"But you have yet to make the logical leap, which is that you don‘t
understand this world, because you literally left it behind."
"I hadn‘t thought about that."
"Which is my point: You can‘t help but challenge some of my
assertions, when your reason hasn‘t accepted that it is inadequate for
dealing with the way things really are. It‘s defending old turf, because it
has run into the first natural enemy of learning—fear."
"If believing you was a conviction, I‘d have no fear or doubts?"
"You‘d have no doubts about what I tell you, but speaking about
things that have to be experienced is generally stupid; there‘s some wiggle
room for preparation, but you‘d still be afraid."
"Why—of what?"
"No pursuit is ever what we thought it would be, and as you have
amply demonstrated, most people do not know how to learn. They
memorize events, like statistics, without assessing their underlying natures
to reveal the continuity of events that finally manifest in what they
recognized as the culminating act. Instead, they claim their poignant
encounters generated an encompassing conviction, then they roost on the
fact of its occurrence, with no real understanding of their role in it. As a
result, they are surprised when it happens again."
"You‘ve made that point, but where does doubt come into it?‘
"You have reasoned your fear of learning life-changing knowledge
into doubt, to protect the continuity you have constructed of this reality
from birth. We‘ll come back to the continuity of reality, as it pertains to
safety and sanity." She grinned like the Mona Lisa. "I said you must have
doubts because you still rely on reason, while at the same time you now
definitively know that you can‘t trust it. So I‘m not accusing you of
insincerity when you say you believe me. I‘m explaining how your
sincerity is as cleverly contrived through your self- image as is your
selective vision of your wonderful self. This is the difference between
believing me and thinking that you do," she said as we separated to walk
around her aging Honda.
Leaning forward on the roof, I played with her words in my mind—
indulging my reason to create a conviction… the second hand conviction
that I believed everything she said—but I really, sincerely, did believe her.
Circling an unformed point, I said, "Most doctors say that out-of-
body events are not indicative of the existence of life after death, which
would be the realm of God. They say the experience falls somewhere
between wishful thinking and a hallucination created in a particular part of
the brain, usually under traumatic conditions or drugs. I think they can
even map the event electronically," I added as if this mattered.
