Dear friends;  this showed up on the Hemingway LIST this morning.  I cannot
resist forwarding it on to y'all, since it is plausible (given the list of
his other "contactees" at the bottom) that our beloved Mark may be next.

just wondering -- how should I -- or any other curious reader -- respond to
this sort of thing?  I'm assuming it's a serious post, but my oh my ...

also:  is anyone on here having any conversations with old Mark?  I'd sure
like to hear about those ....

best to all, --Hal B.




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frank DeMarco <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 8:24 AM
Subject: Hemingway on Hemingway: Afterlife Conversations
To: [log in to unmask]


 My apologies for the length of this, but I thought you might as well get
the whole introduction in one lump.****

I’ve written a book which is going to be published later this year, and I
thought I’d expose parts of it to this list. Don’t think that isn’t an
intimidating thought! In some ways, this audience may be the hardest test
the book is going to face. Your initial temptation may be to ridicule the
whole idea, and what author enjoys the idea of being ridiculed? On the
other hand, I’ll be very interested in your reactions to specific passages.*
***

The book is titled, “Hemingway on Hemingway: Afterlife Conversations on His
Life, His Work, and His Myth,” and I suppose the easiest way to explain
what I’m doing is just to append the Introduction, hence the length of this
email. ****

-----****

"The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and
all that I write." W. B. Yeats****

www.hologrambooks.com/****

<http://www.hologrambooks.com/><http://www.hologrambooks.com/hologrambooksblog/>
*www.thehistoricalcontext.wordpress.com/*****

*Introduction – This business of afterlife communication*

"What a book would be the real story of Hemingway, not those he writes but
the confessions of the real Ernest Hemingway. It would be for another
audience than the audience Hemingway has now but it would be very
wonderful."****

Gertrude Stein, *The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas*

** **

What if Papa Hemingway could speak from beyond the grave? What would he say
about his life and work?****

And what if a skilled and wise psychological practitioner like Carl Jung
could join with Hemingway in speaking from beyond the grave? What if he
were to say that Hemingway is a good model of the Complete Man, developed
physically and intellectually, exhibiting highly developed intuitive and
sensory functioning? And what if their considered judgment was that
Hemingway’s life had meaning beyond what had been seen to date? What if
they felt it worthwhile to make the effort to communicate with us, to try
to correct certain harmful aspects of The Hemingway Myth? What if they
thought that correcting that myth was important, not to Hemingway but to
those of us living now and in the future?****

That’s pretty much what this book is about. This interaction with Hemingway
is neither biography or autobiography. It is more a series of
conversations, hitting certain highlights, Hemingway as I experienced him.**
**

.2.****

I communicate well with disembodied others, working from a mildly altered
state very little different from my ordinary consciousness. How I learned
to do this, I told in my first non-fiction book, *Muddy Tracks: Discovering
an Unsuspected Reality*. What I’ve done with it so far, I have told in
three other books. I don’t intend to recap even the highlights of my story
here, as anyone interested can consult my other books, or my blog, “I of My
Own Knowledge…” *www.hologrambooks.com/*). ****

For most of my life, what I knew about Ernest Hemingway was primarily his
posthumously published novel *Islands in the Stream,* a moving portrait of
a man’s love for his children and his desolation when they were taken from
him. I felt emotionally very close to the man who had written that book.
One day it occurred to me that just as I had learned to talk to others who
were no longer in the body, so I could talk to him. Immediately it was as
if a two-dimensional field had become three dimensional, or a
black-and-white photo acquired color.****

This book is about Hemingway, and Hemingway’s place in our time, and
Hemingway as a model for what humans may become, which gives that life
importance for us all, even those who think they know who Hemingway was.****

His interests were so wide-ranging! His life touched so many extremes! He
was a writer of genius, a renowned and skillful hunter and fisherman, a
charismatic personality who became a celebrity. He had friends in every
social stratum, from his poor neighbors in Cuba to the rich on three
continents. He was praised and damned, admired and contemned. His stories
and books made him rich, but were frequently entirely misunderstood, as was
he. No adequate picture of 20th-century literature can ignore his
considerable legacy. But what that legacy is, history hasn’t quite decided.
He didn’t run with packs, but the pack came to run after him, which
sometimes has left him at the mercy of those who claimed to be upholding
his legacy.****

I had thought of calling this *Hemingway: A Man Alone*, quoting Harry
Morgan in *To Have and Have Not*, who famously decides, at the end, that a
man alone doesn’t have a chance. And I thought of calling it *A Hemingway
Nobody Knows*, to emphasize the difference between the man and the myth.
But neither title quite caught the gist of the story and the reason behind
the story. *Hemingway on Hemingway* better captures it, I think. We’re out
to correct the record, Hemingway and Jung and I – two giants from beyond
the grave and their still-embodied editorial assistant.****

Or, to quote Papa [Tuesday, July 20, 2010]:****

Remember, in all this we are proceeding along more than one track. There is
the correction of The Hemingway Myth for the sake of providing a model of
completeness that the world misunderstood -- not for the sake of doing me
justice, although there is that, so much as for the sake of providing the
model. The model is *needed!* And to correct the myth, it is necessary to
understand; therefore it can't be a whitewash job, and it can't be
superficial. But it isn't a matter of research for new facts -- mostly it
is a matter of interpreting what is known. That's one strand.****

A second is to provide a model of possibilities, showing how communication
proceeds and showing what can be done, and how easily. This could be a
great encouragement to people. And just as correcting the myth can't be a
whitewash if it is to do any good, so explaining the process can't overlook
the difficulties and pitfalls, which involves your giving the process a
certain amount of thought so as to be useful.****

Then, most important of the three but depending on the other two, this will
provide people with a new model of the physical/non-physical interaction,
hence the true function of 3-D existence, and by implication we will show
that the non-physical exists -- that is, that the afterlife is not only not
a fantasy but is a necessary part of life, without which life wouldn't have
meaning or make any sense. And it will do so in a way that shows that
religious belief was tapping into the same reality.****

** **

Of course I am aware of the danger of leading myself and others astray. All
along, others have asked me, and I have asked myself, how much of what I
think is happening can be proved. The answer has to be, none of it. In
matters of contact with non-physical intelligences, all we can really know
for sure is that the material does or does not resonate. That, we can *know*.
Anything beyond that is a matter of belief, only. I am left with Jesus’
test, “by their fruits you will know them.” So far the fruits of each day's
task are enthusiasm, and joy, and new insight. But as to proof? You’re
going to have to use your discernment, and see what resonates.****

.3.****

How is the interaction possible? Here’s how I think of it. ****

Any minds that ever existed *within* time-space continue to exist
*outside*of it, as alive as we are. Since our own minds extend into
the non-physical
world, we can connect to these non-physical minds, often when we aren’t
even aware of doing so. We seem to be in continuous connections with those
who are on our particular wave-length. This is what some people call
guidance. Yet there will be a core group of contacts that connects to what
is most deeply you. ****

I call my core group “the guys upstairs” (TGU), and neither they nor I see
any advantage in my putting them on a pedestal. We have the same kind of
easy, joking relationship that I have with many of my embodied friends. I
would suggest that you think of your own guys upstairs as friends who drop
in or out of conversations depending on whether they have anything to add.
We don’t necessarily know at any given time who is participating, because
different individuals fade in or out depending what’s going on. Different
particular interests elicit different minds, just as in ordinary life. From
time to time our TGU may include relatives, friends, “past lives” – and
perhaps famous people with whom we have certain resonance, or with whom we
share a certain task.****

A very important thing to keep in mind: When we are in connection with
other minds, they know what we know. Thus, Hemingway knows about Star Trek.
That is, he knows what *I* know about Star Trek. When he connects with
others, he knows what *they* know. Minds on the other side are no longer
bound to one time and space as we seem to be. (I say “seem to be” because
in fact our minds are as non-physical, hence as unbounded, as theirs. But
we are tethered to a body that repeatedly brings us back to a focus in one
space, one time.)****

So who are we interacting with? It isn’t always possible to know, and it
isn’t always necessary to know. A message has to stand on its own, to
resonate or not, rather than lean on someone’s presumed authority.
Sometimes I recognize the presence of Carl Jung or Ernest Hemingway or
another specific individual, but I try to remain aware that what I think I
know may or may not be true. I proceed on that understanding, and so should
you. ****

.4.****

The conversations with Hemingway and others that make up this book occurred
between the years 2006 and 2011, inclusive -- with most of it coming in the
last seven months of 2010. Mostly it came in sessions of about an hour to
an hour and a half. I would sit down with my journal and sometimes pose a
question, sometimes merely indicate my availability, and would write what
welled up, and would respond to that, much like a normal conversation with
someone in the body. ****

The material did not come in the same order that Hemingway’s life was
lived, nor for quite a while did I realize that a book was intended. Our
conversations skipped around, sometimes examining this aspect of his life,
sometimes that aspect, sometimes in one session connecting bits of his life
that were widely separated in years. I tried three different ways of
arranging the material. For a while I thought it should be divided into
three themes: his life, his work, and the myth. Then I thought to arrange
it chronologically as much as possible, to follow the life as he had lived
it. Then I thought to arrange it according to a different chronology,
presenting it in the order it had been given to me.****

Each way had its disadvantages, mostly because the conversations skipped
around so much even during the same session. To arrange it by themes
sometimes meant that to put a session where it logically belonged, I would
have to leave another part of the same session where it did *not* belong,
or would have to break the session into two or more parts, with some loss
of clarity.  To arrange it by the chronology of Hemingway’s life resulted
in conspicuous gaps and unevenness – for, after all, this is neither a
biography nor an autobiography – and did not assist in placing many large
sections that could have gone in any of several places, or (because they
were too conceptually abstract) in none at all. So finally, with
reservations, I decided to present the material in the order it had come to
me – that is, chronologically according to the date of the session. This
prevented the kind of confusion that arises when things are presented out
of order. ****

More importantly, though, it gave a better sense of how the relationship
gradually developed, for *the process itself* is at the heart of this book.
This series of conversations provides one example of how to learn to
communicate with the other side. That’s one reason why I have left in some
of the perplexities, hesitations, obstacles and fears that I had to work
through. (I did silently edit both my entries and those of others to
enhance clarity. As the guys upstairs told me long ago, the aim is not to
produce words to be treated as scripture, but to provide increased
understanding of whatever we happen to be talking about.) ****

You will notice that I have made no attempt to dramatize either the
information or the process of obtaining it. I don’t know of any single
factor that has done more to discredit the whole business of such
communication than this over-dramatization that so often happens. I’m with
Jack Webb (“Dragnet’s” Sergeant Friday): “Just the facts, ma’am.” The facts
are dramatic enough; they don’t need enhancement. It would be like making a
big drama over somebody talking on the telephone.****

One more thing. The Hemingway I connected to is not the entire person, any
more than anyone is the entire person to anyone, ever. We relate to each
other according to who we each are. Some traits and interests are shared,
some are not. There never has been and never will be a relationship without
mystery. How could there be? Thus the Hemingway I met was not the hunter
and fisherman – the outdoorsman in general – nor the *bon vivant* or the
cut-throat competitor. Those are not the traits I possess. It isn’t that
these traits do not have their legitimate place in his life; it is merely
that they were not part of the common language we spoke in the way that
literature and writing and art and other things were. So, even if you
accept this book at face value as a genuine communication from Hemingway,
you must not expect it to be the final word. Any new combination of traits
that contacted him would encounter a somewhat different person. And this is
as it should be.****

I no longer get up before dawn, eager to have a talk with Papa Hemingway,
as I did for so many happy, fulfilling months. I miss that, but life goes
on. The very process of putting together the book imposed some distance,
but in any case our shared task was accomplished, as best we could
accomplish it, and so he and I have moved on to other things. But what a
gift, my God! To spend so much time talking to Hemingway, and Jung, and
even Abraham Lincoln, and to do so not as acolyte but as co-worker – what a
wonderful experience!****

This won’t be the book that Gertrude Stein wished she could read, but
you’ll get at least a little of that here, Hemingway’s commentary on
Hemingway (and other things), from the life we come to by way of the grave.
****

** **

** **

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-- 
Harold K. Bush, Ph.D
Professor of English
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, MO  63108
314-977-3616 (w); 314-771-6795 (h)
<www.slu.edu/x23809.xml>



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