Dying to Be Me (27 page)

I sort of liken it to a blind person being able to see for the first time. The individual didn’t go anywhere, but the clarity of what the world actually looks like (as opposed to what he thought it was like) would be amazing! He would suddenly understand things such as color and shade. These would previously have been beyond his conceptual understanding.

In that respect, for me, there was this incredible knowledge of how we’re all interconnected and how what I feel affects the universe, for the Whole is within me. As far as I’m concerned, if I’m happy, the Universe is happy. If I love myself, everyone else will love me, too, and so on.

After coming back, even though I’ve lost some of the enhanced senses that I had during the NDE, the understanding, clarity, and feelings of love haven’t left me. The dots are already connected, and I can’t go back to thinking the way I used to. Imagine the blind person going back to being blind. Every time he makes his way through the world, he knows what it really looks like, even though he cannot see it. That’s sort of how it feels for me now.

As for this plane not being real, I feel that we’ve each created our own reality based on what we think the world is like. In that awakened state, it felt as though this 3-D existence is just a culmination of my thoughts. When I went to the other realm, I actually woke up to a place more real than this one…sort of how it feels when we awaken from a dream into our everyday reality!

Q: What are your thoughts on religion? I notice that you rarely, if ever, bring it up when you speak about your experience.

A: That’s because death transcends religion, which is something we’ve created in order to help us to live or to help us understand death. But once I experienced the other realm, trying to make it fit into a religion—no matter which one—actually seemed to reduce it.

Another reason I don’t really talk about it is because religion can be divisive, and that’s never my intention. I much prefer to be inclusive. I experienced us as all being One, knowing that when we die, we’ll all go to the same place. To me, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in Jesus, Buddha, Shiva, Allah, or none of the above. What matters is how you
feel about yourself,
right here and right now, because that’s what determines how you conduct your life
here
. There’s no time except the present moment, so it’s important to be yourself and live your own truth. Passionate scientists living from their magnificence are as valuable to humankind as a whole room full of Mother Teresas.

Q: One of the most intriguing statements you’ve made about what you understood from your experience has implications that are profound, multifaceted, and far-reaching. I’m thinking of your contention that we can effectively alter our past by the moment-to-moment choices we make as our lives unfold into the future. Am I reading too much into what you’re expressing, or is this close to what you understand?

A: You’ve interpreted it absolutely as I meant it. I feel that the present moment is the only point in time we have to create our reality. Please note that I intentionally don’t say “create our future.” The past and future felt fluid to me, and this is how I was able to alter the test results depending on whether I came back or not.

I agree that this is important because of its implications. For me, it continues to unfold each day, and now this awareness has become bigger than the NDE itself.

Q: In your NDE narrative, you stated, “All disease first begins in the energy first, and then manifests in the body.” Do you have any sense as to how this is accomplished and what prompts the disease to form in the first place?

A: During my NDE, I felt as though my body, in its solid form, didn’t exist. I was just pure energy—perhaps this could be interpreted as the soul or the spirit. It was much bigger than the body, and I like to use the word
magnificent,
because that’s how I felt in that state. It was almost as if having a physical self was an afterthought. This infinite energy mass was the real me, and the body was only a barometer to show how much of this life force was “coming through” or being expressed. It felt as if the 3-D world was the other dimension, and my energy mass was real.

From this, I feel that when we say people are of a higher vibration, we probably mean that they’re letting more of their authentic magnificence come through, so their “barometer” readings are really high! Consequently their positive energy and physical presence are strong. In that realm, however, nobody seemed stronger or weaker. Everyone was magnificent. But how much of that we express through our bodies into this dimension seems to be our choice.

Q: Are you suggesting that the power of your healing came internally and not from an external source?

A: It was neither internal nor external, or I could say it was both. Once I was no longer expressing from the state of duality, I realized that there’s no separation between within and without. I became the Source of all things, and the Source became me. But if you’re referring to whether I think it’s me—as in the ego or the physical self—behind my healing, then no. It emanated from expressing through my infinite self and knowing that I’m not separate from source or anything.

Q: What are your thoughts on the different healing modalities, both Western and Eastern?

A: I feel that many treatments and modalities are useful—and I also want to be clear that I don’t think it’s necessary to have an NDE to heal.

Before my NDE, everything I did came from a place of fear, even when it came to healing. My psychological makeup was such that I only sought out these things because I was afraid of the consequences of not doing so.

But when the dread is no longer there, and we come from a perspective of trust, then the healing modalities stand a much better chance of working. During my short stint in India, my health improved because I was away from the atmosphere of fear. I was in a culture that supported an entirely different outlook on cancer, one that was much more positive. In Westernized Hong Kong, most people I encountered had enormous fear of cancer and passed that on to me. But in India, I was given a different perspective, which gave me hope. I put trust in it, and I felt the effects on my health quite rapidly.

Q: You said that your cancer seemed to heal when you went to India and received ayurvedic treatments, but when you returned to Hong Kong, the disease came back. Do you have any thoughts as why the cancer seemed to disappear in India, but returned in Hong Kong?

A: To reiterate, I think ayurveda worked for me in India because there was no conflict. Everyone around me believed in the same thing, and what I was doing made sense to everyone. I wasn’t confused. For the first time, I felt I was on the right path. There was also a lot of support in terms of ayurvedic doctors, ashrams, and so on, all of which supported this modality.

But here in Hong Kong, the choices are endless and multicultural, and all the different modalities conflict with each other! My first choice has never been conventional Western medicine, but if I hadn’t been inclined toward other methods, I would have chosen it. Personally, however, it was the last thing I wanted.

I think if I’d been born and brought up in the middle of China, traditional Chinese medicine would have worked for me, too—but then I might not even have gotten sick in the first place! Do you know that in Chinese culture, cancer is often referred to as “Western people’s disease”? Are you aware that the incidence of cancer in China, Japan, and even India is far lower than in Western countries?

Some people think it’s because of diet, but I feel that’s only part of it. Another, possibly even larger factor may be mind-set—the Western belief in cancer, the fear of it, and the constant “awareness” campaigns! Conventional western medicine focuses on detecting cancer, and most of their technology is diagnostic rather than promoting overall physical well-being and balance.

Q: What differences did you experience between Eastern and Western healing approaches?

A: Going to and fro between the two caused my emotional state to swing between fear and hope.

The Western doctors focused only on the cancer, making me feel as though something external was attacking my body and it had to be gotten rid off. In other words, cancer is the enemy and has to be attacked. Their diagnosis always instilled fear.

Eastern doctors (from both ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine) looked at my well-being more holistically. They viewed my illness as my body’s way of trying to heal from its imbalances—not just physical ones, but emotional and mental as well. The cancer was actually my ally. These methods were much more comforting and gave me more hope.

Post-NDE, it’s easier for me to see that the cancer itself wasn’t the enemy or the disease. I know what it was trying to tell me, and in my case, it
was
in fact my body’s way of trying to heal me. For me, viewing cancer as an enemy that needed to be annihilated didn’t get rid of the underlying problem that caused it in the first place. Something deeper was addressed during the NDE, triggering the cancer cells to disappear.

Q: You seem to be saying that healing approaches are all culturally based and that there’s no intrinsic superiority of one modality over another when it comes to cancer. Do I understand you correctly?

A: Yes. This is essentially what I’m saying, based on my experience. Remember, from my perspective, many modern-day illnesses are actually mental and spiritual diseases that manifest in the body. Treatment that addresses the mind and spirit will have a much better chance of effecting change than an approach that merely deals with the body. And any modality that’s wholeheartedly supported by the surrounding culture will be more effective than one without such underlying strength—especially if the method addresses the patient’s mind-set and spiritual outlook.

Q: Since your own experience, what are your thoughts on cancer and medicine? Do you think we’ll get any closer to finding a cure for cancer?

A: Personally, simply because of my own experience, I believe that specific cases such as mine are a disease of the mind and the soul, not the body. The physical manifestation is merely a symptom of something much deeper. I don’t believe that the cure for these cases lies in medicine, because scientists look in all the wrong places—they’re only studying the symptoms, not the cause, and then creating drugs to mask the symptoms. They may be able to manage the symptoms, but I don’t believe they’ll find a “cure.”

It seems to me that there’s a very rich field of inquiry surrounding the disease, based on what I understood from my own illness and NDE. Yet sadly, I haven’t seen any real well-funded research on what I view as the real causes of cancer, while billions of dollars are spent on drug-based approaches. I often wonder whether it’s easier to make money selling medication than it is to bolster people’s sense of their own divine magnificence!

I believe that
my
cancer was related to my self-identity, and it feels as though it was my body’s way of telling me that my soul was grieving for the loss of its own worth—of its identity. If I’d known the truth of who I
actually
am, I wouldn’t have gotten cancer!

Q: What’s your opinion about money from the perspective of the afterlife? Some believe that money is the cause of a lot of the problems and evil in this world. What do you think?

A: Money in and of itself has no power other than what we choose to give it, and it’s the same with everything in this dimension. Anything can be used for good or bad, but in and of itself, it’s just neutral. We choose to give it power. We put our judgments (both negative and positive) onto money, religion, race, and so on. We create certain beliefs about them, give them an emotional charge, and presto, we’ve created a situation where people either become stronger or fight in defense.

I’m not saying that this is a bad thing—it may even be a necessary part of existing in this realm. We live in a world of seeming duality, where we’re always deciding what’s bad or good, what’s negative or positive. We have emotions, and we put them into our beliefs, including those about money. We could have given those same emotional charges to something else, another commodity or system of exchange, and that would hold the same power that money currently does.

But death transcends duality. It transcends religion, race, culture, and all our values and beliefs. We aren’t any of those things, but are merely expressing through them at this point in time. We’re something far, far greater.

Q: Many who would like to heal themselves want to know how to go about things like “trusting in your own healing,” “letting go and allowing healing,” and “accessing your place of healing.” Are these platitudes of any use to the average person? People who want to heal their bodies need to know how to put such things into practice.

A: I don’t like to advocate a set methodology, instructions, or anything like that, because if I do, I’m only creating more dogma, and the whole point is to be free of that. I do suggest, however, not viewing illness or symptoms as “something to be gotten rid of,” like an enemy. This a fear-based reaction. For me, the appearance of these symptoms is my body’s way of trying to heal me. I know that if I try to eliminate the illness with an adversarial attitude, I end up doing the opposite, antagonizing it and embedding myself deeper into the illness mind-set.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t go and see a doctor. I’m purely referring to how I view disease or physical manifestations of the body. The idea is not to obsess about it and have your days revolve around doing things for the sole purpose of getting rid of the illness. It’s actually far more productive to distract yourself and stay occupied with activities that stimulate you in a positive, creative way.