APPROACHING 5TH DIMENSIONAL REALITY

Wars to the east and wars to the west, now appearing as a terrible “Awakening of the Arabs” in the Middle East, and great difficulties to the south and north, now appearing as great floodings-- then horrendous tornadoes in the US Midwest that flattened everything within a 3-mile radius in Moore, Oklahoma 2013, as well as earthquakes in Spain, and elsewhere, we see the turmoil of a great cycle of time ending, as well as the birth of a new one. Even in the 13th century (in 1207) (TAKE NOTE IN THIS ARTICLE HOW MANY TIMES NUMBER 13 IS REPEATED, the Divine Feminine symbolic number), the builders in San Miniato in Florence Italy, could see and hear around them the terrible results of the struggle between the powers ecclesiastical and temporal arising from the ambition of the Papacy, which we remember through the famous medieval Divine Comedy epic poetry by Dante.

Historians would see Pope Innocent III as the chief architect of the 13th century papal power and magnificence especially in churches built, while others would trace to his policies many of the wars and witch-hunts which would rip Europe apart in the next three centuries. Something similar is happening again in today’s political-religious turmoil in the Middle East countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and so on. The turmoil goes on within and around them and us because we are already approaching the 5th dimension of the angelic world.


Turbulence, violence between sectarian Muslims, Jews, Christians happens because all can’t seem to reconcile the idea of Spirit existing in Matter. The idea is thrust upon us by the major religions of the world and yet they can’t make us understand that Heaven has its mundane aspect and Earth its divine.


At least not in clear terms that we can live with, though we try hard to understand every thing is contained in the whole. We cannot understand why we see so much evil in it, so much hate in the disagreement, so much inordinate attachment to being right is involved in the violence, in the name of God. How then do we attain the 5th-dimensional; viewpoint which the medieval mind understood even in the process of encountering dissenting views?


First, two preliminary steps are necessary as advocated by an astrologer-scientist like Gregory Szanto in his book Marriage of Heaven and Earth. We have to unlearn the old ways before we can recognize the new. We see partly because of our innate structure and because we have been taught to see a certain way. There is a complete feed-back system between our minds and that which we perceive which governs the relationship between the two.


It has been said that things appear paradoxical because we see 4-dimensional phenomena projected onto our 3rd-dimensional sense. ‘If we could visualize the 4-dimensional space-time reality,’ says Fritzhof Capra, author of the Tao of Physics, ‘there would be nothing paradoxical at all. First, because the scientist’s concept of the fourth dimension does not embrace levels higher than the material or what can be seen, heard, touched, smelt, taste in our five senses. It merely adds time to space to produce in effect a linear space-time combination or continuum.


The second reason we do not see the higher dimension is because we limit ourselves to the material level. If we see only with our physical five senses then we can only function in three dimensions. But the higher levels are present in each one of us, and that’s creating the trouble, because we are higher dimensional beings and so nothing ever makes sense when there’s the absence of Light of the higher centers in the things we see. The more nearly we are tuned into these higher centers, the more closely aligned shall we be with the higher dimensions of the universe of which we are a part.

Einstein’s famous formula E= mc2 revolutionized science by equating matter (seen) with energy (spirit). But it is not only the two sides of the equation which are important; it is the nature of the equivalence itself, says famous London astrologer Gregory Szanto. What we need to appreciate is that matter and energy are the same, and that matter and spirit are also the same. The one is converted into the other because they are the same only on different levels. One of the problems with scientific thought is that it has no model to incorporate the various levels that exist in the universe. That is why scientists have so far failed to resolve the material and the quantum levels. Example: Japanese nuclear scientists have failed to solve their nuclear radiation problem as of now because they have failed to resolve the material with the quantum levels. Nuclear power is in the quantum level


THE EYE OF THE CAT PEEKING THRU TWO VEILS OF REALITY

Astrology, in the symbol of the Horoscope does incorporate the two levels. But the symbol in the Zodiac will not yield its inner truth unless it is perceived correctly. Again, students of astrology, listen to this: The Zodiac will not yield its inner truth unless it is perceived correctly according to the divine universal laws. When we see in the fifth dimension, we see the two levels together, the material and the quantum, as one and also as two. We see the whole and we see the parts. The relationship between the parts and the whole, between time and eternity, between spirit, matter and energy is of particular importance in understanding the principles of Astrology for two reasons. First, because of the controversy concerning the separate factors in the Horoscope. Second, to enable us to decide if the correlations between the planetary bodies and events on earth is based on causation (karma has been caused in previous lifestreams) or synchronicity (two events miraculously relate to each other).

Middle Ages --Burning Ages of Faith

For all the changes reverberating around the San Miniato basilica builders in the 13th century, there was security in their souls, almost every man and woman at the time, writes Fred Getting, a scholar of medieval astrology and history, felt bathed in the sustaining light of the spiritual.

The Middle Ages are known to us as the Burning Ages of Faith. It was that way because faith in a Divine creator was taken for granted by all levels of society, and by all levels of morality. It was a world that was linked to a secret chain of beings held safe in the hands of angels. Few even doubted that the earth itself was the central stage of the great act of Redemption, with millions of human beings as saved for all eternity from the work of the Devil that was waiting in the wings of the stage. We moderns are perhaps less confident and secure, as Fred Getting goes in his book, The Secret Zodiac, and few among us take for granted the abiding presence of the angels in our daily lives.

For example, I felt a nudge to write in my weblog again a couple of days ago, this month of May. When I ventured out to attend a study group meeting, close friends and associates started to ask me what is the meaning of this occurring alignment between Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter in the heavens at this time, and it’s called the “Dance of the Planets.” Previous alignments were not considered “dancing.” They were hard to see without telescopes. Now it’s easier to see them with the naked eye in early dawn. THAT MEANS WE'RE GETTING CLOSER TO THE TIME BARRIER -- we are no longer in simple linear time, we are now in Eternity.  We don't have to get sick anymore, or to even die if we know the secret of immortal life. No wonder, I felt the nudge from my spirit guides to write again. Searching for a possible answer, I saw this book on a pile of books beside my bed beckoning at me -- it is The Secret of the Zodiac, in Medieval Astrology, a book a friend gave me as pasalubong on a trip back from Europe which I have long ignored thinking what help would it give me in my research on conflicting modern viewpoints?

I would feel less confident and secure, myself, about what I am blogging, considering differences in attitude and viewpoints. Ano ba talaga ang sinasabi ko dito, what am I trying to say here? Do I make sense to my friends or readers who venture to go into the Forest of the cosmos with me? This happens because we do not live in a world where the Spirit is manifesting as a miracle. Or if it does, we don’t believe in such things. Whereas, this was a daily expectation for the medieval man who lived between the 12th and 13th centuries.

They viewed miracles drawn in symbols as the necessary interpretation of how we penetrate the nine dimensions of consciousness of the angelic realms while they lived within a world of impermanent linear time. And when people meet for first time they try to find out how old they are (polite people never ask the age directly) or if they have known them long enough, compliment them by saying: Oh, you haven’t changed over the years if in fact they seem not to have aged, as many Pinoys working abroad would appear to foreigners. A Pinoy worker may appear to them as 19 or 20, who is in fact, 39/ The mystery lies in their cellular level or DNA (genetic code) or what some scientists now suspect is the depth of their link to the higher spiritual realms.      

MODERN EYES DON'T SEE MIRACLES

If there are miracles around us, we moderns may not be aware of them – for want of proper eyes, as Fred Getting affirms in his book, The Secret Zodiac. We are not as confident about the spiritual basis of the cosmos as medieval man was, and we do not build places of worship with the same revolutionary fervor and grace. We do not construct buildings to last for eternity, in the knowledge that eternity is not to do with time, but with beauty and the moral life.

The moral life? What is it? We have forgotten what it is to be moral and spiritual, for we try to enjoy the freedom of the democratic idea of pursuit of happiness, and yet we fail to find it. Frustration, loneliness is what we moderns find instead. We separate from our first romantic contact or marriage, after a time, and we do the same in the next, in the next, and in the next romantic contact. We are restless. We don’t have the inner peace and serenity of the Christ or the Buddha.

We do not lay our first stones down to mark the movement of the stars, nor dedicate buildings to the gods. We do not believe in horoscopes which in ancient times linked new buildings or relationships with the sweep of planets and stars, as though architectonic forms or other forms were living beings, magically or hermetically dedicated to saints and God. No, we do not understand these things, our schools don’t include such esoteric knowledge in their curriculum unlike in those olden, golden times when the medieval universities had a chair for astrological, metaphysical studies. In fairness, we Pinoys appreciate the hermetic sciences in a relative, limited way. As a Bicolana I find the beautification of the shrine of our Ina (Mother of God and man) still featuring largely in our lives (see pictures in my Facebook page), more so now with the advance of technology and so much information can be surfed in the Internet.

But again, there’s something lacking in the concept of building churches – we lack the symbolic meaning of the stones and the position they take in constructing them as in the occult or secret zodiacal manner the great San Miniato a Monte was built in 13th century Florence Italy. What is lacking? We lack the guiding Light of the Sun, Moon and stars. Although we claim we have the Christ Jesus and Mama Mary and saints guiding us we do not include the cosmos in our experience of our God, who created us within the powerful sweep of the cosmic energies which constitute God’s robes. And when our people and their houses are buried under mudslides, landslides, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes with tsunami, we tend to be terrified, wondering if there is a God.

Because of man’s historic Fall from grace, and its consequence which is the loss of cosmic vision, we have to remember the distance in time and space, time and spirit which removes us from the Zodiac and the constellations. If we forget this separation, and our own alienation from the medieval art-forms, then we fail to understand the miraculous powers of its symbolic language.


LANGUAGE OF SPIRIT -- SYMBOLS

We are simply not interested in symbols, in the symbolic language of spirit, the unseen, the unmanifest waiting to be manifested, period. We cannot drink in the church’s meaning in the same way a medieval pilgrim would do in the great medieval churches of Europe like San Minato. Perhaps we connect to God by reciting novenas, and praying, but we are not yet contemplative.

We miss the point of our praying when we ritualize it, mumbling formulas, but not feeling into it with our heart as in a deep contemplation without words. If we are contemplative, we do not always respond to words, but we respond to symbols, we are intensely drawn to symbolism in the arts that reconcile matter and spirit, in church architecture of medieval times in old world Europe. If we go into symbolic meanings, differences in opinion, differences in belief systems and social class distinctions are eventually erased. With proper eyes, we realize we are all the same children of God, equal in the eyes of the Creator, interconnected in Unity Consciousness, in peace and bliss.


THE SECRET ZODIAC IN MEDIEVAL CHURCHES

SAN MINIATO al Monte must be approached with an attitude of mind which in modern times might be called ‘holistic’ but which in medieval times was called contemplative. The contemplative mind was the thinking mind made fecund or fertile in creative insights afforded by spiritual disciplines, or by the grace of God. It was widely recognized that a mind not so activated was barren, restless, directionless.

The many layers of astrological and theological symbols within the church must ultimately be apprehended in that single sweep of vision which easily arises from quiet meditation yet the modern outlook fostered by the innate intellectualism of our educational system largely prohibits such a vision.

 A frontal approach of the intellectual kind merely puts the mysteries themselves into a dignified retreat. The only possible way to reach into these ancient secrets is to allow them to speak in their own tongues, and in effect, this is the only valid approach to all art, though this is no longer recognized in our modern time, however, we are shifting in consciousness, and the medieval mind is coming back to be valid again. Surprisingly enough, the medieval mind comes back to us through the zodiacal Astrology, through its symbolic method of expressing the laws of the Universe as they relate to humankind.

The hub of San Miniato’s rich symbolism is in its marble zodiac. This is certainly the most remarkable zodiac in Europe, and perhaps in the entire world. The Latin inscripition calls it a ‘numine celesti’ – a divine power of the Heavens – and as we shall see it, it is so called with very good reason. It provides an opportunity for the most profound contemplation of Christian and occult mysteries. There is hardly a stone of the original basilica that does not play its part in the profound symbolism of the zodiac.

Truth is that the zodiac and its attendant symbolism was to some extent Christianized in the 12th and 13th centuries. However, the Christianized version, though pagan in origin, were directly linked with the initiate wisdom of the Mystery Schools. The numerous surviving Egyptian and Babylonian astrological stelae, and the large numbers of Hellenic and Roman are references to the use of astrological orientations and horoscopes in papyrus fragments, make this quite clear.

LOGOS, IN THE SECRET ZODIAC 

In this study our main interest will revolve around the link between the Word and the Zodiac in medieval churches as studied by Fred Getting  -- specifically drawn between the Taurean rule over the throat and neck, and the Piscean rule over the human feet. Taurus was ruled by the planet Venus which had dominion over such things as the physical body, music and singing. As a result of these associations, the connection between the sound of the voice, is designed to counteract illness of the head, including the disorder of the eyes as well as occult ‘seals’ which exercise a prophylactic influence over health. The gold and silver seals comprise ‘benedictum (sic) sit nomen Domini Jesu (Blessed be the name of Lord Jesus) we see in this esoteric link with the Name or with the Word (Logos) from the Taurean rulership over the throat and speech. The association between the physical body (rulership of Venus) and the fact that Taurus is the first of the Earth signs, would point to the idea of ‘incarnation’ and in particular to the Incarnation of the Word, the Logos.

In the apse mosaic made rich with meaning by the magical rays of sunlight, we see Christ in Glory. He is surrounded by the images of the four Evangelists. These images of lion, eagle, winged-human and bull are derived from pre-Christian zodiacal images. The lion of St Mark is the image of Leo. The eagle of St John is the eagle of Scorpio, which sign (alone of twelve signs) has two images, the eagle the symbol of the redeemed and earth-bound nature. The winged human of St Matthew is the waterbearer of Aquarius, the waterpot which poured spiritual sustenance for all humanity. The bull of St Luke is the animal of Taurus.

As a child, I would look up in rapture to the dome of Naga Cathedral while Mass is being entoned, where the four Evangelists were painted in their zodiacal images. I thought they were magnificent in their individual presentations. Sad to say, they aren’t as beautifully presented in the renovated cathedral made to look slick and modern without much emphasis on the four Evangelists with their zodiac symbols behind them, unlike in the medieval model when astrological symbols were integrated with the church architecture as well as liturgy. For example, St. Luke is represented by the Taurus bull. Without the symbols of the divine Logos, the Word made man, we have been robbed of symbolism that is very essential to our understanding of God’s Glory. The triadic symbolism of the lectern or pulpit appears in other churches, however, the ‘missing’ bull imagery is depicted in some fairly well hidden place upon the decoration of the pulpit.

The nave of San Miniato has been oriented towards sunrise, resulting in the magical effect of sunlight proclaiming a Piscean symbolism on the foot of Christ. The fact is that the zodiac has been oriented towards the east, it is this 30-degree arc containing the image of Taurus that greets the rising sun each day. The book shows figures of this sunlight orientation with the sunlight of Pisces pointing to an annual miracle of light symbolism so we find that Taurus is used to point to the light of daily sunrise. Here, then in the zodiac, we find the symbol of the missing bull of Taurus which resurrects into ‘incarnate’ form each day.

THE HIDDEN SYMBOLS OF TAURUS AND PISCES 

Taurus, the bull was seen as an image of Christ in his role as the incarnating god, sacrificed in the Redemptive act. The early symbolism of the Bull was linked with the Mithraic mysteries, which in early centuries struggled with the ancient Christian initiation wisdom for dominance. It is also possible that a link between Taurus and the ancient mystery wisdom of the Egyptian Serapis was contained within the esoteric lore of the Pleiades – the Seven Sisters planets of which Earth was the eighth which had become moribund and got lost and became directionless as the Pleaidian lore goes.

As if evidence of this was to be provided by my angelic guide, instantly, I felt the nudge to click the meaning of the 8th Ray, and I was led to the Philippine flag. Lo and behold, the national flag has a golden Sun in the middle of its triangular Y design, shining with 8 rays, representing the first eight provinces that rose against Spanish domination. Wow. The 8th Ray of transformative power speaks loud and clear for us, symbolic of our cosmic task to clear ourselves of karma at this time of the Shift, and that of the world by way of behavior or action.

Karmic cleansing lifts us to the higher angelic realms along with those whom we serve overseas as OFWs. No wonder we never seem to find fulfillment by just doing business and staying home, although home is edenic, meaning paradise, and some avataric healers and teachers have to stay to guide, support us too. Even the typhoons annually anticipated by weather bureau Pagasa, and perhaps earthquakes too, are not disturbing us as much as they do other areas, so it seems. Yet we have to leave and be sent out to help in transforming the world along with us. But why are we connected to the Pleaides in terms of vibrational frequencies? Why do Filipinos look younger than their age in Chronus linear time, and manifesting youthful energies in Chiros God time? Where does Pacquio get that superhuman energy? At the same time that he remains consistently prayerful, humble and compassionate?

Question: how does the Creator rescue the Earth and restore it to its Pleiadian kingdom of Light? In the 13th century church of San Miato in Florence, Italy, the image of Taurus the bull constellation upon which the Pleiades has set itself like radiant jewels would serve as a symbolic image of Earth’s redemption. In it, we see the Taurean bull which was being sacrificed by Mithras who cuts its throat to allow the blood to run to earth. The idea of the bull having its throat cut links with image of Christ who spills His blood to redeem earth.

While Taurus was concerned with the descent of the Word into matter, Pisces represented by the two fishes, was concerned with the ascent of the spirit back into the spiritual realm of the heavens. Why two fishes swimming in two directions, one up and the other down? The idea is symbolic of man's ambivalence in his approach to living. Pisceans can either be too worldly or else too impratical, idealistic and other-worldly or both. They are dreamers to be sure but if Saturn and Pluto are well aspected in their charts, they can be remarkable, by being well- balanced between heaven and earth,

The idea is that Piscean lives in the watery fluidity of the poetic world of the subconscious --that’s less ambivalent in medieval terminology than in the modern age. The Fish of the mystery wisdom was recognized by esoterists as being an image of the Initiate, one who is at home both in the material world (human body) and in the spiritual realm (the fish). The fish was not only used as a symbol of Christ but also as a symbol of initiation rites. If you are born Pisces, chances are you are going through an initiation of tests which can drive you perplexed and desperate unless you are a truly spiritual Fish.

HEAVEN IS WHERE YOU STAND (2)

While lunching one day on the roof of a twenty-six floor skyscraper Stephanie Lang of New York walked to the railing with the intent of just looking around. She began to rock, absent-mindedly lost her balance, and pitched forward toward the traffic below. Before she could react, she suddenly found herself ten feet back from the railing, sitting on her bottom with tears streaming. A miracle happened, she was saved from falling. A clear voice in her head spoke: “Are you going or are you staying? If you are staying you have to change.” She credits this rescue to divine intervention. It totally changed her life, afterward, she became goal oriented and excited about taking advantage of every opportunity she could. Even though doubts still assail her from time to time, the deep depressions she once had are gone. This closeness to a spirit, a sense of the Divine of God, propels NDE experiencers into a search for more and better avenues of service, mission, and outreach.


Says Tonecia Maxine of Oxon Hill, Maryland, who at age eleven drowned. “I was mean, self-centered and egotistical before, but when my episode was over, I was more peaceful and I really cared about people and wanted to help them.” She became a nurse as a result, and has devoted her life to taking care of others’ needs.


Many are frustrated by a lack of any clear knowing or message telling them exactly what to do with their lives or how just as many like McMillan – motivated and alive with the faith that where they’re headed is the right path for them,. Jungian analyst James Hillman addresses this frustration in his book The Soul’s Code: Character Calling and Fate. He states: “Psychotherapy has become an exaggerated self-searching to find out who we are but has neglected entirely the search for what the world wants from us – our calling. David Spangler, in his book, The Call expands Hillman’s idea, saying: “You are your own unique self, and if you have the humility to break through the boundaries of ego, you will hear the summons of your Call. Something you may not even know about yourself begins to emerge, and you will discover a service, a gift, a divine purpose behind your actions.


Prayer and meditation take on dynamic proportions immediately following a child’s near-death experience, as does visioning (aligning in consciousness with the divine purpose within us to love and to express greater degree of life and caring) Many of these youngsters who are gifted with native clairvoyance, native to souls who are still innocent about the ways of the world, and thus in purer state of being, actually saw prayers being said for them while they were out of body. They describe how the power of those prayers turned into beams of radiant, golden or rainbow light that arced over them from the one saying the prayer, no matter how many miles away, to where they themselves were “hovering.” Once the prayer beams reached them, the feeling would be akin to a “splash” of love or an incredible warming. Because they can feel the effectiveness of prayer, child experiencers consider it a valid and real way to talk with God while sharing God’s healing love with others.


In her expansive research, P.M.H. Atwater, author of Children of the New Millennium, cites Larry Dossey, M.D. former chief of staff of Humania Medical City in Dallas, Texas, and current co-chairman of the panel on mind/body interventions in the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institute of Health, has a lot to say about the power of prayer, both in his books and personally. He states: There is a quality that correlates with the effect of prayer, and it’s something that sounds very old-fashioned. It’s love. And if the individual doing the praying does not have compassion and empathy and love and a deep sense of authentic and genuine caring for whoever they are praying for, these (medical) experiments (on the power of prayer) don’t work very well. Love is the key to success. And if you rate the ‘frequency’ of love, it is most high when it is not ‘put on’ or manipulated to be self-conscious, stemming from a desire for self-gain.


SPIRIT SHIFT

Spirit shifts bespeak a larger agenda, one that transcends personal and societal concerns and expectations, and seems determinant in why some individuals have a brain shift while others do not even if mutual conditions are similar. PMH Atwater, offers this observation without hesitation on her part, for one cannot research on near-death and other transformative states as long as they do it without recognizing a greater power at work.

Repeatedly, it is stated here that experiencers describe this subtle presence as a highly organized intelligent luminosity that plays the role of emissary for the Divine God, Source or whatever title one prefers. Apparently this intelligent luminosity can take any form or color or substance or order, yet it is always available as a nonenergetic force, a Holy Spirit so to speak capable of moving in and through us once we are ready or once we surrender to it.

How this play out with child experiencers of near-death states is worth a closer look. The depth of maturity that emerges from these youngsters threatens as many people as it inspires. Since spirit shifts lack the physicality of brain shifts, PMH Atwater thinks she will rely more in this section on quotes from any case studies to convey the stirring of spirit. In similar manner, I would like to continue relying on quotes from the study of more adult NDEs as in the special case of neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, M.D.

From: PROOF OF HEAVEN – Chapter 9th The Core, more excerpts.

Meanwhile, I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky. Higher than the clouds – immeasurably higher – flocks of transparent orbs, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamer-like lines behind them.


Birds? Angels? These words registered when I was writing down my recollections. But neither of these words do justice to the beings themselves, which were quite simply different from anything, I have known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher.

A sound, huge and booming like a glorious chant, came down from above, and I wandered if the winged beings were producing it. The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet.

Seeing and hearing were not separate in this place where I now was. I could hear the visual beauty of the silvery bodies of those scintillating beings above, and I could see the surging, joyful perfection of what they sang. It seemed that you could not look at or listen to anything in this world without becoming a part of it – without joining with it in some mysterious way. Again, from my present perspective, I would suggest that you couldn’t look at anything in that world at all, for the word as it self implies a separation that did not exist there. Everything was distinct, yet everything was also a part of everything else, like the rich and internmingled designs of a Persian carpet… or a butterfly wing.


Aside: an image of a butterfly is symbolic of our human metamorphosis, our innate ability to morph, to grow through morphogenetic levels as all humans are destined to be transformative in character…be born from a hairy, ugly pupa, to shed off into a wormy greenish caterpillar that finally sheds off its worminess into a radiant beauty of light that flies to find its purpose in life. And that its Calling is to flit from plant to plant to pollinate plants to produce colorful beautiful flowers to bloom in God’s garden. This co-creative creature of the Creator is called the Butterfly.


What is this place? Who am I? Why am I here ?

Eben Alexander, M.D. : Each time I silently passed on these questions, the answer came instantly in an explosion of light, color, love, and beauty that blew through me like a crashing water. What least important about these bursts was that they didn’t simply silence my questions by overwhelming them. They answered them directly. But in a way that bypassed language. Thoughts entered me directly. But it wasn’t thought like we experience on earth. It wasn’t vague, immaterial, or abstract. These thoughts were solid and immediate – hotter than fire and wetter than water – as I received them I was able to instantly and effortlessly understand concepts that would have taken me years to fully grasp in my earthly life.

I continued moving forward and found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also indefinitely comforting. Pitch black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. An orb that was living and almost solid, as the songs of angel beings had been. My situation was, strangely enough something akin to that of a fetus in a womb. The fetus floats in the womb with the silent partner of the placenta, which nourishes it and mediates its relationship to everywhere present yet at the same invisible mother. In this case, the “mother” was God, the Creator, the Source who is responsible for making the universe and all in it. This Being was so close that there seemed to be no distance at all between God and myself. (Aside: I needed this kind of reassurance --that the Lord God makes me feel so 'special' among the infinite multitude of others, and yet at the same time sense the infinite vastness of his/her Presence) Yet at the same time, I could sense the infinite the vastness of the Creator, could see how completely miniscule I was by comparison. I will occasionally use "Om" as the pronoun for God because I originally used that name in my writings after my coma. “Om” was the sound I remembered hearing associated with that omniscient, omnipotent, and unconditionally loving God, but any description falls short. I had the Orb as my companion. In some manner I couldn’t completely comprehend but I was sure of nonetheless, the Orb was a kind of “interpreter” between me and this extraordinary presence surrounding me.


It was as if I were being born into a larger world, and the universe itself was like a giant cosmic womb, and the Orb (who remained in some way connected to the Girl m the Butterfly Wing, who in fact was she) was guiding me through this process. (aside--my comment: is the Girl the Blessed Virgin Mary as one NDE child saw a beautiful lady pass her by in her own episode while seeing also a glowing Orb of light nearby) Later, when I was back here in the world, I found a quotation by the 17th century Christian poet Henry Vaughan came close to describing this place – this vast inky-black core that was the home of the Divine itself). I remember someone said: can there be Light without darkness? Vaughan: “There is, some say, in God a deep dazzling darkness….” That was it, exactly: an inky darkness that was also full to brimming with light.


….Through the Orb, "Om" told me that there is not one universe but many – in fact more than I could conceive—but that love lay at the center of them all. Evil was present in all the other universes as well, but only in the tiniest trace amounts. Evil was necessary because without it free will was impossible, and without free will there would be no growth—no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be. Horrible and all-powerful as evil sometimes seemed to be in a world like ours (Aside: in the lower worlds where we exist, darkness denotes Karma, law of cause and effect, the choice between good and evil must be willed in the larger picture … Goodness, Godliness and Love are overwhelmingly dominant, and it would ultimately be triumphant)


A COMMON EXPERIENCE -- Chapter 29 – excerpts from the book Proof of Heaven

Finally the day came when I had written down everything I could, every last memory of the Realm of the Earthworm’s Eye View (this refers to the time when he was still an earthworm prior to becoming a butterfly), the Gateway, and the Core. Then it was time to read. I plunged into the ocean of NDE literature – an ocean into which I’d never so much as dipped a toe before. It didn’t take me long to realize that countless other people had experienced the things I had, both in recent years and centuries past. NDEs are not all the same, each one is unique –but the same elements show up again and again, and many I recognize from my own experience. Narratives of passing through a dark tunnel or valley into a bright and vivid landscape – ultra real – were as old as ancient Greece and Egypt. Angelic beings – sometimes winged, sometimes not – went back, at least, to the ancient Near East – as did the belief that such beings were guardians who watched the activities of people on earth and greeted those people when they left it behind. The sense of being able to see in all directions simultaneously, the sensation of being above linear time – of being above everything, essentially that I had previously thought of as defining the landscape of human life, the hearing of anthem-like music, which entered through one’s whole being rather than simply one’s ears; the direct and instantaneous reception of concepts that normally would have taken a very long time and a great deal of study to comprehend, without any struggle whatsoever … feeling the intensity of unconditional love.


…Quite simply, I’d never held myself open to the idea that something of us survives the death of the body, I was the quintessential good-natured, albeit skeptical, doctor. And as such, I can tell you that most skeptics aren’t really skeptics at all. To be truly skeptical, one must actually examine something, and take it seriously. And I, like many doctors, had never taken the time to explore NDEs. I had simply ‘known’ they were impossible.

I also went through the medical records of my time in coma – a time that was meticulously recorded, practically from the very start. Reviewing my scans just as I would have for a patient of my own, it became clear to me at last just how fantastically sick I had been (See Appendix A and B). Though the experience is as old as history, “the near-death experience” (regardless of whether it was seen as something real or a baseless fantasy) only became a household term fairly recently. In the 1960’s, new techniques were developed that allowed doctors to resuscitate patients who had suffered cardiac arrest.


Unbeknowest to them, these physicians were, through their rescue efforts, producing a breed of trans-earthly voyagers, people who had glimpsed beyond the veil and returned to tell about it. Today they number in the millions. Then in 1975, a medical student named Raymond Moody published a book called Life After Life, in which he described the experience of a man named George Ritchie. Ritchie had “died” as a result of a cardiac arrest as a complication of pneumonia and been out of his body for nine minutes. He traveled down a tunnel, visited heavenly and hellish regions, met a being of light he identified as Jesus and experienced feelings of peace and well-being that were so intense he had difficulty putting them in words. The era of the modern near-death experience was born.


… The more primitive parts of my brain – the housekeeping parts – functioned for all or most of my time in coma. But when it came to the part of my brain that every single brain scientist will tell you is responsible for the human side of me: well, that part was gone. I could see it on the scans, in the lab numbers, on my neurological exams – in all the data from my very closely recorded week in hospital. I quickly began to realize that mine was a technically near-impeccable near-death experience, perhaps one of the first convincing case in modern history. What really mattered about my case was not what happened to me personally, but the sheer, flat-out impossibility of arguing, from a medical standpoint, that it was all fantasy.  (To be continued)

HEAVEN IS WHERE YOU STAND

Einstein re-discovered something the ancients knew, and I closed my last posting “Universe: a Total System” with it -- Albert Einstein completed the overthrowing of the concept of the mechanical universe which was prevailing in that period 17th -18th centuries when well-known intellectuals tried to separate reason from faith in God by focusing on the mechanical, purely physical universe such that anthroposophic thinkers credited Lucifer the fallen angel of ancient sacred scriptures as the chief ruler of earthly universe in their philosophical writings. In astrology we tend to regard Saturn the planet of karma as an old devil who tempts us then if we have succeeded in overcoming his tests, he turns around and shines as a radiant angel.   


Einstein resolved the rift between faith and reason by perceiving time in an entirely new way so that common sense of sensual logic was no longer valid. Accounts by NDEs confirm this, particularly that of scientist-neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, M.D. “whose near-death experience is the most astonishing I have heard in more than four decades of studying this phenomenon. (He) is living proof of an afterlife.” -- Raymond A. Moody, Jr., M.D. Ph.D., author of Life After Life. I have read two of three books by Moody and I understand what he means. There are also other books running in the same thread…some are sold out before you can find them.  There's a recent NDE report about a four year old who goes, "nobody is old in Heaven, nobody wears glasses."   


Heaven as you know is not a place, nor a state of mind, but a frequency. Now that the planet Earth is considered by the Asc. Masters as having ascended to the Fifth Dimension after gomg through the tedious seemingly impossible process of rectification of erroneous views, paths, and purification through pain and suffering; the confounding chaos of conflicting views, beliefs; violent conflicts exploding into wars and the horrendous natural calamities experienced by humanity in the past four decades, reversing at times the old familiar pattern of the seasons, someone, a scientist, who has been tediously scholastically studying the outer structural nature and inner dynamics of being human as a brain surgeon can now make enough sense of the outer structural nature and inner dynamics of a celestial being in the higher frequency realms to access it. It appears from his astonishingly detailed NDE account, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, M.D. has earned this singularly phenomenal celestial merit. To read him therefore is a MUST as he represents all of us in our struggle to comprehend the Mystery of the Universe.


Today is Pentecost Sunday, May 19, 2013, and the Gospel (according to ) centers on the coming of the Holy Spirit (fifty days after Jesus Christ rose from the dead) planting ‘burning tongues of fire’ on the foreheads of the disciples and the Blessed Mother Mary as they gathered to receive the Holy Spirit. The ‘flaming tongues’ signified that they have received the gifts of the Spirit, most significantly convenient for their dharma which is the transmission and understanding of languages. From that point on in the history of evangelization, the ordinary disciples of Christ, mostly illiterate fishermen were filled with the gifts of Holy Spirit and became incredibly extraordinary in their transmission and understanding of earthly languages -- the way it’s done by heavenly beings without using words (see Dr.Eben Alexander’s account on his trip to heaven and back, below). Things, ideas are conveyed, comprehended in truth, through vibrations.


Last night, Saturday May 18, between 8:30 – 10:30 we had a rousing Fellowship of Christian communities called BEC meaning Basic Ecclesiastical Community, in native Pilipino, “Bukluran”, within MGV, paranaque, to celebrate the eve of the Pentecostal feast. There was as I said a rousing, rowdy but not in that sense, rowdy, it was rather a wholesome fullsome fruit-filled, consumed with divine Love gathering of souls in prayerful worship. Led by Nonong our stalwart lay-pastor (symbolic, he's just one of us) we were swept away into vibrating intensities of praying, singing, waving of hands, chanting Songs of Worship while in sight was a musical video of images of Christ’s passion and suffering to save a sinning world. In effect, the Holiness of Divine Force emploded within us in the place and made us in spirit, worthy of becoming miniature‘apostles’ ourselves liking us in a small degree to the original Apostles of yore with the visiting priest Fr. Selsi from the San Carlos Seminary of Makati, symbolically anointing our heads with oil to make our cup runneth over as in Psalm 23. When the sharing session came, seven groups in warmly inter-active discussions of how one's personal tribulations inter-twined with family troubles and others are made to feel light and transformed thru a love-inspired-grateful feeling turned magical experience when surrendered to the Divine topped the ecclesiastical activity of the night.


THE SPINNING MELODY AND THE GATEWAY (chapter 7 of book, Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, M.D.)


Multiply that feeling of communion with our Lord in our BEC gathering, a thousand times, and you still won’t be anywhere close to what it felt like when Dr. Eben Alexander, a successful American neurosurgeon got into an untimely death – in a coma of seven days and went to Heaven then sent back to tell it (from the book by the same, Proof of Heaven, an NDE incredible experience.


Here is Dr. Eben Alexander: The moment I understood this, I began to move up. Fast. There was a whooshing sound, and in a flash I went through the opening and found myself in a completely new world. The strangest, most beautiful world I‘d ever seen. Brilliant, vibrant, ecstatic, stunning… I could heap on one adjective after another to describe what this world looked and felt like, but they’d fall short. I felt like I was being born. Not reborn, or born again. Just… born….


… I was flying, passing over the trees and fields, streams and waterfalls, and here and there, people. A beautiful, incredible dream world. Though I didn’t know where I was or even what it was, I was absolutely sure of one thing: this place I’d suddenly found myself was completely real… I don’t know how long exactly, I flew along. (Time in this place was different from the simple linear time we experience on earth and is as hopelessly difficult Eben Alexander says, to describe as every other aspect of it). But at some point, I realized I wasn’t alone up there.



Someone was next to me: a beautiful girl with high-cheek bones and deep blue eyes. She was wearing the same kind of peasant-like clothes that the people in the village down below wore. Golden-brown tresses framed her lovely face. We were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, alive with indescribable and vivid colors – the wing of a butterfly (aside: look to pause to imagine the wing of a butterfly winging them towards heaven). In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us – vast, fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the greenery and coming back up around us again. It wasn’t any single, discreet butterfly that appeared, but all of them together, as if they were a river of life and color, moving through the air. We flew in lazy looped formation past blooming flowers and buds on trees that opened as we drew near.


The girl’s outfit was simple, but its colors – powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach – had the same overwhelming super-vivid aliveness that everything else in the surroundings had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for a few moments, would make your whole life up to that point worth-living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that somewhat was beyond all these …beyond all the different types of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being more genuine and pure than all of them.


Without using any words, she spoke to me. The message went through me like a wind, and I instantly understood that it was true. I knew so in the way that I knew that the world around us was real – was not a fantasy and insubstantial.


The message had three parts, and if I had to translate them into earthly language, I’d say they ran something like this: “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.” “You have nothing to fear.” “There is nothing you can do wrong.”

The message flooded me with a vast and crazy sensation of relief. It was like being handed the rules to a game I’d been playing all my life without fully understanding it.


“We will show you many things here, “the girl said – again, without actually using these words but by driving their conceptual essence directly into me. “But eventually you will be back.” To this, I had only one question. Back where?


Remember who’s talking to you right now. I’m not a soft-headed sentimentalist. I knew what death looks like. I know what it feels to have a living person, whom you spoke to and joked with after you’ve struggled for hours to keep the machine of their body working. I knew what suffering looks like, and the answerless grief on the faces of loved ones who have lost someone they never dreamed they could lose. I knew my biology, and while I’m not a physicist, I’m no slouch at that, either. I know the difference between fantasy and reality, and I know that the experience I’m struggling to give you the vaguest, most completely unsatisfactory picture of, was the single most real experience of my life. In fact, the only competition for it in the reality department was what came next.


ISRAEL – 8TH Chapter -- Proof of Heaven—Excerpts -- A Flashback

In 1996, doctors discovered a new bacterial strain harboring DNA, or KPC, an enzyme that conferred antibiotic resistance on its host bacterium. It was founding the stomach of a patient who died in a North Carolina hospital. The strain immediately got the attention of doctors all over the world when it was discovered that KPC could potentially render a bacteria that absorbed it resistant not just to some current antibiotics, but to all of them.


If a toxic, antibiotic-proof strain of bacteria (one whose non-toxic cousin is ubiquitous in our bodies) got loose in the general population, it would have a field day with the human race. There are no new antibiotics in the ten-year pharmaceutical development pipeline that could come to the rescue. Just a few months earlier, Dr. Brennan knew, a patient had checked into a hospital with a powerful bacterial infection and was given a range of powerful antibiotics in an effort to control his Klebsiella pneumoniae infection. But the man’s condition continued to worsen. Tests revealed that he was still suffering from Klebsiella pneumoniae and that the antibiotics hadn’t done their work. Further tests revealed that the bacteria living in the man’s large intestine had acquired the KC gene by direct plasmid transfer from his resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae infection. In other words, his body had provided the laboratory for the creation of a species of bacteria that, if it got into the general population, might rival the Black Death, a plague that killed half of Europe in the 14th century.


The hospital where all this occurred was the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, Israel, and it had occurred just a few months previously. As a matter of fact it happened at about the time that I’d been there, as part of my work coordinating a global research initiative in focused ultrasound brain surgery. I’d arrived in Jerusalem at 3:15 a.m. and after finding my hotel had decided on a whim to walk to the old city. I ended up taking a lone predawn tour of the Via Dolorosa and visiting the alleged site of the Last Supper. The trip had been strangely moving, and once back in the States I’d often brought it up with Holley (his wife). But at the time I’d known nothing of the patient at the Sourasky Medical Center or the bacteria he contacted that picked up the KPC gene. Bacteria that, it developed, was itself a strain of E. coli.


Could I have somehow picked up the antibiotic-proof of KPC –harboring bacteria while I was in Israel? It was unlikely. But it was a possible explanation for the apparent resistance of my infection and my doctors went to work to determine if that was indeed the bacteria that was attacking my brain. My case was about to become, for the first of many reasons, a part of medical history.


N of 1 – Chapter 17 – more excerpts from Proof of Heaven --- more flashback


…While it was certainly good news that I was not harboring a strain of bacteria that could wipe out a third of the country, in terms of my own, individual recovery, it just underscored what my doctors were already suspecting all too clearly that my case was essentially without precedent.


It was also quickly moving from desperate to hopeless. The doctors simply didn’t have an answer for how I could have contracted my illness, or how I could be brought back from my coma. They were sure of only one thing: they did not know of anyone making a full recovery from bacterial meningitis after being comatose for more than a few days. We were now into day four.


Spontaneous E. coli bacterial meningitis is rare in adults. Less than 1 out of 10 million of the world’s population contracts it annually. And, like all varieties of gram-positive bacterial meningitis, it’s highly aggressive. So aggressive that of the people it does attack more than 90 percent of those who initially suffer from a rapid rate when I first entered the ER. That dismal 90 percent crept toward 100 percent as the week wore on and my body failed to respond to antibiotics. The few who survive a case as severe as mine generally require round-the-clock care for the rest of their lives. Officially, my status was “N of 1”, a term that refers to medical studies in which a single patient stands for the entire trial. There is simply no one else to whom the doctors could compare my case.      (to be continued)

THE UNIVERSE:
A TOTAL SYSTEM

That we live in a planet called Earth that orbits around the Sun in a Solar System of planets that belongs to a huge galaxy called Milky Way is a an objective fact. This points to a realization that there is an objective Existence that we perceive by the senses as the resultant effect of many deep causes. And this leads to the study or inquiry into the nature of these unseen causes which further leads to a realization that these causes are again the effects governed by laws which themselves are based on first principles as given in a book Anatomy of Fate, Astrology and Kabbalah by Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi. These principles are arrived at by a mixture of tradition and revelation making them the most basic set of causes in the Universe. This book Anatomy of Fate is now considered a classic, and has been translated to ten languages, including Japanese. I'd like to give you the thoughts of Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi on what he calls the Universe, as a Total System which to him constitutes tradition, revelation, system, rules, laws, and underlying principles together with its heirarchy of control and forces.


TRADITION


Tradition is that which is handed down from one generation to another or from a teacher to a pupil. Tradition, in most cases is the knowledge that has been collected and verified over many centuries. Depending on its depth and weight of knowledge, this tradition likes to preserve and teach its understanding. Socrates and his disciples had long detailed conversations on existence in contrast with the terse but loaded comments of some Zen masters. In essence, tradition is a gradual building up of a body of knowledge which is transmitted by study, discipline and contemplation. This is for the most part the history of Astrology.  Like Mahatma Gandhi, I'd like to say that my continuing passion for research on the magnificence of the Universe as we know it is my adoration of its Existence. 


REVELATION

Revelation is of a quite different order. It is knowledge revealed by deep insight and the penetration of the veil of ignorance by a flash that connects things that seemed in no way related or did not have this or that implication. Here is the moment of discovery. The word – ‘dis-covery’ says it is the uncovering of something already there, like a new country or law as yet unknown. Einstein as he was sitting before his fireplace was fixed in revelatory thought that can bring about the key to atomic energy or the Buddha seated under a tree can see the way out of carnal suffering. Revelation in Astrology is those moments of illumination that have fused the masses of data into rules, laws and principles upon which the system is based.

A SYSTEM

A system is a working body of knowledge. Theory on its own is only speculation. Without practice or function theory has no real meaning or has no way of being verified. Once the atom had been split and made to work to order, atomic physics became a system. From perceptive observation of life, Halevi speaks of history and everyday things are based upon observable universal principles, as soon as they all become apparent as working systems.

Even made objects as simple as a child’s scooter or as complex as a jet engine are based on systems. Break one wheel or engine part, and the machine or mechanical system ceases to work. From all these can be deduced that there are a set of laws that are a set of interacting regulations, which apply the laws that have been created by first principles.


UNIVERSE IS MADE UP OF RULES, LAWS, AND PRINCIPLES OF EXISTENCE

All indicate a hierarchy of control and forces under direction. Like its internal imitators which only copy a particular functional aspect of its full capacity, the Universe is made up of rules, laws and principles. Based on experience and fact it has again and again concluded, in different cultures and times in history, that the best way to transmit a body of knowledge about the Universe was to construct a symbolic model based upon the original: name the principles, laws and regulations of Existence. This meant formulating a metaphysical scheme.

Such a one recurs all over the world irrespective of time and space and is quite recognizable by the discerning mind, states Halevi, despite the overlay of culture, or the distortion by decadence of the original presentation.


HIERARCHY OF CONTROL AND FORCES

Halevi goes further: The most common example found in many cultures is the principle of the Trinity. This is seen in the three Hindu gods of Creation, Maintenance and Destruction, the yin-yang and neutral principles of Taoism, the three Divine attributes of Mercy, Grace and Justice in Judaism, and the much misunderstood principle behind the Christian Trinity. These are in fact only fragments of the total scheme embodied in each religion. In the case of Astrology there is a difference because Astrology is closer to a teaching philosophy than a true religion.


PRINCIPLE OF TRINITY -- Creation, Maintenance, Destruction

To be precise Astrology is an ancillary system of knowledge to several major systems. Halevi explains: it is because it lacks a central doctrine or personality (Divine or human) to make a formal religion. It does however still stand in its own right as a complete picture of the Universe and has thus survived most of the early religions which were its contemporaries in the ancient world.

A complete system is one that points to the total picture of reality, or at least takes into account all the factors in general if not in particular. Halevi concludes that it is what modern medicine may study, in the finest detail.

Fractions of the physical body and its workings, not to mention of the ailments of the psychological organism, not to mention the ailments of the spirit which may well be the generators of physical diseases. Modern medicine, for all its technology, is an incomplete system. When the states of the two bodies of psyche and spirit are taken into consideration, then medicine can be called truly the science-art of healing.


THE UNIVERSE: A TOTAL SYSTEM

A total system is one that includes the whole. By classical times most bodies of knowledge that had been formulated around the great creative period of 500 BC were based upon a complete picture of the Universe. Nothing was seen as separate from anything else. Under the laws of the first Divine principles was the macrocosm while the microcosm was contained within the macrocosm which it reflected and followed in miniature at a lower level in Creation – As above so below. Thus in China the yin and yang principles of opposites were seen in the big scale of good government and in the small scale of the human body. In the Middle East, the Jews based their secular customs upon the twin complements of duties and rights and their religion upon the dual approach of the love and fear of God. Thus everything in Existence was perceived as one interconnecting chain of smaller and larger links that became simpler yet more potent as the level rose to a peak of Divine unity, from which everything emanated.


This total view was carried by Western civilization right through to the 17th century when the advent of anthropocentric thought and the rise of physical science shattered the whole world picture and reduced Western man to the sensual and mechanical perception of reality.


For instance, Galileo’s telescope revealed to contemporary natural philosophers that the luminaries or Lights (Sun and Moon) and the planets were not as they had been led to believe by the ancient teachers. The Sun’s pure disc had blemishes, the Moon is a rough mountainous face, and some planets possessed satellites of their own, while Saturn had strange rings. The whole allegorical aspect of the Universe evaporated with one glimpse through the telescope. Suddenly ordinary natural men of the Western world believed they could see with their sensual eye more of the Universe than of the thinkers of ancient times and thus all the ideas about relationships of the various cosmoses were clearly redundant. Within two generations the complete world picture accepted by the Elizabethan and the medieval mind had vanished and the very partial and entirely mechanical view, held up till quite recently, took its hold on the Western cultural establishment.

All was not lost, however, says Halevi. While the ‘Age of Reason’ as the new period came to be called, was examining the physical aspects of Creation through the bigger and better instruments, small groups of people dotted around Europe retained the total view in various occult and esoteric studies. These ranged from scholarly groups hidden within the rapidly changing university situation to the secret societies of the Rosicrucians and the Masons. Some groups for example, were indeed no more than cranks reacting blindly against the new mechanistic outlook, while others diligently examined ancient Teachings without possessing the vital key of insight. Yet others knew something but became preoccupied with magical power and then forgot the purpose of spiritual work. Fortunately however, the level of wisdom was still to be found here and there, and traces of it have been detected in England, Holland, and Germany in the presence of men like Fludd, van Helmont and Boehme who saw the Universe as one unified organization.


Moreover, later a while new radio Universe was discovered which pushed back the scientific horizon and revealed a vast subtle complex of vibrating forces and radiant flows which had until then been unsuspected; except by the ancients who had described it in allegory by such terms as the ‘music of the spheres.’ On the microcosmic front the apparent solidity of matter had dissolved in the laboratory experiments with the atom that uncovered as yet small entity or packet of matter.

Einstein completed the overthrowing of the concept of the mechanical Universe by perceiving time in an entirely new way so that common sense of sensual logic was no longer valid. All this together with the re-discovery of our planet's magnetophere and ecological system made scientific inquiry begin to consider that more lay beyond the scientifically observable processes and that as ancient and occult teachings stated perhaps more subtler forces existed beyond the Earth and deep within our planet's  the human being.


Next time, we will investigate what Einstein means by perceiving time in an entirely new way so that common sense logic was no longer valid. Ok?