Nathan Mathewson Shippee
AWAKENING AWARENESS
During the course of preparing for publication, many personal interviews were made in a test of the present stage of awareness of an individual’s sense of self, of who the “I am” really is. These interviews were generally spontaneous, conducted in a natural setting during a conversation in which I would take advantage of a pause and quietly say:
“I am going to ask you three questions which will change your awareness of who you really are. You will simply give me one-word answers, and by doing so you will begin to think of yourself in a new way.
First: Are you more than a body?
Yes, I am more than a body”
Second: Since you are more than a body, what is the “more?”
What is the “more” than my body? My Soul.
Third: Since your soul is “more” than your body—think now—are you a body with a soul, or are you a soul in a body? Which has domain, your body or your soul?
Which is the real you?
(Longer pause)
Most replied by saying “I am a soul in a body.”
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“With” or “in” is determinative, and the one you choose, like a fork in the road, will control your path ahead.
If one chooses “with,” it is an admission that Darwin is right; we are Homo sapiens, intelligent animals descended from the ape. As Donald Trump said, “Life is what you do when you are waiting to die.”
If one chooses “in,” then one believes we cannot die. We are Human Beings, ascended from within, on the earth but not of it, destined to graduate when our bodies die and we return to the universe from whence we came as Souls in the form of radiant energy.
The key to the fork in the road is awareness, for we become as we think. Who we think we are is that which we become. Descended from the ape or ascended from within, there is magic in the awakening of awareness of who is in control during our time of life on earth, and the personal awareness of who “I am” ignites the presence of enthusiasm within us—entheos: God within.
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BEING . . . is Nathan Shippee’s autobiography of his Soul following his out-of-body experience.
Nathan Mathewson Shippee is an entrepreneurial banker. He is also the founder of The Human Being Foundation, an inventor, an archeologist, and an author of philosophical essays. His book BEING, The Radiant Force Within, The Autobiography of My Soul was preceded by BECOMING, Coming Into Being and THE HUMAN BEING.
Mr. Shippee was born on May 1, 1919 in Providence, Rhode Island, has four children and five grandchildren, and lives with his wife, Patricia, in Old Lyme, Connecticut.
In 1963, I was age 44, a principal on Wall Street with the usual “toys” of a successful entrepreneur – a coal mine in Kentucky, a spread of oil wells in seven states, a computerized telephone monitoring system for corporations, a mutual fund for oil exploration and a listing on the American Stock Exchange. I had a six-acre spread in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was married with four children. There was not a cloud in the sky. The horizon was unlimited.
On July 3rd, all the basics changed in the aftermath of the crash of a Martin 404 Mohawk Airliner after taking off from the Rochester Airport at the start of a tornado coming in from Lake Erie. From the time of the crash and for the next five years, the meaning of what had happened churned within me as a I wrestled with the Soul-stretching questions of my out-of-body experience: Who is this new Me? How can I tell others? Will anyone understand? Can I still do what I did before?
That the Rochester airplane crash spawned an epiphany for me is without doubt, but at what point did it happen is in doubt. Was it the out-of-body separation of my Soul from my body when I was flung out of the plane at the crash site, or was it at home five days later when I established a new relationship with my “earth-vehicle” as a Soul-in-a-body, a living Soul within?
The notion of domain was not clear to me at that time. Everything was happening in slow motion, not by the hour or day but by weeks and months.
Surviving the disastrous air crash was not the only turbulent experience I had, but it was the first in a civilian capacity and without preparation. Twenty years earlier, I participated in three landings as a “beach master” at Casablanca, Salerno and Southern France during World War II, and later witnessed the chaotic revolution in
