What were the experiences surrounding Joel’s transition?

Well, I think that’s covered pretty well in The Spiritual Journey in the last chapter. There really isn’t anything more to say about it than that. And if you read that last chapter, you will see that it was a transition and that there really was no sorrow around, about it, but that there was a feeling that this was a movement forward in consciousness, and that only the form was gone, nothing else. That is, this physical sense of form was no longer here, but the consciousness, where does that go? It never goes any place. Consciousness is omnipresent. And it is always wherever we are, if we want to be aware of that particular consciousness.

I myself was amazed at my own reaction. I used to go with my sister, who was a professional singer and sang in a large church as a soloist, and therefore called upon to go to many funerals and sing at the funerals. And I would go accompany her many times just so she wouldn’t have a long drive by herself when I was free in the summertime. And I’d go to these funerals and I’d weep buckets over people I didn’t know anything about. Oh, I’d never seen them, they didn’t mean a thing to me, and there I was, tears would stream down my face. And here somebody to whom I felt very close, when he went on I didn’t have a tear. It was very interesting to me because I didn’t know how I would react in such a situation. But I…again it was that realization that had gone on over the years of the infinite nature of consciousness and the eternality of life, which knows no beginning and no ending. Let’s all remember that.