By Rick Willey
One question has nagged me for most of my life. That question is, “What’s on the other side of the veil?” It is only now that I have embraced A Course in Miracles that I am finally learning the truth. I remember being about 5 years old and mulling over this question in my bedroom: What is on the other side of the veil? I held a knife to my belly, wondering if I stabbed myself and crossed over, would I see what’s on the other side? But I changed my mind because I knew this act would hurt my parents terribly. I didn’t want that, so I changed my mind and just prayed my little heart out.
Not long after that, my Grandpa Willey died. When I went to bed that night after the funeral visitation, I had a dream that terrified me. I was looking into the casket to see if Grandpa’s chest moved in breathing. He suddenly rose up, grabbed me, and put me over his head, shaking me at the same time. He said in a loud voice, “HOW’S MY BOY!?” I was so scared! I ran into my parents’ room, crying in terror, and slept with them that night.
Later in my life, I went through a men’s healing retreat called The Mankind Project Warrior Weekend because my life wasn’t working, and I desperately needed help to understand why. We had weekly meetings to integrate the work done during that weekend. During one such meeting, that traumatizing dream I had about Grandpa came up because I just couldn’t get over the trauma I had experienced. After telling others the story, someone suggested that I could see it differently. “What if that was your grandpa’s way of telling you he loves you and that he’s OK?” That shocked me! I never considered it that way! Grandpa was always a joker, and this would be something he would definitely do! Since the time of that meeting, I have felt relief from what was a traumatizing experience. Now I see it as something very beautiful! (But I’m still going to scold him for it someday! Lol)
A similar story happened when my dad’s brother Bob died. I was fast asleep in the bunk of my semi-truck but not dreaming when suddenly I couldn’t breathe in or out! I sat up in bed quickly and tried to get air moving in my lungs! Suddenly as I was released and could breathe, I heard Uncle Bob’s voice in my head saying, “That’s how it felt when I died.” About an hour later, my mother called to tell me he had passed. I told her what happened and that I already knew. She was flabbergasted!
I’ve had other instances where I was “visited” by deceased friends and loved ones and even a few complete strangers! I consider these experiences to be small glimpses to answer my earliest question about the veil. What happens on the other side? I tended to minimize the importance of these seemingly weird events. But now it seems stranger that I would deny the very answer to the question I was asking all my life.
In July of 2012, my age-old question reached a towering pinnacle! Driving a truck allows plenty of time to think. At the time, I was thinking about God and how each religion had its version of what God is. Different religions would argue that their version of God was correct. They fought wars throughout history to prove God was on their side! How could that be!? Each religion proclaims God is love, but they are killing each other over Him? It doesn’t make sense! Then I started to wonder how I could get to the truth. After considering my options, I realized there was only one way to find out because I was sick of getting all the conflicting answers. I would go to God Himself! In my frustration, I screamed, “GOD! IF YOU’RE REAL, WHY DO YOU HIDE!?? SHOW UP!!”
Then I figured if God heard me, I would get an answer. If He didn’t, I would know it’s all B.S, and I’d just live as best I could, and forget about the subject of God altogether.
Three days later I was delivering a cargo load in the Chicago area. I had totally forgotten about screaming to God to be answered. That thought wasn’t even in my mind at all. I was just waiting to get a phone call to get a dock door and deliver, so I could get on with whatever next load assignment my dispatcher had for me.
I was sitting in the driver’s seat, relaxed and just looking around, patiently waiting. For some reason I looked at my hand on the steering wheel. BOOM! What a shock! Because when I looked, I didn’t recognize my hand!
What just happened? I didn’t know what I was looking at. But when I thought to get a closer look at this strange thing, it moved! Which again surprised me until it dawned on me. OH! That’s my hand!
Wait…WHAT!???” This experience was so strange, I started to look around trying to figure out if I had died or was having some existential crises or who knows what.
As I scanned the area around me, it felt as though I was everything I looked at without being separate from it. The character named Rick was like a distant false memory that no longer nor ever did exist! I was just this eternal being without name or location. And yet I could still see with these physical eyes, feel with the body, but without any identification with it. Please understand that at the time, I’d never heard of non-duality or any such teaching. So even while basking in that eternal Presence, Rick’s mind was freaking out trying to figure out what was going on. At the same time, I was completely absorbed by that Presence many of us call God. It’s difficult to describe how it was. Kind of like paradoxically being both in and out of the body, time, and space.
My mind was being “downloaded” with tons of information so fast I couldn’t keep up with it. But there was a “peace beyond all understanding” I had heard about. And now I know why it’s beyond understanding, because it’s beyond description! My profound mystical experience didn’t happen just once but continued on and off for the next week or two.
Since that time in 2012, I’ve tried to:
- Understand what happened
- Do whatever I could do so it would happen again! (I’m still working on that one!)
- Share with others that this was possible.
- Help people understand the falsehoods religion often imposes on us.
- Wish everyone could have that type of experience I had just once.
I have found that most people aren’t interested in spiritual growth or perhaps others are just too busy doing whatever it is that has distracted them. I must admit that my own Ideas and efforts seem to fall very short of what God showed me as being reality. That’s why I do the best I can to study spirituality with an emphasis on A Course in Miracles. I find its teachings most closely fit my cultural background as well as its direction toward what that mystical experience showed me. What I want to give to the world through my experience is hope. What is beyond the veil? I asked, and God answered. Death isn’t the end for any of us. Death is but a transition. There is so much more.
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There is no death because what God created shares His life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. There is no death because the Father and the Son are one. [CE W-167.1:5-7]
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