Thoughts on the Death of Jerry Hicks

Jerry Hicks' passing on November 19 caused a great deal of soul-searching among people who are looking for answers to the meaning of our lives. How can a spiritually evolved being develop leukemia, go for chemotherapy, and then die?

Some people are thinking, "That's not the way it should go. Jerry should have figured it out and not used a disease as his way of going into The Light. The teachings of Abraham have told us that it is not necessary to manifest a painful disease as a way to emerge into the non-physical."

Some people are asking why he chose the path of chemotherapy instead of vibrational healing. Self-healing through the Law of Attraction is more in keeping with the teachings of Abraham.

Then there is the issue of other spiritual leaders and healers who have died of cancer (Krishnamurti, Seth's Jane Roberts (who died at 55), Ramana Maharshi, Ramakrishna, to name just a few.

In the case of Jane Roberts, Seth was telling her to stop smoking but she couldn't. Compulsions and mental habits are as difficult for people on a spiritual path as they are for the most skeptical nonbelievers in the world of the spirit. People who represent the world of the spirit are not allowed, in the eyes of the public, to die painful deaths from disease. They are awakened, enlightened beings. They should know better. They should be an example of what they represent and speak, right? But they are individual souls working out their growth and enlightenment in a way that is perfectly put together for them. If that includes not being able to live up to what one believes, that may be the big lesson right there.

There is also a Past Lives explanation for this kind of suffering and death amongst the spiritually liberated. It is found in one of Osho's sutras:

"Happiness and suffering happen due to our past actions. So do not think that physical suffering or happiness will not happen to those who have become liberated while living."

He explains it further, "Happiness and sufferings will be happening to the body, even to those who are liberated while living, because these are related to past actions and their impressions, they are related to whatsoever has been done before becoming awakened."

And who is Osho (Rajneesh)? He has been the center of many controversies and strange behaviors that are not in keeping with what we would like to believe a spiritual teacher would manifest. This includes his organization poisoning more than 700 people. He also died of heart failure at the age of 58.

We do not know what anybody's souls journey and evolution will bring about for them. If we look at all healers and mystics, without idolizing them, we will find many behaviors not in keeping with the message they bring. I remember when I found out that guru Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche died of "chronic liver disease related to his alcohol intake over many years." It was reported that "in his last months, he suffered from the classic symptoms of terminal alcoholism and cirrhosis, yet continued drinking heavily." I had always found his teaching to be right on the mark and always helpful in moments of distress.

Do these deaths and failings of the will mean the message of any of these spiritual leaders is invalid? I use the criterion: Does what they say ring true within my heart and soul? I am then be able to overlook the addictions and illnesses of its messengers and go straight to the message. People like Jerry are channels of the spiritual force that moves through them. They also have their own typically human issues to work out.

Therefore, it is best never to idolize or hold any human to an ideal that is more Godly than any human can attain. Jerry did the best he could with the understanding that he had at the time. It is his soul's path and no one else's. If he did not succeed at being immortal or in dying a quiet, disease-free death, it still may have been just what his soul needed on his path to enlightenment.