Experience Spirit Before You Die

Sponsored Content from Four Winds Society

An excerpt from Grow a New Body, by Alberto Villoldo, PhD

In our quest for the scientific exploration of the universe, we have forgotten about personal exploration of the invisible realm of the mind and what we can find there. In the West we use our mind to study nature, to explore mathematics, but we have neglected to use the mind to study the mind. When you turn the mind within to study itself, you find peace and freedom from the suffering that exists in the material world. You find the wisdom that infuses all creation. Much like the microscope is the instrument to study the very small, the mind is the instrument to study the invisible world. But if the invisible world is so marvelous, why aren’t we spending all our time there?

The sages say the reason we are born into a body in the physical world is to evolve and grow, to acquire maturity and wisdom. To use a metaphor from physics, when we’re embodied, we’re like a photon in a particle state; while in the invisible world, we’re like a photon in a field state. The particle state is our “local” nature—flesh and blood, sitting on a couch reading. The field state is our “nonlocal” nature, in which we extend to the farthest reaches of the universe and are at one with all things. When we die and leave this body behind, we return to our nonlocal nature, to our field state, to invisible Oneness. But the sages of old learned to experience their field without dying—to taste Oneness while still in the world.

Our field state, the one we inhabit in between births, encompasses all of creation. The field is insubstantial—we don’t have enough substance to contain our awareness. The ancient Maya called the consciousness required to experience this state of Oneness the “jaguar body.” The jaguar-shamans were individuals who had defeated death and developed awareness of their infinite field state, and they brought this wisdom back to their kings. This is why the jaguar is such a powerful symbol throughout the Americas. The feline represents the journey beyond death, exploring the state of omniscience in the field, and returning to the embodied state of the living. After acquiring jaguar wisdom, we understand that there never was a locked gate between us and the invisible world.

The invisible world exists alongside the visible one, ever present and accessible. We can bring its wisdom into our world at any time to provide healing and balance. The way we do this is by activating the circuitry in the brain that allows us to experience our interconnectedness to all things and all beings in the cosmos. These higher-order neural networks, like all neural networks, are made up of brain cells connected to each other, of neurons that fire together and wire together. They are in a region of the brain known as the neocortex, or “new brain,” which thrives on bliss and the experience of Oneness, while other parts of the brain are more concerned with survival and separation of friend from foe.

This more recently evolved part of the brain has a favorite food source: ketone bodies, or fats, which are like jet fuel for the brain. You cannot explore the invisible world of Spirit with your predatory and more primitive limbic brain, which feeds primarily on sugars and is terrified of death, ghosts, and shadows lurking in the night.

Today the interface between our senses and our machines is moving us ever closer to being able to access all the knowledge in the world instantaneously. But this is not the kind of omniscient awareness I’m referring to. The awareness I speak of is the mind’s ability, in the field state, to experience the cosmos firsthand, across the farthest reaches of space and beyond time. This is the magic potion that I discovered in the Amazon, the medicine that heals the longings of the soul and helps us deal with the stressors of life. With this potion we can become the architects of a destiny infused with health and long life.

The thick doorway between us and the invisible matrix is regulated by the sugars in our diet, by the excess protein in our food, and by the toxins in our brain. If we change our diet, repair our broken brains, and learn to use fats for fuel, we can break down the gate that keeps us from the Oneness that is obvious from the perspective of our higher brain.

Learn more about the link between the brain and Oneness in my forthcoming book, Grow a New Body, now available for preorder.