Robert Kopecky - How to Survive Life (and Death): A Guide for Happiness in This World and Beyond

First published in 2014 by Conari Press, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

665 Third Street, Suite 400

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Text and illustrations copyright 2014 by Robert Kopecky

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-636-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Robert Kopecky

Cover art Robert Kopecky

Interior by Jane Hagaman

Typeset in Sabon

Printed on acid free paper in the United States of America.

EBM.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

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Dedicated to Dorothy, Ruth, Anne, Margaret, Sybil, Doris, and Susan... the feminine divine.

... and to Max, for his love and wisdom, who graciously consented to spend his life, and his last moments on this earth with us, showing us how to do it... and who remains a part of everything, and of us, forever.

I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

Woody Allen

Have you ever looked around one day to find that you were doing something you never imagined you'd be doing? Something you could never have foreseen in your wildest imagination? That's how I feel writing this book about things that no one wants to talk about, inspired by experiences I never dreamt of having. Experiences that no one in their right mind would ever want to have.

Then what could possibly compel me try to write a positive book about the one ultimate, undeniably negative experience in lifethat is, the apparent end of it? How could a person ever become so easy, and even downright encouraging, about such an ominous and always-to-be-avoided subject as dyingmuch less speak with any authority about the one experience for which there's obviously so little first-hand expertise available? The answers to these questions might come more easily if I happened to be someone who'd had one of those remarkable Near Death (after-life) Experiencesand, not coincidentally, I am. In fact, as crazy as it sounds, I've had three of them.

Like a lot of people, I had my difficulties accepting all those Near Death Experience stories, until it happened to meand then, oddly enough, even after it happened to me. For some deep-seated reason, I apparently couldn't face the powerful significance of my experiences; so, for years afterward, I kept pretending I was an agnostic concerning the critical questions of life and death, even though, in a very real way, I knew better. Even though my life had plainly and very painfully demonstrated a deeper truth to me over and over... and over.

I'm still not sure why it took such a long time to open up my mind to the truth imprisoned inside of me, to let it out and allow the fullness of it to start shaping my life. I guess it took whatever it took for me finally to become willing to look back at those experiences, accept them, own them, realize the truths that came out of each, and then try to live within the lessons they'd taught me about Lifebased on what they'd taught me about death.

If you are a doubter, as I was, consider this: Of the now millions of people who, down through the ages, have claimed to have had an experience of life after life, thousands of the more recent cases have been very well documented. There are lots of very credible academic collections of case studies by extraordinarily well-qualified and dedicated experts like Elisabeth Kbler-Ross, Kenneth Ring, or Raymond Moodyand a host of others, if you're curious. Most of these cases have had so much in common with one another that they're clearly not just describing coincidental unconscious states a few survivors have reported, but what seem to be profound non-physical universal experiences that have been shared by so many people that they can be grouped into different distinct categories, levels, and types. So this isn't just some kind of urban legend we're exploring here. It's a bona fide human phenomenona real aspect of Life that's very possibly the opening experience of what happens when we make the transition we call dying.

As survivors of these experiences, are we all just a bunch of crackpots? Well, that would make for an awful lot of crackpots (always a distinct possibility). Are we all describing an actual passage into an extra-dimensional world that follows right on the heels of this one, or, as some would suggest, merely a complex set of vivid biochemical responses that everyone experiences as our common human form shuts itself down?

I don't think it matters much really, in cases like these. I know those suggestions don't bother me. I'm comfortably assured about the authenticity of my own vivid biochemical experiences and, in keeping with the testimony of all those other survivors, I know that something more definitely happens beyond this life, in a conscious world that's very different from, but just as real as, this one. Something that amounts to a continuation, a progression that we flow into seamlessly, immediately after we pass on from this world we think we know so well.

In light of all those people who've claimed to have had dramatic experiences beyond this lifewho've supposedly died and then miraculously come backmy experiences didn't seem to me all that dramatic or miraculous. But that's kind of silly, isn't it? After all, they had to have been a little bit miraculous. So I do consider myself a member of that unusual clubperhaps even kind of a special member because, as I mentioned, I've actually had three such experiences in my life, of differing types. One of them was a momentary set of moving, dreamlike images; one was more gravea struggle of sorts that took place over a number of hours; and one, my first and most profound of all, lasted a full day and apparently sent me off into an altogether different dimension of being.

I hope that I don't have any more such traumatic experiences for a good, long whileat least not until I'm really ready. Those three will do just fine for me, for the time being. I don't say that because the results of those transitions were all that terrible; in fact, they were mostly the oppositeafter all, I'm still here to talk about them. It's just that the circumstances leading up to these experiences weren't what you'd consider a walk in the parkbut then, I wouldn't expect that the circumstances leading up to Near Death Experiences ever are. Besides, it really isn't the sensations of nearly dying that I want to focus on at all; it's the way I think about life with a more complete understanding, from a perspective that came about as the result of those three extreme experiences. Perceptions change profoundly for anyone who has experienced the death of any loved one first handespecially when it's his or her