Do you often have the feeling that an unseen presence is guiding or influencing your thoughts or actions? Do you sometimes awaken in the night with an eerie certainty that someone or something has been there in the room with you-something not exactly human? Have you ever looked up from some private task and thought for an instant that you saw a flesh-and-blood apparition of a departed loved one, or perhaps felt a gentle touch upon your head or shoulder? Do you feel that you have guardian angels, that prayers are frequently answered, or that you often receive information that is not available to you through any of the five senses?

We are here to suggest to you that such feelings and experiences can be very real and entirely valid, and we hope to offer you understanding and encouragement that you may further a meaningful relationship with the wide universe of spirit.

Or perhaps you are merely curious about life in general, who you really are and where you really are, where you came from, where you are headed, and why. Maybe you have been feeling lately that you are going nowhere, that nothing seems to mean anything, that life has come up empty for you or that it is in total confusion.

Possibly we can help you with all of that too. First you need to know that you are not alone in any of this. And then it may be helpful to realize and understand that the earth experience is meaningful but also playful, serious but also humorous, and that you have eternity to work it all out-so maybe you can be encouraged to relax a little, lighten up, and enjoy the process.

A wise old gentleman whom you will meet in this book has told us: "It is impossible to have humor without the ability in a given situation to see beyond one single truth. If you are going to understand your own sense of humor-or lack of same-just go into multiple truths and you will discover the natural humor of the universe-which, in fact, is only wisdom-wisdom that is expressed, that embraces the multiple points of view. And then what can you do except laugh?-at yourself and at others."

But of course laughter in and of itself is not humor. A fine sense of humor can sometimes make us weep, for there is pathos, too, in all humor, and "the natural humor of the universe" touches us in all its aspects. Who wants to laugh their way through life anyway? Inappropriate laughter is more often than not the sound of appalling ignorance and /or fear. We hope to encourage you to honor your tears as well as your joy, to honor the human experience in all its ramifications, and to honor yourself first of all.

We undertake this task with a lot of help, so we are not alone-and you approach it in very good company, so you, too, are not alone. Recent Gallup studies have shown that most forms of mysticism are on the rise and growing quickly among middle-class Americans. In that same vein, the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Council recently released the result of an eleven-year study that shows that forty-two percent of American adults say that they have been in touch with the dead. That same study produced the surprising suggestion that some twenty million of us have experienced profoundly mystical experiences, including healing. But your good company is even stronger than that. The Gallup studies reveal that fully ninety-four percent of Americans believe in a supreme being and that a great majority feel that they receive super-natural guidance in response to prayer or other spiritual communication.

Perhaps your next-door neighbor never talks about such things, but that does not necessarily mean that he or she would not love to do so if given the opportunity. If you feel that way too, you are not alone, and you need to know that you are among a strong majority in your feelings and intuitions. In this book we attempt to encourage you to give free rein to those feelings and intuitions-and more, to give yourself the nobility of freedom to chart your own exhilarating course through life.

Our debt to science and its noble practitioners is so great that one hesitates to venture a word of criticism-but scientists are merely men and women like the rest of us. They err, and they have limitations, imposed by their own approaches to truth. It is not criticism but merely a statement of the obvious when we say that scientists throughout the modern age have tried to discourage and discredit the persistent and growing human fascination with mystical values. Since the scientists to whom we usually turn for answers have pointedly avoided the subject and placed themselves outside it (because they cannot investigate it under their own ground rules), there has developed throughout the world a great unexpressed yearning for some substantiating evidence that life is meaningful beyond the moment, that human existence is the result of something more than the chance combination of chemicals, and that human destiny is strongly intertwined with some worthwhile cosmic purpose.

We hope to give you comfort in the knowledge that you are among a swelling majority of twentieth-century men and women who have a strong curiosity about their place and their role in this magical marvel called life, who want to know where they came from and where they are going, and who want to learn how to make the most of what they've brought with them.

We also wish to suggest that you have come to the right place to begin or extend your search.

Welcome to our magical, wonderful world of spirit. And may you never be the same again.