F O R E V E R A L I V E L i t e --------------------------------------------------- Issue Number 2 Oct 1995 --------------------------------------------------- Forever Alive is the world's premier magazine on the subject of physical immortality. We offer a new vision of humanity, as completely whole, beyond the polarities of life and death, spirit and body, mind and heart, male and female. This pioneering magazine explores the transformative powers of embracing a life without limits. This file is best viewed in a monospaced font, such as Courier. --------------------------------------------------- C O N T E N T S * "An Introduction to People Forever" by Kevin Brown * "Without Sin" by James Russell Strole * "The Smell of Success" by Jon Ward --------------------------------------------------- M A S T H E A D Editor: Herb Bowie Forever Alive Lite is the electronic equivalent to Forever Alive magazine, a periodical printed on actual paper. The paper version is published quarterly, while its electronic "lite" counterpart is published monthly. Both are published by People Forever International. E-MAIL ADDRESS HerbBowie@aol.com MAILING ADDRESS PO Box 12305, Scottsdale, AZ 85267-2305 TELEPHONES 1 (602) 922-0300 Voice 1 (602) 922-0800 FAX 1 (800) 2B4-EVER Toll-Free Forever Alive Lite is copyright 1995 by People Forever International. You may freely distribute this file electronically on a non-commercial, nonprofit basis to anyone, and print one copy for your personal use, but you may not alter or excerpt this file in any way without direct permission from People Forever International. --------------------------------------------------- A N I N T R O D U C T I O N T O P E O P L E F O R E V E R by Kevin Brown People Forever International is based in Scottsdale, Arizona. This non-profit foundation conducts two meetings a week at its Scottsdale center, on Tuesday and Friday evenings, from 7:30 to 10:30. The organization also holds weekend events once a month. These gatherings are usually attended by two to three hundred people, most of whom attend regularly. Newcomers are often present, and always welcome. Our meetings consist primarily of various people talking spontaneously on subjects related to togetherness and physical immortality. Seven or eight people usually sit on stage. Some of these, such as Charles Paul Brown, BernaDeane, James Russell Strole and Kevin Brown, are on stage whenever they're in town. Others are invited to sit there on a particular evening. Many of the evening's "expressions," as they are called, come from those on stage. There is also usually a lengthy period of "Open Forum," during which others from the floor have a chance to speak. In the following article, Kevin talks about People Forever, our meetings in Scottsdale, and our purpose together. -- Ed. Togetherness Every time we get together in our meetings in Scottsdale, we're always making new discoveries with one another. Nothing is ever regurgitated here. I'm constantly amazed by the newness that takes place each time in our expressions. There never seems to be a dull moment around here. (I keep waiting for one.) I have some when I'm alone, but when we're together, it just doesn't happen very often. One of the reasons why we have our meetings is to create a real togetherness of people. We know there needs to be a lot of it beginning to take place. If things don't change on this planet, then--believe me--I definitely don't want to live forever. The greatest thing would be to find this togetherness, not just here with each other, but with everyone we meet. I'm really excited to know that we have people in our meetings who are ready to create a new way of being together on this planet. I'm talking about a togetherness that supersedes all the examples of separation that you can find throughout history. I know we're doing something different here. There have been a lot of ways to leave each other discovered over the years, but I haven't yet seen a lot of ways to stay together in this world. We have gained a lot of ground in the work we do. We've spent the last thirty years learning how to create this togetherness with people, and we've become professionals at it. There's no university that teaches this stuff, but if one existed, we'd be professors there. This isn't just a place for living forever, because there's a real solid foundation that has to be laid first before you can even think about doing that. You must have a support system of people. It's not enough to have "the truth." I've seen people looking for the truth get on guru trips, and head trips, and screw each other over just for the truth. That doesn't happen here. You can have all kinds of truth. There are enough truths in the heads of the people in any one of our meetings to fill the whole universe. So, we're not battling with anybody's truth. That's one of the first lessons we learned about staying together: not to battle with somebody's truth, but to go for their heart. When you get someone's heart, you have them, and you don't have to worry about the truth. When you can go past all the beliefs and all the images to really be together, then you have people who can change with one another. Inspiring Change This is one of the things that makes our togetherness so special: the ability to change with each other. We have learned the ability, not to change and walk away, but to change and create a newness, a constant flow with each other. To a lot of people, change has meant outgrowing other people and leaving them. We're not changing in that way with each other. As far as I'm concerned, if you can't stay with a person, then you may as well forget about living forever. We offer people an opportunity, not to join a movement, not to hear a new truth, but to think about themselves and what they really want out of this world. We offer people a chance to think about what they want to change in this world. Some people come in here expecting us to change their lives for them, but it doesn't work that way: we can't change a single thing for anybody. But if we can inspire people to change something for themselves, then we're not only helping them to change, we're changing the planet. And it will enhance our lives. So we like to call what we do "inspirational speaking." We're not lecturers. We're not preachers. We're people who feel deeply about what we do. We feel deeply about being together. A Rainbow There are so many different kinds of people in our meeting room, coming from all different parts of the world. We have every kind of person here with us, in terms of race, sexual orientation, religious background, type of profession, and every other category. We have two things in common, though: an undying passion to change, and an undying respect for each other. We've got it all here, and that's one of the things we like so much. It's a rainbow of colors in every way, and that rainbow is together. All those colors are meant to be together, not separate. We're bridging the generation gaps. People have built this form of separation to protect themselves from the pain of losing each other, and from the pain of death. In our meetings you can see a person who is over seventy, sitting next to a fifteen-year old. There isn't a lot of difference for us between these two people, but in the rest of the world, there's a big difference. In the rest of the world, the older one would be assumed to be the wiser of the two, but here, the one who is fifteen can be considered to be just as wise. Being wise has nothing to do with age. You don't get wiser with time--you get wiser through your openness and your feeling of other people. Wisdom is feeling from the heart. When you feel from the heart, you can be as "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." When you feel from the heart, you become a chameleon: not in the sense of fooling people, but in the sense of changing to support the individuals you're around. That's what's happening here. Our elders aren't respected because they're old, but because they're individuals who have put in a lot of time supporting what we're doing here. That's why they get respect--not because they need help and support, and not because they don't have much time left. A Chance To Live We offer people a chance to think about what they want to get out of this life. This is an important subject because, I can tell you right now, this life is the only one you're going to get. I have no proof of anything else. I've heard a lot of "white light" stories, but I haven't heard anything about what the promised land looked like. I've found my promised land, and that's people. It's you and me, together. I don't need a heaven up in the sky somewhere. This world alone has all the heaven and hell that there needs to be. For me, it's not a question of whether we're going to go to heaven or hell--it's a question of how much crap we can take from one another before we just give up. It's a question of how much stress, and separation, and isolation we can put up with before heaven and hell start to sound good to us. Don't tell me that death is natural. If you were supposed to die, then it would look good. We're changing all these things around. We're saying "Hey, maybe if we give each other a lot of respect, and a lot of praise, and a lot of love, and a lot of integrity, and a lot of togetherness, then we can keep on living." All those things may just sound like a lot of words, because they have been used too easily by other people, but I'm talking about a deep, deep movement taking place behind those words. You can have a lot of thoughts about peace and all that other stuff, but unless you move on it, nothing happens. Unless you are it, it's nothing. And that's what we are here. We're what we're doing here. We are what we're doing here. Of course, when you realize that--when you realize that human beings are the most important thing, that there's nothing else to wait for, that the second coming is our togetherness--then you realize, "Hey, wait a minute, there's something for me to do here." Not out of a mission, but out of your nature. Not out of a mission to try and save the world, but because you can't do anything else but be a prosperous, potent individual on this planet. There's something that happens to people just by being in our meeting room. If you're sitting in that room, then you're open for something new. I don't care if you take that next step this week, or next week, or maybe a month from now, because I know that you're in a movement towards more togetherness, towards a more supportive living with each other in relationships, in business, and in every facet of our lives together. I've found the most important thing in the world, and that's people. I've found the only thing that changes this planet, and that's people. That's what I'm sticking with. I'm tired of hearing that people are dysfunctional. People aren't dysfunctional until you put them in a box. People aren't dysfunctional until you put them in the box of death, and the box of separation. The dysfunction comes from the lie that we don't need to come together. The dysfunction comes from the lie that it's every man for himself, until you get over to the other side. For me, what it's all about is having a real respect for the human race. It's about joining with people who are creating a real lifestyle of togetherness. We're creating a new way of moving with each other so that the human race doesn't become extinct. We're creating a way of moving with each other that allows us to take on our true heritage: eternal life in the physical body. - - - =46rom Forever Alive magazine, Issue number 24. Copyright 1995 by People Forever International. --------------------------------------------------- W I T H O U T S I N by James Russell Strole When it gets right down to it, being human is the best there is. Yet most of us have been taught that being human is the worst. We've been taught that it's not godly to be flesh and bone. We've been taught that we are all sinners, and that it is sin that causes corruption of the flesh. I don't believe that it is sin that corrupts our bodies--I think it is the consciousness of sin. You see this in so many societies. The Hawaiians enjoyed each other in ways that Christians would consider sinful, yet they were originally one of the healthiest and happiest races on the planet. It wasn't until the missionaries came and gave them a consciousness of sin that they began to have diseases they'd never known before. I feel that it is so crucial that we remain free of this consciousness of sin. I can't emphasize this enough. I'm not talking about feeling perfect, or feeling pure, or feeling that we have it all together. What I'm talking about is a feeling of total wholeness. When you have this feeling, then you need never feel sinful, even when you absolutely fall on your face. For me, this feeling of wholeness is synonymous with physical immortality. When you have this feeling, then you can not only forgive yourself for your sins, you can forgive everyone around you. This is the big one. Many people feel so condemned themselves that they're out crucifying everyone else, because they can't forgive their own flesh. Who on this planet deserves not to live? The mass murderer, sitting on death row? I believe every human being deserves to live. There's only one unforgivable sin--and that's death. If you die, then you can no longer forgive yourself. Everything else can be forgiven. I'm not out to bring the world a message of immortality. I'm not out to persuade anyone to adopt some new doctrine. The world is so bored with messages. This planet doesn't need another new doctrine. What I want is to bring people this feeling of wholeness. I want a living that is totally without any consciousness of sin. I want to live with people who make no distinction between sinner and saint. I want a living with people who have a feeling for their own flesh, and who are able to give this feeling to others. I want to give the world a feeling of what this kind of living is like. This is what the world needs. This is what people are hungry for. So Many Sins Sometimes it's easier to forgive each other for the big sins than for the little ones. What would you do if you met someone who had spent some time in prison? You might decide not to hold it against them. You'd probably feel pretty big about it, too, being so forgiving and all. But what about the person who said something offensive to you about your business, or about your belief system? Can you forgive them, too? Can you be with them, no matter what? Can you find them sinless in your body? Many people consider it a sin to deviate from the norm. There are many people who think it is a sin just to be different. This is how people end up sinking to their lowest common denominator. A Passion For Flesh Charles Paul, Bernadeane and myself--and all those involved with People Forever--are doing something so special in the world. We're bringing people together who have nothing in common. Immortality is not our common denominator. It's got to go past immortality, otherwise we'll start discriminating between mortals and immortals. The only thing we have in common is a passion for human flesh that's never been before on the face of the earth. The only thing we share is a feeling for one another that's unadulterated. It's not something you can turn on with this person, and off with another. It's not a feeling you can contain in some little box. It's a feeling that bubbles over, that spills over onto every person you meet. When you have this feeling, then it's not a matter of right and wrong. It's not a matter of sin. You don't have to repent. You don't have to go to the high priest of immortality and confess all your sins (so that you can feel free to go out and sin again). You don't have to accumulate bad karma and come back as a bug. When you have this feeling for human flesh, then you can allow a person to make a mistake without condemning that person to death. When you have this feeling, then you can make a mistake without putting yourself on death row. You may have made a mistake, but you don't have to die. You don't have to get cancer. You don't have to get heart disease. You don't even have to get a cold, if you don't want one. You don't have to condemn yourself for your sins anymore. Instead, just start correcting them. Don't worry about what may look like a sin to someone else. Just be concerned about moving in ways that are complementary to you. Stop worrying about being condemned to hell if you don't change your ways. Instead, start changing your ways because you're condemned to live here forever, and because you want to live better all the time. Realize that real living is about sometimes making the wrong turn. But what's great about real living is that you can always turn around, even if you've been driving down the wrong road for days. The Forgiveness of God Stop waiting for god to forgive you. Take responsibility for forgiving yourself. Be big enough as a human being to forgive yourself and to forgive others. I hope that telling you to take the responsibility away from god doesn't make you think that I'm a hopeless sinner. I hope you won't condemn me to hell because I talked about god in some way that offended you. If you feel like this, then I guess you've missed everything that I've been talking about. For me, it's clear that humankind created god for his own purposes. You can see the examples right on down through history. You can see it in the first civilizations that worshipped the sun. You can continue to see it right on down the line, until you get to the more ethereal and sophisticated gods that we worship today. When I realized that god had always been the creation of humanity, I didn't feel blasphemous. I didn't feel like a pagan. I didn't feel any of these emotions. I felt that I'd gotten rid of all the bogeymen. I felt that I'd come unto the revealing of the mystery. I felt divine. I felt holy. I felt whole. You may believe that god exists. If so, then I don't want to argue with you. If there really is a god, though, then there's one thing I want you to know: I'm his best servant. I'm living his creation. He created me out of his own image, and from that place I'm sinless. I'm whole. I don't need repentance. I don't need to be forgiven. All I need is to be lived, in the holiness of our flesh, with those whom he created to live with me. - - - =46rom Forever Alive magazine, Issue number 24. Copyright 1995 by People Forever International. --------------------------------------------------- T H E S M E L L O F S U C C E S S = by Jon Ward America is full of people who are dying to get somewhere. Dying to land a job. Dying to be promoted. Dying to make sales. Dying to get married. Dying to be recognized. Most of all, dying to succeed. "Success" in the American sense is journey's end, the ultimate destination. It's the American dream turned American reality. "Success" belongs to the future, and sometimes the past. It's what you strive for, or nostalgically remember. After I crossed the Atlantic, I met several people who had once owned a million dollars--and lost it. This was a shock. In stodgy England, people accumulate a little nest egg and put it somewhere safe and dull. Here, it seems that former millionaires are daily washing my car, filling my grocery bag or serving my lunch. Like nineteenth century Russian princes, they tell fabulous tales of vanished fortunes. Their counterparts (often the same individuals, in fact) are the nearly-millionaires. They are always on the verge of an astronomical deal, in real estate or satellite dishes or multivitamins. Sure thing--no kidding--closing next month! The American paradise of success has this peculiar virtue: it may not be here, but it's never far away. Of course, the compulsion to succeed crops up everywhere. But no other country has refined it with such intensity. In these matters, the United States is the undisputed world leader. So watch out, wherever you live: "success" is coming your way. There's a special violence embedded in this tireless idolatry. It's the violence of judgment. "Success" is the deity who looks down on your present existence and finds it lousy. In such a mindset, life without "success" isn't worth living. Except that life is always worth living so long as you busy yourself struggling to succeed. This is like trying to feed yourself on menus, and in America especially, there are more menus than people. Are you hungry? Here's a wonderful recipe for you to eat. And another. And another. The funny thing is, people on this diet get addicted to the menus, and can't stomach real food. Hence the former millionaires. No sooner do they grasp "success" in their hands, than they blow it away. "Success" quickly returns to where it belongs--just out of reach. To say people are dying to succeed is no mere figure of speech. My work in advertising takes me into some of the nation's top corporations, and I'm astonished by what I see: fine, intelligent people packed into poorly lit cubbyholes, systematically dismantling their own bodies. This is the profile of "success" in the making: badly fed, under-exercised, overworked and un-cared for. Quite often, these poor folk know what they're doing--so there's a whole genre of corporate humor, about heart attacks and exhaustion and ruined marriages. On board the Titanic, the passengers are laughing while the ship goes down. Needless to say, if people are dying to succeed, they're also killing to succeed. Not just the sharks, but the nice guys too. In fact, the nice guys especially. It's not so much that people are mean to each other. It's more that they cooperate in the patterns of self-abuse. Are you stressed out again? Wonderful you! What Americans call "business" is largely an agreement to trample on the body in the race for cash. None of this is news. The sixties saw a mass revolt against the American cult of success. For a few heady years, millions of people refused to want what they'd been told to want. They quit the corporations. They hit the road. They played with soft drugs and easy sex. They "dropped out." But how far out did they actually drop? The alternative sixties culture was saturated in spiritual values, borrowed (rather casually) from the East. The dominant theme was to turn against materialism in favor of the higher values of love, peace and transcendence. As in so many revolutions, there was more a change of face than a change of heart. And twenty years later, the same generation swung back to the corporate values of success with even greater ruthlessness than before. That's because even during the sixties, there was an unconscious agreement between the old regime and the new. The beats and the hippies and the groovers badly misinterpreted the cult of success. It has nothing to do with materialism. "Success" in the American sense isn't money or possessions or a public position. It's an odor, a sensation, an aura that surrounds these homey things--a parasitic addition to the physical object. In other words, "success" is a purely spiritual value. That's why it's always "there" and not "here." "Success" is the afterlife of secular culture. The American religion of success has the same root as every other religion in the world: a fundamental contempt for the physical body. People kill themselves and each other to "make it" because they hate their own flesh. This hatred digs a cavity in the heart of humankind--and the promise of success is to fill the hole. Of course it never can, and never will. So it seems much wiser to live with the promise than suffer the disappointment of the reality--to yearn for the solace of success, rather than experience the bitterness of self-disgust. When the sixties crowd turned from "success" to "love," they were simply switching spiritual values. All the imported religious trinkets--transcendental meditation, ascetic lifestyles, cosmic belief systems--reinforced the underlying conspiracy against the body. "Dropping out" was another escape from the flesh, neither better nor worse than "success." So twenty years later, it was easy to switch back again. But what about nature-worship? What about all those herbs and organic foods and yoga exercises? Surely an important feature of the sixties revolt against corporate America was a return to the natural life, in which the body is preeminent? Yes and no. Yes, some valuable lifestyle changes were installed at this time. But no--the natural life is not the life that supports the body. The natural life obeys the laws of nature. The natural life decrees that the body has to die. It's precisely this decree that causes human beings to hate the flesh. So the more people associate themselves with nature, the more they betray the body--however healthily they appear to live. Death is a vicious circle: you reject your body because it's going to die, and your rejection speeds your death. This circle is what cuts a hole in the heart, a hole that longs to be filled--with success, with peace and love, with Jesus, with anything but flesh. "Nature" doesn't plug the gap. It only widens it, with the two-edged sword of birth and decay. That's why the most "natural" people are usually the most spiritual. Every revolution up to now has been just that--another turn of the circle. Physical immortality is not a revolution. It's not a "paradigm shift." It's not the next revolt against a nasty world. Physical immortality is an awakening of the physical body--a cellular event. It's you discovering your own wholeness, not only in space but also in time: the wholeness of foreverness. Only when you are here forever can you totally embrace your flesh, past, present and future. This is true success. Then you have nothing to be nostalgic about, and nothing to strive for. You recognize that you are complete already, and always will be. You get on with living. If physical immortality has anything to teach America, it's how to be truly materialistic. The real purpose of money and possessions is not to prove your own worth. It's to give pleasure to the body. There's a way to enjoy the things of this world with a light touch, like a child. Then you're easy with receiving and easy with giving. You're not greedily attached. You're not spiritually detached. You're alive. That's because you start from an overflow. The body that's here for all time is full to begin with, and has nothing to achieve. Living is an adventure and a celebration. To break the cycle of death in this way is no small thing. It can't be achieved alone. (Who'd want that anyway?) Only in our togetherness do we discover the full potency--and beauty--of the human form. The body that's whole is connected to people, not to goals. Your dreams of "success" are fine so long as they inspire you. But if you need them to experience your value, you've already lost the race. When you reach your goal, you will still be empty. The real excitement of living comes from somewhere else entirely. It comes from a primeval and passionate feeling for another person. A feeling so strong that it overflows towards everyone you know--and everyone you don't know. A feeling that tolerates no falsehood, no abuse and no separation. Because the ultimate success is to stay together through everything we experience. Forever. =46rom Forever Alive magazine, Issue number 23. Copyright 1995 by People Forever International. --------------------------------------------------- FOREVER ALIVE MAGAZINE Forever Alive magazine is the paper-based big brother to this e-zine. It has been published quarterly since 1989. R. Seth Friedman, in Factsheet Five, Issue No. 56, said about Forever Alive: "This publication breaks the mold of fringe immortality zines with informative, rational (and very readable) essays in a bright colorful package." Carol Wright said about us, in the Spring 1994 edition of the NAPRA Trade Journal: "This quarterly publication is probably the only immortalist (as opposed to longevity) magazine around. Forever Alive offers recent information about longevity, bodywork, nutrition and so forth. But their upbeat philosophical essays separate them from other health magazines. They challenge your most deeply seated beliefs about life and death." The Alternative Press Review, in their Spring/Summer 1995 edition, said: "Forever Alive is a nicely-produced, 42-page quarterly magazine devoted to bodily health and human immortality...." Forever Alive has now grown to 52 pages, with no outside advertising, and featuring a full-color cover. The magazine is available at better bookstores, including the Barnes & Noble and Borders chains. The cost is $6 for a single issue and $24 for an annual subscription (4 issues). Subscriptions and single issues may be ordered directly from People Forever. Distributors for Forever Alive include Desert Moon, New Leaf, Armadillo & Co. and Ingram Periodicals. --------------------------------------------------- --PART.BOUNDARY.0.25743.emout04.mail.aol.com.812869168--