Art of Dying Art of Dying_Volume III_joomag | Page 11
Swedenborg believed there is an afterlife very much like our own where spirits live
in cities you can visit if you are sensitive to that alternate reality. Communication
is possible. Receptive, creative people commune with spirits. I had to be willing
to hang out with suffering spirits to open up to Divine possibility, to imagine and
conceive continuity beyond the body.
We both
realized
our vital
connection
with all
beings...
Through Visuddhimagga, the Path of Purification, Allyson and I learned about the
power of sky burials and meditating on rotting corpses. We were inspired by the
exquisite depictions of the Nature of Mind in Tibetan Buddhist thangka paintings.
Allyson: Meditation on Mortality, our 1980 performance, ritualized our wedding.
I was covered in white grease paint, Alex in black. We embodied Yin and Yang.
Through deep embrace, body upon body, we symbolized our ability to connect
beyond duality, to transcend whiteness and blackness, light and darkness, life and
death. We became Grey.
For the first ten years of our relationship I lost sleep with anxiety over our separation
by death. One night, lying on our bed together with our eyes closed, neither talking
nor touching, we took a therapeutic dose of MDMA and all of that anxiety went
away. We simultaneously shared the same psychedelic vision: an experience of
the “Universal Mind Lattice.” Our shared consciousness no longer identified with
nor was limited by our physical bodies: We each felt this state to be our purified
essence. “I” was one particular point in the vast network, aware of “my” unique
relationship with all points in the field.
We both realized our vital connection with all beings and things in the visible and
invisible Universe, with God. We felt that death was not to be feared because the
Light was our spiritual core and we would eventually return to the profoundly
transcendent bliss of this lattice realm. I knew I was alright, I knew Alex was
alright and I knew that HE knew that I was alright. I thought, 'Whoever survives
should repeat this experience.' Psychedelics and MDMA help relieve all sorts
of suffering, often permanently after only one journey.
Jewel Net of Indra by Allyson Grey
VOLUME III | 11