It's been just a little over a year since October 16, 2004,
when an aneurysm suddenly burst inside my head and I was
rushed to the hospital. Whitley and my son Andrew, who
were constantly by my side, were told that I would be fully
healed in a year. I am writing this on October 20, 2006, 4
days after my one-year "anniversary."
Physically, I am healed. I have a little glitch in my
peripheral vision, but even that is healing up. I?m very lucky.
But there's another problem, a psychic problem, that I rarely
spoke of?but now that's finally healed as well, and I want to
tell you how it happened. It all has to do with the incredible
saga of the Green Man.
First of all, who is the Green Man? He was named that by
archeologists who noticed carvings in medieval churches of a
strange man with sticks and leaves in his hair. They were
surprised to see what was obviously a Celtic (pagan) symbol
in Christian churches.
Next, I need to explain a little about the way I learn
things. I never learn them through direct experience, I always
learn them vicariously, through the experiences of others.
This has sometimes frustrated me, but as I've grown older
I?ve realized its value. Whitley has Visitor experiences and
symbolic dreams; I interpret them. People write us hundreds
of thousands of letters about their own experiences; I read
them all and collect the best ones into a book.
After I got out of the hospital, I was left with a deep,
visceral fear of death. It almost seemed to me that life
wasn't worth living, because I was going to die someday, so
what was the point? I didn't see any evidence of life after
death.
Then a few weeks ago, we were contacted by the author
Graham Hancock, whose home in the UK we visited years
ago, when Whitley was on his "Communion" tour. Graham has
written a spectacular book called "Supernatural," which will
be published in the US on September 1st, 2006. In it, he
describes taking the mind-expanding drug iboga and the
visions it brought. He did this at a time when he was bereft
at the recent death of his father. He saw a tall, light-skinned
man with blond hair and green moldy splotches on his
forehead. I immediately realized he had seen the Green Man.
I recognized this being for two reasons. First, I had recently
been at a dinner where a person confided in me that she had
met a man who really puzzled her. She called him the "Jolly
Green Giant" because he was huge and dressed all in green.
He hugged her and pressed her forehead against some
crystals he had hanging around his neck and she felt as if her
brain had emptied. I knew, from listening to Dreamland
interviews, that green is the color of magic, so I told her he
was trying to communicate to her that he was a magician.
The second reason I recognized him takes a little more
explanation. When we lived in Texas, I was appalled by all the
religious fundamentalists I met. These people had been
indoctrinated by a certain preacher, but they seemed to have
little Christian love in their hearts. What was even more
puzzling was they had amazingly little knowledge of what is
actually in the Bible. In order to fend them off, I created
a "Christian Quiz," with two questions?one from the Old
Testament (or Torah) and one from the New Testament. I
told people they couldn't talk to me about religion unless they
could answer these questions.
The Old Testament question comes from Genesis 21: What
does the word "Isaac" mean? (Not who was he, but what
does the word mean). It means "He laughs," because Sarah
was in her 90s when God told her she was finally going to
have a baby, after being barren all her life, and she thought it
was one of the funniest things she had ever heard.
The New Testament question was: When Mary Magdalene
went to the cemetery and saw the risen Jesus, who did she
think he was? (The answer, from the gospel of John, is she
thought he was the gardener). When I asked William Henry,
who is an expert on legends and myths, to tell me more about
the Green Man, he pointed out that this was who she met
there.
The Green Man is the symbol of resurrection, the man who
defies death and reforms as a living being, and in so doing
overcomes evil. His story comes to us from earliest times. It
forms the center of the tale of Isis and her brother Osiris,
who after being murdered by the jealous Set, was put back
together by Isis and became a resurrected being. Of course,
the great "green man" of our era is Jesus, and that's why he
is portrayed in medieval churches, where worshippers were
seeking to identify him as a link between ancient and what
were, in those days, modern Christian ideas of resurrection.
In John 20:15, Magdalene was asked by the risen
Jesus, "Madam, why are you crying? Who are you looking
for?" Her reaction was predictable. She did not recognize him.
Of course not, he was dead! I would have done exactly the
same, I just know it. "She, supposing him to be the gardener,
said to him, 'Sir, if you carried him someplace, tell me where
you put him and I?ll go get him.'" (I am quoting from my
favorite version of the Bible, The Unvarnished New
Testament, translated by Andy Gaus).
As William Henry pointed out to me when I wrote him about
my Green Man experience, that reference to the gardener in
John is a veiled symbol of the Green Man?Jesus, who
overcame death (by the way, William is the only person I
have met so far who could answer both of my quiz questions).
In my case, it is literally true: I died last year, but I'm
still here. I have overcome death. But it goes deeper than
that. The Green Man has told me a greater story, the
message that has traveled with us from Osiris to Jesus and
down to our own era: there is more to life, death is not final,
and we can overcome even the great death that waits for us
all.
When the Green Man embraced my friend, he emptied her
mind of life's concerns and pointed her toward a new and
greater life. When Graham Hancock saw him, he saw him on
behalf of me and on behalf of us all. I am the Green Man. So
are you. So are we all.
And I have been given a message, in the usual, round-about
way that I always receive wisdom. I have been contacted by
the Green Man and shown that there is life after death.
I have finally healed.
Related Entries:
10-Nov-2009: On NOT Going to a Movie about UFOs
20-Oct-2009: The Laughing Buddha
11-Oct-2009: The Red Coat
22-Sep-2009: Four Days
07-Sep-2009: Portents, Synchronicities (and Coincidences?)
27-Aug-2009: Two Birthdays
12-Aug-2009: Held Hostage by Hummingbirds
05-Aug-2009: The Irish Milkmen of the Dog World
27-Jul-2009: Two Surprising Events
29-Jun-2009: Trickster Coyote
