The Harmonic Concordance Blog

Another selection from my bookshelf I that submit for your consideration:  Linda Keen’ s John Lennon in Heaven.  I first ran into this remarkable work some 20 years ago while rooting around in my local library.  I had long been a fan of John from the earliest Beatles days right up to his untimely murder and beyond.  Needless to say, I was stunned and saddened by his passing.

It was a rather warm day for December as I sat alone in my back yard, weeping for the loss.  A gentle breeze come up out of the West and I had this feeling that it was carrying his voice, gently reminding me in his fmailar Liverpudlian accent, that all was just as it should be, that he was OK and that he was troubled by all the fuss being made over him.

My own deep, if not personal, connection to Lennon actually began in late 1965 when, as an English major, I had chosen to do my Senior Thesis on him, titling it “John Lennon: Beatle, Poet and Satirist.”  There was not a whole lot of information available back then, but as I began digging into as much of his life and verse  as I could find, I came across this comment by the noted critic, Richard Schickel, in a review of his collection of poetry and doodles entitled In His Own Write, “When John Lennon sings ‘I want to hold your hand,’ one cannot help but feel that what he’s really saying is ‘I want to bite it.'”  And that led me onto the track of his satire and wit.

Of course the professor for whose class I had written it didn’t appreciate John nearly as much as I did.  He actually gave me two grades on the paper, something he said that he had never done before.  The one, a B+ for the research work I had done and the organization of it, marking that part of the grade down from what should have been an A because my spelling was so atrocious (no such thing as spell check back then), but the second grade was a C because, as he wrote, “John Lennon is just not a fit subject for a serious Senior Thesis.”   Yeah, right, Doc.

But I digress.  Linda’s story was the first sort of glimpse into the afterlife that I had read up to then which seemed a wholly plausible depiction of what I might expect to experience on “the other side.”  Reading it pre-dated my coming across Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls which suggested much the same scenario for the period of our “life between lives.”

In her book, Linda not only discloses her “conversations” with a whimsical, funny and thoroughly charming John, but we also get join them on various walks and hikes and meet others who had been a part of his Beatles life.  Further still we get to encounter more than one of his own “past” incarnations, members of his “Soul Family” and a few of his more exalted teachers.  I found that the book was ripe with ideas that I could extrapolate and apply to my own life.  I also came across this prayer, which I copied out those many years ago.  It still resonates for me today.  I have taken the liberty to call it:

John Lennon’s Prayer

May the Love of the God and Goddess surround us,
May the Love of the God and Goddess flow deep within us,
May the Love of the God and Goddess make us free!
May we be free to know ourselves,
May we be free to love!

May the Light of the Christfire surround us,
May the Light of the Christfire burn bright within us,
May the Light of the Christfire make us free!
May we be free to love ourselves,
May we be free to know!

May the Wisdom of the Higher Self and Teachers surround us,
May the Wisdom of the Higher Self and Teachers live within us,
May this Wisdom make us free!
May we be free to help ourselves,
May we be free to grow!

May darkness and light abide in peace!
May the circle of death and rebirth be rightly honored!
May the violet flame of transformation make itself known!
May the beauty of dawn unfold in the hearts of its seekers!
May there be peace in the Universe!

Courtesy of Pan Publishing

To which I can only add: Amen!