Benjamin Franklin, at age 22, is credited with writing his own epitaph:
THE BODY OF B. FRANKLIN, PRINTER,
LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK,
IT’S CONTENTS TORN OUT AND STRIPPED OF
ITS LETTERING AND GILDING,
LIES HERE FOOD FOR WORMS,
BUT THE WORK SHALL NOT BE LOST,
FOR IT WILL AS HE BELIEVED APPEAR ONCE MORE
IN A NEW AND MORE ELEGANT EDITION
REVISED AND CORRECTED
BY THE AUTHOR
In the late ‘60’s, when I embarked on a career in journalism, it was my very good fortune to meet and become close friends with Marion Kuclo, also known as "Gundella the Witch". Gundella was a Traditional Witch, descended from the green witches of Scotland. She had chosen the religion of Wicca when she was 18.
I doubt if she ever realized the impact she had on my life.
Prior to that friendship, my confusion about religion had reached the point where I no longer chose to deal with it. Part and parcel of that mental chaos stemmed from the Big Question of what happens to us when we die.
The popular theories of Heaven and Hell gave me the most trouble.
At that time in my life, the only alternative was the disquieting idea of when you are dead you are dead.
I couldn’t come to grips with the first and the second was one I wouldn’t even consider.
I’d also heard some say that death is a natural part of life. Well, it could be natural — if we accept the inevitability of it — but oh, how we resist the idea, and oh, how we choose to ignore it and go on with our daily lives as if we will live forever.
I found my niche of comfort and sensible reasoning in the religion and tenets of Wicca.
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who lived c. 535 - c. 475 BC is credited with having said: "Not I, but the world says it: All is one."
If we get beyond the images the word magic, conjures — rabbits jumping out of hats and women being sawed in half — and replace the thought or the very word itself with the phrase, ‘positive thinking,’ or the ‘power of the mind,’ more of us might be willing to accept it as at least plausible.
And then comes reincarnation.
Perhaps we can look at it this way:
The primary driving force in our bodies is electricity.
Electricity cannot be destroyed.
If this is so, when we die and the electricity leaves our bodies, where does it go?
If electricity is the "living" force of human bodies could it be that it’s contained in our very beings — or souls?
If so, our souls cannot be destroyed.
Ovid (43 BC - AD 17):
"Souls are not subject to death; and having left their former abodes, they ever inhabit new dwellings and, there received, live on."
Another hypothesis held tightly to the chest of the paranormal, is astral-projection. This theory postulates that your soul had the ability to escape your body, and travel to wherever you wish.
Here again, references to this can be found in the King James Version of the Holy Bible.
Corinthians 12: 2-3
"I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth:) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
"And I knew such a man, (whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth:)"
It is said that everyone has experiences this condition wherein the soul leaves the body and is free to travel without the restrictions of the physical self.
Astral projection or out-of-body-experience (OOBE) is thought to occur in the Dream State.
Have you ever had a dream that was so vivid, a dream in which you could see, feel or touch, a dream during which you didn’t realize you were dreaming, because everything was so real —?
