THE MIRACLE OF DEATH

In her foreword to this book, Anne Baring writes that 'what matters is that we recognise the existence of a dimension of reality beyond the one we know and enter into a relationship with it'. This is the experience of Betty Kovacs in this extraordinary narrative around the deaths of her son and husband. As an academic, all her training imbued her with the 'myth of matter' as the only reality, which insists that there is no inner realm and that the universe is empty of love, consciousness and therefore of meaning. She feels that this creates a 'civil war against the deepest organising principles at work in all of nature'. The rational mind is grounded in denial and doubt, and has therefore separated and severed itself from its own deeper source. Experiences of the Cosmic Mind advise us otherwise: that the Divine is not Other, but Self – hence we are intrinsically linked to the whole of creation.

The book begins with the phone call that every parent hopes that they will never receive – the news that Betty's son has been involved in a serious car accident and that he is unconscious in hospital. Although Pisti did die a few days later, the result was that she and her husband Istvan entered 'a highly charged energy field of strange coincidences, synchronistic events, powerful dreams and waking visions'. It is these that give rise to extraordinary insights as the threads they represent are gradually woven together into a complex tapestry of meaning. Dreams that all three of them had experienced in the months leading up to the accident suddenly begin to make sense, including a detailed prefiguration by Pisti of his own accident, hospitalisation and death. Then further dreams and visions unfold within the narrative, all of which give the reader a new understanding of death in relation to life: that there is nothing but life (or, more accurately, consciousness).

Betty realises that there is a creative principle at work in every life, but that one has to listen and study in order to discern it, especially in today's sceptical climate. Archetypally, the Egyptian jackal Anubis – Opener of the Way – makes an appearance as a symbol of decomposition and radical transformation. Although Pisti is no longer embodied, he is a powerful presence in altered states and the relationship with his father develops significantly as they realise the closeness of their interdimensional connection. The three of them are conscious within the Cosmic Mind, of which most people remain ignorant and from which they therefore feel disconnected. This means being out of touch with a larger intelligence that informs the rational mind and speaks in symbols and images, as C.G. Jung understood.

Both love and healing run powerfully through the book, expanding into an inspiring collective vision. In these turbulent times we are the earth dreaming to heal herself as we long for a world of love and peace. Betty writes: 'our deepest aspirations had created the field necessary for them to be born on earth. This longing is the thread that connects us to our deepest nature….now, out of this very longing, we were creating new worlds'. So the earth can now 'dream its future to itself' through us – what a sign of hope!

These visions open up a new understanding of reality. Matter is experienced as 'the infinitely diverse expression of Mind/Spirit in time and space'. This means that thoughts and feelings can affect the physical world and that the force behind creativity is Mind itself, which is Spirit, 'the essence of life'. So 'matter is spirit, birth and death are transformations within life, and each of us is "the nucleus of the nucleus" of that life'. Such an understanding can reawaken our innate knowledge of the organising principles of life.

One insight in the book has direct relevance to the current international situation. Drawing on Riane Eisler's distinction between dominator and partnership systems. The dominators seek to destroy or at least control the darkness in the world, which means destroying 'the other' in ways that blind them to their own shadow: 'the refusal to become conscious and thus responsible for their own individual darkness perpetuated a cycle of repression and violence'. We are still entirely caught up in this vicious dynamic, which will continue for as long as we fail to become conscious and evolve a system that builds on non-violence, trust, compassion, participation and love.

For Betty, there was another initiation to come: the death of her husband, also in a car accident. He too had experienced premonitions, against which his rational mind had fought. When she tunes in to him on the way to Budapest, he says 'I didn't go anywhere. I'm right here, everywhere, and nowhere. I'm simply in another dimension'. There is a reassurance about the unfolding of events and a trust that it will all be for the best, even if the rational mind finds some things unfathomable. If there is a collective forgetting then there is also a collective awakening; if suffering and tribulation is part of the purification process, there is also love and meaning beneath it. Perhaps young people know this but we have overlaid their insights with 'education'. As the reader will realise, this is much more than a book about death, it is a book about life and a powerful call to connect with deeper orders of reality, to live our lives as consciously as possible, and to play our part in the healing of humanity and of the earth.