Divide by Zero: A Spiritual Autobiography of Greg Roach

I think the best place to start is with my late adolescence – around age 10 or so. That’s when I first pursued an independent path of spiritual exploration.

I was raised as a tepid Episcopalian. We hit church for all the biggies: Xmas, Easter, funerals, etc. But God didn’t intrude much beyond that.

At the age of 10, I started working on my “God and Country” merit badge in the Boy Scouts. This triggered an explosion of interest and involvement in “my” church: Grace Episcopal in Alvin, Texas. I became an altar boy, learned to assist during communion and eventually became the lead altar boy – managing the other boys and assisting the priest during communions, christenings and other special ceremonies.

All this was to the consternation of my parents. It seemed strange, for a teenaged boy to want to go to church. They also hated getting out of bed on a Sunday morning to drive me in to town. If I were a little more typical, they might have slept-in.

For my part, I loved the ritual and the quiet and the solemnity of church. A southern Baptist revival meeting it wasn’t, but it struck a deep and hidden chord within me.

But I didn’t love God. Not that I can really recall. I just took him, and my ideas about him, rather for granted. All this changed, explosively, at the age of 17, my senior year of high school. Within a few months of graduation three things occurred in quick succession that would, ultimately, unseat my inheritance of vague notions about that thing called God.

First, my girlfriend dumped me. Trivial enough, unless you’re a 17-year-old boy who’s never kissed, loved, or made love with, any other woman. Then it becomes a tragedy of Grecian magnitude. One week later, my entire family (except me), was involved in a horrendous, disfiguring automobile accident. This rocked me to my core. Confused, alone, frightened and heartbroken, I tried to keep up with my schoolwork, serve as a proxy adult for my family and nurse my shattered psyche.

The ordeal of the ensuing week culminated when my dog – the only surviving memento from my girlfriend, and my one remaining family member not in the hospital – was run over by a large truck and killed.

In hindsight, when this happened I think I must have had what you’d call a nervous breakdown.

I screamed and cursed at God. I called him some very bad names. Right there on the side of the highway where my dog was killed. And then, in the middle of all this, it suddenly hit me: “Who the fuck am I talking to? THERE’S NO ONE OUT THERE.” Kablooey.

Here endeth phase one.

After a few years of flat-out atheism, my center of gravity began to drift back toward its natural set point. And once I again opened the door to belief. I ran through as fast as I could and just kept on going, devouring every philosophy and system of thought I could get my brain on. I took numerous philosophy classes, chewing through most of Western philosophy, from Aristotle to William James. While my teacher, Mr. Aboulafia, was guiding me through exoteric European philosophy, I was pursuing my own, extracurricular program: immersing myself in the Koran (a gift from a Muslim butcher from Boston named Samir Ismael – but that’s a different story), Carlos Castaneda, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Gurdjieff, Rumi and other transcendental poetry (Blake, Rilke, Whitman). It was about this time I first experienced the effects of entheogens (look it up .

But while I spent years gorging myself on every far-flung philosophy I could find, I was never satisfied. Indeed, the more I consumed, the hungrier I became. Eventually, I sought out increasingly esoteric fare as the only means to provide the real substance (sustenance?) I had been seeking.

This phase culminated when I joined A.M.O.R.C. (Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis) in early 1997. The Rosicrucian system offered me the first synthesis point in all my learning; tying together disparate threads, bridging the ancient and the modern and encouraging the student to become a “walking question mark.” At last I had found a metaphysical system that laid out the real stuff I had been craving: cosmology, esoteric psychology, spirituality, subtle energies, healing.

After about 9 months of this study, I joined a Rosicrucian trip to Egypt. And this set the stage for my “act two plot point” – while visiting the Osirion in Abydos I had another psyche-shattering experience, this time in the form of a spontaneous, all-encompassing out-of-body vision. After a brief meditation, I stood up into a shaft of light that from an opening in the ceiling. This triggered the most massive change in consciousness I have ever experienced. My sense of the external world fell completely away and I stood in the presence of an ineffable, unexplainable, glory. To my inner eye it took the form of an infinitely recursive living electric fire. I was laughing and crying at the same time. My mind was filled to overflowing with the most remarkable awareness – a glimpse behind the veil and a true experience of the fundamental unity of life.

 
Here’s a visual representation of what I experienced. Some of you will recognize the Flower of Life – that’s what I saw – the Flower of Life as ultimate living mind. The audio is toning recorded in the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid.

It was utterly overwhelming. When I could hold no more, I tore myself away (it was that or, it seemed, die). I was dazed, euphoric. Everything around me glowed from within. But deep behind this was a terrifying awareness: “Who the fuck am I? THERE’S NO ONE IN HERE.” Kablooey.

Here endeth phase two.

And the hits just kept on coming. The elation of that afternoon suddenly flowered into a full-blown “memory” of a past life lived in Abydos in a time well before the age of the Pharaohs. Actually, “memory” is far too weak a word for what I experienced. I was channeling information from my higher self with all the clarity and detail of a feature film. I wrote and remembered for days on end, completely filling a journal with this information about a distant highly advanced culture. All this seemed deeply alien to me. Despite my early tottering steps into the esoteric, I was still grounded and sleeping. I didn’t believe crazy things like Atlantis or channeling. I knew literally nothing about sacred geometry. I doubted the idea of reincarnation.

This dazzling, mind-boggling peak of the journey became, upon my return home, a 6G roller coaster drop into the deepest pits of personal despair. I was utterly depressed and unable to function. I understand now that any system, after so massive an influx of energy and information, must normalize and stabilize. I also see now that this began my “dark night of the soul.” But hindsight is bright, and at the time the experience was debilitating and terrifying. What had happened to me? Why? What did I do with it? What did it mean? My experiences left me with an overwhelming sense of obligation – yet I had no guideposts as to how to meet this nebulous feeling of responsibility.

Just before I left for Egypt, the multimedia company which I founded had finished our largest, most ambitious project, “The X-Files Game” which we created for Fox. Upon my return, I had nearly a hundred people looking to me for leadership and direction that I could no longer provide. Instead, I threw myself into my further education – reading, studying, and trying to understand – much to the detriment of the successful company that I had spent the previous decade building.

As Dickens said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” On the one hand, a vast new world had opened up to me and I was exploring it at a breakneck pace. At the same time my business (and personal life) was spinning increasingly out of control and my emotional state deteriorated right along with it. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed and went on antidepressants. I started psychotherapy. If I did not have support, and medical intervention, I surely would have taken my own life.

I began to travel the globe: Egypt (again), Jerusalem and Israel, Greece, Glastonbury and Wiltshire in Southern England, Bulgaria, all over Europe. I began to undertake self-directed pilgrimages to sacred sites. I studied voraciously: sacred geometry, ancient religions, initiation, Gnosticism, alchemy. I began work with energy, healing, past lives.

My business and personal lives continued to spin further out of control as they became increasingly out of cadence with my interior direction. In short order, external events began to conspire as well: the internet crashed, we shuttered 90% of our business and moved from Seattle to LA to start over, 9/11 hit… Kablooey again.

I began a series of classes at a New Thought center in LA, Agape. This became the second point of grand synthesis in my learning. And it was here that, after nearly eight years, my dark night of the soul came to an end. During a group session I suddenly found myself experiencing another revelatory state of unity consciousness: looking out from eight pairs of eyes at the same time.

After the class I stepped out into the afternoon sunshine to realize that finally the dawn had come. The knowing was now mine through direct experience: I was an immortal soul. There truly was one life. One mind. The Divine is fully present right here and right now. I am a vehicle for its experience and expression.

But wait. There’s more.

About four years ago, I began to channel (with my partner, Halle, as facilitator) a group of discarnate intelligences often called The Great White Brotherhood or, as they call themselves to me, The White Lodge.

They started to give me assignments. I began to guide groups to Egypt on initiatory pilgrimages. For six months prior to the last national election, I ran a series of guided group meditations as an internet blog called “Meditations for America.” I launched a podcast on spiritual travel and sacred sites called “Spirit of Place.” I re-launched “Meditations for America” as an ongoing audio podcast with an expanded agenda to retool American consciousness.

Then in June of 2006, they dictated an incendiary document:
“All of the old religions must be thrown off. These structures and philosophies and systems of thought have become a great hindrance to the further evolution of humanity.”

Holy shit.

This group, The White Lodge, had a revolutionary agenda and they expected me to help. But I couldn’t get my hands fully on it. It was like I was trapped underwater, beneath a sheet of ice. I could understand where I needed to be, but I had no idea how to break through to it. I experienced terrible fear and anxiety around this. I didn’t want to be involved with this; I just wanted to go back to being my ordinary self. But where was this resistance coming from? And how was I to overcome it?

The answer would come as suddenly and dramatically as you’ve probably come to expect. Halle and I were on vacation in Hawaii and visiting an old friend who had guided us through a lot of past life regressions over the years. Rather than do any “formal” work, we simply sat and talked about my situation. In the middle of the conversation I suddenly remembered a previous incarnation as a “prophet” that ended in betrayal and death. Okay. I had found the source of my resistance! Wow that was easy. No remembered pain. No relived trauma.

Ha ha. Nice try, but not so fast, mister.

That night, sitting on my hotel bed, it all came rushing back to me with a visceral power that was truly shocking. Suddenly I was doubled over – living through the memory of being disemboweled. Publicly murdered. I relived it all: pain, mortal anguish, betrayal, the moment of death and the peace and relief that follow the soul’s release from the body.

No wonder I was so resistant. The last time I accepted one of these assignments it seems to have ended rather badly. I came out of that night’s experience with a new awareness: they have a message and I have come here because, like so many others of us, I agreed to help deliver it.