The Big Picture: Insights from the Spiritual World

By Garry Gilfoy

Built around the extraordinary stories of seven people who have been unwitting visitors to the spiritual world, The BIG Picture examines the themes of reincarnation, the relationship between karma and destiny, the divide between religion and spirituality, humanitys task in creation, and the emergence of a new Western spirituality to lead us into the next stage of the evolution of consciousness.

In The BIG Picture, author Garry Gilfoy discloses his own spiritual experiences and also tells the stories of others, such as Joy, who was sent back from the realm of spirit without her husband after a horrific crash; Trish, who died numerous times before learning to visit her cosmic classroom at will; Helen, who relived a holocaust nightmare before her eyes opened onto ancient Egypt; and Keely, who was miraculously saved by a familiar figure, the Watcher.

Gilfoy helps us contemplate deeper meanings and refocus the lens through which we view the world. The BIG Picture guides us to ponder unusual possibilities that can shift the point of reference for our earthly thoughts and deeds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781462071098

Garry Gilfoy

Garry Gilfoy earned four university degrees. His formal studies included psychology, theology, and education. Gilfoy currently trains therapists, and his private practice specialises in mid-life transitions and past-life regression. He lives with his family in South Australia. Visit him online at www.garrygilfoy.com.

Book preview

Contents

-PREFACE-

-INTRODUCTION-

-CHAPTER ONE-

-CHAPTER TWO-

-CHAPTER THREE-

-CHAPTER FOUR-

-CHAPTER FIVE-

-CHAPTER SIX-

-CHAPTER SEVEN-

-CHAPTER EIGHT-

-CHAPTER NINE-

-CHAPTER TEN-

-CHAPTER ELEVEN-

-CHAPTER TWELVE-

-CHAPTER THIRTEEN-

-CHAPTER FOURTEEN-

-CHAPTER FIFTEEN-

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"The whole Prophet is saying one thing:

‘you are far, far greater than you know—and all is well.’"

—Kahlil Gibran

-PREFACE-

That is at the bottom the only courage demanded of us:

to have courage for the most strange,

the most singular and the most inexplicable

that we may encounter.

That mankind has in this sense been cowardly

has done life endless harm;

the experiences that are called visions,

the whole so-called spirit-world,

death,

all those things that are so deeply akin to us,

have by daily parrying been so crowded out of

life that the senses by which we could have

grasped them are atrophied.

To say nothing of God.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Over the years I’ve come across some extraordinary stories from everyday people—remarkable encounters, just-in-time escapes, amazing coincidences, hilarious happenings, implausible survivals. The ones that strike me as most significant, however, are the stories of spiritual experiences. These events are more than just interesting. They have the power to change lives deeply and irrevocably. Even decades later, when these people find the right time and place to share their stories, they will still speak in reverential tones.

In these pages you’ll meet some of these people. They aren’t people you’ve heard of before. They’re not gurus or evangelists. They don’t glow. There’s no mark on the forehead, no halo, nothing to give them away. They are average citizens, like everyone else you see going about the daily business of life. Yet, as unassuming as they are, they have been exposed to some of the mysteries of the universe that sages long for and great philosophers have been considering for millennia. Their worlds have been profoundly shaken. They can no longer stroll through life believing things are as they seem. But it’s not only their own lives that are affected by their discoveries. The things they’ve seen have much to say about what it means to be human. Their experiences matter to us all.

How often do we look at people with a real sense of curiosity about what they’ve been through? A person you see walking down the street might be someone you read about a few years back who plunged down a rocky mountain cliff and lay stranded and injured before help arrived. Or maybe you’ll see the lady who barely survived the car crash that took her husband’s life. Perhaps you’ll nod to someone who has recently had a profound and traumatic reliving of a past life where she was thrown into a mass grave because she wasn’t blue-eyed. These are a few of the people we’ll meet in the coming chapters, but for all you know there might be a story like these closer to home. Maybe your own brother or sister has recently survived emergency surgery but will never find the courage or the opportunity to talk about what happened while he or she was ‘out there’.

The things you hear from friends or read about in newspapers are usually the external perceptions of an event: the dramatic rescue; the children doing a hospital vigil praying for their mother’s life while grieving their father’s death; the older woman who collapsed on the street just a few weeks back who was pronounced dead… but then she wasn’t. While we take an interest in the drama of the events, do we wonder what else went on during their challenging time? Some—not many, but definitely some—of the people you see on a busy day have had an experience that has totally transformed their inner life and the way they see the world. They can tell us stories that are not often heard in our society. These people are not weird. They didn’t imagine it. In fact it would have been the most vivid experience they ever had. But rarely will they talk about it. Like you, they grew up in a time and place where people simply wouldn’t ‘get’ what they were saying.

Now we live in the information age. We learn a lot more than previous generations. Stories of all kinds slowly make themselves known. People have spiritual experiences that are inexplicable to modern science. But they’re real. My certainty arises from my own experience.

There was a time when I was reluctant to talk about my otherworldly insights because they didn’t really fit with everyday conversation. But there came a point when I felt I had to. I spent some years teaching in Singapore in a Master of Counselling program. One of my subjects was on Psychosynthesis, a model of psychotherapy that explores the integration of the human being on all levels, including the spiritual. I felt I owed it to my students to explain how I came to be leading a course with an overtly spiritual framework. For me the work of spiritual psychology was more than theory. I lived it personally and used it in my private practice.

It had been University protocol at the start of a course that a program director would introduce lecturers to the new students. Someone who didn’t know me well would read about me, in front of me, from material I had written about myself. I have four university degrees, including post-graduate studies in education and social science. I travelled and lived in several countries. I offer a range of workshops, do public speaking, host conferences, have an abiding interest in this and that, and the list goes on. Everything that was said was true, yet I never felt comfortable sitting there listening to it all. I always had the feeling that it didn’t say anything about who I really was. It described the outer me—my movements and accomplishments in the world—yet conveyed very little of my inner essence, of what gets me up in the morning and excites me about life. So I asked to dispense with the ego-propping stuff and began to introduce myself. Since then, I would begin new classes by honing in on my major transformative inner experiences, both psychological and spiritual, and how the meaning I take from these experiences has shaped the life I live. I revealed to them the nature of my quest even as I was living it.

My story began at the age of twenty-one with a life-altering experience. It was not, of course, the time of my physical birth, which is the usual way to start telling one’s life journey. But in the ways that matter most, it was the beginning of the life I’ve come to live. It’s when the nature of my existence as a spiritual being was laid bare, never to be doubted again. That was the singular event which provided the focal point of my life. That moment in time became the lens through which I would explore the possibilities and the challenges of what it means to be fully human. And in the context of my life, it also shed light on what came before and shaped what would follow. It had everything to do with who I am.

It’s through events like these that spirituality and psychology meet in the most profound ways, beyond the boundaries of the perceptible. This is the work I had come to do with my students in Singapore. It would be folly to introduce myself and leave out such formative events. Yet people do. In the preceding years of teaching I had done so. At the times when our most powerful experiences are called for we often withhold them out of fear. It might be about major excursions into the world of spirit or it might be about the impact of sexual abuse. When we have come to terms with experiences that shape us so strongly, perhaps we’re meant to make these known to others who could benefit from them. That’s what I discovered once I started to describe my experience.

For the thirty or so minutes I took to tell my deeper life journey to my students, there was utter silence. Here I was, an intelligent, engaging, worldly man, telling these highly educated, middle-aged professionals an extraordinary story that asked them to open up their hearts and minds to possibilities far beyond what we consider normal. There was no doubt that they knew me better. In addition, we had set the scene for much greater depth of exploration in the time we would have together.

There was such absorbed interest in what I had to convey that I can only conclude I reached a place in people that was familiar, or perhaps addressed an unconscious need to understand life on a more profound level. This was a post-graduate program with the average student in their mid-40s, a significant age in the search for meaning. Whatever it was, my students were spellbound. Significantly, in every class of forty to fifty students who heard my introduction, at least two or three, sometimes more, would eventually find me in a break, alone, and quietly tell me about their own spiritual experiences. Invariably, they hadn’t spoken these words aloud before. What freed them up to do so was hearing mine told so publicly, without embarrassment or apology.

I would always walk away from these sessions with a conviction that such stories need to be more accessible to people. When you’ve had your world turned upside down with the profound reality of your spiritual nature, it’s difficult to pretend the life you once lived had adequate meaning attached. These experiences exist across generations, cultures, genders and social divides. It’s not helpful that they remain untold. It was in these classroom settings in Singapore that the idea for this book originated.

Most people who read this book will do so because they already have a strong belief in the existence of the spiritual world. This book won’t convince you of anything, but it may fill gaps. I include in it a worldview that has been built up over many years of avid pursuit of spiritual understandings. This is what I call the big picture. I think it’s not easy to find sources which bring a coherent spiritual picture together. I remember when I had many pieces of the puzzle, before they fitted into a logical whole. For me it took hearing a couple of key concepts—humanity’s task in creation, the journey between death and a new life—and suddenly so many of the bits fell together and made sense. I hope I have taken a broad enough view that this might happen for you.

Read on. Let’s contemplate deeper meanings and perhaps refocus the lens through which we view the world. We’ll ponder unusual possibilities that might shift the point of reference for our earthly thoughts and deeds. Let’s explore The BIG Picture.

The publication of this book represents another chapter in the life I’ve come to live. I’m grateful to share karma and destiny with the many people who helped me find my way. They include Rudolf Steiner (1861-1924), Austrian scientist, mystic and teacher extraordinaire who made public the greatest depth of insight into things spiritual, by far. His work was pivotal in shaping my worldview. Roberto Assagioli (1888-1974), a student of Freud who parted ways with the master to create Psychosynthesis in order to imbue his work in psychotherapy with spiritual underpinnings. His work provides the basis of a modern language and approach to shift the focus of psychology from a culture of the wounded child toward the child of destiny. The results speak for themselves. Helen Manock, still going strong, who swept my psychological slate clean in order for me to start again, this time on the road to authenticity—like giving birth, it hurt, but thanks for a life worth living. Lane, my early editor cum motivator, my happy household, my great friends, and very importantly, the people who made their stories available for me to publish—Joy, Helen, Lukas, Caren, Keely and Trish. Thank you.

-INTRODUCTION-

After dominating many aspects of life for millennia, religion was becoming unfashionable by the last half of the twentieth century. Around that time, when the scientific worldview reigned supreme, clever people would debate the question of whether or not one should believe in God and the afterlife. The general conclusion was that if you do believe, and in the end there is nothing after death, then you haven’t lost anything. But if you don’t believe and end up discovering there is a God, then you might be in trouble. Therefore it’s better to believe.

This roll of the dice with its punishment-reward paradigm doesn’t work for today’s mindset. Nor, for the most part, does the vexed term God. But the dilemma still holds water. It’s worth considering whether spirituality is something that might be important for each of us to come to terms with during our lifetime. Even if we don’t come to any conclusion, can being open to the possibility of the existence of an unseen world make a difference in our daily life? Does spirituality have a bearing on psychology? Is there a relationship between our spiritual or religious mindset and how we are in the world—an integrity of worldview and wellbeing? As we undertake this journey of life, do we regularly stop to gauge the resonance between our outer endeavour and our inner level of engagement—our excitement, passion, inspiration, connectedness?

On a more sober note, is it possible that the very point of our existence might elude us as we remain absorbed in what’s urgent or what’s pleasurable—while completely missing what’s important?

After years of taking more than a cursory interest in peoples’ wellbeing, there is one thing of which I am convinced. People who embrace the reality that we are spiritual beings on an evolutionary path, and who reflect on what this means about the life we live, are considerably happier and more resilient than those who do not. I don’t mean ‘happy’ in the usual transient, fragile sense of something that might be gone tomorrow if our circumstances should change. I refer to a deep and abiding sense that all is well, which in turn provides a firm foundation for living in good faith.

Although my observations are purely anecdotal, there is increasing research to support the conclusion that these people are, on the whole, happier than others.

Kathleen Noble, author of Riding the Windhorse, gives a definition for the range of personal attributes that people develop as a result of spiritual experiences. Her study looks at a number of people who, by all reckoning, have had the kind of upbringing that might result in very dysfunctional lives. But in addition, her subjects have had spiritual experiences similar to those of the people in this book. Through these experiences, they have gained a different frame of reference for their existence. Despite their early traumas and abuse, Kathleen’s people have come to live very healthy lives, both on the inside and the outside. She uses the term spiritual intelligence to define the characteristics and personal resources which these people have developed as a result of their spiritual experiences.

Kathleen’s work supports one of the great earlier researchers in this area, Kenneth Ring (1984). His studies show that those who have near-death experiences develop some key characteristics that contribute towards living a full life. They become more open-minded, have less or no fear of death, feel emotionally stronger and less fearful