About Ahhh-TheLIGHT!        What follows is a loose outline with some explanations and links to pages where you can find out more.  This is organized on the basis of progression of concepts so that once you get the logic of it, you can more easily absorb what is here.  There are in essence two main parts to Ahhh-TheLight.com.  Most of what follows concerns ..              ------- PART I ------- [Re:  Most of what you see in the top navigation bar]

Overview:  What's It All About?          If you have ever had an experience that took you beyond the familiar five-sensory, physical perspective most of us take for granted as reality -- examples being near-death or out-of-body experience, afterdeath communication with a loved one, mystical experience, enhanced or supersensory awareness of the otherwise consensual world about you, reincarnation or pre-birth memory, the distinct impression of a spiritual presence with you, or even déjà vu or a psychic premonition -- then you will instantly relate to what this website is about.  Especially if, as a result, your life becomes much more meaningful and purposeful.  You might feel as if a whole new dimension has been added to your worldview, or that you are now living out of a previously unglimpsed, yet miraculous and sustained clarity that has changed your life.  Maybe you become directly aware of who and what you are as a spirit being temporarily in a physical body and not a 'merely' human being aspiring to be more spiritual.  In any case, you will notice something within your core self has shifted in an extremely positive and freeing way as a result of the process of coming to terms with your Experience/s.  Such moments can so enrich and enlarge your sense of reality, that earthly existence may never quite look the same again.             Ahhh-TheLight.com and another website [mentioned in PART II below] bring into sharp relief several major points about such events, starting with the impact such encounters and the ensuing life-long process to integrate them can have on individual Experiencers' lives.   Much research over the last 40 years and the very lives of Experiencers themselves demonstrate that when Experiencers trust their  experiences and find value, meaning and purpose in them, they experience a consciousness shift toward a more altruistic, accepting, very positive outlook on life.  This influence spills over into their communities because of their increasing social and ecological concerns and often impels them toward a more proactive role in these regards.           On these sites, in honor of the defining Great Work of Rhea A. White, they are most frequently referred to as Exceptional Human Experiences / EHEs.  These powerful, 'realer than real' moments can be as instantly reorienting as a magnet is to iron filings and at the same time, may take some earnest work to integrate their implications into one's life.  So these events invariably invoke a continual flow of working through and adapting toward the purpose of living more fully out of one's Experience/s that may last through the remainder of one's life, to which White refers as the EHE Process.  Not only do they affect the experiencer, but their stories can have a like influence on nonexperiencers' lives as well.  Near-death-experience / NDE researcher Kenneth Ring uses the analogy of a benign virus that can be quite "contagious."            Especially since the 1960s there has been a phenomenal upsurge of these experiences all over the world.  Surveys in the USA and Great Britain, Japan, Brazil, Italy, Australia and other countries suggest between 49 and 60 percent of people polled say they have had some form/s of psychic or spiritual or anomalous experience not explainable by Western science.  White has compiled a list of more than 500 such possible experiences!  More and more people are coming forward to share their stories, which, at least in the USA, they didn't dare do openly if at all before roughly 1990, for fear of being considered crazy or thought to be lying.  Also, imagine telling perhaps your most cherished and sacred experience to another who then derides or demeans you.  So even today, this reticence, fear, and self protectiveness is prevalent.  We have not created much in the way of the kinds of communal opportunities such as the former EHE Network [Rhea White's organization] that extend to the public a safe, welcoming, yet ideologically neutral setting for this purpose, although that is about to change [see EHE Study Groups].           Notably, people who have had death-transcendent types of EHEs will often exclaim, if there is one thing that can save our planet and save us from our destructive ignorance it is these experiences.  The more inwardly connecting one's Experience is, the more fully is this understanding implicit within it.  That's how powerful and eye-opening these experiences can be and in the highly universalistic way remarked again and again by Experiencers, as if in each case, analogous to a parent's first baby birthing experience, they had just discovered this for themselves, which of course they did [again, this is one of the markers noted in the aftereffects -- more below about this, also].             And finally, this nearly silent rEvolution [thus far] has affected so many people in such a short time, a good portion of the EHEers and even the researchers perceive this as a major consciousness shift that will eventually alter the disposition of the majority or tipping point of people on this planet.   But one delaying factor,  which paradoxically also holds forth promise for snowballing into this developing awareness sooner than later, is that a major portion of people who have had such experiences have not known how to value these events and so are momentarily  in stasis.  I believe this will shift rapidly, once people have a better understanding of their personal and universal significance, and this can happen much more effectively if people have safe and appropriate ways to become more open to sharing, writing, and processing their experiences.  This collective validation process will be a key factor in the timely unfolding of this consciousness shift.             Kind of like a delayed reaction to a joke -- we've all experienced this; someone tells a funny story, and at the time it just doesn't connect.  It may take an extra moment or a day, but suddenly you get it and bust out laughing.   In just this way a sizeable number of potential EHEers, have yet to "get it" how extraordinary all this is.  In other words, the experience is merely the seed.  It has potential, but there is the process, the planting and growing / nurturing that must ensue for this to unfold.  The "humanizing" life change comes into play only with the Process of how we begin to make sense of the experience and integrate it and its gifts into our lives, consciously work with it, allow it to deepen us into the MORE we potentially all are.  As a result of millions and millions of people having these Experiences, we are finally and with finality side-stepping the question of belief altogether, to realize we can no longer imagine to ignore, deny, question the truth of this larger-life reality before us.             Our awareness is expanding.  The veils are being lifted in a way similar to what happened when the discoveries of Copernicus, Kepner, Bruno, and Galileo effectively deconstructed the idea of a "flat earth" that was also supposed to be the center-of-the-universe.  The old way of thinking, believing soon becomes like yesterday's news -- like, who cares?  And we simply take up the new -- of course having gone through some earnest processing to get there!  In the astronomy example, Giuardo Bruno was murdered by the Church.  One result of that was that Galileo delayed for quite some time the publication of his main ideas until about or after the time of his passing, to circumvent the likelihood of a similarly tortured demise.  It takes time and a lot of little things adding up to integrate those big shifts, whether you are a person or a whole culture.           We could say there are two integral parts to the requisite consciousness-raising that culminate in this personal and collective Shift.  The first Shift belongs to the individual, whatever it takes to process the EHE-type of experience within.  The other is the cultivation of our collective awareness, a mutual validation and heads-up that these momentous encounters with the Ineffable are genuine, that many, many people have had such experiences, that these events / processing can and do change people's lives in very meaningful and important ways that benefit all of us and our world.  In these postmodern times still dominated by the materialistic view, things are not a whole lot different than they were for "Galileo and Co." a few centuries back!  Stake-burning events are pretty much out of the picture these days, but as the old saying goes, there are other ways ...             What we are learning together is that we as the entire Human race are Waking Up to a whole new level of awareness, including super- or subtle-sensing abilities that extend beyond the old consensus of the five-sensory world.  Shattering and thrilling.  Often Experiencers come back from their encounters with the recognition that all of Humanity will eventually come to this understanding and conscious awareness as the new consensus reality.           One person, John White, an EHEer / Experiencer and a consciousness studies pioneer who, along with Edgar D. Mitchell, co-founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences / IONS, perceives this 'turning point in time' as an evolutionary leap in which a whole new human species is being born here in our midst, within us, all around us, and because people typically as of yet do not talk openly about this, most of us aren't remotely aware!  His name for this new species is Homo Noeticus.             Interestingly, David Spangler got the same message [circa 1970] but in a different way.  It helps to see the same ideas expressed in varying ways, which is also validating.  David was speaking for a nonphysical Being of whom he was directly aware, who identified itself as what we might call "Limitless Love and Truth," who said,      The Choice is not between forms but between consciousnesses.  The identity of this world is one in which humanity confronts itself as a divine being and takes on with wisdom and with skill, in wholeness and in love the truth of its identity as co-creator with God. ... What this new world shall be like will be discovered and enunciated by many men and women throughout the world, whose voices will grow to become one voice as they recognize their oneness.

Link Recommendations: What are Exceptional Human Experiences? [Also offers an excellent explanation of the EHE Process] Exceptional Human Experiences: A Brief Overview Glossary and Notes [R. Rocamora] ; also .. Dictionary of EHE-Related Terms: An Experiencer’s GuideDictionary of EHE-Related Terms: An Experiencer’s Guide [R. A. White and S. V. Brown -- Note: a number of EHEN articles are written or co-written by Suzanne Brown, who was White's Research-and-Development right-arm.] Classes of EE/EHEs List of Potential EEs/EHEs Mission Statement of Exceptional Human Experience Network, Inc. The Act of Sharing EHEs as a Catalyst EHE Study Groups Integrating, Applying, and Validating Our EHEs EHE and the More We Are The Import of Individual Exceptional Human Experiences for the Species - and Beyond EXPERIENCE -- All Things EHE: A New Consensus Reality The Awakening of a rEvolutionary New Worldview The Collective Message Inherent in Exceptional Human Experience [also see a comments on this article, 'How We May Together Change the World for the Better? An " Inside" Approach'.]

EHEers Have Characteristic Aftereffects in Common             EHEs tend to change people in specific ways that are surprisingly universal, given their amazing variety, and highly differing qualities and impact, really quite unique to each person and each experience.  One of the better-known characteristics EHEers share in-common is a heightened altruism; EHEers become much more compassionately and actively concerned about the plight of the Earth and Humankind.             They also overall tend to be optimistic and deeply confident about the positive unfolding of our earthly future in this regard.   Short of that epiphanous understanding, trapped in the too familiar and apparent drama of the physicalistic worldview, a genuine optimism -- or sometimes even hope! -- is hard to fathom, much less with certainty.           People often discover, as a result of their Experiences, a service-focused Calling, or they feel like their life has a special purpose along these lines, even if they are not immediately aware of what that might be.  This is particularly the case with what we  could call death-transcendent EHEers, individuals who have undergone an exceptional, anomalous, transformative and 'Humanizing' event that is in any way associated with death or what we discover beyond the doorway we call death, including reincarnation or pre-birth memory, OBEs, NDEs, afterdeath communications [ADCs], cosmic consciousness and mystical experiences.  Only through such experiences may we acquire the certainty, the absolute knowing that, regardless of the body's ultimate fate, there is no death of one's conscious sense of self or 'I'.            Most death-transcendent EHEers are left with the conviction, if there is one thing that can save the Earth and its people, it is having experiences of this nature, because they completely reorient us in this powerfully caring way.  In other words these experiences initiate a Wakening into the inexpressible sacredness of life and into what William James originally described as "the MORE" that it means to be Human.  Hence the "Human" in Exceptional Human Experience; by definition, one is transformed insofar as this MORE becomes more actively evident in the experiencer's life.

Is This a New Religion or Another Maligned Attempt at Being [Western] Science?             The short answer is no and no.

Link Recommendations: EXPERIENCE -- All Things EHE: A New Consensus Reality    EHE Network FAQ [Do a search for "relig" and you will see the EHE Network's point of view about this [and Western Science]

A Little Hirstorical Perspective             Since the 1960s, with the improvements in medical technology and emergency medicine, an eye-opening phenomenon began to surface and just would not go away.  More people were being brought back to life whose monitored vital signs had flatlined.  In other words their condition during these moments, such as surgery or in-hospital care, briefly indicated they had died, but through these means of intervention they were revived.  On a regular basis, some of these folks came back with what they insisted were memories of another, even 'realer than real' reality.  Most were people who were observed and known to be quite sane and normal.  One such person was Dr. George Ritchie, a psychiatrist and professor at the University of Virginia, who courageously revealed his memory of such an experience to some of his medical students in the 1960s.  His story made a profound impression on one of his students, Raymond A. Moody, who eventually gave us a name for these events -- near-death experiences / NDEs.             What really got the attention of medical personnel was that NDErs also sometimes came back with distinct memories of what was going on physically within the setting of their medical crises, when they were monitored as "dead."  This could be ignored only so long, and the short of it is, near-death experience has become a nearly household word.  Subsequently publicized research and experiencers' stories have fascinated many of us ever since.             As this phenomenon became more openly acknowledged through the annals of science and medicine and the subject of much research, brave Experiencers began to share their stories with a most receptive public.  I believe this has contributed to a pervasive receptivity to the implications of such experiences and to an increased if subtle spiritualization in many countries that was not present before this began to surface.             In any case, this new open-mindedness grew to include other types of unusual, paranormal, meta-physical, spiritual experiences, leading to more research and even government experimentation [particularly with out-of-body experiences and remote viewing] at least as early as the 1970s.  The way this developed in the broadest sense, whether they were researchers or people who shared such interests, including Experiencers, people usually gravitated to a particular kind of experience.  For example, Robert A. Monroe focused on out-of-body experiences.  Religious scholars and contemporary mystics like David Spangler naturally put their energies into mystical experiences.

Where's the Big Picture?  What Do All These Experiences Have in Common?             There has been so much to explore about any particular type of experience, and rarely has anyone ventured to step back and begin to look at these experiences as a whole, what they suggest together.  An early exception to this was the humanistic psychologist Robert Maslow who studied what he called ecstatic or  "peak experiences" in the 1960s, which could have been anything from a mystical encounter to a "runner's high."  He did similar research into desolation-type experiences.             In the meantime the explosive field of consciousness studies and also a fusion of psychology and spirituality known as transpersonal psychology have emerged, and through these potent avenues, disciplined studies of all possible types of these anomalous, paranormal, spiritual experiences have continued to burgeon rapidly into an amazing number of new institutes, university programs, scientific conferences, and a now extensive literature.  And of course the popular press and other media have been similarly affected and impressive in their impact, especially in the publication of Experiencers' stories.              Two people who have each taken different but quite methodical approaches to the study of these experiences as a whole are John Heron [transpersonal psychologist] and Rhea A. White [parapsychologist], both of whom have had considerable personal exposure to the "realer than the real"  stretching outside the familiar materialistic Western scientific perspective.  Although little has been said about him thus far on Ahhh-theLight, Heron's work will be a major influence within the second website highlighted in Part II, below.             Rhea White's story, what led her to this field of inquiry, begins with a dramatic near-death experience as a college student.  By entering the field of parapsychology, she hoped to gain an understanding of "her accident."  She did not find any satisfying answers from this source, but over the course of the more than four decades that followed and as a result, she did find her direction for more fruitful exploration.  Quite against the grain of the then prevailing approach to the study of these events in that field and their impact on people's lives, White developed a heart- [or experience-]centered model, which she calls the "exceptional human experience paradigm."  It is a thorough work, a work of genius, and her Voice is unique and essential to an expansive understanding of the significance of these experiences in our lives.           In the first edition of her journal, Exceptional Human Experience, she says, "The concepts of exceptional human experience ... initially grew out of my lifelong engagement with parapsychology.  Initially the papers were primarily concerned with breaking away from parapsychology in the way the chick breaks away from the egg.  ... I have taken an experiential rather than an evidential approach.  I have chosen meaning instead of proof.  I think they are like the waves and particles of quantum mechanics -- you can't have both at the same time."

Link Recommendations: If you start with this article about Rhea A. White, you can walk this entire website in her excellent company, as if with the special friend she was to all who knew her. At 20 years old, any conception of death, the paranormal, or spirituality were just not in her golf bags [she had planned to be a professional woman golfer -- in the early 1950s, yet! One way or the other she was going to make her unique mark on the world]. This is her story that had barely begun before the first time she ‘died’. PART 1: The Making of an Exceptional Human Being [same link in paragraph above] PART 2: The Extraordinary Lifework of an Exceptional Woman: All-Things EHE PART 3: The EHE  Autobiography and Beyond PART 4: A Recapitulation from Higher Ground Arriving at that shift in consciousness is not "an event," but a process, the fullness of an important life passage. If the Experience itself and the process that follows comprise the whole adventure, the momentous event itself is merely one's opening the door and taking the first step out into the world beyond. The [EHE] Process is the rest of the journey that gets you to the "happily ever after." Here are some introductory articles that give definition to that process: What Are Exceptional Human Experiences [and the EHE Process]? The EHE Process:  The Subjective Standpoint, by Rhea A. White The EHE Process:  The Objective Standpoint, by Suzanne V. Brown, PhD What is this ‘MORE’ thing about and why is it so important? EHE and the More We Are Another way this comes into play is the .. Aftereffects of EHEs Guiding us in our own processing of EHEs, including the importance of sharing them with other people and listening to their stories: Integrating, Applying, and Validating Our EHEs The Act of Sharing EHEs as a Catalyst Writing down our Experiences greatly assists the EHE process: Introduction to Writing EHE Autobiographies The Narrative is the Thing: The Story of “Necessary Spirit” and Psi   The relevance of EHE consciousness for saving our Earth and us from our not-knowing and destructiveness: The Collective Message Inherent in Exceptional Human Experience EHEers and the Creation of a New Worldview The Import of Individual Exceptional Human Experiences for the Species - and Beyond All Things EHE: Creating an EHEerly Lifestyle The Awakening of a rEvolutionary New Worldview

A Global Movement About to Discover Itself            Reconsidering “all things EHE,” it seems like there are more and more people all the time having / revealing such life changing events.  For example, [as of 2005 -- see Statistics] almost 300,000 people a year have NDEs in the USA alone!  That is merely one type of experience, one that makes a very small statistical showing in the overall picture of all the different kinds of possible potential EHEs, such as, that between 25-34% [USA, Great Britain, depending on which poll you are quoting] have had at least one out-of-body experience -- that's one out of every 3-4 people!  But for all the transformative wallop inherent in an NDE, still, an incredible number of people are also profoundly altered every day by many types of these Wake-Up experiences.           Of course, the depth and quality of impact vary to a great degree, depending somewhat on the type of experience and even more on the disposition of the experiencer.  Even so, one thing that will change over time, in fact has been changing rapidly, is our understanding of this EHEerly phenomenon as its implications really sink into our collective human consciousness concerning what is possible and what IS [such as this other-dimensional reality].  Even if we are not explicitly aware of this, we are all continually influenced by the pervasive human psyche -- what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious / superconscious.             In less than 20 years, for instance, look at what has happened to the general acceptance of the idea of "consciousness" now being more fully integrated into the Western science purview; it just seemed like "suddenly," in all these different fields it got credibility, as if that previous 350 years of the insufferable "mind-body problem" had never existed!  Well, get ready; we are just snagging snapshots of insights in the midst of this pervasive consciousness leap.  Already G-O-D and spirituality are sending up the Spring of bright green tendrils into all sorts of unexpected places like physics and biology, and now there are whole new fields of inquiry found in many universities and research institutions, in which spirituality is a given, like transpersonal psychology and survival studies.  I guess we could only bar the door from the "realer than the real" just so long.           Although there is no apparent global census of EHEers, etc. to give us a definitive count [that I know of], considering the many surveys and other corroborative research around the world, it’s safe to guess there must be at least hundreds of millions of people who have been affected by such experiences, to whatever degree.  A 2001 Gallup Poll reported that over 50 percent of Americans admitted to having had some form of “psychic” experience.  Most survey reports I’ve come across that use intentionally generic terms, ask something like, “Have you ever had a mystical [or spiritual or psychic or paranormal] experience?”  In the USA and England, the responses over the last 30 years that I am aware of fall between 49% and 60%.  This is more specific, but in Wales 60% of people whose spouses had ‘died’ said they had had some form of after-death communication with their mates.  And a special place of honor belongs to the First Peoples still living among us, many of whom are and have long been directly attuned to Spirit.             Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson published a bombshell of a book in 2000, The Cultural Creatives:  How 50 Million Americans Are Changing the World.  They do not mention EHEs, but they do say that spirituality, an inner life, and humanitarian causes are very important to the core group of 24 million, [compare EHE Aftereffects and Core Cultural Creatives’ traits and also The Characteristics of 'Shamanic Vocation'] who also happen to be the most committed activists of their entire population.  All Cultural Creatives share in common a concern for a sustainable future.  No doubt these numbers have grown over the years.            And finally, we have hardly mentioned EHE Empaths yet, whose lifestyles, values and worldviews are similarly influenced by EHEers and their stories.  A tandem situation exists between the secular "Green" Cultural Creatives, who largely defer to and are inspired by the leadership of the more activist Core CCs.  The Greens comprise just over half of the Cultural Creatives as a whole.  I wonder if the count between EHEers and Empaths might be roughly comparable.  There's no means to assess this except take a head count, but it's a starting point from which to imagine the extent of our EHE-influenced relational web as a Movement.           In other words in sheer numbers, there is an astounding Movement in evidence all over the world, but we have not discovered FIRE yet ["for the second time," as someone has said], which amounts to our mutual and lively recognition of each other, and our organizing globally and having world-wide  impact on the basis of the incalculable significance of what we have in common in these exceptional [humanizing] experiences.             ... AND:  Our shared agenda for a safe and healthy planet and a mature and peaceable humanity who can finally choose universally to be guided by our most basic communal conscience that can be stated in such terms as "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and "I am you in another body," and we are ONE SELF in many bodies.  If and as the tipping point or majority of people are transformed / deeply and lastingly affected by these EHEerly stories and all that they infer about [no equivocating: Spirit IS, and] Life-Writ-Infinitely-Large, this is the New Consciousness that will become, in fact is becoming, the new consensus reality.

Link Recommendations: EXPERIENCE -- All Things EHE: A New Consensus Reality The Awakening of a rEvolutionary New Worldview The Yin-Yang of Exceptional Human Experiences and Incarnational Spirituality Homo-Noeticus -- A New Human Species? The Pinocchio Complex

------- PART II ------- wHeretwoworldsTouch.com   [ For those interested in learning more about a second and related  website, actually a complex of several websites, for which I am now in the process of seeking  partnership, angel investors, funding]

There is another web project composed of several independent and to some extent interdependent webs.  Each one is quite substantial and with its own complex of offerings and objectives.  The basic themes are .. The Physical Death and Dying Portal -- Provides a multiplicity of educational and other services and resources, including bereavement groups, legal aspects of home funerals and green burial, and more. The Larger Life Reality Portal -- Primarily educational and communal, this is the initial jumping-off point into "all things EHE."  It will contain a huge database of related media, mostly books, to be sold through amazon.com. The Living the Awakened Life Portal -- Will highlight / bring into sharp focus what people have in common in lifestyle and values who live out of the EHEerly perspective.  Includes lifestyle articles; its own "co-op"; a huge selection of products/services along with consumer reviews; a global  nexus for activist interests and in relation to a networking organization with the objective of increasing collaboration, creative alliances, and global strategizing to better consolidate our effectiveness while multiplying our outreach;  EHE Study Groups.   The EHEer Support Cooperative -- to bring EHEers together into a mutually supportive community membership.  Also, we could say the ESC is a living vessel where EHEers and EHE Empaths can bring their spiritually attuned, often even supersensory gifts, creativity, passionate causes and efforts and inspirations into a collaborative community that will in turn attract other people  looking to assist or partner on behalf of better ideas, products, services for continuing to upgrade [for example] the improvement of what "green" can be for the Earth and quality of life can be for all of us. The Death-Transcendent Cooperative Inquiry Initiative -- We need to bring together the very best of all the great wisdoms and study and utilize what they most have in common, find the gems of discovery to nurture an EHEerly consciousness that has a passion for our mutual support of each and all of us toward spiritual growth and vocation.  Not as separate from everything else in life, but as integral to what some may still think of as "everything else in life."  Let's climb the Mountain together, hand in hand, and as Rhea White says, "until we travail no more."           To learn more about this adventure, start with "Dear Friends, Possible Partners, Angels .."  You will be guided through a thorough review of that project.

------- SUMMARY -------             There is a globally significant spiritual meaning and purpose implicit in this work as broad and deep as the promise of human evolution -- and as urgent as the hope of planetary survival.  The underlying question that drives this "Project of Transcendence," ultimately  belonging to all of us as one evolving Human Family, is this:             What could the unified consciousness, astounding creativity and brilliance, and purposeful commitment of hundreds of millions of compassionately motivated, Aware people from all over the world, who have these aftereffect characteristics in common, do together with well-organized, unifying, Spirit-led intentionality?   Exactly this is what Ahhh-TheLight! and  wHeretwoworldsTouch have been created to nurture and help facilitate.              I believe we are in the very midst of a consciousness revolution unlike anything we have ever experienced in our human hirstory.  We also have the opportunity to become a global movement such as the world has never seen, built from the inside-out and the ground-up, rather than from any top-down agenda.  Across all differences, it is a Movement of and for and by our Awakening Humanity and is sourced from within our very selves and the "Self we all are."             This is The Adventure like no other on the planet, an understanding that will without doubt profoundly influence and reshape every single human being to know directly -- as our new, experiential consensus reality -- ourselves to be sourced in Eternity.  What could possibly be more exciting, meaningful, useful, and fulfilling than this!