“Just Say No – Unsquared,” my short memoir about the positively transformative power of remembering lessons learned in a past life as an opium addict, is now published in Issue X of The Closed Eye.
Now is a good time to reflect a bit on how I managed to write about such a subject. I arrived at near-fluency in American English in the early nineties, a time when New Age conferences were plentiful and where authors like Dannion Brinkley, a former Marine, cracked jokes about his near-death experiences. Philosopher and psychiatrist Raymond Moody had already coined and popularized the term “Near Death Experience.” Additionally, the psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, had already founded the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and popularized the idea that reincarnation could perhaps be proven. At the time, I counted my blessings and told myself that, had I remained in France, I would have withered away from lack of exposure to content about what was crucial for me to be able to start living the truths embedded in my own unusual life experiences. The odd thing is that I had never heard of the groundbreaking work of French authors and researchers Evelyne-Sarah Mercier and Jean-Pierre Jourdan of IANDS France, among other French trailblazers!
Now, three decades later, I am becoming part of the conversations aiming to redefine our presuppositions about consciousness.
In gratitude to all the people who have paved the way and continue to do so!
Dominique Margolis 