Going Within (21 page)

Christ demonstrated what we would today call precognition, prophecy, levitation, telepathy, and occult healing. But many others, before Christ and since, have demonstrated those same spiritually technological powers. They claim their powers come not only from God in “heaven” but from God within themselves
connecting
with the superconsciousness.

So Jesus and the Essenes, with their teachings of love and light and cosmic laws along with the Golden Rule of karma, sound very much like metaphysical seekers in the New Age today. These “new” systems of thought are rooted in ancient masteries and mysteries. What
is
new is that our left-brained scientific brotherhood is beginning to balance its obsession for pragmatic materialism with a right-brained approach
to the science of consciousness and cosmic thought.
Their
new theory, which makes mankind (and possibly all other kinds as well) observer-participants in the creation of the universe, really brings home the need for individual responsibility.

With the energies of our world accelerating in their intensity, it is becoming more and more compulsory that we take care as to
what
we think. Since we are each responsible for creating what we experience in our lives, it becomes vitally important for us to monitor and be aware of our thoughts.

I had never realized how important it was to choose what to think until I became involved with metaphysics and the possible transmutation of energy. I understand now and actually catch myself when I choose to be afraid (negative) or choose to be angry or, on the contrary, to
reject
fear. All of the emotions I feel, I now understand, are a question of my choice. And when I choose to reject a negative emotion and I am successful at it, I realize that it was nothing but an illusion in the first place. But the illusions are useful. For example, anger at another helps me see the hostility I’m really directing at myself; and judgment and impatience are lessons someone else is teaching me about who I really am. I find that if I can transmute the negativity I see in another, I am much happier with myself. It isn’t easy, but after a while it becomes a mental discipline, which is really only a shift in perception. I try to find the positive in whatever negativity I see and then try to nourish
that
. It’s better than continuing to react with my own negativity, but, as I said, it’s not easy because I, like everyone else, have been brought up and conditioned to judge and find fault in others rather than see how it’s possible to turn such feelings into understanding and learning.

I realize now that my actions are governed by my thoughts, and my thoughts are governed by the faith I have in myself. Therefore, when I began to come into alignment with the idea that light and understanding lay not only within me but within all of us, I then began to see a way to dispense with the negative judgments I had of myself and others, which tended to stunt the creativity of both.

So the most important task became the need to expand the level of my awareness of myself
and
others so that I could tap in to the source that opens up a universe of power for positive creativity in this piece of time and space that I perceive. My world is uniquely mine, and only I can do anything about it.

13

Spiritual Adventures

None of this is a matter of life and death.
It is much more important than that.

A
s my spiritual curiosity increased through the years, I ventured into areas of psychic phenomena that some people would term “occult”—unfortunately equating that with “weird.” But I was continually reminded that the word
occult
simply means “hidden.” The knowledge that was hidden from our empirical and logical understanding did indeed, after seeing the light of day, sometimes seem so outrageous as to be termed “weird.” But I was learning that the “weirdness” lies in our limited assumptions of reality. I am going to describe some of the events I personally experienced because they demonstrate how these particular individuals work with their internal spiritual dimension to develop natural talent into an extraordinary ability for going beyond the accepted boundaries of rational reality. Indeed, some of what you read will seem irrational and bend your sense of logic to the breaking point. But what I
experienced was real and always witnessed by others with me. I’m reminded of the old show biz adage, “Ya had to
be
there!”

Let me say that I have been fortunate to attract healers and practitioners whose reputations are immaculate in spiritual and metaphysical circles. In circles of traditionally scientific investigation, the people I speak of have been observed, questioned, tested, and examined in the most detailed and thoroughly scientific manner by physicians and scientists under laboratory conditions, and by journalists and experts in other areas of technological understanding. The conclusions reached by these good people echoed a more or less common note: “There does not seem to be anything fraudulent here, either in testing or results. But we can’t explain the results in terms that really make sense scientifically and logically.” Or, you can’t really trust a strange new fruit called a tomato by comparing it with an apple. (Believe it or not, tomatoes were once regarded as highly exotic and even dangerous.) So the sturdy apple remains an apple, and the tomato, while proven incontestably to exist as a fruit, is weird and untrustworthy.

I have been to many trance channelers, psychics, sensitives, clairvoyants, and so on. With every person I have learned something. Even those whom I didn’t quite trust were lessons for me in discernment. I’ve had too many experiences over the past fifteen years to remain stuck in old definitions of “truth.”

Something
we don’t logically understand is occurring, and, as I have said, I believe it is evidence of alternative realities and higher-dimensional capability.

I mention these people because in every case they developed their psychic and spiritual talents by keen awareness of their own chakra systems. Each claimed that the seven chakras of consciousness were the pathway to higher understanding and the development of their own talent.

One channeler stands out in my encounters as both inspired and artistic. His name is Luis Antonio Gasparetto. He is a healer from Brazil who was brought to my attention by Anne Marie Bennstrom, herself such a remarkable healer and human being that she should be honored for her own achievements. Anne Marie is from Sweden. She is a physician (a dear and glorious one!) and runs the Ashram, a rough-and-ready spiritual workout spa that is known to be the toughest and the most effective in this country and probably the world. People come to deal with their bodies and usually end up contending with their spirits.

Anne Marie arranged for me to travel to Gasparetto’s home in Southern California with a woman named Maria who knew him and could introduce us.

I walked into a neat and tidy home that was actually two trailers joined together. The furnishings were tastefully middle-class Sears Roebuck—somehow almost always the case with spiritual people—and, as was also always the case, immaculately clean. The
moment I entered the double trailers I spotted what looked like two van Gogh originals on the wall. I turned around. A Rembrandt glowed at me in its original splendor; on additional walls were Picassos, Toulouse-Lautrecs, and a Modigliani. I was bemused. What the hell were these paintings doing
here?
I had been briefed about Gasparetto but nothing could have prepared me for what I was seeing.

Luis is the famous Brazilian who channels the greatest painters the world has known. He claims that he himself has no artistic talent, except for one—he is a superb medium for the real artists. And so, one by one, the greatest painters of the past have formed a conglomerate on the “other side,” and whenever Luis goes into trance they take turns coming through, depending on who feels like painting that day!

Gasparetto claims that their point is to prove that souls are alive even after so-called death. Gasparetto is famous in Brazil. In fact, he has his own television show, where, before a live studio audience, he goes into trance, brings through the artists, and paints. He is also an effective healer and runs his own spiritual center, where he charges no money for his services; he has found that he needs to heal in order to feel healthy himself.

Maybe it was because he knew me from the screen, but we felt comfortable with each other immediately. He sat with his feet under him on a sofa and smiled with the warmth of a young man who was happy
with himself. He was handsome, easy with humor and sharing himself.

Over tea and crackers he told me about himself and his background.

Gasparetto was born into a middle-class family on August 16, 1949, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His parents were spiritual mediums, which is not unusual in Brazil. His mother, Dona Zibia Gasparetto, herself a famous medium, was raised a Catholic, but was influenced by her spiritualist husband to abandon formal religion and study the interpretations of the Christian Gospels published by the French medium Allen Kardec.

Kardec spiritualism is very popular in Brazil, where many centers operate in his name. So Luis had a childhood of encouragement to develop his early mediumistic talents—which were naturally recognized by his mother and father.

He began to channel painters when he was thirteen. No one quite realized what was happening because the paintings were not signed, his people were not familiar with the works of the great European artists, and Gasparetto himself had very little talent for painting when
not
in trance.

He was eventually “discovered” by a visiting journalist who recognized the various styles of the paintings and pointed out that Luis was channeling the great artists.

As the years went on, his mediumship became acute and sensitive and the paintings magnificent,
which led him into a period of self-deception where he believed
he
was doing the painting. Within a few weeks the painters deserted him and he was producing nothing that resembled art. He accepted this as proof that he was genuinely channeling spiritual art, and acknowledged his egotistical regression, but he found that it took a year for the painters to return. When all was intact again, he committed his life to acting as a medium and a teacher of what he learns and experiences, in order to demonstrate that death is nothing to be afraid of, and the artists prove that art, as life, is eternal and timeless.

After our tea and chat Luis led me into the dining room.

He put on a pair of overalls with acrylic paint splashed all over them. Then he brought out a bag of acrylics. He dumped these on the dining-room table and with a flourish turned on the tape recorder set to a very high volume, playing some kind of Brazilian waltz music. He then leaned over the table and seemed to go into an altered state of some kind. It didn’t take very long, about one minute. Then Maria put an empty canvas flat on the table in front of him. As though he were in a film that had been speeded up, Luis
became
another energy and with great speed began to squirt acrylic paint all over the canvas. He made guttural sounds and then began to knead and
push the paint around with almost insane force and speed. His right and left hands were “painting” simultaneously! Then he spoke English with a Dutch accent.

I wondered why he wasn’t speaking Dutch. But I had long since learned that “entities” speaking through mediums use the knowledge and comfortable “information bank” of the medium because it does not tax the medium’s energies as much as forcing through a foreign language. I have observed mediums channeling entities who spoke in languages completely foreign to the medium. In those cases, however, the mediums were exhausted afterward.

Now Luis was talking about how painting had helped him deal with his insanity! He seemed to have become van Gogh in front of my eyes. He then proceeded to paint a still life of flowers in a vase in about three minutes! It was so fast and furious I felt involved in a time warp. The painting was not like van Gogh’s
Sunflowers
, which it echoed only in that it was a vase of flowers. But the broad, heavy strokes, the furious energy, the baldly stated composition were all there, and all clearly in the style of van Gogh! Luis had said his artists never repeated any painting they had done in the past. They are still progressing on the other side even though they need to paint in their old style in this world in order to be recognized.