Al’s Story

 

Some of you have heard that Al recently passed on.
Here is what happened:

 

Susan: “He’s in severe agonal breathing, severe prolonged apnea. The body is shutting down.” The night nurse gently touched my arm as she spoke these words to me. “He will not coming back from this,” confirming what I already knew, “but he’s not feeling any of this. He’s in no discomfort, it only sounds like that. He’s gone.”

Had I not experienced what I am about to share next, had I not seen it myself, I would be, at best, skeptical. But there are the medical records and the nurse to back it up and my best friend, Lunita, who experienced it with me …

At about 7:15 PM, July 26, having told family, friends, and his hospice team that he was not going to let the disease take him and that he intended to “meditate his way ‘out'” as he’d done for nearly half a century — except that his intent would be that on one of these journeys soon he would simply remain on the “other side”— Al meditated and fell asleep. By about 7:30 he appeared to be gone, with long intervals between extremely labored breathing. I called Lunita to tell her it was time, and she came over to stay with me. It was about 8:30 PM that the hospice nurse arrived.  She took one look at him in the hospital bed and explained, “His body is simply doing what bodies do as they shut down.” She made her notes on her computer and took his vitals. “His heartbeat is extremely erratic, his pulse is very, very low, and there is very little air exchange… ” She turned to face me full-on and look into my eyes. “There is almost no air exchange. He is experiencing severe prolonged apnea,” she called it. “Severe agonal breathing.” She sat down to make additional notes and I returned to the couch. When she was finished with her notes, she went back to Al’s body, and I joined her. She was lifting the covers looking for additional signs and checking his vitals again. She walked with me back to the couch and sat beside me, asking gently, “Do you understand what to do when this process is complete?” I told her I did. She waited with me and Lunita for awhile longer, looking over at Al each time there was prolonged silence, sometimes minutes going by, only to have him loudly gurgle one more time. After awhile, she gave me a hug and quietly left.

Lunita and I kept watch as Al’s body continued this process of shutting down… for five agonizing  hours. Sometime after midnight, after the longest period of silence from Al since the night had begun, assuming what this meant, I slowly walked to his bedside. I was shocked at what I saw! His head was now turned slightly to the side, nestled into the pillow, and his breathing was gentle, easy, and perfectly rhythmic! Gone was the waxy-looking body, head arched back, haunting sounds escaping his gaping mouth. Instead, his color was returned, his body was wholly at ease, and he appeared to be dreaming. I motioned Lunita over! At first, we were both ecstatic, amazed, whispering and giggling quietly with delight, shaking our heads in disbelief: He appeared to be coming back! How was this possible?! Then, suddenly, our eyes locked on each other, no words exchanged between us but we knew what the other was thinking: If he returned, it would likely be to a severely incapacitated body because of the hours of oxygen deprivation. Simultaneously, we began all but yelling to him. “No! Don’t do this. Go back, stay! Be free!” But he was unconscious and unresponsive. After awhile, we returned to our make-shift beds in the room to continue our vigil.

At about 3 AM, I went to check on him. Everything was exactly it had been since about 12:30 AM, no change that I could detect, his head and body having remained in the exact position. I turned to go back to my bed when, suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of Al’s arms shoot up. I turned around and he was throwing the covers back. In one nano second, Lunita had seemingly leapt over the sofa because she was standing beside me as Al sat up and swung his legs over the side of the hospital bed. “I really have to use the bathroom!” he said firmly. “And what’s Lunita doing here?” And he got up from the hospital bed and walked briskly to the bathroom. No sign of any incapacitation whatsoever. Lunita left quickly and I began answering Al’s myriad of questions — what had happened, what was Lunita doing there, how long had he been gone, etc.—  until we were finally able to put aside the excitement and get some sleep. When Al woke up later that morning, not only were there no signs of his body having been through that unimaginable stress for five hours, but the rest of the miracle was that there was very little indication of any compromising physical condition.

Later that morning, his nurse and social worker came to see him. We were all trying to make sense of what had happened, what was going on. His feet and ankles had slight remnants of the edema and mottling common at end of life, but other than that, he was sitting, conversing easily. The team was befuddled … “sometimes there are things that can’t be explained.” The nurse he started out in hospice with 1 1/2 years prior to this “passing” said that in all her experience with the dying she had never seen nor heard of anything like this: Not only had he come back after all that, but he was back without the serious issues that had admitted him into hospice in the first place.

Al’s 82-year-old body continues to improve. Following this event, there was never a need for the wheelchair, walker, or the former abundance of medicine and inhalation treatment given for end-stage Alpha-1, and he weaned off the last medication. Even the oxygen he is on is now negligible and Al expects to be off it soon, other than perhaps for sleep or exercising.  The Alpha-1 was not cured; his lungs are still diminished. But in the time he was “gone” he evidently adapted to that condition. Through rehab and exercises, he is regaining the muscle tone and stamina that had atrophied from minimal use over the past year and has gained the weight back that he had lost.

As of this date, unlike his NDE, near death experience, as a young child (see below), the only recall Al has to this point of what happened while he was “gone” is of seeing three very large, brilliant circles in the darkness, which he understood to represent choices he could make, and a long passageway lined on either side by very large white columns, “like the Taj Mahal,” he said. To date, he has not done a reading to determine what took place during those eight hours and why. Perhaps he will in time.  -Susan Miner

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ABOUT AL MINER

In 1973, a little more than twenty years after an NDE, a chance hypnosis session triggered Al’s reconnection to the other side and began his tenure as the channel for the Lama Sing readings.

Since then, over 10,000 readings have been given in a trance state for groups and individuals from around the world without them being present, answering questions on a virtually unlimited array of topics. The precision of the information has been substantiated by individuals, professionals, and institutions, and those who have received personal readings continue to refer others to Al’s work based on the accuracy and integrity of the information given.

Al has quietly served individuals and groups for over forty years, dedicating his life totally to this work. His focus now is research on Consciousness – its application in daily life and in service to the Promise.

AL’S NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

When Al was nine, he was struggling to survive the rheumatic fever he’d had for more than six months. As he lay staring at the ceiling, the doctor speaking with his mother in a hushed voice in the next room, the pain came again. So excruciating was the pain, it forced him into delirium. My Lady (as he called her) came to him as she had so many times before. He took her hand and she lifted him out of his body and into worlds beyond.

They traveled far away but when they returned this time it was not to his body as usual but to hover just above the rooftop of his house. He could see his mother weeping alone in the kitchen and his body lying still on the living room sofa where they had moved him. As My Lady showed him the scene, Al knew he was being given a choice — leave with her to remain in realms beyond or return to his body and the pain and the lifetime ahead. His love for his mother urged his return. He did not see My Lady again but neither did he have the ferocious attacks of pain again, and over the coming months he recovered.

Though he did not recall  the NDE at the time of the first hypnosis session, he attributes his ease and depth of journeying beyond the finite deep into the infinite to his trips with My Lady, particularly the last one in which she took him to a beautiful pathway and into the shining experience beyond, indescribable for a nine-year-old and nearly so even 70 years and more than 10,000 readings later.

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THE REST OF THE STORY …

Al had left his job in the computer field in 1973 and decided to visit a friend. The friend was on his way to an appointment with renowned hypnotherapist, Dr. E. Arthur Winkler, and invited Al to tag along. When the session was over, Dr. Winkler and the friend coaxed Al to have a session. The hypnotic suggestion given was, “You will now go back to that time and place of greatest spiritual significance to you.”

Waking Up in a Desert
The next thing Al knew, he was standing under a twilight sky. He held his hands up. They weren’t his. The shirt he’d had on at the beginning of the hypnosis session was replaced with a coarse robe-like garment. And instead of the shoes he was wearing, on his feet now were sandals. Behind him, some men were gathered around a small fire. He turned to look. There were a few palm trees beside a small pool, and sizable dunes were silhouetted against the dark sky. The men were talking, not paying particular attention to him. He turned back to face the night and a feeling of joyful anticipation came over him. Someone he cared deeply about was soon to arrive. As he searched the horizon, waiting, he wrestled with thoughts — what is going on, where am I, who is this I’m waiting for? Yet, the thrill about the one that would come walking out of the darkness any moment continued to build and utterly captured his attentions. Then, he began to hear a voice calling to him, barely audible at first but growing louder.

Back on the Hypno-Therapy Couch
The voice was Dr. Winkler’s calling him back. Once back, Dr. Winkler played a recording of the session to a shocked Al. He explained, “You have an uncommon ability to move in a sleep-like state of consciousness.” He asked if Al would return for another session the following day. Because Al hoped to return to the oasis, he agreed, but when he arrived the next morning, he was shocked to see about thirty others excitedly waiting for him in the small office. Dr. Winkler quieted everyone. He explained that these were colleagues very interested in Al’s experience and, once he had calmed Al, he began the session. Al did return to the oasis and, while he was gone, whoever was speaking through him answered questions from those present, even an answer in a code to one in a clandestine government position that could only have been understood by that one. When the session was over and Al woke up, those in the room burst with chatter while Dr. Winkler quietly turned the recorder on again for Al. After everyone had left, Dr. Winkler told Al he was interested in working with him.

Looking for Answers the Next three Years
Al and Dr. Winkler began traveling the country, with Dr. Winkler arranging and conducting “readings.” Al gave conditions for continuing his work: First, he would give himself three years to find at least one other who was doing what he would now be doing, who could answer some of his questions. Second, to validate to him the worthiness of what they would be doing, he would work only by referral, no advertising. Throughout the country, Al did readings for individuals, groups, and those who came to do research, and he and Dr. Winkler began a deep friendship that would last until Dr. Winkler’s death in 1998. During those years Al did not find anyone one else to talk with who was giving information while in a trance.

He made the decision to give it up after the next reading, but it happened that sitting in the small group for the next reading was a man who would turn this phenomenon into a lifelong work for Al. The group was a “Search for God” study group, the name given to those groups studying the works of Edgar Cayce, and the man was Arch Ogden, then President of the Edgar Cayce Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors for the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, VA. Arch took Al to the A.R.E. and introduced him to various members, and Al began to get insights and understanding into this new world, and his new work.

AL’S WORK NOW

Al is referred to in numerous publications and books, and has had his research incorporated into the procedures of professionals in various fields. He has participated in many documented research projects, perhaps one of the most noteworthy being for the A.R.E. in a study with other psychics being tested for accuracy. Al’s scores were so high that the test was repeated, and he beat his previous scores. He was subsequently appointed to the Advisory Board for Atlantic University, a sister organization of the A.R.E. and The Edgar Cayce Foundation, and scheduled by them for frequent appearances. In 1984, St. John’s University awarded Al an honorary doctoral degree for his outstanding contributions to the field of parapsychology. The vast majority of readings given have been personal readings for individuals all over the world, conducted without the person being present.

The Best Guidance Comes from Within
Al is not currently accepting requests for personal readings.  He believes that the best of all guidance is that which comes from within.

Al lives with his wife Susan in Ft Myers Beach, Florida.