay their respects, they found Capitan howling by the grave.

The fact that they had never taken the dog to the cemetery made his presence there all the more extraordinary.

Graveyard staff are feeding Capitan and said: "He turned up and started wandering around until he found the tomb. During the day he sometimes has a walk, but at 6 pm sharp he lies on the grave and stays there all night."

Can there be any devotion more potent?

P.S. Incidentally, THE FOREIGNER is due to be FREE on Amazon later today (see right-hand column)!

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH

Where do the reflections in this picture begin and end? Even though I took the photo, I can't answer that question with any degree of certainty. And it seems to me that there are some parallels here to life and death. When life in one dimension ends it begins again in another. We haven't gone anywhere except beyond limited human vision.

We've just shed a skin that has outlived its usefulness. How liberating this must be - especially if that skin had become irrevocably diseased or for some other reason a burden to us! Imagine the freedom of being bodiless and having the ability to be anywhere we want to be, at will - instantly! And we can watch over our loved ones, protecting them and 'telling' them that they haven't lost us. If we tell them often enough, they'll hear us in the end.

Yes, my reflections on death suggest that there's fun ahead!

AVA GARDNER - Did She Carry Through Her Threat?

Here's a snippet about Ava Gardner from Richard Kay's page in yesterday's DAILY MAIL that I simply had to share with you:

'The brilliant biographer, Peter Evans, has died at home in Dulwich, South London. He was 78. Peter, who worked with my late colleague Nigel Dempster, was finishing his latest work, on Ava Gardner, when he had a heart attack. Curiously, he blamed Ava for nearly killing him 22 years ago after she asked him to write her obituary, saying she was about to die. At the time, Peter said: 'I didn't believe her and she ended with the words: "When I go, I'll send you a bolt of lightning."'

Sure enough, days after her death, lightning hit a tree which crashed into Evans's house, missing him by inches. Something they may be able to laugh about on the other side ... '

HENRY FORD - Was He Born Before?

 Henry Ford believed implicitly that in a former lifetime as a soldier he had died at the battle of Gettysburg. The San Francisco Examiner dated 26 August, 1928, quoted him as saying:

 'I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty-six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilize the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan. I realized that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men's minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.'

Here are some further awesome words of his:

FREE BOOKS - 3 MORE!

Here are 3 more FREE books for you to choose from today on Amazon Kindle Direct:

OUT OF TIME: Tyneham Revisited

THE FOREIGNER 

and

THE PORTRAIT

Read about them in my right-hand column - or just click their links. Oh, and by the way, DUSTY'S JOURNEY is still free from yesterday ... but this extra special offer on all 4 will be over tomorrow!