Mission of Love - Softcover

Roger Cole was born in England, and trained in London at Guy's and Kings College Hospital. He worked as a cancer specialist at the Royal Prince Alfred and Prince of Wales Hospitals, Sydney, and is now the Director of Palliative Care for the Illawarra Area Health Service in New South Wales. He lives in Stanwell Park, New South Wales and is the author of Therapeutics of Sympton Control in Palliative Care. Roger conducts workshops annually and is an experienced public speaker.

In 1984, while attending an Elisabeth K bler-Ross seminar for professionals, Cole experienced what he describes as enlightenment. This catharsis inspired him to leave his successful career as an oncologist and focus instead on palliative care. Rather than writing a straightforward memoir of his life since then, he blends the genres of autobiography and primer in this emotionally and spiritually powerful book. The autobiographical segments feature several extraordinary encounters, some of them supernatural, that Cole has had with dying patients. In most cases, these patients, once freed from besetting pain, began to feel peace, joy and detachment from worldly worries. Cole believes that such people, by way of dying, have reached enlightenment, or what he refers to as "soul-consciousness," and that they understand that death is a passage, not an end. Cole's autobiography segues into a primer as he describes his own spiritual journey from atheist to practitioner of Raja Yoga meditation. As Cole uses the principles and concepts of Raja Yoga to explain what he has witnessed in many hospices, he urges readers to embrace the lessons of this dharma in order to experience enlightenment before getting to their own death beds. In particular, he instructs readers to free themselves from "body-consciousness," a state that leads to all human strife, and to embrace the disciplines that lead to soul-consciousness. One need not share Cole's theology to appreciate the moving stories and uplifting message of this book.
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