Have you ever brooded on something to the point to where one day you get the uncanny feeling it's 'brooding' you?   Over the years a pressing quandary that eventually acquired a 'presence' of this sort for me was, what could possibly make enough difference to save us from ourselves in terms of our ever-escalating social and environmental difficulties of every description?   Not with any hope of discovering 'the answer'; it just became almost a ritual response for every time the latest "awful" made the headlines, which got added to the moldering mental pile.   This probably isn't far from the truth for most of us who pay even a little regular attention to the daily news.   Don't you find yourself wondering sometimes if we as a species are going to make it even another fifty years on this beautiful, yet beleaguered planet?

          Merely trying to stay on top of the endless crises or improving outer circumstances, of course, can never be the whole answer, because plenty of people will continue to abuse our physical world and fellow-beings with little or no concern for the harm they may cause unless or until they -- in fact all of us -- know better and possess the wherewithal to do better.   However we may ultimately discover such an answer, without doubt, it will require a profound Awakening from within, a change of heart in every human being that so cuts to the core, is so gripping, it would dramatically alter people the world over, for good -- and of course, for the greater good.   This individual and collective transformation would necessarily manifest as a unifying and motivational force, expressing as our highest values-in-action.   

          There are people among us who have gone through such changes that tend to present themselves as totally out-of-the-blue 'visitations' of sorts.   As the range in variability of such experiences go, they may visit us as anything from literally death-defying dramas to moments as quiet and subtle as the movement of one steady breath to the next.    In all cases, the inner shift rocks us to the very foundation of our inmost being.   Regardless of former beliefs, values and behavior, after these events, which are invariably described as 'the most important thing that ever happened to me', these people tend to share a recognizable pattern of traits and worldview, at once unifying, yet individuating in expression.   Some of the observable aftereffects these people almost unanimously attribute to such experiences are --

• 'A deepening or spontaneous development of profoundly affecting moral consciousness and reverence for all life' (in Rhea A. White's words)

• Greater concern and compassion for the Earth and all living beings and a compelling need to be of service to others

• A direct, experiential knowing that even though the physical body dies, one's conscious sense of self does not

• No matter what one's previous belief or nonbelief, an experiential certainty that, by whatever name one may prefer, God - Goddess - Allah - Brahman - Yahweh - Manitou - the Tao - Spirit - All That Is -- IS

• An experiential knowing that our physical consensus reality with all its physical (scientifically verifiable) laws is but one minor note in the symphonic majesty of an all-encompassing, larger reality

• The awareness that life is extravagantly infused with meaning and purpose 

• A felt need, indeed, a driving passion to discern and to accomplish a felt mission in life

          Can you imagine how different our world would be if the determining majority or power of humanity shared a magnificently engaging worldview of this nature?   Some people might understandably respond with, 'Yeah right, and why make up fairytales like this that are never going to happen?   Besides, what could possibly have this kind of influence on billions of us … short of something like the sudden and world-wide awareness of the imminent impact of a mile-wide meteor??'   

          You may be surprised to know there are knowledgeable sources, people whose lives are devoted to studying such events and those who have had them, who say with certainty this Awakening process is already well underway, which is why this idea is so exciting and needs to be brought to the attention of the widest possible audience.   Those who will take time to examine this historically unprecedented trend will discover an explosive revelation of inestimable personal value.   Together, we could begin to ask ourselves  such useful questions as,

• What will it take for this phenomenon and what is behind it to impact on enough of us to achieve a critical mass of people who have been transformed to exemplify the characteristics mentioned above?

• What far-reaching consequences will this evolutionary trend in consciousness have on us individually and collectively?

• What might we do to bring this quiet if emphatic revolution into the global consciousness?

• How long will it take for enough of us to become aware of the incomparable worth this type of event is to us  --  that it is a must-have, a personal and collective imperative?   As something so powerfully persuasive, compelling, alluring, irresistible, magnetically attractive, you -- and we -- just cannot live without it!?

• And on the other hand, what will it take for us to realize that without it, our lives are tragically compromised and depleted of any lasting meaning, fulfillment, or promise?

• What will it take for the vast majority of us to become aware of the fact that such transformative events are quite personally accessible, learnable, and achievable for everyone?

• How long before a snowball effect propels this phenomenon into becoming a sweeping, global focus  -- without the need for a mile-wide meteor to get it the necessary attention? 

• And will it be in time to make the critical difference for our continued habitation of this blessed Earth?

Hints of Things to Come

          Over the course of the last many years, I've pursued an avid interest in what I call death-transcendent "exceptional human experiences" (DT EHEs).   An exceptional human experience or EHE, according to Rhea A. White (see Dedication), alludes to any "unusual, nonordinary, anomalous, supernatural, transpersonal, metanormal, transcendent experience … that [is] instrumental in transforming the identity, life, and worldview of [an experiencer] in the direction of realizing their full human potential."      By death- transcendent, I mean any EHE that provides a direct, personal breakthrough awareness into an all-inclusive reality innate to, yet outside the measuring / labeling five-sensory reach of our more immediately familiar physical consensus reality.   Such an experience leaves its recipient with an absolute knowing that even though the physical body may cease to function, one's sense of self, the I-consciousness, survives.  [See Glossary for fuller definition, especially about how and why 'human' is of such paramount significance.]]

          There are many types of death-transcendent EHEs, including the now household-word varieties -- near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, after-death communications, visionary and mystical experiences.   The single-most telling feature that underscores the authenticity of these events, aside from the various features in common, is how the experiencers are irrevocably transformed by their personal encounters with this transcendent reality.   Here’s the point: Regardless of EHEers' former worldview and values, the universal nature of this transformation includes, as mentioned earlier, a deepening or spontaneous development of profoundly affecting moral consciousness and reverence for all life and a compelling need to serve and help others in whatever way they can.   These fortunates share an exquisitely, inwardly orchestrated congruency in their post-EHE values and larger-than-life perspective.   For most DT-EHErs, this 'realer-than-real' event [or events] becomes the outstanding guiding light of the remainder of their lives.  

          One day, out of the blue, the obvious struck like the ol' brick:   How would our lives be different if most-to-all of humanity perceived such experiences as an essential right-of-passage toward realizing and manifesting our highest potential and purpose, as well as the ultimate Healing for ourselves and for our Earth?   [... which of course they are for each and all of us, but we have to manage to comprehend this.]   Also, what if we could generate death-transcendent EHEs safely, without dire threat to our physical existence?   [… there are many methods and technologies that greatly increase our potential for manifesting just such experiences.]   Put aside for the moment the question of what it might take to make this a relished priority in most people's lives, and let's just imagine that most of us do actively covet the opportunity to have the kind of direct experiences that would grace us with such Knowing.   Wouldn't you agree that under these conditions we might have a real chance to create together the world we long to experience?

          As a result of this insight, the 'onamission' that possesses me is to contribute to the special movement nurturing this awareness into a global phenomenon, to feed the flame of its unfoldment within the consciousness of an actively interested, EHE-seeking humanity.   I have every confidence that, like cars, computers and grassroots environmental groups, this Idea's time is upon us and may just be the next step we are collectively moving into.   A number of people who study EHEs and many death-transcendent EHEers themselves certainly think this is the case [e.g., K. Ring, R. White, J. Mack, M. Morse, R. Moss, J. White].

          In 1985 my youngest brother and his best buddy, both 21 years old, died in a car wreck.   As a result I found myself for the first time needing to get a grip on 'death'.   Past EHEs had taught me that we as conscious beings do not die.   I wanted to know that they were released safely into the loving embrace of that Larger-Life Reality, as I call it, and whether they truly were aware of their situation, having read from various sources that some people pass over without realizing they have died and seem to get stuck in sort of an in-between limbo without moving forward into the larger-life continuum as conscious participants; that they had reconnected within the unbroken tapestry of eternal beloveds and belovedness with their eyes open, so-to-speak.   Also I needed to put to rest my own fears about death and dying. 

          So began a search that has carried me to the present and has long since taken on a life of its own.   This devastating event occurred congruently within the early stages of a movement that had been initiated several years earlier which turned out to be of critical importance.  In the USA, it seemed to start with Raymond Moody, MD, who published Life After Life [1975] in which he coined the term "near-death experience" / NDE, and by the mid-80s, the NDE literature was just beginning to proliferate.   I devoured all I could find, which led me to the wider field of parapsychology, back to its historical underpinnings, and forward into the ever-broadening research interests in what I tend to think of as Survival Studies.   There is, for example, a burgeoning number of people and organizations -- both experiencers and people who study experiencers, most of whom were not publicly evident even a few years prior to this, now researching just about every imaginable type of death-transcendent exceptional experience.   Examples:   consciousness studies; transpersonal psychology; the sweeping movement of 'feminist science'; the Exceptional Human Experience Network; the 'alternative sciences'; some major proponents within the so-called traditional sciences, including biology, cosmology, quantum physics, anthropology, sociology, psychology; the International Association of Near Death Studies; the National Institute for Discovery Science; the Institute of Noetic Sciences; The Monroe Institute; The Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences; many outstanding experiencers, themselves veritable 'institutions' (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, P. M. H. Atwater,  Dannion Brinkley, John Heron, Suki Miller, Jane Roberts, Robert Moss, Raymond Moody, Jr., and legions more!). 

          Thus far, this movement has been comprised of all these individual causes, institutions, types of experiences, specialties or special-studies and concerns.   I've often felt the fundamental implications of these many singular interests has not been recognized by a larger number of people simply because, to use the old saying, 'you can't see the forest for the trees.'   It's one thing to read or hear about a few NDEs or about the Catholic or Eastern saints and to dismiss them on the basis of too narrow and too shallow an understanding.   Sometimes when a subject is 'too familiar' within the context of our limited understanding and the uninformed judgments we make as a result, we miss the baby in the bathwater.   

          But when you examine examples and the multidisciplinary literature from a wide range of such experiences [see EHE List] and from a  great variety of cultures, historical periods, types of sources, the mix can be truly overwhelming!   It becomes much more difficult just to ignore or pass off these things as of no consequence.   Thus, one of the main goals of this website has been to bring together as many shining threads as possible in one place for people to study.  This adds tremendous depth and dimensionality to the field of survival studies and increases its credibility exponentially!

          Another thing that fueled wHeretwoworldsTouch into being:   There are all these sources for so-called professionals who study these anomalous events.   There are far fewer that are intended specifically for the experiencers themselves and those who want to learn to have these experiences.   Again, there are specialty communities, such as for OBEs or NDEs, but not for the broad index of possibilities that allows us to recognize together the greater pattern of unity and its overall implications.  With this more holistic perspective, it is harder to dismiss it as 'just another case of not enough oxygen to the brain'.  We begin to understand just how huge, how extant throughout the world this phenomenon really is.  .... which brings us to 'the revolution' ...  

A World-Class Revolution in the Making: You Are Invited!

          wHeretwoworldsTouch ultimately serves as an invitation to a world-class revolution, offering the allure of a subversive summons to participate in the creation of a major shift in our shared worldview, one that has the potential to bring into existence truly a heaven-on-earth.   The assertion here is that the hirstory [('history'/'herstory') -- there is also a little gender experiment in play on the website] of many world cultures, especially in the West, is dominated by power-over ideologies and leaders committed to the suppression of an innate self-knowing (or the means to recover that self-knowing) that could threaten to undermine these power structures. [Gender or any such class discrimination in this context, by the way, is as prevalent in the East as the West.]

          This is not an accusation but rather an observation of something that goes far back into our recorded hirstory and has pervaded our lives for so long it appears to be almost "natural," an unconsciously maintained phenomenon, yet of far-reaching consequences for every human being.   Each of these power-over influences has in its way denied us the validation of our personal, anomalous exceptional experiences, and often enough even the right to pursue them, as if our honoring or even acknowledging them may upset the apple cart of the presently dominant power structure.   In so doing, such power-over governing and ideological structures have taught us to distrust our own psyches in favor of outside "authorities" / "experts" who are quite glib in telling us what our experiences "really" mean, usually in terms of pathologies or dismissal.   We have given over our personal power, our trust, sometimes even our reverence to these traditionally power-over institutions.   And we have thus unwittingly forfeited in large measure the possibility of developing that knowing of who we are as great and enduring, perhaps genuinely eternal, conscious beings.   In so doing, we also suffer the lack of awareness of our intrinsic worth and goodness (nothing I've ever come across in the EHE literature, for example, remotely suggests that humanity is the product of 'original sin' -- quite the contrary!), because we have, broadly speaking, bought the power-over programming to ignore or mistrust our own natural experiences of the anomalous EHE variety, those that uniquely [though truly universally] belong to us as our individuating doorways into greater awareness of who and what we are as beings of consciousness temporarily in body suits.

          Fortunately, such experiences and the AHAs derived from them can never be totally suppressed, or so our world hirstory teaches us.   The innate characteristics of our eternal nature are rediscovered and remarked again and again in virtually all the anecdotal literature of people's exceptional experiences from all over the world and from the remotest chronicled past to the present (such as near-death experiences and mystical experiences, among Rhea A. White's list of now more than 500 such experiences [potential EHEs] that fall outside the materialistic Western science purview).   We find them not only in our religious teachings but also abundantly present in every field of science, the humanities -- in every human endeavor that may be touched by -- epiphany.

          There is no doubt that our human hirstory points to the cardinal principle of Individuation as our evolutionary path.   We are at a critical juncture where we have more than enough people (runaway population growth), not to mention the technology and the lack of wisdom, to destroy ourselves and our planet.   And most of us feel the terrible heartburn of helplessness and RAGE (or worse, apathy, indifference) in the face of a lot of of our leaders' choices and behaviors that exacerbate rather than heal so many untenable situations in this world.

          It is as if we stand at the edge of the abyss and night is falling. There are earthquakes everywhere in the land, and the flaming breath of a herd of pursuing dragons approaches!   Do we stand helplessly and let them devour us or do we LEAP into the void so we may discover our wings?   For the moment (and it is a GRAND MOMENT!!], that is our potentially individuating choice.   In the meantime, most of us pretend as best we can to sleep through it, hoping to wake up in the morning merely to remember a bad dream that is no more.

          It is up to us as individuals to reclaim our power as the magnificent, evolving beings we are and to take on the earnest responsibility (and high adventure!) to discover these deeper truths, if indeed we want to Know them for ourselves.   On what basis does one reach that impasse where heshe will no longer continue blindly accepting what has been gleaned from earliest childhood as ‘gospel’ truth – to find out for hirself [himself / herself] what indeed is true?   Almost inevitably this bridge is crossed with finality only after such life-changing EHEs, through which we are privileged to learn firsthand a greater truth than what, until that moment, had been accepted unchallenged.   In the meantime, we tend to accept without question what other very human beings (who are usually indisposed to see our personal EHEs in a positive light) tell us is what to believe and not, based on their beliefs (and certainly not on their direct experiences of this nature), presuming to interpret for us the truth of our experiences.   Not only that, but if we continue clinging to this kind of dependency, we suffer the fact that such Experiences are almost without exception described as "beyond words"!   How then are we -- you! -- to know-that-you-know anything of this nature except by your very own experience?   The proof is in the experiencing.   Of all the dangerous have vs. have-not dichotomies the human species perpetrates, this one, belief vs. experience, is the most profoundly, uncompromisingly affecting.

          Any imposed (and accepted) patterns of denial and repression are long overdue for some animated re-evaluation by all of us who live under any misguided precepts of this nature, for ourselves and for all others.   This is not to say religions are "bad" or science is "bad," nor for that matter that society is "bad," for accepting and reinforcing this stance through various means of social pressure to maintain the status quo.   Each of these has had and continues to have an important role to play in our ever-expanding knowledge of life and personal/communal growth.

          This is a revolution that must take place initially from within.   It is up to you, me, each of us in our inmost lives, whether consciously to choose or not to reclaim the power and dignity of our own deeper knowing and core beingness through such experiences.   As Jane Roberts' William James says (in The Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher), "Let science beware, for the 'common man' may overcompensate and overthrow it; for religion and science have each underestimated the ordinary person .…"   Alan Watts (The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are) and Gloria Steinem (Revolution From Within), like Rhea A. White, John Heron, and many others, make clear to us that the revaluing of personal experience is the key not only to the recognition and acceptance of Survival but also of an increased self awareness and self worth that could transform the world almost overnight.   It would be as if the majority of the human race had had a near-death experience, or a similarly affecting EHE of whatever nature, and what necessarily follows:  the "spontaneous development of moral consciousness and reverence for all life."   Kenneth Ring, Melvin Morse, and other Survival researchers theorize that, in light of the dramatic upsurge of NDEs since the 1960s and the now-pervasive public awareness of this phenomenon, this shift is already well underway.

          By calling attention to a widely dispersed but complimentary literature and hirstory relating to Survival, the conceptual framework underscored by wHeretwoworldsTouch.com has the potential to invoke a far-reaching response of recognition and empathy in ways that could powerfully advance this worldview which is already shared by many people.   The fostering and development of a paradigm shift of this caliber would unquestionably result in a world transformation to which nothing of our past can compare.   Given the overwhelming evidence to support it, the potential consequences of global awareness and acceptance of this view are enormous and inconceivably extraordinary.   Imagine the whole of humanity operating from this understanding, that there is no death, and ALL that implies!   Imagine our no longer being able to dismiss or deny Survival on the basis of its being "merely a religious question" of belief or nonbelief in this dark age of nonbelief, dominated by our currently popular "theology" -- the materialistic tunnel-vision of Western science...  although, this has actually begun to shift the last few years in positive ways to include a respect for consciousness and for spirituality.

Summing Up ...

          Having studied Survival [conscious survival of physical death] for more than two decades, I've always missed the ultimate source or interface that brings the many types of supportive data, as well as networking agencies together effectively into a cohesive unity.     

          wHeretwoworldsTouch.com is that ultimate resource I could never find -- also for the most basic subject of death and dying.   The results of these efforts come in the form of a multifaceted compendium of research and anecdotes, supported by an abundance of resources, validating Survival of physical death from many different fields of inquiry and many cultures, not just Western, including discussion of many types of death-transcendent "exceptional experiences" which may gift us with an unequivocal awareness of the Larger-Life Reality and of our inevitable Survival of physical death.   If you seek clarity or validation of your own unusual experiences or long to be finally and utterly convinced that we do Survive; if you want some cut-to-the-chase guidance for your own search in this rather scattered, often obscure field of study; if you seek comfort and renewed strength as you struggle with grief for a loved one you feel you've lost through death, or you want to get a grip on your fear of death; or if you seek to renew a sense of meaning and purpose in this sometimes very hollow-seeming world, then you will find this is a most worthwhile site to visit again and again.   In fact the whole world would benefit beyond measure from the revolutionary understanding we gain through our personal and collective development of an openly, actively EHE-seeking global society.