Zap on Coast-to-Coast AM (today, 9/9) and other news

The online version of this newsletter will look way better:

http://zaporacle.com/zap-on-coast-to-coast-am-and-other-news/

I will be on Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory this Wednesday night Sept. 9th (actually very early on the morning of Sept. 10th) midnight to 2AM PST, 1AM-3AM MST, 2AM-4AM CST, 3AM-5AM EST). Coast is the world’s most listened to late night show carried by close to 600 stations in North America.

Go here to find a station near you: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/stations or to stream live through Iheart Radio or most of the stations carrying the show. The archived version will only be available to Coast subscribers.

If you are a Coast subscriber you can find the archive of my six appearances on the show here: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/zap-jonathan/6473

Here’s the description from the Coast website of what we will be talking about:

“Paranormal researcher and philosopher Jonathan Zap reveals how telepathy, UFOs, and near death experiences (NDEs) can be explained and why he believes that NDEs are not a brain-based event, but a non-local event. He’ll also address the amazing technological advances toward singularity, which will lead to a quantum shift in human consciousness.”

I will also be doing free dream interpretation and Zap Oracle readings at the Symbiosis festival September 17-20^th. My friend Rob Brezsny will be doing his legendary “Sacred Uproar” performance there (not performed in public since 2008).

I know it’s been an incredibly long time since I sent out a newsletter, but I have been preoccupied with a number of major life shifts. My mom, Bernice Zap, crossed the event horizon at age 91 in March: http://zaporacle.com/bernice-zap-at-90/ Condolences are not necessary. She led a very full life and exactly the way she wanted to, able to live independently with all her faculties right up to the day of the stroke. I was fortunate to spend the week before the stroke with her and was there for her remaining time post-stroke.

PHOTO CAPTION: My mom, sitting in her walker in her house with about two weeks before the stroke with her neighbor, a young chess champion.

As with my dad’s death in 2012, there were mystical aspects that reinforced my perception of death as  the great portal, an event horizon that may feel like an emergency to embodied egos, but may be more of an emergence for the soul.

In late February, a friend of mine was driving me to Tucson where I was going to do research for my fantasy epic,  Parallel Journeys, which has portions that take place in Tucson and in nearby Oracle, Arizona, the location of Biosphere 2, which is the setting for another major part of the book. I was reading aloud to him from Parallel Journeys, a part where a dingy apartment in the lower astral plane (an afterlife plane) is described. The reading was interrupted by a call from my mom (Bernice). Her doctors had unexpectedly decided to do the hernia surgery they had been considering much sooner than expected and she asked if I could come to the Bronx during that time. I told her I would arrange the flight as soon as we got to Tucson and Wi-Fi access.

Bernice was optimistic about the surgery, but also wanted to discuss a series of dreams she had that she believes were about the afterlife. In the one that she could remember the most distinctly, she is being given a tour of a beautiful facility, with wonderful architecture. There were colors she hadn’t seen before, and there was also a lovely apartment that was being provided for her. She had a young male companion with her who was concerned about the cost of staying at the facility. Bernice is explaining to him that there is no money where they are and that everything is provided for free.

Again, she interpreted the dream herself as about the afterlife. Near-death experiencers (I’ve researched this topic for many years and it is a major section of my book, Crossing the Event Horizon) commonly report being in beautiful environments where they see colors they haven’t seen before. Some also report awareness of a free abundance of beautiful things, and that thought or intention (rather than money) is sufficient to manifest desired objects. The timing of her dream report to coincide exactly with my reading a portion of Parallel Journeys that describes an apartment in a darker afterlife region seems highly synchronistic.

During Bernice’s final days I created an online page where friends and family could log in to get updates on her condition. I wrote the three paragraphs above when it was clear that the end was very close.

At the exact moment I hit “update” on her status page to post the above entry, a hospice worker came to me to tell me that her breathing was slowing. A few hours before, as we stood around my mom’s bedside, we discussed how to contact Carol, the day-shift hospice worker in case she didn’t have to come in (since the end was so close).  Carol told us repeatedly that 5AM was the best time to call her to catch her before she left her home for the subway.

Bernice took her last breath at exactly 5AM. This seems so characteristic of her, able to hold on long enough for the family to reassemble and punctual to the minute to make sure she didn’t inconvenience anyone else.

When Bernice called me to tell me that her surgery had been rescheduled and that she had been having a series of dreams about the afterlife, she also told me that the day of her surgery was March fourth and at the time I was struck by an eerie sense of the potential symbolism of that date because “March fourth” is a also a kind of pun with “March Forth!” (I was particularly struck by this correspondence because a few years ago I wrote something entitled “March Forth!—A Mutant Manifesto” which could be the title of the extraordinary image I discovered and photographed the morning after my dad’s funeral (see below).

For more on how this uncanny optical effect appeared please go to Nathan Zap’s memorial page.  

I feel that Bernice was aware on some level that this was the time to “March Forth!” and it was clearly indicated by her dreams.

There were also a couple of strange details about the day she had her stroke. The day she came home from Mount Sinai following the hernia surgery—and once again she was as sharp as ever and in good spirits—I physically put her Lifeline Medic Alert Pendant on her. She was well aware of the importance of keeping it on even while bathing. When she was found, however, the pendant was not on her (and was never found anywhere in the house) and also the door to her bedroom was locked which was not her custom. It was as if she were trying to ensure that no one interfered with the opportunity to March Forth!

This huge transition brought many other major life changes for me. My dad was an amazingly gifted collector of antiques and all sorts of intriguing things. Long before the term “steam punk” was coined, he collected all sorts of archaic technology such as mechanical computers that had no utilitarian value for him, but had amazing build quality. My parent’s house in the Bronx was like a four-floor version of an Indiana Jones warehouse, packed with intriguing objects. Dealing with all this stuff has been, and continues to be, a monumental task. Mountains of contractor-grade trash bags full of stuff not worth keeping had to be disposed of. The valuable stuff had to be taken to Boulder where I recently bought a house (an inheritance came with the transition).

There was a Bernice-related synchronicity involved with my new house. I had a distinct feeling when I went to house showing that she approved of it and just as this feeling came up I saw that a red bird, a rare type I’ve never seen before was perched on the patio fence.  When I went to the house closing I learned from the previous owners ( a couple)  that they googled my name and were shocked when they read about my mom. Each of their mothers was also named Bernice (even spelled the same) and one of them also lost their mom Bernice in 2015 at age 91!

I also bought a new Sprinter van that I’ve used to take five trips so far from the Bronx to Boulder with giant loads of stuff. A sixth, and hopefully final trip is planned for late September. (In October the Sprinter will be converted to a camper and will become my mobile home as well as my all-purpose vehicle).

This work has been made more arduous by an accident that happened on March fourth, the day of my mom’s surgery. With a cab waiting outside the house, I was carrying my mom’s heavy walker down the marble front steps. An ice storm the night before had glazed the steps with an invisible, super-slippery coating of ice. With my mom looking on in horror, I fell while carrying the walker and my lower back took the full impact. There was an explosion of color and fiery pain, but after a couple of stunned moments I found I was able to struggle to my feet and was still able to assist my mom getting down the icy steps.

Since this accident, I have had a chronic case of sciatica. I’m still able to function, but walking and standing is often quite painful. An X-Ray showed that nothing was broken, but insurance won’t allow an MRI because I’m not interested in surgery. The good news is that there is zero pain while sitting or lying down and that includes while pedaling a bike so I can still do cardio workouts cycling outside or using my Aerodyne machine inside. Continuous movement often helps, but unfortunately since the accident I’ve been doing everything that would slow or prevent recovery—lifting heavy things, sitting for three days at time during the commutes back and forth from Bronx and Boulder.

Meanwhile I’ve still been doing some sporadic writing of articles and work on a massive revision of Parallel Journeys (<<use this link to see the new version of chapter one I posted today) While a complete text of Parallel Journeys was finished around the start of the year, during three early-morning sessions in April I had downloads of how to make every aspect of the book better by doing a massive revision. I’ve been sporadically working on that ever since with my editor, Austin Iredale (best known as successful actor).

I’ve now occupied my new home for six days and am working on the massive unpacking and setting up of the new place. Once all the dust has settled, I will no longer need to work a day job (working with stuff has basically been my day and night job since late March) and will then be able to greatly increase the time and energy I can devote to writing.

Obviously I have been dealing with first-world problems, and have no complaints, but only gratitude for the blessings I have received. I’m not soliciting sympathetic feedback, only catching everyone up on what’s going on and why my output of new articles and newsletters, etc. has been so low.

Meanwhile, webmaster extraordinaire Tanner Dery (need a website, trouble shooting, graphics? email [email protected] —superb quality and work ethic) has been making enhancements on the Zap Oracle website and a code-writing genius has been working on a greatly enhanced APP version that will work on both Iphone and Android.

I have posted some new work since the last newsletter on Reality Sandwich and on Zap Oracle. In April I did a dialogue with writer/director Alex Garland about his new visionary masterpiece film, Ex Machina, and its connection to the Singularity Archetype. See: Ex Machina—Are Homo sapiens failing the Turing Test?—A Dialogue between Alex Garland (writer/director of Ex Machina) and Jonathan Zap

I also wrote an article for Reality Sandwich entitled, The Demonization and Deification of Cannabis—Sex, Drugs and Enantiadromia which is about hidden meanings in our shifting attitudes toward sex and drugs.

If you want to follow more of my work, check out Reality Sandwich where 70 of my articles are posted. For more frequent updates friend one of both of my two Facebook pages (look for Jonathan Zap or Zap Oracle). If you have any comments you can send them to [email protected].