Questions Answered and Answers Questioned

300 Pages·2014·1 MB·English

by  Drew Leder

Questions Answered and Answers Questioned:

Conversations with a Spiritual Guide

Drew Leder

(pre-publication: do not share without the author’s permission)
CONTENTS

I. Introduction: Who am I? Who is the Guide? What is this Book?

PART ONE: LIVING WELL

Creating Joy: Attention, Appreciation, Abundance

1. Attention: Investment Strategies for the Mind

2. Thought: Metabolizing the Real

3. Mind-Sailing

4. Happiness: Retuning the Radio, Appreciating the Song

5. The Ego is Immature, Irrational, but Overcomeable

6. Good Dog, Bad Dog: Mastering the Mind

7. The Mind is a Display Window that Attracts Customers

8. Faith is Fulfilled: The Mother/Child Team

9. Beyond Trust and Faith…Assurance

10. Self-Love is the Window Through Which God’s Love Shines

Dealing with Difficult Emotions

11. Anxiety: Calming the Barking Dog

12. Anxiety: Comforting the Child

13. Anxiety: The Unheard Messenger

14. Fear: To Whom Do You Grant Power?

15. Anger and Anxiety: Accepting, Witnessing, Channeling, Enjoying

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16. Frustration: What to (Un)do About It?

17. Anger: Choosing to Make Yourself Soft

18. Weathering Your Emotional Weather

19. The Meat and the Stewpot (Emotional Versus Spiritual Growth)

20. Dream Problems Only Dissolve When You Wake Up

Living With Others in a Challenging World

21. Disappointments and God-Appointments

22. Are Children a Burden or Blessing?

23. Don’t Try Harder, Try Easier

24. Self-Esteem: Avoiding Others’ Projections

25. Listening Beyond Positions and Op-positions

26. The World is a Dark Stage

27. The Troubles of the World: How Not to be Overcome

28. War: The Horror of the Unreal

Pain, Illness, Aging: The Body and Beyond

29. Pain Doesn’t Have to be that Painful

30. Medications: Sin or Self-care?

31. Physical Pain and the Intact Covenant

32. Physical Healing: Our Stories and Dialogues

33. The Aging Body and the Timeless Self

34. Seeing Through Illusions

35. Who Am I? The Self Beyond All Mirrors

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Living From the Heart

36. Head and Heart: A Landlubber and a Ship’s Captain

37. A Net Catches Fish, Not the Ocean

38. Designing a Proper Universe

39. The Heart is a Flip Phone

40. Death and the Timeless

41. Heartbreak and Beyond

PART TWO: REALMS OF REALITY

Other Dimensions: Death and the “Subtle Plane”

42. Death (and Enlightenment): Getting Off the Hook

43. Others Died? Other-Sided

44. Our Living Conversation with the Dead

45. Reincarnation IS

46. Astral World: What You Want is What You Get

47. Realms of Reality: Amusement Parks and Planetariums

48. ESP: To Intuit by Getting Into-It

49. Out-of-Body (and In-the-Body) Experiences

50. Eighty-Eight Keys and the Music of Karma

The Way the World Works: Twelve Lessons

51. Lesson #1: The Room in Which All is Related

52. Lessons #2-3: Bursting the Bubble-World
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53. Lessons #4-6: The Game Unfolds

54. Lessons #7-8: Remembering What You Already Know

55. Lessons #9-10: The Benevolent Universe

56. Lessons #11-12: You Cannot Be Alone

We Are Part of the Mind of God

57. The Creation Beyond Destruction

58. The Mother Ship and its Probes (God and Us)

59. God Doesn’t Care (The Impartial Referee)

60. The Bottomless Mind of God

61. Avatar World: Befriending and Expressing the Divine

62. Physics and the Garden of Eden

63. Matter and Spirit: Pushing Off and Penetrating

Time and Eternity: The Evolving Universe

64. The Big Birth

65. Ocean Waves: Time and Eternity

66. Perceiving Perfection: The Is-ness Behind the Business

67. Buddhas and Bicycles: The Universe Awakens

68. Evolution: The Scientific “How” and the Religious “Why”

Coda: How Do I Know this Spiritual Stuff is Real?

69. The Quarrel Between the Mind and the Soul

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Appendix One: Hari’s Worldview

Appendix Two: Who Are You? — The Guide Responds

Appendix Three: A Philosophical Postscript — The Universe Re-Members

Appendix Four: A Note on the Preparation of this Book

Bibliography
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Introduction: Who am I? Who is the Guide? What is this Book?

A funny thing happened a few years ago. I started communicating with an inner spiritual voice,
or as some would call it, a spirit-guide. Not that funny you might say — there are many authors,
teachers, and just plain ordinary people who claim to have experienced that kind of
communication. But it was funny to me: funny-peculiar, not funny-ha-ha, as I used to explain the
difference to my children.
Here I was, scientifically trained with an M.D. from Yale University School of Medicine
with a Ph.D. in Philosophy, a professor for twenty-two years at Loyola University Maryland. Not
the kind of person who is supposed to be talking with a spirit-guide, a seemingly disincarnate
being from another realm. My mind is trained, and is now used to train others, in careful thought
and logical analysis. I am a big believer in the power of the scientific world-view. Yet I also
couldn’t deny my experiences.
Experiences of a spiritual sort had been happening to me for over twenty years. They
particularly began back when I joined a Twelve Step program (the program used in Alcoholics
Anonymous, and other such fellowships) for multiple compulsive problems. When I was age
eighteen to twenty my mother died of breast cancer, and my brother and my father both
committed suicide. Such harrowing events, as well as preceding traumas and, perhaps,
constitutional predispositions, left me something of a nervous wreck. While successful on the
outside I was disturbed within by intense anxiety, guilt, low self-esteem, and a tendency to bleak,
depressive moods where I dwelled as much in the land of death as with the living.
The Twelve Steps, along with therapy, and other forms of inner work and spiritual
practice, helped me to overcome, or at least better cope with such problems. The Steps also
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triggered a series of sometimes quiet, sometimes dramatic, spiritual experiences which led me to
belief in a Higher Power. (Some of this is recounted in other books I’ve authored.) In accord
with mystics of religions the world over, I have come to view this Power as inside myself, as
well as saturating the outer world. I look within for Higher Consciousness but have also prayed
to and talked with God as if he/she were another. I’m happy to mine the riches of many spiritual
traditions and methods without worrying too much about defining my religious “brand.” (For the
record, I’m currently a Jewish Quaker who teaches Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism at a
Catholic college.)
Still this spirit-guide thing was a new and deeply weird development. It started when I
first contacted a “medium.” Again, not a typical thing for me to do, skeptic that I am. Perhaps
because of the premature deaths of my closest family members I have long had a passion to
know more of what death is, and whether one survives, individually, or as part of an eternal
Mind. Can one know what life is, and whether it has any meaning, without also exploring death?
I was intrigued to discover that a Psychology professor who I had known when at Yale
University as an undergraduate, had become intensely interested in such matters and attempted a
rigorous scientific study of the claims of certain mediums to contact the dead.1 Gary Schwartz,
Ph.D. from Harvard, professor at Harvard and Yale (now at University of Arizona), with many
prestigious appointments, positions, and grants, and he’s taking this stuff seriously? I was
intrigued.
I contacted one of the mediums, untrained, unprofessional, but who performed quite
impressively in Gary’s book. On a phone appointment she told me at length, while I transcribed
her words, about different family members from whom she received images and

1 The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Evidence of Life After Death, by Gary Schwartz with William L. Simon.
Note: Full citations to all books mentioned by myself and the guide are provided in a bibliography at the end.
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communications. At her suggestion I kept almost entirely silent during the call so as not to cue
her responses. Though there were occasional mysteries, or perhaps mistakes, I was rather “blown
away” by the power, specificity and accuracy of what she shared — how could she know all
that?
At the end of the two-hour conversation she said, “By the way, you don’t really need me.
You can do this on your own.” (For me that added to her credibility because she was not trying
to hook a future customer — quite the opposite.) She recommended a book about contacting
one’s own spirit-guide.2 Rather half-heartedly I bought it and tried out its method. The short
form: it worked. Though I had only a vague visual impression of someone wearing a white robe,
I started distinctly hearing a voice within my mind identifying itself as “Harry.”
“Harry?” I thought. What kind of a name is that for a spirit-guide? Hari was the slightly
corrected version I heard.3 I quickly found that I could ask Hari whatever I wished, and I would
immediately hear forming in my mind an answer, one which utilized precise language,
metaphors, parables, clarifications, and explanations concerning issues I had been struggling
with for years. Hari provided wise counsel on matters both personal and metaphysical.
For the most part I talked with him in front of the computer so I could take down
immediately and preserve his answers. My fingers raced to keep up. As a writer, it made sense
that for me such spiritual communion might best flow forth in written form. (For many that

2 Opening to Channel: How to Connect with Your Guide, by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer.
3 Though I didn’t think about it until much later, in the Hindu tradition — which I am conversant with and teach —
Hari is one of the many names used for Vishnu, and his avatar, or divine incarnation, Krishna. Vishnu is God in the
role of one who preserves and renews the world at times of decline through repeated manifestation on earth. My
“Hari” has served that kind of purpose for me — one of assistance and renewal.
“Hari” is pronounced as if it would rhyme with “sorry.” I found myself in time also addressing him as Hare
(pronounced like Har-ay), which I much later discovered is the Sanskrit “vocative” form of Hari — what you would
call such a being if speaking to him personally. However, I have chosen to stick with “Hari” throughout the book for
consistency, and as a little easier to pronounce in English.
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might be quite the wrong medium.) A few times I would simply have conversations in my head
— or heart — while walking, sometimes writing them down afterwards.
What gives, I wondered? The simplest answer, the one that presents the least conflict
with a standard scientific world-view, is that I was communicating with my own subconscious.
Perhaps the technique of “automatic writing” and my imagination of a guide, unlocked access to
another part of my mind allowing helpful messages to come through.
As a scientist I cannot disconfirm that hypothesis. I could even point to some supporting
evidence. In some areas the manner of speech and the kinds of points made by “Hari” strike me
as similar to things I myself believe, spoken in ways I might. For example, later in this book
there is a long treatise on the spiritual meaning of evolution, but I had just been thinking,
reading, and teaching in similar ways on the topic myself.
At other times more personal messages that the guide transmitted were similar to
messages I had received earlier in life through prayer. They confirmed, reminded me, or
elaborated on, what “I already knew.”
Of course, all this does not prove “Hari” is just a creation of my own mind. It makes
sense that spiritual inspiration — if you believe in such a thing — would flow into me, or any of
us, through many conduits, restating essential truths in a variety of ways. It may be evidence that
a guiding Consciousness is at play, teaching the recalcitrant pupil over and again through
different vehicles.
Even when Hari refers to authors and ideas I have studied over the years I do not think
that proves it is just my own mind at work. As Hari has told me, a teacher must speak to a
student using a language the latter can understand. In that sense, my training as a man of science
and professional philosopher, may be an asset. The material I’ve studied over the years, the terms
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