Dannion Brinkley - At Peace in the Light; The Further Adventures of a Reluctant Psychic Who Reveals the Secret of Your Spiritual Powers

I first met Dannion Brinkley while waiting for a car to arrive at the Omni Hotel in Chicago. We were both scheduled to make an appearance on the Oprah show and the guests were all instructed to meet in the lobby and ride over to Harpo Productions together.

As my wife, Sallie, and I exited the elevator and began to meet the other participants, a booming voice interrupted from the rear, Jimmy Red, Ive been wanting to meet you. We Southern boys got to stick together.

Looking up, I watched a large man with soft eyes walking toward us. He smiled widely and pulled us into a huge, enveloping Dannion Brinkley hug, which he dispensed to the other guests as well. Later, although Oprah never knew, the best show occurred in the Green Room backstage, where Thomas Moore and Marlo Morgan joined us for a lively discussion of everything from the trials of publishing to conspiracy theories.

For Dannion and me the conversation has never ended, taking place either by telephone, often across continents, or at Hawkview, our place in Alabama. And what I have discovered about Dannion is that as incredible as it may seem, he is exactly the person he appears to be.

Yes, he used to be an intelligence operative, a background that caused him much agony in his first near-death life review, but which prepared him well for the kind of global-military-economic-cultural analysis that rolls off his tongue as easily as the Southern drawl and good ol boy attitude he picked up during his upbringing in South Carolina.

And yes, he is one of the most gifted psychics that I have ever met, leaving a constant trail of stunned believers in his wake. The first time I spoke on the phone with him, my editor once told me, he named everything that was on my desk, described my office exactly, and then took me on a mental tour down the hall, describing my co-workers and all the office politics that no one could possibly have known about.

But, for Dannion, all this ability and humor is precisely focused on an urgent sense of mission. (When I last spoke with him, for instance, he had been in thirty-two presentations in the last ninety days, while also giving interviews, lecturing, and teaching classes in hospice techniques.) When I asked him why he followed such a torturous schedule, he told me he felt he could make a difference if he could have an impact on society in just one area: health care, and especially alternative health care, for the final days of life when the most money in traditional medicine is spent in an often cruel extension of existence for a few hours or days.

His main theme is this: If we can dispel our fear of death, we can dispel our fear of life, our fear of living up to our fullest, most spiritual potential. Key to ending fear, he believes, is training people to help make the transition to death a loving, gentle, and normal experience. The people at several hospice associations tell me that he has already recruited more hospice volunteers than anyone in their histories.

My own opinion, however, is that Dannions contribution is even wider than that, for in spite of the fact that he is often loud and boisterous and casts into the trees too much when fishing, the man is a model. Here in the 1990s, we are moving from a theoretical understanding of spirituality to actually living what we know, which can be very difficult. Somehow we have to understand and follow our intuitions, stay connected with our sense of mission, discern how and when to intervene in peoples lives, and, above all, portray ourselves honestly to others whether they are skeptical or not.

In this, Dannion has no equal. He spends much of his time on a variety of talk shows, bantering with professional debunkers, and he never retreats for a moment. You only have to kill me a couple of times and I get the message, he is fond of saying. We are great and powerful spiritual beings. And were all beginning to realize it.

Dannion Brinkleys lasting contribution is that he does realize it, and he wears it outwardly for all the world to see.

JAMES REDFIELD