Standing in the Spiritual Heart

An Interview with Laurie Conrad by Diana Souza. Ithaca, New York.

Q Laurie, the initial question Let me ask - I would like to know everything you mean by the phrases "standing in my own heart" and "I looked within and found him in the spiritual heart". You wrote: "I was standing in my own Heart. My Heart was throughout me in the room, surrounding me. I could do little more than look around the room at all that has been manifesting from my Heart, intrigued and wondering."

A The passage you merely read was about my experience with the sage Paul Brunton, almost thirty years ago. When I say "I looked within and found him in the spiritual heart"... There is the physical heart that beats and provides us life, and there is also a spiritual Heart where clairvoyants often head to find their images. You can say that it is where the soul, the average person soul has its mysterious link with the Divine, to God.

So the divine images, the images that are given to the soul by the Divine, are first received by the soul in what I would call the spiritual Heart. I am not the only person to utilize that term -- I didn't develop that vocabulary. The spiritual Heart is a mystical term.

When the clairvoyant or mystic is clairvoyantly seeing into other realms or tapping into the future, or seeing or likely to other places on the planet while in waking state consciousness or in dream state, they are generally looking in the spiritual Heart to find these images. I believe that many, if not a lot of people have these experiences during dream state, they are just not aware of it. But clairvoyants can go there during ordinary waking state consciousness to get these images of other realms or other places on earth or the future.

Q The average reader is going to wonder how your heart could be in the room throughout you?

A Well, I think I wonder about this myself. It is part of that grand mystery of Life. I've had a similar experience with music, where I am going to suddenly maintain my heart, standing for the reason that mystical Heart, and the notes to my pieces will be all around me. THEREFORE I suppose that I go to a similar place when I am interpreting Chopin or writing my music. I don't know that we can really explain these things. Once you meditate, in the event that you meditate, I think it really is easier to understand this. In fact, it might be very difficult to explain or describe it for those who do not meditate.

The spiritual Heart is normally believed to be located in the seat of the soul. In my experience, it is roughly where the physical heart is, and much more in the heart of my body. The soul itself is indeed beyond the limits and boundaries of our physical body, we can not even begin to imagine the grandeur of the soul. So my personal self, along with my individual little mind - was sitting for the reason that room with the fantastic sage Paul Brunton. He was near the end of his life on earth and he was fully enlightened. A Christian may possibly say that he had reached sainthood. In the Indian traditions, they would say that he was fully enlightened. In his presence, I did so have this big mystical experience, where I experienced the contents of my heart throughout me in the area - as if I were in a very deep, advanced meditation or contemplation.

I had only been meditating, I think, for some months when I met him. So that it was a very memorable and fortunate experience.

This human body that we are in, when compared to soul - and the physical brain in comparison to Consciousness Itself - are minuscule in comparison. So, I might have been allowed to experience my Heart around me, filling the complete room to teach me this. I would have been given the experience so that I possibly could see and recognize that we all have been so much bigger than we believe ourselves to be, that the Soul is immense. You can find other meanings to this occurrence aswell, meanings that we would not have time for in this interview. It had been a mystical experience. It isn't something we humans can simply find words for.

Q Additionally you said that you first met the Dalai Lama in your dreams, before you even knew who he was. Later you met him in person. Tell us your impressions of the Dalai Lama. Anecdotes...

A Our Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Well, he could be an extraordinary person. I have seen him and met with him in an organization setting many times. One of the first items that struck me is his incredible love of life - and his tremendous joy. The next thing that I noticed was his extraordinary earnestness and seriousness whenever he speaks about prayer. He and his monks are constantly praying for the planet. He is an extremely humble and holy man. And I love that juxtaposition of these two attributes of his personality, the humor and the holiness. He is reported to be the incarnation of Compassion, and everything that he says and does revolves around the higher Compassion.

When he speaks concerning the higher Compassion, it will always be coupled with Wisdom - the Higher Wisdom which roughly corresponds to the Wisdom of the Catholics along with other religions: that we aren't the body, that the material world is not Ultimate Reality. This higher Compassion is not the ordinary, sentimental emotion most people call compassion; Paul Brunton would call that emotion, or the sentimentality of empathy, the lower octave of true Compassion. The Dalai Lama would say that true Compassion also includes this higher Wisdom. By applying Wisdom, we'd have Compassion for each sentient being, every being on the planet - just because they are in the body, and therefore, suffer. This is the true Compassion. This Compassion would also include the view that you stop people if they're behaving badly, because within their bad behavior they are hurting themselves and others. So, in this definition of Compassion, Wisdom stands in the backdrop in a loving, detached way. The Witness position, let's say, of Paul Brunton, whenever we are able to clearly see what's truly best for everyone in the situation. That is true Compassion.

Overall, we humans arrived at the world mainly from our personal thoughts and lower emotions. The big Teachers, such as the Dalai Lama and the sages, the saints - all of them are trying to get us to come from the higher position, the higher octave of all personal emotions. Brunton speaks relating to this at length in his Notebooks, and the Dalai Lama also has written many volumes of books.

As for anecdotes, I wouldn't even understand where to start. Mainly I recall his laughter, his joy. Next the sacredness that he brings with him. The clarity of his mind. The first time I was in exactly the same room with him, I clairaudiently heard a very low tone all around the room, vibrating the complete room - perhaps it was the energy of his very being, or his mantra, his inner prayers. I hadn't heard that phenomenon before that day, nor since, not even while in his presence.

Q I remember a tale you told about the Dalai Lama coming and clearing an area where he would speak, with a storm?

A Yes, that was in Boston, when he spoke at Harvard. A friend and I were residing at Mataji's ashram for a few days. I really believe Mataji took over for Ramakrishna. She had an ashram near Boston, and we had made a decision to stay there instead of at a hotel in Boston. We'd arrived at hear the Dalai Lama when he spoke at Harvard.

I don't know what year this is, but it was a long time ago. It was one of the Dalai Lama's first visits to this country. Mataji sent three folks ahead, to arrange a meeting between her and the Dalai Lama just before the lecture. She had never met him. So she sent us ahead to talk to his entourage, and arrange it. I always thought this unusual assignment was a ruse of some kind - Mataji was fully enlightened, she didn't have to send three young human seekers to set up this meeting with the Dalai Lama. She and the Dalai Lama were perfectly able to arrange it themselves, through non-verbal communication, mentally. As it turned out, the young woman driving us there had met Paul Brunton in dreams throughout her childhood - when i had visited with the Dalai Lama first in dreams being an adult. In those dreams, Brunton instructed her. She discovered who he was years later, when she saw his photograph in a book. That has been probably why Mataji sent us ahead together, in order that my friend and I would meet this young woman and hear her story. Also that I would experience the storm, to one day tell the story in this interview. Mataji, like Paul Brunton, was perfectly in a position to see into the future.

Regardless, the three folks all got into just a little car, an old, very beaten down car that people hoped would get us there. And we did get there early enough to set up a meeting between your extraordinary Mataji and the saintly Dalai Lama.

After we had finished talking to his people, they readily agreed to the meeting, and we were happy and happy that our mission have been accomplished so easily. I went outside by myself to hold back for Mataji to arrive. It was a lovely, calm, early fall day. The sun was shining and there I was, on the stunning Harvard campus; I had never been there. Students were sitting under the trees studying, or strolling to or from their classes across the paths. I walked from the lecture building door a little way and happily stood there, consuming the wonder of the scene. Suddenly, an enormous storm came up; a rigorous and surprising, shocking wind. Students' papers were flying everywhere, branches waving everywhere, the trees were almost bending. I tried to take shelter against an enormous tree near the door, wind and leaves flying, students now scurrying across the paths, bent over against the storm, trying to retrieve their scattered papers. It had been quite something. It felt like I had inadvertently stepped into a vacuum cleaner or perhaps a washing machine.

It probably lasted for approximately several minutes. Then the storm stopped just as quickly since it had arisen. I said to myself: "Good Heavens, what was that?"

I QUICKLY laughed. I realized that it had been probably the Dalai Lama purifying the lands of Harvard before he arrived. And that's still my view. He's an extremely powerful being, the Dalai Lama. He has tremendous power. Yet, in terms of his teachings, probably his biggest message to the world is kindness, to be kind to others. And when you have followed the messages from Our Lady, the Madonna, to the world - She has been appearing in Medjugorje, Yugoslavia for almost two decades to six visionaries - She also says to lead a sort, simple life. She says that we should make an effort to pattern our lives after St. Therese of Lisieux. And St. Therese of Lisieux never even left her convent! She had the simplest of lives. She had, for the most part, a little table in her convent cell and a bed. Maybe a chair. At one point she had a vase in her room, but she thought she might be getting too mounted on it, so she asked them to remove it. She basically did her daily work and chores at the convent and was kind to another nuns. And yet she became one of the biggest Catholic saints. In Medjugorje, Our Lady said basically: pick your way and lead a sort, simple life.

The Dalai Lama is currently a celebrity, he could be a very famous man. He has written books and lectured in many countries. He could be world known. And he is still one of the humble and simple of men. They state he has one pair of shoes and two sets of his maroon robes. He remains completely untouched and unspoiled by the world. He considers himself a monk, yet he is both temporal and spiritual leader of his country. But he lives such as a simple monk. So, in that sense alone, I think he is an unbelievable and saintly man, and a role model for humanity.

Our interview couldn't be long enough to really discuss the Dalai Lama. When I first saw him in person, I inwardly told Our Lady that I felt as though I had met Her Son. I felt as though I had seen Christ on earth, that I had paid attention to Him speak.

Q Modern psychiatric science probably wouldn't be too friendly within their evaluation of mystical states and the saints and persons who experience them. Many modern psychiatrists may call what you make reference to as "inner vision" and "movies in my own head" as delusional. How do these mystical, inner visions and movies be differentiated from a vivid imagination?

A That is a very astute question. And I think, in my case, most likely the biggest "proof" that an experience isn't only imagination or delusion is if I inwardly saw a location, and I later saw that exact place in a book or magazine or in waking state consciousness. Or if I had a vision into the future, it then happened in the same way I had seen it unfold a couple of days or weeks later, which luckily it always did. If I clairvoyantly saw a lost animal in a specific spot, the pet was found there. When I clairaudiently heard Our Lady's voice speaking to me, my little dog Guinivere heard in addition, it - she was still sitting on the street corner, searching for the individual behind the voice despite the fact that I had already walked on half of a block. The majority of my experiences have been validated the following on the earth plane. So easily had an inner vision of somebody doing something or saying something or understanding that they were in big trouble - I would find out later that yes, that had, actually, happened just as I saw it. THEREFORE I actually was very lucky by doing so. Personally, I had a great deal of validation. Otherwise, I probably would have wondered myself if my experiences were just imagination or hallucination.

This is an interesting and important topic. Should you be having high mystical experiences, you are being thrown into another, higher consciousness. You're already probably more sensitive than a lot of people. And if people tell you that you will be crazy and they keep telling you that you will be crazy, you might just begin to believe that you are. But there are also people who are delusional. One easy solution to determine the truth of their clairvoyance would be to see if the predictions come true. The saints were never wrong.

In the Catholic Church, visions and clairvoyance won't cause you to a saint. And the Church is extremely careful about testing and evaluating such abilities. First, they go through the general behavior, virtue and rationality of the person. Many visions cannot be verified. Some of the saints have seen their guardian angel. How can that be verified? Is this person rational the rest of the time? Do they seem to have a hysterical nature? Do they see or predict things that could be proven wrong later? The Catholic Church observes that person carefully and analyzes their entire life on earth, which I think is very wise.

St. Teresa of Avila, in her books, her Autobiography and in THE INSIDE Castle, speaks of the things. She says that ordinarily she actually is no imaginative person. Therefore, it seems unlikely that her visions would be produced by her own mind, by her imagination. But she also says that when we've visions of any sort, we should categorically discount them, just to be on the safe side, in the event it's the imagination or Old Nick producing them. She also says that if it is a true experience, you'll just know it. Section of that knowing is something intangible that may not be verbalized.

Part of it's the staying power of the mystical experience. It'll stay with you for the rest of your life, word after word, image by image. That has always amazed me. But anyone who has had mystical experiences agree that this is true.

In the same way at the birth of Christ, once the angel appeared to the shepherds, almost all of the children our Lady, the Madonna, has appeared to throughout history are shepherds. As in Medjugorje, in these current visions of Our Lady on the planet. (She says they will be Her last appearances on the planet.) The kids in Medjugorje were on their way to care for the sheep when Our Lady first appeared to them. In Fatima, the children were tending the sheep when the angel first appeared to them. Not to mention, Christ is called the Shepherd, and we are His flock. Throughout history, She has mainly appeared to children shepherds and shepherdesses. In one instance, the kids were very uneducated, they could probably neither read nor write. They spoke a local, rural patois, and Our Lady gave them a very long, complicated message beautifully stated and using words they did not even know. The kids repeated it verbatim afterward, without changing a syllable, even years later. This again shows the power of true mystical experiences, that they are indelibly imprinted on our consciousness. This is quite different from our ordinary experience.

Q How can we start to see the inner purpose of the fall of a sparrow? You'd a major accident that nearly ended your life. It has partially disabled you. And it even erased for a while your clairvoyant abilities. Yet you say you don't believe in accidents. In view of the destruction and disability it brought into your life, if that accident was Divinely orchestrated, then what possible purpose could it have served to improve your daily life and consciousness?

A That is another deep question, rather than that easy to answer.

Q The fall of a sparrow?

A Yes. That was from a quote from Christ Himself. He told His disciples that every hair on our head is numbered and that there is Providence in nov a sparrow. Now the scientists agree, they call it DNA, the tiny chart of our life in those strands.

Definitely, I think my car crash was Divinely orchestrated. If there was negative intent, which is also possible, certainly God allowed it. And in my belief framework, if He allowed it, it could be allowed for the purification of my soul - and/or for the souls of others, or with regard to the planet. Our life on the planet, in my mind, is just a continual deepening.

A continual deepening to be and understanding. Certainly, I'd also hope that it's a deepening of holiness; and there are certain experiences that we receive to help deepen wisdom and strength.

It has been a lot more than fifteen years because the accident, and I certainly have had enough time to think about why it might have been allowed to happen. Personally, I would prefer that I either didn't need to learn those lessons or that I could learn them a different way. But I am certainly not going to question the higher vision that God and the soul possess. Luckily, the small person, the person within the body, Laurie Conrad in this situation, was not in control the day of the accident. Or any day. God and the soul come in charge. We can start to see the poverty of our own judgment even in your own lifetime on earth: things that we wanted so very badly when we were young now seem so undesirable, or even harmful. Has that ever happened for you? Well, I look back and just inwardly say: "Thank God you didn't get everything you wanted". Because either it had been not good for me or something much better arrived. So, even within the time frame of our earthly existence, we are able to commence to have that summary of events and the value of events, even while they happen. How could we possibly second guess the wisdom of the soul and of God? You cannot. If I look within with total honesty - which is always the easiest method to think about events - as hard as it has been for myself and the ones around me, a few of the biggest lessons of my spiritual life probably came as a result of this accident.

Well, I possibly could say, I think, that whenever I was flat on my back all those months and years, it had been the 1st time that I felt union with the Higher Love, the Love from the universe. That the universe, the full total of the Hearts of all creatures that populate the universe, does indeed hold this extraordinary Love for every and all of us. And yes, of course, it is the higher Love, the Divine Love from God expressing Itself through all the souls of all creatures - but it is also from those combined souls and the universe itself. I was shown this in a vision of sorts, and I could still view it hung in my mind's eye, such as a little movie. A cosmic Love. It's the Divine Love from God, but then gleam cosmic or universal love that I felt pouring into me and around me. It was as if every creature on earth wished me well, was sending me love and healing. And that, I believe, in my vocabulary, will be a high mystical experience. To believe that universal Love from all creatures. In fact it is there for all of us, every moment of every day. We are not conscious of it, alert to it. And I was conscious of it because I was knocked flat on my back for so long with a certain type of injury. I have the feeling that anyone who's that seriously injured, or that seriously ill, is considering that opportunity.

I remember reading, way back when, reports and stories having said that people who have polio, in iron lungs, sometimes experienced an incredible peace. I think it might be much like what I experienced. Regardless of the terrible difficulties and the horror of it, I also felt the deepest peace I had ever felt in my own life. Granted, I knew how to meditate, I had been meditating for several years.

And I mainly meditated while I was lying there half conscious and feeling half alive. But, I think that even if I did so not learn how to meditate, I would have already been thrown into that beautiful inner place anyway. And it was an extraordinary peace and love to arrive, even simultaneously that the vehicle, your body was dysfunctional and miswired. I had fairly severe head injuries. I possibly could not understand what people were saying if you ask me or really speak for nearly per year. I had amnesia. You may already know, I still can get into a semi-coma state easily overload myself with work or ideas, as I did this past week.

At that time, following the accident, the body, the vehicle was totally dysfunctional - but this other place was so vast therefore deep, so filled up with Love. And I have no idea if I would have ever experienced it without that accident.

I believe another invaluable lesson or virtue I learned after my accident was the difference between humiliation and humility. In the monastery they ask for poverty, chastity and obedience, which is another method of saying humility. When I was first injured, it was very humiliating. Not for long, because the emotion was too difficult for me to bear. I have been an intelligent, capable, respected and independent person with a big career - and all that changed immediately. Suddenly, I couldn't do anything, not for myself or others. I couldn't dress or feed myself. I couldn't sit up. Doctors discussed me as though I was not there. I could not necessarily speak or know very well what people were saying. I possibly could not form words interiorly, this means I could not pray. I had forgotten most of my very own personal history so when I tried to walk I fell over. Six years later, I was still crossing the road following grade school children with little bright-colored back packs slung on their backs because I couldn't tell where in fact the cars were. I couldn't play concerts for seven years.

And so I had to rapidly discover how to inwardly stand in another place, a location that i would call humility, being humble. And why by that is being humble before God - because humiliation only comes whenever we compare ourselves to other human beings. Comparing ourselves to others can be neurotic, and it could be dangerous. Humiliation is more than counter-productive, it really is ruinous.

But when you are truly humble, you're simply just kneeling before God. So when I just humbly knelt before God inwardly and said to myself: "Well, I'm terribly injured and God wants this from me", the energy of the Divine came through me, the Power of the universe came through me - and suddenly I felt stronger and more peaceful than I had ever felt.

When it comes to healing others, following the accident, I now didn't even have to receive healing requests consciously, to ensure that people to be entirely healed. Prior to the accident, I often had to work quite diligently and pray much to acquire miraculous healings for others. I believe this new, more automatic healing for others began because this higher, divine Love, healing energy - anything you desire to call it -

Q Presence.

A The Divine Presence was now coming through me. I was just naturally radiating it, because I was so filled up with it.

So there have been tangible rewards. I was now feeling a remarkably deep peace and Love and strength - among others were being spontaneously and miraculously healed without my even working at it consciously. That is still true.

But this difference between humiliation and humility is, I think, very important for everybody. And we have to learn it, I think, if we wish to stand before God. Or we could say, so as to stand in your higher self, stand with the soul, in a continuing way. Not just the mystical glimpse occasionally that you might be given in meditation.

Laurie Conrad is the Writer of two books: "Realms of Light: Clairvoyant Experiences of Life After Death" and "The Spiritual Life of Animals and Plants", both collections of true stories. "Visits With Angels", another level of true stories, is scheduled for publication in 2010 2010. She actually is currently working on a fresh book, "We Meet in Dreams/ The True Nature of Dreams", also scheduled for publication this year 2010. Website: http://www.figarobooks.com