F O R E V E R A L I V E L i t e ------------------------------------------------------------- Issue Number 6 June 1996 ------------------------------------------------------------- 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. ------------------------------------------------------------- FOREVER ALIVE IS NOW ON THE WEB! Visit our Web Site at http://www.people-forever.org ------------------------------------------------------------- C O N T E N T S * TURNING POINTS by Herb Bowie * THE UNCOOL A Poem by Injy Tawa * GET SO FAR AWAY FROM DEATH THAT IT CAN'T FIND YOU ANYMORE! by James Russell Strole ------------------------------------------------------------- TURNING POINTS by Herb Bowie For the last ten years, I have been closely associated with an organization now called People Forever International. I will grant you that we are an unusual group, in several ways. We believe that people can, and should, live forever. We also believe that one of the keys to achieving this state of physical immortality is a new quality of human togetherness. Some of the forms this togetherness has taken include regular weekly meetings, monthly weekend events, and an annual "Convergence" that lasts one to two weeks. Many of my family members, friends and associates have a hard time understanding what has gotten into me. For most people, this idea of physical immortality and these forms of togetherness are difficult to relate to. These new beliefs and behaviors appear to have come out of the blue. One day, they seem to think, Herb was walking around like any other person, normal to all outward appearances. Then--Bam!--suddenly he thinks he is immortal, and is consorting with this odd group of people. What happened? For me, though, this is not at all how it looks. I was not subject to a sudden and unexpected conversion. Instead, I see my involvement with People Forever as the natural culmination of a long series of turning points, each one taking me a step closer to these people, to this life. Others have come by different routes, so there is no magic to these particular events. Yet all of my experiences have been shared by many others, so perhaps by describing them, and what they have meant to me, it will be easier for others to come along, or at least to understand how I got here. Religion My parents tried. They really did. They raised me as a good Methodist. My faith in an omnipotent deity expired, though, one fateful year after I discovered the box my chocolate egg had come in, and the awful truth dawned on me that the Easter bunny was a hoax. By comparison, it was relatively easy to give up God. The story of the Easter bunny was at least a simple tale, even if untrue. The vast maze of Christian religious beliefs, in contrast, always held a note of artifice for me. I have generally found the truth to be relatively simple--unexpected, perhaps, but still convincingly simple. Religion, though, always sounded to me like a lie that had gone on for too long. You know the kind. When you try to cover up the truth, you start by telling a simple lie. But then, if someone begins questioning you, trying to reconcile your lie with what they know to be true, you end up weaving an increasingly complex tapestry of falsehood, piling one fabrication on top of another. These types of stories, even when they successfully avoid any obvious contradictions, never quite seem convincing. Like bad scientific theories, they seem to introduce more questionable suppositions then they purport to explain. Even though they cannot be proven wrong, they lack the ring of truth. Religion raised many important questions for me. Why are we here? How were we created? Why do people die? Yet the answers always struck me as too complicated to be true. None of the answers ever seemed to satisfy. The Beatles The music of The Beatles only partially explained their appeal to me. There was something else about them that seemed revolutionary, some trait always implied but never openly stated. The Beatles had a togetherness that I longed for. Not the homogenized, uniform sameness that I saw around me, but something new, something that celebrated diversity and unity at the same time. In the early years of their success, they all dressed alike, all sported the same haircuts, all made the same music together. Yet they were not faceless band members. They all had distinct and obviously different personalities. And there was not a single front man, as in so many other groups. No one was in the foreground or background. Unlike any musical group before or since, they were often introduced on the radio simply by their first names: John, Paul, George and Ringo. Four distinct individuals who at the same time formed a cohesive whole. People who came together for a common purpose without sacrificing their individuality. Four human beings who changed the world by forming a bond that went beyond conventional relationships of family, friends and work. People who transformed those around them, not through the words they spoke, but through the music they made, the jokes they made, their appearance, their very presence. "Catch-22" Joseph Heller's darkly comic novel had the ring of truth about it. It poked fun at the absurdity of religious beliefs, yet betrayed a deeply felt respect for the human ideals and longings embodied in these beliefs. At the most literal level, "Catch-22" was about World War II. At a deeper level, it was about the absurdity of all war. At many points, though, Heller uses WWII as a metaphor for modern society in general, extending the reach of the book beyond the trenches of combat. At its most basic level, though, this book speaks to a universal human condition. There are many "catches" in the book, many ways in which the characters are caught between hope and reality, between desire and possibility. Many of these catches seem pointless, the arbitrary decisions of a mindless bureaucracy. As the book progresses, though, and its central mystery is revealed, the ultimate "catch" becomes clear: we want to live, but we have to die. As Yossarian feels by the end of the book, there has to be a better way. College In 1969 I left my family home in Annapolis, Maryland and began four years of college at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. College was a magical place for me. It was like a storybook land. Sandwiched between the stark constraints of growing up with my family (as wonderful as they were), and the routine and responsibility of the working world, were four years of magnificent freedom. I lived in a dormitory, and then apartment buildings, with other roommates. The confining expectations of families and bosses were nowhere to be found. I lived in a society whose purpose was learning and discovery of new truths: both in and out of the classroom, on and off campus. The traditional relationships of family members and coworkers were missing. I had friends, but beyond friendship there was this tremendous sense of shared experience, with the hundred or so students I met in classrooms each semester, the thousands I shared a campus with, and the millions in other colleges across the US, and around the world. We were being birthed by, and at the same time giving birth to, a new culture. I started in the school of Engineering, switched to Physics for a semester, then surrendered a scholarship from Lockheed so that I could major in English literature--for no better reason than that I felt drawn to it. I have never lost this desire to be a co-creator of an emerging culture, to live in a society dedicated to learning and the discovery of new truths, new thoughts, and new realities. The Films of Frank Capra One of the great benefits of the U. of M. was that various student film societies screened recent and classic movies on a regular basis. If you wanted to, you could see a different film practically every night of the week. European films were all the rage on college campuses at this point, and many were darkly lit and full of despair. One weeknight, in the middle of winter, I can remember going to a small auditorium with one of my best friends to see an old black-and-white American comedy. The director had been one of the most commercially successful of his generation, but his films were currently out of style with academia, considered too sentimental and naively optimistic. We sat in the dark for an hour and a half, surrounded by no more than a handful of fellow students. When the movie was over, we discovered it was snowing outside. We lived in different directions, and it was too late to go anywhere else, so we stood there in the cold and falling snow and talked about the film we had just seen. We were so excited that we stayed there, talking in the dark, for what seems like at least an hour, before we could bear to go our separate ways. The film was "You Can't Take It With You". It was directed by Frank Capra, one of the acknowledged masters of the American cinema (his work has since come back into popularity). Other Capra films are "It Happened One Night", "Meet John Doe", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and the holiday classic "It's A Wonderful Life". Viewed today, generally on television, squeezed between reruns of old sitcoms, it is easy to mistake Capra's films for trite Americana. Watch closely, though, and you will find deeply felt beliefs in the redemptive power of community and in the ultimate sanity of quirky individuality, and an abiding mistrust of politics, big business and the media. Capra's faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity was rocked by the same World War that gave birth to "Catch-22". His films stirred in me a renewed hunger for this strange mix of togetherness and diversity. Group Therapy After college I moved to Los Angeles. Despite the handicap of having a degree in English, I stumbled across a job in computers, and found a career that was both interesting and financially rewarding. I was not happy, though. My life felt empty. I had a few close friends, but nothing that really stirred me, really motivated me. A friend referred me to a therapist she had been seeing, a wonderful woman named Jennifer Reese. Jenny practiced Gestalt therapy, and after a few individual sessions she asked me to join one of her ongoing groups. In society's eyes, the goal of therapy was to restore me to normality. In reality, though, group therapy opened up a whole new world for me. I found a level of emotional honesty that I had never before experienced. I found a setting in which people shared what was really going on within them, beneath the normal facades that got them through the day. I experienced a new sense of community, among the six to eight people in my group, and others I met at encounter weekends. People in Jenny's practice came from all walks of life, and all sorts of backgrounds, and I felt nourished by this close communion with a group of people I never would have chosen, had I been left to choose on my own. I flourished in an atmosphere that encouraged personal growth and transformation, and not just dependable reliability. In society's eyes, therapy was supposed to fix me and send my on my way. In reality, though, these few hours a week rekindled a hunger in me for a different way of life. I found what I had been missing, but it was only partially something that had been missing in me--it was also something missing from my daily life, and from the lives of those around me. Marriage In 1978 I met a wonderful woman with whom I seemed to have nothing in common. On our first date we attended a movie that I loved and that she hated. There was something that drew us together, though, despite our differences. Two years later we were married (with Jenny, my therapist, performing the ceremony). Nothing was said about "until death do us part." And inside the wedding band that Pauline gave me was a simple inscription: "Forever". The Rebirthing Community Through a friend, Pauline discovered a weekend seminar called the LRT--the Loving Relationships Training. The event included a group rebirth on Saturday evening. Rebirthing is a breathing technique that releases deep emotional memories, even allowing the breather to re-experience, and then release, the pain of their birth. Much of what was taught on these weekends would now loosely be called part of "New Age" thinking. The LRT weekend encouraged people to take 100% responsibility for what happens to them. It included a section on physical immortality. The trainers encouraged people to see everything that happens as a choice, up to and even including death. And so, if we can choose death, then why not choose life instead? Pauline and I attended many of these weekends, eventually becoming assistants ourselves. These were wonderful experiences, but we were finally left hungry for more. We enjoyed the community, but were eventually frustrated by the fact that community was not viewed as a primary goal, but as an accidental byproduct of another process that was supposed to transform people and then send them on their way. People Forever In 1986 we moved to Arizona, and stumbled across People Forever. Here, finally, we found what we had been looking for. Instead of the confusion of religion, we found a simple truth: people deserve to live. We found people who celebrated diversity and the uniqueness of each individual, yet who also wanted to build a togetherness strong enough to keep us together forever. We found an ongoing community of people who encouraged unending growth, change and transformation for everyone they met. We found people who could say anything and everything to each other, without fear of reprisal or abandonment. And we found people actively co-creating a new culture that started and ended with the infinite value of each human being. Despite outward appearances, it was no accident that I found these people, that I chose this life, and that I choose to live it forever. The hungers and ideals that led me here have been present all along. Even when lost in the middle of a wilderness, a compass still turns true. Looking back now, it is easy to see the bends in the road that brought me here, each one taking me a step closer to my heart's desire. It may not be the life for everyone, but it is my life, and it is whole. - - - Copyright (c) 1996 by Herb Bowie. ------------------------------------------------------------- The Uncool by Injy Tawa I'm the fire: the fire that burns. Without you, the cobwebs and the ice collect in the joints. In the mornings I creak to work, to a world of wonder: nice and cool people, headed for marked graves in desolate fields somewhere-- to rest. But I'm headed to you: my once buried treasure, my endless delight, whose physical presence ignites immortal DNA, humiliating ancestral genetics of death with your penetration. I walk city streets. I watch the cool saunter. They tell me: Cool down. Cool it. Keep your cool. Cool off. I tell them: You, with the bulletproof vest for a soul-- beware the flames and scorching heat of me, for I come with hundreds of the uncool. We spread fingers of forever across your faces, where the vest has no effect. We seep through the harsh lead you parade as a heart and quick-- like a bullet-- shatter, penetrate, Then stand back to observe, with infinite delight, the melting abandonment that, despite yourself, you become. - - - Originally published in Forever Alive magazine, Issue no. 26. Copyright (c) 1995 by Injy Tawa. ------------------------------------------------------------- GET SO FAR AWAY FROM DEATH THAT IT CAN'T FIND YOU ANYMORE! by James Russell Strole The Top Dog People have created death to be so powerful. We've given it so much praise and acknowledgment. When I was in high school it always seemed that the most intimidating guy would be the most popular. The top dog wasn't picked for being the most sensitive person, but for being the coolest. He was picked because he seemed so tough that nothing scared him. He was chosen because he could look death in the eye and not blink. He could seemingly live with death. He was death's right-hand man. I didn't like what I saw in high school. I saw people spit on people--just because they dressed differently. I saw people beat people up--just because they didn't fit into the so-called norm. I hated that chemistry. And I thought, when I get out of high school, the world will be different. I found that nothing changed. I found that our whole society was built the same way. The bullies still run the streets. The gentle people are still attacked by the wolves. War is constantly breaking out all over. The cool guys are still running the show. The tough guys are still in charge. Death is still the top dog. A Hunger For Change In the past few months, I've experienced some intense tribulations. Things seemed awfully dark at times. But I made a decision that--no matter what was going on--I was to open myself up to a sound of my life. I opened myself up to the sound of my flesh, and decided that this was my way through the darkness. Real living, when you let yourself feel it fully, is not all joy. Sometimes there's pain involved, especially around change. Human beings have a tendency to so fossilize themselves, to get so stuck in ruts, that change becomes painful. When a person whose arm has been broken and in a cast for some time tries to move that arm, it's painful. In fact it might even feel as if it can't move. It can be the same way with any change. Someone came to me recently about a problem she was having with a change going on in her life. She was feeling some resistance to the change. But she wasn't defending her position. She wasn't defending her rigidity. This person said, "These are the things I feel, and I want to change them in my body." She hungered for a change. It's a wonderful thing when we don't defend our resistance or our depression, when we don't blame it on somebody else. It's wonderful when we can feel our rigidity, and still hunger for the change in our own bodies. Getting Away From Death This is something I've experienced deeply in the last few months. It's one thing to say you don't want to be depressed. It's not hard to say you don't want to be down. It's easy to say you don't want to be sick. But how much do you not want to be sick? How much do you not want to be depressed? How much are you willing to change in order to stop feeling depressed? In my case, I so hungered for a shift that I went deeper. And I found that I had to open up in my guts in a way I've never opened before. As I was going through this, I realized I don't just want a reprieve from death. I don't just want to avoid it for a while. I don't just want a break from it. I want to be out of it once and for all. I want to be done with it for good. That's my hunger. They say life is filled with bad and good, so if you get a certain amount of what they call a good life, you're supposed to be satisfied. You're supposed to settle for a week here and there, or a month, or a few years of respite. That doesn't satisfy me anymore. It's not enough. I'm not willing to settle for a little bit. I don't just want a respite from sorrow and depression--I want out of it totally. I've tasted death. I've tasted depression. I've tasted sorrow. I don't like the taste--it's bitter. I don't want anything to do with it anymore. I want totally out of the pit. You know, sometimes when people feel depressed, they watch a bunch of happy movies, or do something else to feel uplifted for a while. They give themselves a break from depression. They put a bandage on it, to cover it up. It's not enough for me. I want all the way out. I want all the way out from death. I want to get so far away from death that it can't find me anymore. I want to be so far removed from it that I can't see it, no matter where I look. I don't want to just pacify myself for a week or two. I want to be so far away from any capacity to have depression, so far away from feeling anything ugly or unclean about my own body, that depression can't even find me. End the Polarities The law of gravity says that what goes up must come down. The law of death has said the same thing about people. Oh, let's remove each other from the gravity of death. Let's end the polarity of coming down because we've been up for too long. Living in the polarity of life and death will wear you out. You'll live a joyous life one week, only to be visited by death again the next. Hot and cold, cold and hot, hot and cold. How many of those can you take until you crack? That's what cracks the earth--the constant going back and forth between the hot and the cold. How much can human flesh take before it cracks? I don't want that world. It does not make sense to me. I want out of it completely. I'm moving myself beyond what seemed to be the logical: the logic of pain, the logic of release, the logic of relief. I don't want an antacid just to relieve me for a while from the burning in my gut. I want a fire in my belly that is ongoing, that consumes the pain and the sorrow. Don't give yourself time for depression. The fastest way out of your pain, your depression, is for you to give your aliveness to another. It's so powerful to give what you want. The fastest way out of depression is for you to embrace someone else's life, for you to get so caught up in what you can give to your life, rather than what you can get out of it. It puts you on a whole new track. Let's leave the land of death behind. I'm not talking about being on a high. I'm not talking about being abnormal. I'm talking about being totally alive. I'm talking about an aliveness so total that we can't be stalled out anymore, we can't be stopped in our tracks, we can't be dragged back. I'm talking about being so completely alive that nothing can ever stop us from going for what we want. I'm talking about a continuous movement of our flesh that carries us beyond the reaches of death--forever. Let's go there together. - - - Originally published in Forever Alive magazine, Issue no. 27. Copyright (c) 1996 by People Forever International. ------------------------------------------------------------- M A S T H E A D Editor: Herb Bowie Forever Alive Lite is published more or less monthly, 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 Copyright (c) 1996 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. -------------------------------------------------------------