Echo Bodine is a teacher, spiritual healer, and one of America's preeminent psychics, featured nationally on TV and in other media. Many organizations, including Paramount Pictures, use Echo as a con- sultant on psychic phenomena. She had led workshops throughout the country, and is the author of Hands that Heal and Passion to Heal. She has an extensive practice of consulting and healing and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

As we go through the journey of our life, there are many times that A we have questions that we pray to have answered, questions that deal with the very essence of who we are. Is there truly a spiritual world, or is it the creation of poets and mystics? If there is a spiritual world, what is our relationship to that other dimension? Are we mortals, whose existence is confined to our earth experience, or are we souls that God has granted immortality and eternal life?

For over 1,600 years religious teachers have tried to persuade us that we only have one life to live, that salvation and redemption can only be achieved through their churches and that there is a punishing God who will condemn your soul to eternal suffering if you do not abide by the dog- mas and doctrines that they are preaching to us. But a spiritual conscious- ness is spreading throughout the world today. More and more people are recognizing that their minds are the gateway to their hearts and souls, and they are now opening the gates to allow information to come into the hearts and souls that five years ago would not have been available.

I was seventeen years old when I discovered that I was born with psychic abilities and the gift of healing, and it took me completely by surprise. Nothing in my mainstream midwestern upbringing, except maybe the voice I heard throughout my childhood, indicated that I or the other members of my family had paranormal abilities.

It all started one night in the fall of 1965 when one of my brothers, who was in the beginning stages of learning to play the drums, went down to the den to practice. My parents, my sister, my other brother, and I had just finished dinner and were still sitting around the table.

My brother played his amateurish best for about five minutes. Then suddenly the clanking noise stopped and beautiful music came from the den. We all looked at Dad, thinking he could somehow explain. But Dad said it must be the Sandy Nelson record he had bought my brother, although we could tell that Dad wasn't convinced, either.