Well, that’s certainly a thing to know. Great! Excellent! A problem that has vexed mankind—where do we go when we’re no longer going—has been cleared up by none other than a Harvard neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander, who intends to tell us all about it in the next issue of Newsweek.
Why isn’t there a regulatory agency to prohibit people from making damn fools of themselves?
Disclosure time—the words “damn fool” and the thoughts may not be mine. They were Joan Didion’s, borrowed from her grandmother, to describe Bishop Pike.
Whom of course we’ve all forgotten about.
Though I shouldn’t, as a gay man. Because Pike was an early champion within the Episcopal Church of inclusion for LGBT folk.
Right—good for you, Pike!
Now then, back to the rest of him, which would be about 99%. Or so I thought. But there’s a lot to like about Pike—he marches on Selma with Martin Luther King, he’s strongly liberal (not hard to be in San Francisco, but OK), he’s on the right side of history.
Even his vices—he’s a chain-smoker and a drunk—are, in my eyes at least, all too understandable.
So why am I calling him a damn fool?
For the same reason that I think our Harvard-man-of-the-heavens is a damn fool.
Remember The Other Side?
Well, I didn’t until I WikiPediaed (I don’t like your attitude, computer!) him. Here it is:
In 1966, Pike's son Jim took his own life in a New York city hotel room. Shortly after his son's death, Pike reported experiencing poltergeist phenomena—books vanishing and reappearing, safety pins open and indicating the approximate hour of his son's death, half the clothes in a closet disarranged and heaped up.[6] Pike led a public (and, for the Church, embarrassing) pursuit of various spiritualist and clairvoyant methods of contacting his deceased son to reconcile. In September 1967, Pike participated in a televised séance with his dead son through the medium Arthur Ford, who served at the time as a Disciples of Christ minister. Pike detailed these experiences in his book The Other Side.
Right. Actually, Pike was sufficiently thorny to risk heresy trials—has a rather medieval ring to it, doesn’t it?—four times in the early sixties. Eventually he was “just” censured by his fellow bishops in 1966. So he resigned his position after that.
You may remember his last stupidity. That would be his death….
In September 1969, Pike and his third wife Diane drove into the Judean Desert, searching for proof of the historical Jesus. With typical Pike bravado, they were unprepared for the journey; and, when their car broke down and became stuck, Diane Pike told her husband to stay in the shade of the car to protect himself from the heat of the desert sun, and not to go anywhere. Diane walked down a wadi to a grocery to seek help. The men there asked where she'd come from. She pointed to the wadi; they said "That's impossible. No one can do that." Help was obtained, but by the time they arrived back at the car, they found that James had wandered off, in violation of instructions, and later his body was recovered. This account came directly from Diane Kennedy Pike's verbal account to a group she and her partner Oso Lorrance were leading to Egypt, Jordan and Israel in 1975[7] and, following his wishes and those of his family, buried in the Protestant cemetery in Jaffa, Israel.[8]
Typical bravado? Well, typical something, yes. Bravado, no.
OK, let’s jog back to Dr. Alexander, our Harvard man. His story is that he was in a coma for a week or so back in 2008. And he took a tour around heaven—which, with complete lack of originality, is absolutely identical to the New Age twaddle we’ve been afflicted with for the last 40 years. The white light. The female guiding spirits. The immense void, filled with the presence of God, the essence of which is…
…you ready?
…I need to hear you gasp after I tell you….
PURE LOVE!
I copy and paste now from Yahoo (just to give WikiPedia a break…).
Alexander says the messages he received from those beings loosely translated as:
"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever."
"You have nothing to fear."
"There is nothing you can do wrong."
Right. Just one question for our good doctor….
Anybody checked your gag reflex lately?
It’s almost enough to make you long for the old fire-and-brimstone-you-miserable-sinner days. Or perhaps the God-is-the-supreme-gentleman of the English vicars. Sorry, I still think—I may have endured one too many Wisconsin winters—that people can do, and perhaps routinely do, wrong. I fear many things, some perhaps rightly. (Ever lost your mind?)
Loved, cherished, dearly, forever?
Look, I had an OK relationship with my Mom. I live in a strongly matriarchal society. And yeah, some doors got open by an invisible hand, the dead finger was on the smoke alarm. She’s out there, that Franny of mine.
My take on it?
She’s stirring around, just the same as always.
Just don't know where, or what it's like....
Just don't know where, or what it's like....
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| Dr. Eben Alexander—kinda looks like Robin Williams, doesn’t he? |
