Mega-kook New Ager. M Schiavo's death dealing lawyer George Felos.

Holy cow! This lawyer Felos is a New Age nut case. He has somehow perverted yoga and other ancient religions into meshing with the kill'em (the disabled) ethos of Scientology

“As a spiritual aspirant for close to twenty-five years with definite monastic tendencies, my friends don’t understand how I survive within the aggressive and often highly negative energies of the courtroom.” (x)

“The urge behind this book is to encourage and impel you to utilize your life’s endeavor, whatever it may be, to its highest purpose – to move from making a living from your work, to having your work make you more alive.” (xi)

In the acknowledgments section, Felos notes that he has drawn from a wide range of spiritual teachers and teachings, with particular acknowledgment to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Throughout the book, Felos cites Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Native American and other spiritual traditions from which he draws his views.

Felos describes himself as a “crusader” for the “right-to-die” in chapter 21, where he also admits to enjoying his status as a news celebrity, describing it as “exhilarating” to see himself on television. (217) Later he writes, “I was getting pretty good at trying my case in the media and shaping public opinion. … Developing a good ‘sound bite’ helped, but so did the media’s support of the cause. Some of my best quotes appeared on the editorial pages.” (238) Responding to media requests after Gov. Martinez vetoed (July 3, 1989) the bill permitting the removal feeding tubes which was initiated by the Browning case and moved along with the assistance of a “powerful state senator from Jacksonville” (230), Felos writes, “…there I was on the holiday news—Mrs. Browning’s white knight, stalwart at his covered desk, intently crafting her plea of last hope to the Supreme Court. Did I love it! And given the strenuous effort, I much appreciated the positive reinforcement.” (242)

Chapter 22, “Collective Consciousness and the Fear of Death,” has an extensive discussion of the hospice movement which Felos is deeply involved in, noting, “The force that created today’s Hospice also propels the right-to-die movement. We sense that keeping one alive against his wishes—artificially perpetuating the body once the spirit is ready to depart—is a defilement of life’s final rite of passage. It appeared so obvious to me that the ability to die with dignity, as that term is defined by each individual, is an essential personal right.” (223)

When describing the “cathartic releases” of “blocks of my unconscious past” from his body (20), Felos describes the process: “As these unprocessed experiences entered my throat, I often felt absolute, unimaginable terror—like I was being murdered, hacked to bits. One time I could actually feel a long blade plunging into my chest; another time I could smell the dank, putrid odor of an attacker. Other dark cells brought on indescribably intense grief and its accompanying pain, as if a beloved child of mine were dying. … Although the passage of a cell through the throat seemed to take an eternity, in relative time, the process usually elapsed in less than fifteen minutes. Once the block was experienced and discharged, I often noticed a feeling of lightness, as if a dead weight had been lifted. I also sensed an interior spaciousness, sometimes so vast, I felt as if I could rise like a helium balloon. Sometimes after a release I would feel a joy and peace, a homecoming, like the prodigal son returning to the abode of the Father after a long, wayward journey. This experience of integration, bringing into awareness that part of me previously excluded, was also occasionally followed by a period of insight. Here, the truth of why the past event occurred and how its suppression had shaped my personality (sometimes over numerous lifetimes), was reveled to me.” (20-21)

FULL TEXT of Baptist website's exposure of
George Felos' freaky book

http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/1782/article
Note: Page references follow in parentheses. Brackets [ ] indicate Smith's editorial comments about the relevant passage or clarify Felos' emphases in the original (usually concerning the use of italics or use or lack of use of capitalization).
“As a spiritual aspirant for close to twenty-five years with definite monastic tendencies, my friends don’t understand how I survive within the aggressive and often highly negative energies of the courtroom.” (x)
“The urge behind this book is to encourage and impel you to utilize your life’s endeavor, whatever it may be, to its highest purpose – to move from making a living from your work, to having your work make you more alive.” (xi)
In the acknowledgments section, Felos notes that he has drawn from a wide range of spiritual teachers and teachings, with particular acknowledgment to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. Throughout the book, Felos cites Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Native American and other spiritual traditions from which he draws his views.
“While we continue to struggle with the ever-increasing pace of change, some of which feels so wrenching, we also are accessing the changeless and eternal with greater frequency and ability. This evolution of consciousness, our ultimate salvation, has even begun to be felt in small ways in the legal system. I hope this book plays some small part in that evolution.” (xiv)
In July 1991, Felos took-up a two-month residence at a yoga center “where I lived and worked essentially as a monk,” four months after his marital separation. The prior year, 1990, he argued the landmark Florida right-to-die case in the Florida Supreme Court. (4)
When commenting on his marital separation – “Throughout the process of our breaking apart, the pain and torment I suffered was tempered, no, made more bearable, by the first principle of spiritual life: we are the creators of our own reality; what we experience we have attracted to ourselves; our perception of the outer world is a reflection of our inner self.” (7)
“In the world of spirit every moment holds the possibility of transcendence. Understanding of the truth is helpful. While mental knowledge doesn’t, by itself, bring us in touch with spirit, it can lead the way. Right knowledge helps to foster right intention, which helps in developing right attitude and action. For me, transcendence is a matter of Grace [Felos’ capitalization]. It is not gained or earned, it is bestowed. What we can do is prepare a fertile field, be receptive, and when we are the recipients of Grace, be grateful. I don’t mean to say that some divine entity parsimoniously parcels out transcendence. What I mean is that spiritual unfoldment is something you can’t force. You open like a flower. Self-emanation is not something you achieve but that which you relax into. Our natural state is Grace. You can’t make it happen, you let it happen.” (8)
When describing the “cathartic releases” of “blocks of my unconscious past” from his body (20), Felos describes the process: “As these unprocessed experiences entered my throat, I often felt absolute, unimaginable terror—like I was being murdered, hacked to bits. One time I could actually feel a long blade plunging into my chest; another time I could smell the dank, putrid odor of an attacker. Other dark cells brought on indescribably intense grief and its accompanying pain, as if a beloved child of mine were dying. … Although the passage of a cell through the throat seemed to take an eternity, in relative time, the process usually elapsed in less than fifteen minutes. Once the block was experienced and discharged, I often noticed a feeling of lightness, as if a dead weight had been lifted. I also sensed an interior spaciousness, sometimes so vast, I felt as if I could rise like a helium balloon. Sometimes after a release I would feel a joy and peace, a homecoming, like the prodigal son returning to the abode of the Father after a long, wayward journey. This experience of integration, bringing into awareness that part of me previously excluded, was also occasionally followed by a period of insight. Here, the truth of why the past event occurred and how its suppression had shaped my personality (sometimes over numerous lifetimes), was reveled to me.” (20-21)
Also discussing the pain of his marital break-up, Felos talks about the rage he felt at times: “No amount of water could douse the fire of the rage I was experiencing—rage at my wife, rage built up over years held tightly in control, rage of lifetimes of human suffering.” (26)
After his “weekend from Hell” in which he dealt with the pain of his marital separation, Felos describes entering a “profound state of Grace” by Monday morning. (30) “I experienced with gratitude and unsurpassed joy what the scriptures [his lower case “s”] describe as birthless, eternal, perpetual, primeval—that which weapons do not pierce, fire does not burn, water does not wet nor the wind cause to wither. In this reality, so grounded in the truth that your essence is the eternal unchangeable God, you become the sky. You become the stage upon which the play and dance of creation unfolds, without identifying with the manifestations of creation. In this state I experience a different relationship with my mind. … Grace feels like your ‘higher self’ stepping on the clutch—the gear of the mind lifts and disengages, and it loses all authority over you.” (30-31)
“This autonomy from mental control is characteristic of how events and emotions are encountered during Grace. … Nothing holds permanent and immutable except the ocean of God’s consciousness from which and upon which the forms of Divine consciousness play. Life in Grace is a succession of these unfolding moments. Whether the next moment brings death or a fortune is irrelevant because nothing that can happen can ever harm or hurt you, or improve or make you better. In reality you have never been born and never can die. You are the expression of the Divine.” (31-32)
“If we are infinitely large, if the Divine within us, which is [his italics] us, contains all of creation, what can be taken from us and who is there to take it?” (32) [This passage sounds a bit like the Apostle Paul: “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31-39)].
“Most times we live and modulate within a continuum having on one end full remembrance of our Divine self, and on the other, complete forgetfulness.” (32)
After months of prayer and trying to understand his separation and why his marriage did not work: “Now, before my mind’s eye, this truth emerged. When the puzzle was complete I stood in awe. I perceived with clarity who we were in relation to each other and why we chose to take our path of marriage. I saw our souls prior to this incarnation discussing what each needed to learn in this birth, and in compassion and love for each other agree to take this journey. As firmly and unshakably as I have ever known anything, I knew what had been revealed to me was the truth. I lay in bed that night in the darkness drifting towards sleep, marveling at how this tapestry was woven before me the past few days. Then a clear voice softly spoke, saying, ‘This is your prayer answered.’” (34)
Chapter Five, “Death and Resurrection,” describes Felos’ significant spiritual experience during a ten day retreat at the Kirpalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, Mass., in April, 1988. The experience “birthed a personal transformation of immense and unexpected proportions. I came to the retreat in April, 1988, wanting a change in my life and was returning home with my old life vaporized.” (47)
Felos writes that although he experienced his “initial spiritual awakening in my early twenties, I had spent the last few years of my mid-thirties backsliding.” (47)
Described as “a superconscious experience,” Felos writes, “I was drunk with God” resulting in the inability to walk on his own without the assistance of others. “My predominant expression was laughter and a grin just short of it.” (49) “I had imprinted upon me the purpose of life—God-realization—and in the knowing of this purpose came instant fulfillment. Although to some I reckon the above sounds like metaphysical gobbledygook, I will attest there exists a Universal Consciousness that not only can be experienced by us but is us.” (50)
“I lost the boundary between the idea of myself and the world around me and gained immeasurably. Subject and object merged, and in some way I experienced the essence of each thing my consciousness touched. I felt the joy of grass as it grew and sense the genetic code by which it manifested into physical reality. In ecstasy I became the solemn grace and beauty of a tree and new the freedom of the passing clouds. I don’t speak metaphorically.” (50) He then cites Isaiah 55:12. (51)
He describes the same experience with other individuals at the center: “When I perceived and felt someone so completely, I often could hear her thoughts and knew what she was going to say before she said it. It was as if the individual before me was transparent and I could see the person’s form, yet look through it at the same time.” (51)
While on the plane ride home from the retreat, Felos reads a book about “conscious dying” written by a meditation teacher who is active in hospice work, which “described the enormous potential for spiritual awakening, both for the patient and the caregiver, which sometimes is realized during the death process.” (53)
“Scripture says neither hands, nor feet, nor emotion, nor mind, nor body are we. Our death—the permanent separation of our spirit, our consciousness, from the body—if experienced with awareness, can provide the opportunity to dispel the greatest of illusions: that we are this body. The author goes on to describe how meditation and spiritual practice is the process of dying—the means by which we extinguish our ego and body identification and realize we are the expression and manifestation of the Divine. Pretty heady stuff, especially for one who had just died and been reborn, so to speak. I deeply connected with the message of this book, and as I gazed out the window upon the clouds and surface below, I felt death move a bit closer.” (53)
His first legal appointment after returning from the retreat at the yoga center was with Doris F. Herbert, the cousin of Estelle Browning, seeking his assistance in the removal of her feeding tube. (54)
Felos became consumed with yoga and meditation following his retreat, including three or four hours per day to the point that his wife and those close to him were “disturbed by and concerned with my abrupt and radical change and believed I was close to becoming nonfunctional.” (55)
“I had not ‘adopted’ some new philosophy nor decided to ‘operate’ under some new belief system. I was part of a process so compelling that my participation wasn’t optional.” (56)
“The mystics have said that this world, this universe, is nothing but the thought-form of God. In Genesis, God intended that there be light and there was light. Christ fed the multitudes with only a handful of fish, not because he was a sushi master, but because he had the deepest realization that matter is an expression of mind and spirit. This creative power is not exclusive to the Divine, but comes as part of our birthright. We are made in the image of God. This does not refer to having two arms, two legs, and a head. It means that in some way we naturally possess the attributes and qualities of the Universal Consciousness. I believe Christ intended his life on Earth to be an example—a testament of what is possible for us. We are not only instructed to worship God, but to ‘become sons of God’ (John 1:12).” (60, italics in the original).
This discussion occurs in the midst of his description of his first meeting with Mrs. Herbert to discuss the case of Mrs. Browning and his joy with having this kind of legal case to deal with. “After she departed it seemed evident to me that the case, given my recently acquired fascination with death and dying, was a blessing rather than a coincidence.” (61)
Felos visits Mrs. Browning for the first time. Browning, who was radically debilitated by a stroke, was a resident of a nursing home for more than a year and one-half when Mrs. Herbert, her cousin and caregiver, sought to have the feeding tube removed, honoring Mrs. Browning living will.
He writes of his meeting, including a “soul-speak” conversation: “‘Mrs. Browning, do you want to die? … Do you want to die?’—I near shouted as I continued to peer into her pools of strikingly beautiful but incognizant blue. It was so eerie. Her eyes were wide open and crystal clear, but instead of the warmth of lucidity, they burned with the ice of expressionlessness.” (63)
Felos notes that Browning was not in a coma and she was “more than vegetative, as she appeared able at times to interact with her environment in a rudimentary way.” (68)
Chapter Eight, “Soul-Speak”
“As I continued to stay beside Mrs. Browning at her nursing home bed, I felt my mind relax and my weight sink into the ground. I began to feel light-headed as I became more reposed. Although feeling like I could drift into sleep, I also experienced a sense of heightened awareness. As Mrs. Browning lay motionless before my gaze, I suddenly heard a loud, deep moan and scream and wondered if the nursing home personnel heard it and would respond to the unfortunate resident. In the next moment, as this cry of pain and torment continued, I realized it was Mrs. Browning. I felt the mid-section of my body open and noticed a strange quality to the light in the room. I sensed her soul in agony. As she screamed I heard her say, in confusion, ‘Why am I still here … why am I here?’ My soul touched hers and in some way I communicated that she was still locked in her body. I promised I would do everything in my power to gain the release her soul cried for. With that the screaming immediately stopped. I felt like I was back in my head again, the room resumed its normal appearance, and Mrs. Browning, as she had throughout this experience, lay silent.” (73)
“I knew without a doubt what had transpired was real and dispelled the thought as intellect’s attempt to assert its own version of reality.” (73)
As proof of the existence of “soul-speak,” as he calls it, Felos cites an incident with his wife years before concerning their yet-to-be-conceived, unborn son. At this time there was disagreement between he and his wife about whether they should have children. One day at his office, Felos was “hammerstuck. While almost seeing stars like a comic book character, I heard the soul of my yet-to-be-conceived child emphatically shout: ‘I’m ready to be born…will you stop this fooling around!’ … The voice I heard was distinctly male, and I beamed with the idea I had a son—or was going to have a son—or sorta had a son out there—or something like that.” (75) Later, when his wife told him of having a similar experience that day. “I had no doubt we were beneficiaries of the same soul transmission…” (76)
[Later in the book, Felos describes another “soul-speak” conversation with Mrs. Browning the evening before the trial began in which he argued for removing her feeding tube. (216)]
In addition to other implicit and explicit suggestions of Felos’ belief in reincarnation, he discusses his previous existences and/or future existences or lifetimes (106, 138).
In a discussion of the “cosmic law of cause and effect,” Felos argues that we create our own physical realities with our mind, but most people do not understand their own power to change their life’s circumstances – even including the ability to make a new dream car appear “out of the ether.” (178-179) He cites as an example of this power, the biblical account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead because Jesus concentrated solely on that act. “Jesus knew without any shred of doubt whatsoever that through God all things were possible. That is why Lazarus rose, and that same knowing is also why the mountain did come to Mohammed.” (179, italics in original)
Felos illustrates this power in his own life by describing an incident while on a plane during a time when he was engaged in a “right-to-die” case and had become very involved in the hospice movement. He pondered, “I wonder what it would be like to die right now?” and “indulged the thought by imagining the plane starting to lose it trajectory and descend.” The plane did, creating chaos in the cabin as people began to realize the plane was going to crash. “Needless to say, the juxtaposition of my imagined death and the possibility of a real demise heightened for me my different reactions. I assure you, my hubris in assuming that I would meet a life-ending crash with equanimity was not lost on me.” (181-182) The pilot later explained to the passengers that there was an unexplained problem with the auto pilot which caused the momentary descent. “At that instant a clear, distinctly independent and slightly stern voice said to me, ‘Be careful what you think. You are more powerful than you realize.’ In quick succession I was startled, humbled and blessed by God’s admonishment.” (182)
Felos describes himself as a “crusader” for the “right-to-die” in chapter 21, where he also admits to enjoying his status as a news celebrity, describing it as “exhilarating” to see himself on television. (217) Later he writes, “I was getting pretty good at trying my case in the media and shaping public opinion. … Developing a good ‘sound bite’ helped, but so did the media’s support of the cause. Some of my best quotes appeared on the editorial pages.” (238) Responding to media requests after Gov. Martinez vetoed (July 3, 1989) the bill permitting the removal feeding tubes which was initiated by the Browning case and moved along with the assistance of a “powerful state senator from Jacksonville” (230), Felos writes, “…there I was on the holiday news—Mrs. Browning’s white knight, stalwart at his covered desk, intently crafting her plea of last hope to the Supreme Court. Did I love it! And given the strenuous effort, I much appreciated the positive reinforcement.” (242)
Chapter 22, “Collective Consciousness and the Fear of Death,” has an extensive discussion of the hospice movement which Felos is deeply involved in, noting, “The force that created today’s Hospice also propels the right-to-die movement. We sense that keeping one alive against his wishes—artificially perpetuating the body once the spirit is ready to depart—is a defilement of life’s final rite of passage. It appeared so obvious to me that the ability to die with dignity, as that term is defined by each individual, is an essential personal right.” (223)
Concerning the Florida Supreme Court’s affirmation of his position in the Browning case (Mrs. Browning actually died while still being fed and before the case was argued before the Court): “A profound satisfaction welled up. I believed I had made a difference. The result of my efforts would touch many lives, now and in the future. I felt proud to be an attorney and was grateful to God for this extraordinary opportunity. I still am.” (251)
Concerning his involvement in a income tax case in Federal Tax Court (which he ultimately won), Felos writes about his feelings while doing yoga on the eve of the trial: “I felt like an empty vessel, a vehicle through which Spirit does its own work. I felt deep gratitude for being endowed with the abilities that allow this work to be done through me. In a sense I lost, at least for that moment, a personal agenda. I became an agent and God was the principal. All I needed to do was permit the work to come through me.” (268)

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