Bullen The Other Side

Journeys into mysticism, magic and near death
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-77619-349-3
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

What happens when we die? How are some people able to see or communicate with spiritual worlds beyond our own? Can they offer answers to some of our most burning questions about life and death? Sarah Bullen, who has had a life-altering near-death experience herself, explores these mysteries as she gathers riveting stories of people from South Africa and beyond - people who have crossed to the 'other side' or those who can contact it. This book offers original interviews with a fascinating collection of teachers with special abilities, individuals who have gone through near-death experiences and those who can communicate across worlds using mediumship, gifts, trance and plants. Meet and learn from a man who woke up on a stretcher on the way to the morgue, a spiritual teacher who survived two near-death experiences on an operating table, a psychic rabbi, an influencer who communicates with the departed, a former corporate executive-turned-sangoma who runs a traditional clinic, and shamans and neo-shamans from across the continent. With her keen observation skills and insights gleaned from her own experience, Bullen offers a fresh way of looking at the world.

SARAH BULLEN is a multi-published author and writing coach, leading international writing retreats and adventures in Europe and Africa. She is a former financial and magazine journalist writing for titles such as Marie Claire, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan and Psychologies UK. Her most recent book is Love & Above: A Journey into Shamanism, Coma and Joy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bullen, Sarah

Leseproben

1

Something epic

‘There is something bigger than us out there, guys.’

You are going to hear this time and time again in this book.

‘There is something bigger than us out there.’

‘There is something bigger than us out there?’

It is both a statement and a question.

There must be something bigger, right? I mean, what would be the point of all this otherwise? Would it mean that life is just a flash in the pan? A brief moment of animation? There must be something else. A bigger journey? Life after life? Something longer and more significant than a mere few decades in a human body?

This is the question we have been exploring as human beings, well, almost forever. It is the great question of this age, and almost every age before it. What happens after I die? But also, what is far greater than me and how can I connect with that higher power? Chances are, if you’ve bought this book, you are making that search, or are at least interested in it. Religion has grappled with it. Philosophers have wrestled with it. Science has investigated it. Researchers have tackled it. Medicine has confronted it. Netflix is grappling with it.

We are a new generation in an age-old quest to understand life and death. It is a search that moves out of the structures of religions and has transcended culture and time. We may just have better tools than before. Access to these secrets and the great mysteries of the universe and life itself was long the domain of priests, sages, mystics and healers. But ordinary people are increasingly taking it into their own hands and finding new technologies and ways to accelerate access to these secrets – or at least to peer into them.

Global trends are showing there is an ever-deepening need for meaning and connection to that bigger thing. Over the past few decades, there has been a move in many spiritual seekers towards ancient healing traditions as they search for more understanding of the great mystery of life – so much so that The Economist has named shamanism the UK’s fastest-growing religion. Sure, it is by no means the largest, and it is not actually a religion at all, but the interest in it is noteworthy. We are looking to peer through the curtain and see what is on the other side, and we are not waiting until we die to do it.

One increasingly popular way to catch a glimpse is by using psychedelic drugs and plants. It is, in fact, an ancient way. Most people are not travelling to the Amazon or Gabon to do this; they are often doing it online or at a retreat or journey. In researching this book I walked into a few suburban living rooms with mattresses lying side by side ready to receive a group for a plant ceremony. What may long ago have taken place in a forest, or under the darkness of an ancient sky, is now happening in clinics and doctors’ rooms to treat a host of psychiatric issues.

There are ever-increasing droves of people signing up for ancient healing rituals, all under the guidance of a neo-shaman or spiritual healer. Many are virtual, others are in person. Some are led by social media shamans who run ceremonies and workshops, and social media has most certainly contributed to the rapid rise in interest. Mindvalley, for example, is one of the largest online learning schools, with over ten million students enrolled in its courses. It offers modules on how to enter an altered state of consciousness and teaches lucid dreaming, shamanic meditations and ‘how to access superhuman abilities’.

In some way, these rituals and ceremonies are the rising new churches and doctrines of this generation. We are looking for answers, or healing, or perhaps we are doing it for fun, to experience something we cannot access in our waking lives.

Africa is one of the few places left in which indigenous belief systems are still widely practised. For centuries, it was common for the larger organised religions to speak of African spirituality as ‘tribal superstition’ or dismiss it as ignorant. So, it is an interesting move that these older ways are being rediscovered and taught as techniques of wisdom and ways to connect to the spiritual world.

This book looks at whether there is something big out there beyond life and death, and even between them. The enduring question is, what? And can we come to know this before we die? Can we peer over the fence into what lies on the other side? What is the way of some cultures of understanding and working with this unseen world? The book sets out to explore this idea in a particular way – through speaking to people in Southern Africa who have journeyed into death by having a near-death experience (NDE) or who have a unique gift of being able to see across the divide between the seen and unseen worlds. NDEs may be the bridge between mysticism and science. So, this book tells the stories of those who have moved into death, and of those who can communicate with other realms.

This book is not a single answer to these questions but a discussion about various answers, which are particular to Africa. It is a way of allowing people who have travelled beyond the physical to tell their own story and explain their methodology. You are going to read stories about escaping death, visits to the afterlife, mediums, spirit channels and plant trips. The stories, plants and people are from Africa.

You will find:

•Personal accounts of NDEs from people in Southern Africa who have crossed over into a clinical death and come back, or people who have neared a death state and had a vision that goes beyond life as we know it.

•Stories about out-of-body experiences (OBEs) in which people received a clear message, epiphany, vision or path to follow.

•Personal accounts of the trance state of sangomas, diviners and herbalists, and how this leads them to cross into spirit worlds or speak to ancestors.

•Information about plant medicine and how it can help us cross the divide between the seen and unseen worlds.

•Secrets of psychics and mediums who can communicate with the other worlds using channelling or guides.

•A journey with a Bwiti shaman who takes seekers on iboga plant medicine to journey with the God of the Dead.

What is clear is that you are not reading this book to get a scientific or psychiatric unpacking of near death. This is not an attempt to prove or disprove anything about it. Science has done a better job than I can in hundreds of rigorous research studies and papers on it. What you are going to find is a uniquely Southern African view of it.

I am strangely and uniquely qualified to explore and unpack this particular conversation as I have been there – to the ‘other side’. It wasn’t just a glimpse, either; it was a long and protracted NDE journey that took place while I was in an 18-day coma. This is a story I have spoken about at talks, conferences and events since it happened in 2012. It took me years to talk about it, and a decade to write a book about it.

So, this gathering of stories is not simply an anthropological research project. I had a keen special interest in these stories, and wanted to learn more about my own experience back when it happened in 2012. I went looking for stories from South Africa that touched on what had happened to me. But turns out I couldn’t find them. Sure, there are many books on NDE from a Western perspective; the body of work is vast and growing. But nothing from Africa aside from YouTube, rumour and anecdote. There was only one story I found at that time; you will read it later in the book.

A few years later, I again set out to find the stories. Things were easier as by then I was working extensively with writers as my main career is as a book writing coach. This was an obvious channel for me to explore. I started off five years ago gathering stories from people who had been in a coma and I put out a call through my network for people who had been in extended comas to share their stories with me. Over the course of three years, I gathered only three from Southern Africa.

Things changed again in 2022 after my last book was released. My focus turned back to near death. This wasn’t intentional, and the book was about a lot more than that. But it was the NDE that struck and captivated readers. As the story of the book spread, people found me – and sent me their stories. Many called, emailed or messaged me over social media platforms or told me their stories over coffee. In this book I’ve kept to the exceptional ones, the ones that left a mark on both me and the experiencer.

It has also required a lot of personal experience to ask the questions and look for answers. Sometimes the answers have to be lived as well as found, not unlike the way Michael Pollan did his own personal experiments with psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin, which led to his book (and subsequent documentary) How to Change your Mind.

So, the journey we are going to go on in this book is not strictly objective, but it is no less rigorous as I lean into my two-decade-long career as a journalist. The kind of journalism you will find here is not going to be Time magazine journalism; it is more in the immersive journalistic style of Pollan, Truman Capote, Ruby Wax, or BBC reporter Louis Theroux. This kind of story requires someone who is both inside the journey and watching it from the outside and reporting on it. I think my first newspaper editor and mentor would turn in his grave to read this. We were...