| Year 15 | Number 86 | 2007 | August 15th, 2007 |
| "Unshakable
faith is only that which can face reason face to
face in every Humankind epoch." Allan Kardec |
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Mahatma Gandhi,
"Non-Violence in Peace and War" Do not tell me you are too old. Age is all imagination. Ignore years and they will ignore you. (...) Breathe deeply, filling every cell of the lungs for at least five minutes, morning and night, and when you draw in long, full breaths, believe you are inhaling health, wisdom and success. (...) Never for an instant believe you are permanently ill or desabled. (...) If you will study your own spirit and its limitless powers, you will gain a greater secret than any alchemist ever held; a secret which shall give you whatever you desire. (...) It is weak and unreasonable to imagine destiny has selected you for special suffering." Ella Wheeler Wilcox
From the poem "Let the Past
Go", in the opuscule Heart of the New
Thought.
[The author of this poem translated Léon Denis' spiritist classic Life and Destiny] |
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| °EDITORIAL
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| HANDLING SUFFERING WITH RESIGNATION |
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| ° THE CODIFICATION
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| THE GOSPEL
ACCORDING
TO SPIRITISM [Motives for
Resignation] |
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| CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUALISM by Leon Denis | |||
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| THE
DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS - Heaven and Hell |
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| DYING,
DEATH &
AFTER DEATH: RANDOM MUSING by Michael E. Tymn |
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| UNITED STATES SPIRITIST COUNCIL'S
DOUBLE CELEBRATION |
| ° EDITORIAL |
One amongst the many incapabilities of orthodox religions to explain the reasons behind the miseries prevailing in the world is the ability to rationally justify suffering according to the fairness of the Creator's laws. The problem starts from the beginning when they try to define God. The justification for so much pain and distress that permeate our world, becomes almost an impossible task to accomplish, if by trying to understand God we anthropomorphize Him. Even the most pure amongst the brethren who lived and preached mankind through words and deeds, cannot be taken as a parameter to define God. Regardless the fact that many of these enlightened beings set themselves afar from the majority of the humankind, in terms of spiritual progress, they are simply our brothers in a more spiritually evolved condition, one that each and every one of us are destined to reach one day. The time when this will take place depends solely on us.
Question number 1 of The Spirits' Book deals with the problematic of giving us a better understanding of God, which states:
1. What is God?
"God is the Supreme Intelligence, the First Cause of all things."
The statement is absolutely comprehensible. However, notice that it does not bring God under our human condition. Nevertherless, it is quite clear that in our current stage of spiritual evolvement we lack the appropriate faculties to understand the fundamental nature of God. This is exactly what the Superior Spirits taught us in the question number 10 of The Spirits' Book, in the topic The Attributes of the Divinity, which says:
10. Can human beings fathom God's innermost nature?
"No, they lack the aptitude to comprehend it."
In addition to the above, in his remarks to the question 13 of The Spirits' Book, one that lists some of the attributes of the Divinity, Allan Kardec ponders by saying:
"God is supremely just and good. The providential wisdom in the divine laws is revealed in the smallest things as well as in the largest, and this wisdom makes it impossible for us to doubt either God's justice or goodness."
Now, if the attributes of God are unanimously shared amongst those who are considered non atheist, how do we conciliate suffering with the attribute of justice and goodness of God?
In order to be able to rationally comprehend the attributes of God and understand suffering, one needs to primarily consider the principle of reincarnation, which tells us that we have come from a long journey that precedes the date of our birth in this current existence on the Planet Earth. In addition to that, one needs to also consider that what we understand as "death" is nothing more than a shift of position from which we change the condition of incarnated spirits to one of discarnation. In fact we are all immortal spirits, for this was the condition to which we were created by God. The phenomenon called "death" does not annihilate our individuality, which keeps going on and carrying all the achievements and misdeeds of the past lives.
Taking into consideration solely these two major principles or point of views, it will be vital to understand suffering and face it in a way that will be beneficial to our spiritual progress. Enduring suffering with resignation is crucial for our spiritual evolvement, for complaining will not allow us to benefit from it. Furthermore, resignation towards suffering will definitely diminish the pain of the suffering.
We live in a world, the Planet Earth, yet in a low level of spiritual progress, consequently suffering is inevitable here, the question is when and how it will hit us. But we ought not to forget that this is the world we have built and if we find ouselves here it is because we deserve it. Suffering will cease to exist when we decide to work bravely to improve ourselves spiritually and the improvement of the world will be just the consequence of this attitude.
Unfortunately, the orthodox religions have rendered a disservice to mankind throughout the ages in regard to the explanation of these pressing matters. It is understandable that they do so, for selling the idea of easy solutions is convenient and according to their policy of keeping people in a level of ignorance, so as a result it will be easier for them to push through their guts the paraphernalia of dogmas and formalities from which they profit from immemorial times, retarding humankind progress.
Spiritism does not preselytize, it rather has a strong commitment to help mankind towards spiritual progress. Therefore, the message imparted from the voices of the Superior Spirits through the Spiritist Doctrine, is one that appeals to our rationality and at the same time pushes us towards the unavoidable principle of personal responsibility. These Spirit friends find themselves in a condition of evolvement far beyond from the one we fit in, and undoubtedly they know indeed what is better for us. They also have endured all kinds of suffering and have the authority to tell us about what would be the best way to undergo suffering and benefit from it. So, let us listen to what they have to tell us in the question 115 of The Spirits' Book, which covers the matter into analysis here, in a very clear and reasonable way:
115. Have some spirits been created good and others evil?
"God has created all spirits simple and ignorant, i.e., without knowledge. God has given to each of them a mission, with the aim of enlightening them and progressively leading them towards perfection through knowledge of the truth in order to draw them near. In that perfection they will find eternal bliss without any troubles. Spirits acquire knowledge by experiencing the trials that God has imposed upon them. Some humbly accept these trials and thus arrive more quickly at their destiny, while others cannot endure them without complaining; thus, through their own fault they remain far from the perfection and bliss promised to them."
- Then are all spirits at their origin ignorant and inexperienced like children, who gradually acquire the knowledge they lack by passing through the different phases of human life?
"Yes, that is an accurate comparison. How much children improve depends on their behavior - rebellious children remain ignorant and imperfect. However, human life has an ending, whereas that of spirits extends into infinity."
One cause for great suffering in our world is the death of a dear one, which most inappropriately call "a loss". The article that we bring forth in this edition, Dying, Death & After Death: Random Musing Concerning the Spiritually Challenged, by Michael E. Tymn, is extremely instructive and may lead those who see this unavoidable aspect of life as negative towards a different direction, one of more comprehension of a phenomenon that is simply part of our Real Life, the spiritual one.
Antonio Leite
GEAE Editor
Back to Content
| ° THE CODIFICATION |
THE
GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SPIRITISM
CHAPTER V
BLESSED ARE THE AFFLICTED
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
[MATTHEW 5: 4,6 & 10]
MOTIVES FOR RESIGNATION
CHAPTER V
BLESSED ARE THE AFFLICTED
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
[MATTHEW 5: 4,6 & 10]
MOTIVES FOR RESIGNATION
12. With the words: Blessed are the afflicted for they will be
consoled, Jesus indicates the compensation that awaits those who
suffer and the resignation that leads us to bless sufferings as a
prelude to the cure.
These words can also be understood in this manner: that one should be content to suffer, seeing that the pain of this world is the payment for past debts that have been incurred. Patiently supported here on Earth, these pains will save centuries of future suffering. One should be happy that God is reducing the debt by permitting payment now, thereby guaranteeing a tranquil future.
The sufferer is like a debtor who owes a large sum and to whom the creditor says: "If you pay me even a hundredth part of your debt today, I will exonerate you and you will be free. But if you do not, then I shall torment you till you pay the very last instalment." Would not the debtor feel happy in supporting all kinds of hardships in order to liberate himself, so paying only a hundredth part of what he owed? Instead of complaining to the creditor, would he not be grateful?
This is the meaning of the words, 'Blessed are the afflicted for they shall be consoled.' They are happy because they are paying their debts and also because after payment they will be free. However, if on acquitting himself on the one side, a man becomes indebted on the other, he will never find liberation. Therefore, each new fault only increases the debt, there being not even one that does not entail a compelling and inevitable punishment. If not today, then tomorrow; if not in this life, then in another. Amongst the list of failings, it behoves a person to put the lack of submission to God's Will in first place. So if we complain about afflictions, if we do not accept them with resignation, or if we accuse God of being unjust, we contract new debts, which in turn make us lose the fruits that should have been gathered from these sufferings. This is why we must begin again from the start, exactly as if after paying part of a debt to a creditor who has been tormenting us, we then took out another loan.
On entering into the spiritual world, we are like the labourer who arrives on the day of payment. To some God will say: "Here is your recompense for the days you have worked." While to others, the so-called lucky ones on Earth who have lived in idleness, or those whave built their happiness on the satisfaction of their own self-esteem, and on wordly pleasures, He will say: "There is nothing more to come: you have already received your salary on Earth. Go and begin your tasks again."
13. We can soften or increase the bitterness of our trials according to the manner in which we regard earthly life. Our suffering will be all the more depending on how long we imagine it to be. But those who can see life through a spiritual prism understand bodily existence at a glance. They see that life is but a point in eternity, they comprehend the shortness of its duration, and recognise that this painful moment will soon pass. The certainty of a happier future sustains and animates them and far from complaining, they offer thanks to God for the pain, which will permit them to advance. On the other hand, for all those who see only bodily life before them, the duration seems interminable and the pain oppresses with all its weight.
The result of looking at life in a spiritual way is a diminishing in importance of all wordly things. Thus we feel ourselves compelled to moderate our desires, and to be content with our position without envying others. This in turn enables us to receive weakened impressions of reverses and deceptions that may be experience. From these attitudes comes calmness and resignation, so useful to bodily health as well as to the soul; whereas from jealousy, envy, and ambition we voluntarily condemn ourselves to tortures, increased miseries and anguish during our short existence.
These words can also be understood in this manner: that one should be content to suffer, seeing that the pain of this world is the payment for past debts that have been incurred. Patiently supported here on Earth, these pains will save centuries of future suffering. One should be happy that God is reducing the debt by permitting payment now, thereby guaranteeing a tranquil future.
The sufferer is like a debtor who owes a large sum and to whom the creditor says: "If you pay me even a hundredth part of your debt today, I will exonerate you and you will be free. But if you do not, then I shall torment you till you pay the very last instalment." Would not the debtor feel happy in supporting all kinds of hardships in order to liberate himself, so paying only a hundredth part of what he owed? Instead of complaining to the creditor, would he not be grateful?
This is the meaning of the words, 'Blessed are the afflicted for they shall be consoled.' They are happy because they are paying their debts and also because after payment they will be free. However, if on acquitting himself on the one side, a man becomes indebted on the other, he will never find liberation. Therefore, each new fault only increases the debt, there being not even one that does not entail a compelling and inevitable punishment. If not today, then tomorrow; if not in this life, then in another. Amongst the list of failings, it behoves a person to put the lack of submission to God's Will in first place. So if we complain about afflictions, if we do not accept them with resignation, or if we accuse God of being unjust, we contract new debts, which in turn make us lose the fruits that should have been gathered from these sufferings. This is why we must begin again from the start, exactly as if after paying part of a debt to a creditor who has been tormenting us, we then took out another loan.
On entering into the spiritual world, we are like the labourer who arrives on the day of payment. To some God will say: "Here is your recompense for the days you have worked." While to others, the so-called lucky ones on Earth who have lived in idleness, or those whave built their happiness on the satisfaction of their own self-esteem, and on wordly pleasures, He will say: "There is nothing more to come: you have already received your salary on Earth. Go and begin your tasks again."
13. We can soften or increase the bitterness of our trials according to the manner in which we regard earthly life. Our suffering will be all the more depending on how long we imagine it to be. But those who can see life through a spiritual prism understand bodily existence at a glance. They see that life is but a point in eternity, they comprehend the shortness of its duration, and recognise that this painful moment will soon pass. The certainty of a happier future sustains and animates them and far from complaining, they offer thanks to God for the pain, which will permit them to advance. On the other hand, for all those who see only bodily life before them, the duration seems interminable and the pain oppresses with all its weight.
The result of looking at life in a spiritual way is a diminishing in importance of all wordly things. Thus we feel ourselves compelled to moderate our desires, and to be content with our position without envying others. This in turn enables us to receive weakened impressions of reverses and deceptions that may be experience. From these attitudes comes calmness and resignation, so useful to bodily health as well as to the soul; whereas from jealousy, envy, and ambition we voluntarily condemn ourselves to tortures, increased miseries and anguish during our short existence.
| ° ELECTRONIC BOOKS |
CHRISTIANITY AND SPIRITUALISM
The History of the Gospels
The Secret Doctrine of Christianity
Intercourse with the Spirits of the Dead
The New Revelation
Vitam Impendere Vero
By
LÉON DENIS
Author of
"Après La Mort, "Dans L'Invisible," ETC.
Translated from the French by
HELEN DRAPER SPEAKMAN
LONDON
PHILIP WELLBY
6 Henrietta Street Covent Garden
1904
This book is out of print indefinitely
1st Electronic Edition by
the
Advanced
Study Group of Spiritism
(GEAE)
2006
THE NEW REVELATION - SPIRITUALISM AND SCIENCE
= Second Part =
Either by contact of the fingers
on the gelatine or
even on the glass itself, or by holding the plate, in a dark room, near
the brain, we obtain on it undulations and vibrations varying in
intensity and aspect according to the different mental states of the
operator. Uniform and regular in the normal state, the waves form
themselves into whirls and spirals under the influence of anger, spread
into wide sheets in ecstasy, and rise in majestic columns during
prayer, like the vapour of incense.
We have even been able to reproduce on the plate the fluidic double of man, that mysterious double which is the centre of these radiations. Colonel de Rochas, head of the Polytechnic School of France, and Dr. Barlemont obtained the simultaneous photographs of the body of a medium and of its double, momentarily separated.4
As a prelude to so many objective proofs which we mention further on, photography has revealed to us the existence of this fluidic body, which lines and sustains our physical body. This subtle envelope forms the luminous and radiant envelope of the spirit, inseparable from it during life as after death.
Photographic plates are not only impressed by the fluidic vibrations of the human body, but also show us the forms belonging to the invisible world, to beings who exist, live and move around us, presiding over a whole series of manifestations which we will rapidly review, and which it has been vainly sought to explain by any other means than by their presence and action.
These beings, freed by death from the needs and miseries of human nature, continue to act by means of their imperishable envelope, the fluidic body; a body formed of these most subtle elements of matter of which we have spoken, and which until now had escaped our senses in their normal condition.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The question of the fluidic body, although already treated by us elsewhere,5 requires further explanation, for it enables us to understand better the life in space and the action of spirits on matter.
We all know that the molecules of our physical bodies are subject to constant changes. Each day our carnal envelope eliminates a certain number of elements and assimilates new ones. The whole body, from the soft parts of the brain to the hardest parts of the bone structure, is renewed entirely in a certain number of years. In the midst of these constant currents there exists always in us an original fluidic form, compressible and expansible, which maintains and perpetuates itself. It is in it, on the pattern presented by it, though invisible to our senses, that the molecules of gross matter fix and incorporate themselves. The Perispirit is the moud, the fluidic outline of the human body. That is why, when death separates them, the material body immediately falls to pieces and is decomposed. The frame-work has been withdrawn from it.
The perispirit is the permanent envelope of the spirit, whereas the physical body is only a temporary clothing, a borrowed dress which we don for our earthly pilgrimage. The perispirit exists before birth and survives death. It constitutes, in its intimate union with the spirit, the president and essential element of our individuality, throughout the multiple existence which we tranverse. It is the perispirit which automatically directs all the actions pertaining to the keeping up of life; and under the influence of the vital force, it disposes the material molecules according to a predetermined plan or pattern which represents all the apparatus of our organism, respiration, circulation, the nervous system, etc.6
It is by the existence of this fluidic body, by its separation, natural or voluntary, from the physical body during sleep, that the apparition of the phantoms of the living is explained, and, consequently that of the spirits of the dead.
It has often been proved that the fluidic double of a living person detaches itself, under certain conditions, from the material body, to appear and manifest itself at a distance. These phenomena are known as telepathic.
Therefore, if during life the fluidic form can act outside of, and independently of the body, it becomes evident that death cannot put an end to its activity.
In the special study of the phenomena of the exteriorisation of sensibility and of motion, Colonel de Rochas, head of the Polytechnic School of France, and with him such celebrated scientists as Prof. Charles Richet and Sabatier, Drs. Ségrad and Dariex, Messrs de Grammont and de Watteville, have attacked the dominion of experimental proofs, from which clearly appears the certitude of the action of the fluidic double at a distance. The English scientists have gone even further. They have ascertained in numerous cases, that the fluidic envelopes of discarnate spirits have become visible, by condensation or rather by materialisation, as a vapour of water contained in a invisible form in the air may, by sucessive transformations, become visible and tangible in the form of ice. The perispirit is invisible to us in its ordinary state, because its subtle essence produces a number of vibrations too great to be perceived by our eyes. In the case of a materialisation the spirit is obliged to borrow from the medium or from other persons present coarser fluids which it assimilates to itself, so as to adapt, and to diminish the number of the vibrations of its envelope to meet the capacity or our vision. The operation is a difficult and delicate one. Nevertheless, the cases of apparitions of spirits are numerous and repose on a considerable volume of testimony.
The most celebrated case is that of the spirit of Katie King, which manifested itself during three years at the home of Sir William Crookes, the English professor, through the aid of the medium Florence Cook. Sir W. Crookes has himself described these experiences in a celebrated work, "Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism," and has lately again endorsed his conclusions, particularly in his speech as President of the British Association. Katie King the spirit, and Florence Cook the medium, were seen side by side. They were of different heights and differed from each other in many ways. The testimony of Sir W. Crookes is confirmed by Doctors Gully and Sexton, by the Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein, by Harrison, by B. Coleman, by Serjeant Cox, by Varley, the electrical engineer, by Mrs. Florence Marryat, etc., who were all witnesses, at different times and under various circumstances, of these apparitions of Katie.
It has several times been falsely stated that Sir W. Crookes had retracted his statements. He has himself repeatedly denied this report. In April 1897, in passing through Paris, he stated for publication7 that not only did he maintain all his statements, but intended shortly to take up again and pursue further his researches into spiritualism.
Another celebrated case is that of the spirit of Abdullah, related by Prof. Aksakof, the Russian Counsellor of State; in his work "Animism and Spiritualism." The spirit was of an oriental type, and more than six feet high, whereas the medium Eglinton was short in stature and of a very pronounced Anglo-Saxon type.
The American scientist, Robert Dale Owen, at one time United States Ambassador to Napolis, worked six years on experimentos of materialisation. He declared that he had seen hundreds of spirit forms. In a séance given at the instigation of the American Society for Psychical Research, and at which the celebrated preacher the Rev. Mr Savage was present, thirty spirits materialised and appeared to the assistants, who recognised deceased friends and relations. These manifestations are frequent in America.8
The favourite objection of the incredulous, touching this kind of phenomenon, is that it is produced in the dark, and therefore lends itself to cheating. It must be remarked that darkness is requisite for the luminous apparitions, which are the most numerous. Light exercises a dissolving effect on the fluids, and a number of manifestations can only take place in its absence.
There are nevertheless cases in which spirits have been able to show themselves by a phosphorescent light. Others have dematerialised in full light. Under the glare of three gas-jets Katie King was seen to dissolve little by little, melt away and finally disappear.
To testimony such as this, we must add our own, though of much less importance, in regard to a fact which came under our personal observation.
During ten years we pursued this order of experiment with the assistance of a doctor of Tours, Dr A----, and a Captain of the Archives of the ninth Army Corps. Through one of these gentlemen, who was plunged in a magnetic sleep, the Invisibles had long promised us a materialisation. One evening we three were in the consulting room of our friend, the doors carefully closed and quite sufficient light still coming in through the large window to enable us to see most distinctly the smallest objects, when three raps sounded on a certain spot on the wall. It was the signal agreed on.
We looked in the direction of the sound, and saw, emerging from a blank wall, a human form of middle height. It showed itself in profile, the head and shoulders first appearing. Gradually, the whole body became visible. The upper part was clearly drawn, the outlines sharp and clear. The lower part was more vaporous and formed a confused mass. The apparition glided, not walked. After slowly crossing the room, passing within a step or two of us, it melted into the wall on the opposite side of the room and disappeared. This wall also was quite blank and contained no exit. We were able to gaze at the form for about three minutes, and on comparing our impressions of it, they proved to be identical.
As we have said, the materialisations and apparitions of spirits meet with obstacles which necessarily limit their number. It is otherwise in the case of certain phenomena of a physical order and of great variety, which are multiplied around us continually.
We will examine these facts, in their progressive order, according to the interest they present and the certitude we can derive from them, as to the free life of the spirit.
In the first place come the very common phenomena of haunted houses. They are habitations frequented by spirits of an inferior order, who give themselves up to noisy manifestations. Blows, sounds of all kinds, from the faintest to the loudest, cause the floors, the furniture, and the walls to vibrate. China is displaced and broken, stones are thrown in from the outside in spite of careful watching.
The papers bring us almost daily new tales of these phenomena. Scarcely have they ceased in one spot, before they begin in another, in France and other countries, attracting and holding public attention in suspense. In certain places, as at Valence-en-Brie, at Yzeures, in the department of Indre et Loire, at Ath, in Brabant, at Agen, etc., they lasted many months, in spite of the continuous efforts of the cleverest police and detectives to trace them to human agency.
These facts are explained by the malevolent action of invisible beings who thus satisfy, post-mortem, hatreds born during their earth-life, or requite injuries done by certain families or individuals, who thereby allow these ill-disposed disincarnates to obtain a hold over them.
In spite of the repugnance of science in general to the examination of these facts, each day we see the number of conscientious seekers increasing, who leave the beaten tracks and devote themselves to the patient observation of the invisible world. There is no month, no week indeed, which does not bring the discovery of some new and well authenticated fact in the realm of experimental research.
The phenomena of a physical order, such as the levitation of heavy bodies and their transportation to a distance, without contact, especially occupies the attention of certain scientists.
We have spoken elsewhere9 of the experiments made in Naples and at Milan, in 1892, by scientific men of various nations. Official reports drawn up by them recognised the intervention of unknown forces, and the action of will-power in the production of these phenomena. Analogous experiements have been made since in Rome, in Varsovie, at the home of Dr Ochorowicz; on the island of Roubaud, off Marseilles, at the country house of Prof. Ch Richet, Professor at the Academy of Medicine in Paris; at Bordeaux, and also at Agnélas, near Voiron, Isère, at the home of Col. de Rochas, head of the Polytechnic of France.10
>From everywhere came reports of the displacement of furniture and of instruments of music, without contact; of the levitation of the human body, of the lifting up of chairs with people seated on them. Professor Lombroso, in one of these reports, speaks of a sideboard which "advanced like a pachyderm."
All these manifestations might be more or less explained by strictly material causes, by the action of unconscious forces. The psychic force exteriorised by a human being would suffice, for instance, to explain the movements of tables or other objects at a distance, and even, by stretching a point, of any phenomena which does not show the action of an intelligence other than that of the spectators.
But what renders this explanation quite insufficient, is the fact that in most of the séances to which we refer, there are, besides these movements of things and persons, appearances of luminous hands and of human forms which are not those of the spectators, touches and contacts are felt, tunes are played on locked pianos, voices and songs are heard. Sometimes, as at Rome, in the experiments of Dr Sant Angelo, penetrating and unearthly melodies throw the hearers into almost an ecstasy of enjoyment.
All these phenomena are obtained in the presence of mediums who have become celebrated, among others, Eusapia Paladino. Here, some explanation of the nature and true object of mediumship appears necessary.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Our senses, as we said above, only reveal to us a restricted portion of the universe. Nevertheless, the circle of our knowledge has little by little been enlarged, and will widen still more as our modes of perceiving improve. It would suffice for us to have one more sense, one new psychic faculty, for unknown worlds of life to open before us, and to see revealed the marvels of the invisible world.
Well, these new senses, these faculties which will one day belong to all, are possessed even now by some people in varying degrees, who are in consequence called mediums.
As we know, at all times, through all ages, there existed persons possessing, under different forms, special faculties, permitting them to communicate with the Invisible. All history, and the sacred books of every people, mention this on almost every page. The seers of Gaul, the oracles and soothsayers of Greece, the sibyls of the heathen world, the prophets, great and small, of the Jews, were but the mediums of our present day. The higher powers have always used the services of these intermediaries to convey their teachings and exhortations to humanity. The names only change, the facts remain the same, with this difference only that the facts are produced in greater number and in more striking form from time to time, as the hour comes for one of these periodic waves of increase of activity in the upward endeavour of man.
The higher spirits are not the only ones to manifest themselves; spirits of all classes like to get into connection with men when they find the means to do so. Hence the necessity of discrimination, in occult communications, between that which is from above and that which is from below; between that which comes from the spirits of light and that which proceeds from backward spirits. There are spirits of all sorts of character and degrees of elevation; indeed there are naturally around us more of the inferior than the higher ones. It is the former kind who produce the physical phenomena, the noisy manifestations, and everything of a vulgar order, but who nevertheless have their use, as they reveal to us the knowledge of a world we had forgotten.
In these phenomena, the mediums play a passive part, like that of the pile in electricity. They are producers, accumulators of the fluids, and it is from them that the spirits take the force needful to act on matter. This class of medium is found more or less everywhere, even in very unenlightened surroundings. Their help is purely material, their aptitudes are rather a physical privilege than an indication of moral elevation.
Quite different is the part of the medium in the intellectual phenomena. These are the most interesting of all; it is through them that the identity, the individuality of the invisible Intelligence reveals itself, it is through them that we receive the teachings, and revelations which make of spiritualism not only a field for science research, but also, according to the expression of Sir Russel Wallace "a gospel of truth."
We will pass in review a few of the phenomena:-
Direct writing first claims our attention. Under certain circumstances, papers appear covered with writing of non-human origin.11 I have myself been present at the production of several facts of this kind. One day, for instance, at Orange, during a séance of spiritualism we saw descending over our heads, a morsel of paper which seemed to issue from the ceiling, and, fluttering slowly down it rested in my hat, placed on the table near me. Two lines of delicate writing in verse were traced on it. They expressed a warning or prediction concerning me, which has sinced been fulfilled. Generally, this phenomenon is produced between two slates, closed together, sealed and stamped, and between which a fragment of pencil has been placed. The message is traced in the presence of the spectators, often in a foreign language, unknown to the medium or the people present, and in answer to questions put by the latter.
Dr Gibier made a special study of these manifestations, during thirty-three sittings, with the help of the medium Slade.12 It has been objected that the latter experimented by placing the slates under the table. We will therefore rather cite the case of the medium Eglington, related in the work of Prof. Stainton Moses, of Oxford University, called "Psychography." There, the phenomenon was produced in full light, in the view of all present. In this book there is mention of a séance at which Mr. Gladstone was present. The great English statesman inscribed a question on a slate which he immediately covered by another, putting a morsel of pencil between. The salates were securely tied together and the medium placed on them the tips of his fingers, to establish the fluidic connection. Very soon, the scratching of the pencil was heard. Mr Gladstone's steady gaze was not for an instant diverted from the medium. Under these rigorous conditions, a number of answers were obtained in various languages, several of which were unknown to the medium, answers in perfect accord with the question asked.
We have even been able to reproduce on the plate the fluidic double of man, that mysterious double which is the centre of these radiations. Colonel de Rochas, head of the Polytechnic School of France, and Dr. Barlemont obtained the simultaneous photographs of the body of a medium and of its double, momentarily separated.4
As a prelude to so many objective proofs which we mention further on, photography has revealed to us the existence of this fluidic body, which lines and sustains our physical body. This subtle envelope forms the luminous and radiant envelope of the spirit, inseparable from it during life as after death.
Photographic plates are not only impressed by the fluidic vibrations of the human body, but also show us the forms belonging to the invisible world, to beings who exist, live and move around us, presiding over a whole series of manifestations which we will rapidly review, and which it has been vainly sought to explain by any other means than by their presence and action.
These beings, freed by death from the needs and miseries of human nature, continue to act by means of their imperishable envelope, the fluidic body; a body formed of these most subtle elements of matter of which we have spoken, and which until now had escaped our senses in their normal condition.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The question of the fluidic body, although already treated by us elsewhere,5 requires further explanation, for it enables us to understand better the life in space and the action of spirits on matter.
We all know that the molecules of our physical bodies are subject to constant changes. Each day our carnal envelope eliminates a certain number of elements and assimilates new ones. The whole body, from the soft parts of the brain to the hardest parts of the bone structure, is renewed entirely in a certain number of years. In the midst of these constant currents there exists always in us an original fluidic form, compressible and expansible, which maintains and perpetuates itself. It is in it, on the pattern presented by it, though invisible to our senses, that the molecules of gross matter fix and incorporate themselves. The Perispirit is the moud, the fluidic outline of the human body. That is why, when death separates them, the material body immediately falls to pieces and is decomposed. The frame-work has been withdrawn from it.
The perispirit is the permanent envelope of the spirit, whereas the physical body is only a temporary clothing, a borrowed dress which we don for our earthly pilgrimage. The perispirit exists before birth and survives death. It constitutes, in its intimate union with the spirit, the president and essential element of our individuality, throughout the multiple existence which we tranverse. It is the perispirit which automatically directs all the actions pertaining to the keeping up of life; and under the influence of the vital force, it disposes the material molecules according to a predetermined plan or pattern which represents all the apparatus of our organism, respiration, circulation, the nervous system, etc.6
It is by the existence of this fluidic body, by its separation, natural or voluntary, from the physical body during sleep, that the apparition of the phantoms of the living is explained, and, consequently that of the spirits of the dead.
It has often been proved that the fluidic double of a living person detaches itself, under certain conditions, from the material body, to appear and manifest itself at a distance. These phenomena are known as telepathic.
Therefore, if during life the fluidic form can act outside of, and independently of the body, it becomes evident that death cannot put an end to its activity.
In the special study of the phenomena of the exteriorisation of sensibility and of motion, Colonel de Rochas, head of the Polytechnic School of France, and with him such celebrated scientists as Prof. Charles Richet and Sabatier, Drs. Ségrad and Dariex, Messrs de Grammont and de Watteville, have attacked the dominion of experimental proofs, from which clearly appears the certitude of the action of the fluidic double at a distance. The English scientists have gone even further. They have ascertained in numerous cases, that the fluidic envelopes of discarnate spirits have become visible, by condensation or rather by materialisation, as a vapour of water contained in a invisible form in the air may, by sucessive transformations, become visible and tangible in the form of ice. The perispirit is invisible to us in its ordinary state, because its subtle essence produces a number of vibrations too great to be perceived by our eyes. In the case of a materialisation the spirit is obliged to borrow from the medium or from other persons present coarser fluids which it assimilates to itself, so as to adapt, and to diminish the number of the vibrations of its envelope to meet the capacity or our vision. The operation is a difficult and delicate one. Nevertheless, the cases of apparitions of spirits are numerous and repose on a considerable volume of testimony.
The most celebrated case is that of the spirit of Katie King, which manifested itself during three years at the home of Sir William Crookes, the English professor, through the aid of the medium Florence Cook. Sir W. Crookes has himself described these experiences in a celebrated work, "Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism," and has lately again endorsed his conclusions, particularly in his speech as President of the British Association. Katie King the spirit, and Florence Cook the medium, were seen side by side. They were of different heights and differed from each other in many ways. The testimony of Sir W. Crookes is confirmed by Doctors Gully and Sexton, by the Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein, by Harrison, by B. Coleman, by Serjeant Cox, by Varley, the electrical engineer, by Mrs. Florence Marryat, etc., who were all witnesses, at different times and under various circumstances, of these apparitions of Katie.
It has several times been falsely stated that Sir W. Crookes had retracted his statements. He has himself repeatedly denied this report. In April 1897, in passing through Paris, he stated for publication7 that not only did he maintain all his statements, but intended shortly to take up again and pursue further his researches into spiritualism.
Another celebrated case is that of the spirit of Abdullah, related by Prof. Aksakof, the Russian Counsellor of State; in his work "Animism and Spiritualism." The spirit was of an oriental type, and more than six feet high, whereas the medium Eglinton was short in stature and of a very pronounced Anglo-Saxon type.
The American scientist, Robert Dale Owen, at one time United States Ambassador to Napolis, worked six years on experimentos of materialisation. He declared that he had seen hundreds of spirit forms. In a séance given at the instigation of the American Society for Psychical Research, and at which the celebrated preacher the Rev. Mr Savage was present, thirty spirits materialised and appeared to the assistants, who recognised deceased friends and relations. These manifestations are frequent in America.8
The favourite objection of the incredulous, touching this kind of phenomenon, is that it is produced in the dark, and therefore lends itself to cheating. It must be remarked that darkness is requisite for the luminous apparitions, which are the most numerous. Light exercises a dissolving effect on the fluids, and a number of manifestations can only take place in its absence.
There are nevertheless cases in which spirits have been able to show themselves by a phosphorescent light. Others have dematerialised in full light. Under the glare of three gas-jets Katie King was seen to dissolve little by little, melt away and finally disappear.
To testimony such as this, we must add our own, though of much less importance, in regard to a fact which came under our personal observation.
During ten years we pursued this order of experiment with the assistance of a doctor of Tours, Dr A----, and a Captain of the Archives of the ninth Army Corps. Through one of these gentlemen, who was plunged in a magnetic sleep, the Invisibles had long promised us a materialisation. One evening we three were in the consulting room of our friend, the doors carefully closed and quite sufficient light still coming in through the large window to enable us to see most distinctly the smallest objects, when three raps sounded on a certain spot on the wall. It was the signal agreed on.
We looked in the direction of the sound, and saw, emerging from a blank wall, a human form of middle height. It showed itself in profile, the head and shoulders first appearing. Gradually, the whole body became visible. The upper part was clearly drawn, the outlines sharp and clear. The lower part was more vaporous and formed a confused mass. The apparition glided, not walked. After slowly crossing the room, passing within a step or two of us, it melted into the wall on the opposite side of the room and disappeared. This wall also was quite blank and contained no exit. We were able to gaze at the form for about three minutes, and on comparing our impressions of it, they proved to be identical.
As we have said, the materialisations and apparitions of spirits meet with obstacles which necessarily limit their number. It is otherwise in the case of certain phenomena of a physical order and of great variety, which are multiplied around us continually.
We will examine these facts, in their progressive order, according to the interest they present and the certitude we can derive from them, as to the free life of the spirit.
In the first place come the very common phenomena of haunted houses. They are habitations frequented by spirits of an inferior order, who give themselves up to noisy manifestations. Blows, sounds of all kinds, from the faintest to the loudest, cause the floors, the furniture, and the walls to vibrate. China is displaced and broken, stones are thrown in from the outside in spite of careful watching.
The papers bring us almost daily new tales of these phenomena. Scarcely have they ceased in one spot, before they begin in another, in France and other countries, attracting and holding public attention in suspense. In certain places, as at Valence-en-Brie, at Yzeures, in the department of Indre et Loire, at Ath, in Brabant, at Agen, etc., they lasted many months, in spite of the continuous efforts of the cleverest police and detectives to trace them to human agency.
These facts are explained by the malevolent action of invisible beings who thus satisfy, post-mortem, hatreds born during their earth-life, or requite injuries done by certain families or individuals, who thereby allow these ill-disposed disincarnates to obtain a hold over them.
In spite of the repugnance of science in general to the examination of these facts, each day we see the number of conscientious seekers increasing, who leave the beaten tracks and devote themselves to the patient observation of the invisible world. There is no month, no week indeed, which does not bring the discovery of some new and well authenticated fact in the realm of experimental research.
The phenomena of a physical order, such as the levitation of heavy bodies and their transportation to a distance, without contact, especially occupies the attention of certain scientists.
We have spoken elsewhere9 of the experiments made in Naples and at Milan, in 1892, by scientific men of various nations. Official reports drawn up by them recognised the intervention of unknown forces, and the action of will-power in the production of these phenomena. Analogous experiements have been made since in Rome, in Varsovie, at the home of Dr Ochorowicz; on the island of Roubaud, off Marseilles, at the country house of Prof. Ch Richet, Professor at the Academy of Medicine in Paris; at Bordeaux, and also at Agnélas, near Voiron, Isère, at the home of Col. de Rochas, head of the Polytechnic of France.10
>From everywhere came reports of the displacement of furniture and of instruments of music, without contact; of the levitation of the human body, of the lifting up of chairs with people seated on them. Professor Lombroso, in one of these reports, speaks of a sideboard which "advanced like a pachyderm."
All these manifestations might be more or less explained by strictly material causes, by the action of unconscious forces. The psychic force exteriorised by a human being would suffice, for instance, to explain the movements of tables or other objects at a distance, and even, by stretching a point, of any phenomena which does not show the action of an intelligence other than that of the spectators.
But what renders this explanation quite insufficient, is the fact that in most of the séances to which we refer, there are, besides these movements of things and persons, appearances of luminous hands and of human forms which are not those of the spectators, touches and contacts are felt, tunes are played on locked pianos, voices and songs are heard. Sometimes, as at Rome, in the experiments of Dr Sant Angelo, penetrating and unearthly melodies throw the hearers into almost an ecstasy of enjoyment.
All these phenomena are obtained in the presence of mediums who have become celebrated, among others, Eusapia Paladino. Here, some explanation of the nature and true object of mediumship appears necessary.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Our senses, as we said above, only reveal to us a restricted portion of the universe. Nevertheless, the circle of our knowledge has little by little been enlarged, and will widen still more as our modes of perceiving improve. It would suffice for us to have one more sense, one new psychic faculty, for unknown worlds of life to open before us, and to see revealed the marvels of the invisible world.
Well, these new senses, these faculties which will one day belong to all, are possessed even now by some people in varying degrees, who are in consequence called mediums.
As we know, at all times, through all ages, there existed persons possessing, under different forms, special faculties, permitting them to communicate with the Invisible. All history, and the sacred books of every people, mention this on almost every page. The seers of Gaul, the oracles and soothsayers of Greece, the sibyls of the heathen world, the prophets, great and small, of the Jews, were but the mediums of our present day. The higher powers have always used the services of these intermediaries to convey their teachings and exhortations to humanity. The names only change, the facts remain the same, with this difference only that the facts are produced in greater number and in more striking form from time to time, as the hour comes for one of these periodic waves of increase of activity in the upward endeavour of man.
The higher spirits are not the only ones to manifest themselves; spirits of all classes like to get into connection with men when they find the means to do so. Hence the necessity of discrimination, in occult communications, between that which is from above and that which is from below; between that which comes from the spirits of light and that which proceeds from backward spirits. There are spirits of all sorts of character and degrees of elevation; indeed there are naturally around us more of the inferior than the higher ones. It is the former kind who produce the physical phenomena, the noisy manifestations, and everything of a vulgar order, but who nevertheless have their use, as they reveal to us the knowledge of a world we had forgotten.
In these phenomena, the mediums play a passive part, like that of the pile in electricity. They are producers, accumulators of the fluids, and it is from them that the spirits take the force needful to act on matter. This class of medium is found more or less everywhere, even in very unenlightened surroundings. Their help is purely material, their aptitudes are rather a physical privilege than an indication of moral elevation.
Quite different is the part of the medium in the intellectual phenomena. These are the most interesting of all; it is through them that the identity, the individuality of the invisible Intelligence reveals itself, it is through them that we receive the teachings, and revelations which make of spiritualism not only a field for science research, but also, according to the expression of Sir Russel Wallace "a gospel of truth."
We will pass in review a few of the phenomena:-
Direct writing first claims our attention. Under certain circumstances, papers appear covered with writing of non-human origin.11 I have myself been present at the production of several facts of this kind. One day, for instance, at Orange, during a séance of spiritualism we saw descending over our heads, a morsel of paper which seemed to issue from the ceiling, and, fluttering slowly down it rested in my hat, placed on the table near me. Two lines of delicate writing in verse were traced on it. They expressed a warning or prediction concerning me, which has sinced been fulfilled. Generally, this phenomenon is produced between two slates, closed together, sealed and stamped, and between which a fragment of pencil has been placed. The message is traced in the presence of the spectators, often in a foreign language, unknown to the medium or the people present, and in answer to questions put by the latter.
Dr Gibier made a special study of these manifestations, during thirty-three sittings, with the help of the medium Slade.12 It has been objected that the latter experimented by placing the slates under the table. We will therefore rather cite the case of the medium Eglington, related in the work of Prof. Stainton Moses, of Oxford University, called "Psychography." There, the phenomenon was produced in full light, in the view of all present. In this book there is mention of a séance at which Mr. Gladstone was present. The great English statesman inscribed a question on a slate which he immediately covered by another, putting a morsel of pencil between. The salates were securely tied together and the medium placed on them the tips of his fingers, to establish the fluidic connection. Very soon, the scratching of the pencil was heard. Mr Gladstone's steady gaze was not for an instant diverted from the medium. Under these rigorous conditions, a number of answers were obtained in various languages, several of which were unknown to the medium, answers in perfect accord with the question asked.
4 See "Revue Spirite," Nov.
1894, with facsimile, and also the works of Col. de Rochas,
"L'Extériorisation de la Sensibilité et de la
Motricité." Chaumel.
The same results are mentioned in the case of the medium Herrod. Also stated by Judge Carter, in "Animism and Spiritism," by Aksakof; and Mr Glendening, ("Bordeland" for July 1896) and others.
5 "Aprés la Mort," "After Death," p. 191, by the same author.
6 For full description, see "Evolution Animique," by Gabrielle Delanne.
7 To the newspaper Le Matin.
8 See "Le Psychisme expérimental," by Erny, p. 184.
9 "Aprés la Mort," latest edition, pp. 182-184.
10 The edition of "Christianisme et Spiritism" from which this translation is made was published several years ago, therefore the enormous mass of more recent confirmatory experiments is not mentioned, - Translator's Note.
11 See "La réalité des Esprits, Ecriture directe," by Baron Guldenstubb.
12 See "Spiritism ou Fakirisme occidental," by Dr Gibier, Director of the Pasteur Institute of New York.
The same results are mentioned in the case of the medium Herrod. Also stated by Judge Carter, in "Animism and Spiritism," by Aksakof; and Mr Glendening, ("Bordeland" for July 1896) and others.
5 "Aprés la Mort," "After Death," p. 191, by the same author.
6 For full description, see "Evolution Animique," by Gabrielle Delanne.
7 To the newspaper Le Matin.
8 See "Le Psychisme expérimental," by Erny, p. 184.
9 "Aprés la Mort," latest edition, pp. 182-184.
10 The edition of "Christianisme et Spiritism" from which this translation is made was published several years ago, therefore the enormous mass of more recent confirmatory experiments is not mentioned, - Translator's Note.
11 See "La réalité des Esprits, Ecriture directe," by Baron Guldenstubb.
12 See "Spiritism ou Fakirisme occidental," by Dr Gibier, Director of the Pasteur Institute of New York.
Next: CHAPTER IX - THE NEW REVELATION -
SPIRITUALISM AND SCIENCE [Third Part]
| ° SPIRIT
MESSAGES |
THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS
Messages from the book HEAVEN AND HELL
After the first evocation of the spirit of Mr. Sanson, at a séance of the Spiritist
Society of Paris, another spirit made, spontaneously, under the above
heading, the following communication:
"The death of the worthy and intelligent
man, with whose spirit you have been conversing, was 'the death of the
righteous;' that is to say,
accompanied with calmness and hope. As daylight follows the dawn, so
the spirit-life in his case succeeded to the earthly life; and his last
sigh was exhaled in a hymn of thankfulness and love. How few
accomplish, in this fashion, the rough passage to the spirit-world! How
few, after the intoxications and the despondencies of life, can thus
perceive the harmonious rhythm of the higher spheres! As one who,
having been mutilated by a shot, still suffers, after his cure, in the
limb he has lost; so the soul of the man who dies without faith and
without hope issues, torn and palpitating, from his body, and falls,
unconscious, into the abyss of space.
Pray for these souls in trouble; pray for all who suffer. The action of charity is not restricted to those who are visible to the fleshly eye; it aids and consoles those, who also inhabit space. You had a touching proof of this truth in the sudden conversion of the spirit who was so deeply affected by the spiritist prayers offered up at the grave of this excellent man, whom you do well to question, and who desires to aid your advancement. 58
Pray for these souls in trouble; pray for all who suffer. The action of charity is not restricted to those who are visible to the fleshly eye; it aids and consoles those, who also inhabit space. You had a touching proof of this truth in the sudden conversion of the spirit who was so deeply affected by the spiritist prayers offered up at the grave of this excellent man, whom you do well to question, and who desires to aid your advancement. 58
58
After the ceremony, a few of the members of the Society, having met
together, received the following communication, made spontaneously and
most uexpectedly:
"My
name is Bernard; I lived in 1796, in Passy, which was then a small
village. I was a poor devil of a teacher; and God alone knows what
miseries I had to undergo. What a life of weariness I weant through!
How many years of care and suffering! I came, at last, to curse God,
the devil, men in general, and women in particular! Of the last, not
one ever came to me to say, 'Courage! Patience!' I was obliged to live
alone, always alone; and the malice of others rendered me malicious.
Since that time I wander about the places where I lived and died.
I heard what you said today; I was greatly affected by your prayers; you have accompanied a good and worthy spirit to the grave of his body, and all that you said and did has moved me deeply. I was one of a numerous company of spirits; we all prayed in common for you all, for the spread of your holy belief. Pray for us, who need help. The spirit of Sanson, who was with us, has promised us that you will think of us. I desire to be reincarnated in order that I may profit by a new trial, and thus prepare for myself a happier future in the spirit-world. Adieu, friends; I call you so, because you are kind to those who suffer. As for you, I wish you good thoughts and a happy future."
I heard what you said today; I was greatly affected by your prayers; you have accompanied a good and worthy spirit to the grave of his body, and all that you said and did has moved me deeply. I was one of a numerous company of spirits; we all prayed in common for you all, for the spread of your holy belief. Pray for us, who need help. The spirit of Sanson, who was with us, has promised us that you will think of us. I desire to be reincarnated in order that I may profit by a new trial, and thus prepare for myself a happier future in the spirit-world. Adieu, friends; I call you so, because you are kind to those who suffer. As for you, I wish you good thoughts and a happy future."
Back
to
Content
"When you're dead, you're dead," my doctor proclaimed quite authoritatively, as if his medical training had qualified him in subjects beyond the earthly shell. His comment was prompted by having noticed a book about near-death experiences I had brought to read in his waiting room.
"The most important thing to know about death is that you'd better make the most of what time you have," the doctor added in such a way as to clearly drive across the point that he does not believe in the survival of consciousness.
While I fully agreed with his comment about making the most of this lifetime, I doubted that we were anywhere near agreement on our underlying reasons. As I have come to understand it, life is a learning experience aimed at an ultimate graduation to something much greater - a Godhead that no human can really comprehend - and death, except for those ready to graduate, is merely a transition to another phase of that learning experience. Can anyone who does not believe in survival of consciousness view life as a learning experience? Where would the lessons be applied? What is the point of it all?
The doctor expressed concern that my interest in such a morbid subject might indicate depression, perhaps even thoughts of suicide. I informed him that such was definitely not the case. I wanted to explain to him that I consider death a very positive and uplifting subject, that the study of it helps me embrace this life in a much more courageous and fulfilling way, that it helps me be a better person, that it just simply makes me feel good. I wanted to recite the words of transpersonal counselor and author Lily Fairchilde:
"We cannot begin to live fully until we come to terms with the reality of death. We cannot know true courage until we look death in the face and see that it is not a voracious monster with yawning jaws that will eventually gobble up everything we hold precious, but instead a thing of beauty and wonder and great adventure. We will never be free to love fully and without fear until we know deep in our hearts the truth that love never dies, but lives on, along with those we have loved, forever." (Fairchilde, 1997, intro xviii)
I wanted to engage the good doctor in a discussion on the subject, to ask him how much, if anything, he knows about near-death experiences, whether he is aware of the growing body of evidence - even if no more purely scientific than his profession - gathered by reputable physicians and scientists in support of the validity of the NDE. I wanted to ask him if he has investigated psychic phenomena and the paranormal or if he has come to his conclusions from the superficial remarks of his colleagues. I wanted to ask him how much of his profession is probability, or just possibility, rather than certainty.
But I hesitated and said nothing. I knew he did not have the time to discuss the subject in a meaningful way. It is far too complex, too subjective, too abstract, too controversial, too paradoxical. One cannot in a few minutes turn a subject of supposed morbidity into one of joyfulness, a subject of chaos into one of orderliness and serenity, a subject of dread into one of great expectation. Moreover, I suspected that he would reply with the standard scientific theory that NDEs are nothing more than hallucinations of an oxygen-deprived brain, perhaps enhanced by drugs, and that other psychic and paranormal experiences are figments of the imagination or just plain bunk. If he were like most of my scientifically-minded friends and acquaintances, he would most probably react with a cynical snicker at the mere suggestion that he could possibly be so gullible as to even consider so much folly and fantasy. Such snickers seem endemic to scientists and other skeptics, especially those reared in orthodox religion but then "enlightened" by college professors eager to ravage innocent minds and perhaps establish themselves as mini gods.
I understand the scientific method and I know the scientific mindset, but I must admit to not fully grasping why scientists are always looking for reasons to reject survival evidence rather than for reasons to accept it. It seems like it would be a much more positive approach to recognize that there are things outside the scope of science, and to open the mind to the likelihood that there is a spiritual world that cannot be completely understood by the limited human intellect. The eminent Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung had this to say about such attitudes:
"In response to this understandable skepticism, I suggest the following considerations: If there is something we cannot know, we must necessarily abandon it as an intellectual problem. For example, I do not know or what reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know. Therefore, I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual problems. But if an idea about it is offered to me - in dreams or in mythic tradition - I ought of take note of it. I even ought to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though it will forever remain a hypothesis which I know cannot be proved. A man should be able to say he has done his best to form a conception of life after death, or to create some image of it - even if he must confess his failure. Not to have done so is a vital loss." (Jung 1989, 301-302)
As I drove home from the doctor's office, many thoughts concerning his comments raced through my mind: He seems like a caring physician and serves his fellow man in an very honorable way . Does it make any difference what he believes? It would seem that a person who can do good without regard to reward or punishment in an afterlife is a better person than one who is motivated by such reward or punishment. Philosopher-psychologist William James put it this way: "If religion be a function by which either God's cause or man's cause is to be really advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is a better servant than he who merely knows about it, however much. Knowledge about life is one thing, effective occupation of a place in life with its dynamic currents passing through your being is another." (James 1961, 380)
On the other hand, my thoughts continued, will his attitude about survival cause him to be earthbound or flounder in the lower ethers in a state of unconsciousness or semiconsciousness, perhaps not even realizing he is "dead," before at some future time - whatever form time takes or doesn't take in that realm -awakening to his new surroundings? In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche wrote:
"The teachings make it clear that if all we know of mind is the aspect of mind that dissolves when we die, we will be left with no idea of what continues, no knowledge of the new dimension of the deeper reality of the mind. So it is vital for us all to familiarize ourselves with the nature of the mind while we are still alive. Only then will we be prepared when it reveals itself spontaneously." (Rinpoche 1994, 12).
This Eastern belief is present in much of Western mysticism, including the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th Century scientist who abandoned his scientific career at the age of 56 and devoted his remaining 30 years to spiritual meditation and mediumistic trances in which he traveled out-of-body to spiritual realms and conversed with spirits. He wrote:
"People who have not believed, in the world, in any life of the soul after the life of the body, are acutely embarrassed when they realize that they are alive. [They] make friends of others with like mind and are separate from people who were in faith. For the most part, they are attached to some hellish community, because people of this sort have denied the divine..." (Swedenborg 1976, 349)
But even Swedenborg, said to be one of three people who might have had an IQ higher than Einstein, gets that cynical snicker from most modern-day scientists. There is the assumption that he must have crossed the line that separates genius from lunacy
My thoughts about my doctor's beliefs continued: But even if he is able to make a conscious transition to a comfortable realm on the "other side," would it not be more consoling to him in his remaining years on this plane to know that he has a soul that will live on? ....How does his attitude toward survival influence his teenage children? Why bring children into the world if all you can offer them is 20 some odd years of growing under your tutelage before you cut them loose for 50 or 60 years of physical decay and then total extinction? What a selfish and cruel act propagation seems in that light.
As Jung saw it, the skeptic "marches toward nothingness" while the believer "Follows the tracks of life and lives right to his death." (Jung, 306)
I wondered if my doctor might be one of those skeptics who claim to be able to quell the inner voices, focus on the present, and live fully without any trepidation toward what they must see as the obliteration of the personality, all the while contributing to the welfare of society and future generations. On the one hand, it seems like such a courageous and unselfish attitude, but when we ask to what end the legacy, to what generation full fruition, it seems more foolish and myopic. I suspect that William James hit upon the truth of it when he wrote:
"I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But when I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word 'bosh!' Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow 'scientific' bounds." (James, 401)
As I continued to ponder my doctor's beliefs, a voice in my mind harshly ordered me to halt. Who are you to judge? the voice scolded me. Who says you have it figured out? Are you not being a little self-righteous? What are your qualifications to question anyone?
A somewhat softer voice intruded, but was in agreement with the first voice. Just do your own thing. If the doctor and others like him choose to stumble over their own egos, that's their problem.
But then a dissenting voice pushed its way between the other two. No, that's not the attitude. This whole thing is about love, not romantic love, but the caring and compassionate kind. How can one who anticipates total extinction not have at least some deep-seated festering fears concerning the future, whether he is fully conscious of them or not? You're not trying to "save" hint. You're just trying to offer him a little comfort. How call you possibly walk away from such an opportunity and still assume that you are on the path of truth, the path of love? If you can just plant a seed that might sprout at some later date, it is your duty to do it.
The mind rebelled at being an arena for such debate and proceeded to shut off the voices, tuning back into the material world. A few days later, however, the musing resumed as I attended the funeral of a neighbor. As I observed the mourners, the words of French essayist Michel de Montaigne came to mind:
"They come and they go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come - to them, their wives, their children, their friends - catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair!" (de Montaigne 1987, 95)
I couldn't help but wonder about the negativity associated with death by most present and contrast that with the attitude of many people whose views on death have changed following a near-death experience. I recalled a video on NDEs in which several experiencers were interviewed. One of them quipped that upon hearing of the death of a friend's father, he wanted to say, "Well, good for him," but he decided it would be more appropriate to offer condolences. Another comment that came to mind was that of John Van Luyk, as reported by author Ian Currie:
"I can hardly find words for it - the most beautiful experience of my life. I had the most peaceful, contented feeling - but I wish there were different words available to describe it. If you called it peaceful to the 10th power- that would be getting close to it. When they jolted me out of that, I was really mad. The experience changed my whole outlook on death. I think very different of it now - I'm not afraid of it at all. As a matter of fact, I sometimes tell my kids that dying is the most beautiful experience you can have but they look at me as if I'm some kind of nut. So far as death is concerned, I can recommend it to anybody." (Currie 1992, 202)
As I resumed reading the book I had taken to my doctor's office, Lessons from the Light, by Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino, I came upon Dr. Ring's discussion of veridicality studies, those which have in some way been corroborated by witnesses and are not simply unsupported individual reports. Ring, one of the founders of the International Association of Near-Death Studies, begins with the now well-known "shoe on the ledge" case. In that NDE, a woman who had suffered a severe heart attack while visiting relatives in Seattle had an out-of-body experience during a cardiac arrest in the hospital. While still recovering in her hospital bed, she told a social worker of her OBE and how she had looked down from the ceiling watching the medical team at work on her before suddenly finding herself outside the hospital. She vividly recalled seeing a tennis shoe on the ledge of the third floor. She described the shoe in detail to the skeptical social worker, who checked it out and found the shoe in the exact place and exactly as the patient had described it. The social worker concluded that the patient could have in no way seen the shoe otherwise.
While such veridical NDEs are understandably few, it is a bit difficult to write off the hundreds of other documented cases as mere hallucinations. It does seem very strange that dying brains would have such very similar hallucinations. One would think that the variety of hallucinations would be as diverse as nightly dreams. It is also difficult to believe that the "being of light," the instantaneous life review, and the conscious decision as to whether to return to the body or not, common among many near-death experiencers, are all neurological effects or hallucinations. NDE researcher Pamela M. Kircher, M.D., writes:
"When people undergo a life review, each instant in their lives is reviewed, not just the 'big' ones. They find that it matters how they treat people in the grocery line or on the freeway. In the life review, they often experience the event, from their own perspective and from the perspective of the person with whom they were interacting." (Kircher 1995, 94)
Tom Sawyer, a Rochester, N.Y. resident who had an NDE in 1978 when his pickup truck fell on him as he worked under it, tells of reliving an encounter with a man he almost hit with his hotrod when he was 19. The pedestrian said something to him, which prompted Sawyer to get out of his vehicle and assault the man. During his life review, Sawyer, who says he was an avowed agnostic before his NDE, experienced the attack from the victim's perspective.
"[I experienced my] fist come directly into my face. And I felt the indignation, the rage, the embarrassment, the frustration, the physical pain. I felt my teeth going through my lower lip - in other words I was in that man's eyes. I was in that man's body..." (Farr 1993, 33)
More than the experience itself, NDE researchers point to the after effects of the experience as proof that these are not mere hallucinations. Ring observes:
".....we know that the NDE tends to bring about lasting changes in personal values and beliefs: NDErs appreciate life more fully, experience increased feelings of self-worth, have a more compassionate regard for others and, indeed, for all life, develop a heightened ecological sensitivity, and report a decrease in purely materialistic and self-seeking values. Their religious orientation tends to change, too, and becomes more universalistic, inclusive, and spiritual in expression." (Ring 1998, 4)
Surely, the skeptics cannot believe that such transformation is simply a neurological happening. Perhaps some of them believe that experiencers like Tom Sawyer are embellishing their stories so that they can sell books or otherwise profit from them. Does the skeptic truly believe that Carl Jung contrived his NDE in order to profit from it? Jung's NDE in 1944 came after he broke his foot and then had a heart attack. He recalled visualizing the earth from high above it and experiencing everything he had ever done and everything that had ever happened to him. In reflecting on his NDE, Jung wrote:
"I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible. It was not a product of my imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective about them; they all had a quality of absolute objectivity." Jung, 291)
A few days later, as I watched the movie Saving Private Ryan, my thoughts returned to death. An early scene showed a foot soldier having his arm blown off as he charged the enemy on the Normandy beach. Yet, he continued to run, seemingly unaware that he had lost a member of his body. I recalled seeing photographs of the phantom counterparts of missing limbs and reading credible accounts of people who, shortly after amputation of a leg, forgot to use their crutches and then walked several steps on their phantom legs.
The thoughts flowed: With all the evidence to support the existence of an astral body - soul body, spirit body, etheric body, double, whatever name be assigned to it (or even a third body reported by some) - why does mainstream science turn its head and not attempt to examine the relationship here between the NDE and that phantom counterpart? Why does science not make a real effort to study people who have the ability to loosen the astral body from the physical body and have out-of-body experiences? Their numbers are not limited to those having NDEs or to the likes of Swedenborg, Oliver Fox, Sylvan Muldoon, Frederick Sculthorp and other well-documented astral projectionists of the past; there are so many now incarnate who have this ability. Moreover, there are reportedly many doctors and nurses who have witnessed deathbed apparitions of the dying person. Why can't science see the links?
While the movie was set in World War II, my thoughts wandered back to World War I and to the esteemed British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge and his book, Raymond or Life and Death. I recalled how an agnostic friend had been scanning the books in my personal library during a party in my home and had randomly pulled Raymond from the shelf to browse it. To satisfy his curiosity, I explained how Lodge's son, Raymond, had been killed on the battlefield in France and had communicated with Lodge through the famous medium Gladys Osborne Leonard. I mentioned the evidential material that Lodge received, information that no one but Raymond had knowledge of, and which was later verified by the elder Lodge as being true. I explained to my guest how Lodge, one of the most respected scientists of the early part of this Century, subjected all of the information to every scientific test before eventually concluding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that his disincamate son had actually communicated with him through Leonard. But my guest, whose attitude on such matters is "I have to see it to believe it," responded with only a subdued smirk and shake of his head. Later, after my guests had departed, I pulled Raymond back off the shelf and began rereading some of Lodge's words, including these:
"Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is. We change our state at birth, and come into the world of air and sense and myriad existence; we change our state at death and enter a region of - what? Of ether, I think, and still more myriad existence; a region in which communion is more akin to what we here call telepath, and where intercourse is not conducted by the accustomed indirect physical processes; but a region in which beauty and knowledge are as vivid as they are here: a region in which progress is possible, and in which 'admiration, hope and love' are even more real and dominant." (Lodge 1916, 296)
My musing continued but with a 180 degree shift. Rather than the obstinacy of the skeptic, my thoughts turned to the credulity of my aging parents. Since all they have been taught by the Catholic Church is a heaven in which Jesus walks on clouds and angels play harps, a hell in which the devil reigns supreme over an inferno, and in between a purgatory which is just as bad as hell except that it is not eternal, it is understandable why they look upon death as that "voracious monster" of which Fairchilde spoke. Moreover, they have been taught that except perhaps for Mother Teresa and a saintly few like her, everyone who is "saved" must spend some time, possibly decades or centuries, in the flames of purgatory. How can anyone anticipating such an environment not look upon death with fear and great anxiety?
The thoughts raced through my mind during a visit with my parents: How is it possible for the Church to have done such a poor job in preparing its faithful for death? How can I possibly share with them what I have come to understand about the "other side" without rocking the foundations of their faith? If I can convince them that the Church has given them a distorted picture of the afterlife, will it cause them to lose faith altogether and perhaps become even more fearful and anxious in their final years? Is it better to say nothing? What chance is there that they will accept what I want to tell them when it is not consistent with what they have been told by popes and priests? How can their son, a "heathen" who hasn't attended Mass in 30 years and leans toward a belief in reincarnation, possibly know about such things?
I wanted to share with them the discoveries of Swedenborg, Leonard, Edgar Cayce, Alice Bailey, Rudolf Steiner, and other mystics or clairvoyants who were able to "cross through the veil" while still incarnate and then report on it. I wanted to share with them how their discoveries strongly suggests various planes, spheres, or realms making up the nonmaterial world. I wanted to tell them how so much of this is apparently beyond the human vocabulary and why therefore the Church was forced to use imagery through metaphors, similes, and symbols to describe it. I wanted to tell them how that "fire" the church has indoctrinated them with is really a "fire of the mind" on the very low planes, what they would call hell. I wanted to read to them the words of Alvin Mattson, a Lutheran minister, who made his transition in 1970, as channeled through the British clairvoyant Margaret Flavell Tweddell. Mattson, who found himself on an intermediate plane, reported:
"From this point we can progress to higher planes - to higher levels of consciousness. By 'higher' planes I do not mean spatially higher but rather those planes which have a finer vibration... The astral world is almost a replica of your world, except that it is of a finer substance and we are not 'bound' by our objective reality as you are. On the astral plane we are conscious of our personalities and the modes of life we carried out on earth. Therefore, we have denominations on this plane and we continue to practice the rites of our respective churches ...On numerous occasions since I arrived here, I have been permitted to go into the higher planes where there is a unity of God-praise, not a segregation of the praise of God." (Taylor 1975, 41-44)
I wanted to tell my parents how even St. Paul talked about a plurality of heavens (2. COR 12:2-4). I wanted to tell them that those intermediate planes, what they call purgatory, are reportedly quite pleasant, not a blazing inferno. I wanted to tell them that a belief in out-of-body travel, channeling, and other psychic phenomena, does not mean forsaking Jesus or the Bible. I wanted to mention how Swedenborg, Sculthorp, Sawyer, and Mattson all met Jesus during their out-of-body travels. Since my parents put doctors on a pedestal with priests, I wanted to tell them about George G. Ritchie, M.D., who had an NDE in 1943, and how he encountered Jesus as a brilliant light:
"For now I saw that it was not light but a Man made out of light, though this seemed no more possible to my mind than the incredible intensity of the brightness that made up His form." (Ritchie 1978, 48-49)
I wanted to tell them how Dr. Ritchie, like so many others, also saw every moment of his life played out before him. I wanted to tell them how Mattson reported seeing Jesus:
"When I first saw Him, the light and the glory and the surging of power was so tremendous. It was like an avalanche of feeling over me. At the present time I just don't feel that I have found a way in which to describe what it was like - an indescribable contentment and uplifting, a tremendous ecstasy of feeling on all planes, being completely out of yourself, an unusually vivid knowledge of the intense, sympathetic love around you -the warmth of it, the light of it - something that is not external but is part of you. It s like a sunrise on a mountain that is covered with snow, when the colors come down and reflect on you - a dazzling brilliance that would make you close your eyes and yet feel it in every pore or your body. This is the feeling that you have as you come toward the LIGHT." (Taylor, 36-37)
As some evidence that these encounters with Jesus were not mere hallucinations, I wanted to tell my parents that Ritchie, Mattson, Sculthorp, and others all mentioned that Jesus did not look exactly like the pictures we have of Him; and yet, they still knew it was Him. There was so much I wanted to say, but I knew it would bring only sympathetic smiles. My success in communicating with my parents was no greater than with my doctor or my house guest. I again considered my duty or responsibility, if any, in this regard and recalled the words of Alice Gilbert, which she says were telepathically transmitted to her by her son Philip from the "other side":
"To follow another soul into the mire, to walk by its side there protecting it from the ultimate dregs - this must not be done even by love. Each soul has to trudge alone - only so, it can learn to fly." (Gilbert 1948, 25)
The musing continued, however: Does my interest in this subject indicate a twisted personality, as some would suggest? Does it detract from the "real life" things I am or should be involved with? Does it interfere with grasping the lessons of this lifetime? Could it be that 1 am the blind one, not them? Am I the spiritually-challenged one? Or perhaps the reality-challenged?
To each question, my answer, after some deliberation, is always a definitive, if not totally objective, "NO!" To "practice" death for an hour or so a day, as I usually do, seems no less important than the hour a day I give to physical exercise to better enrich the quality of this lifetime. As de Montaigne wrote:
"To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die gives us freedom from subjection and constraint." (de Montaigne, 96)
And yet I am constrained slightly by those cynical snickers, those subdued smirks, those sympathetic smiles of my associates, friends, and relatives. Whenever I feel so constrained, though, I recall the reaction of Professor James to such skepticism: BOSH!
Still, I concern myself with the spiritually challenged and wonder if I should resign myself to emulating an unidentified victim of the Titanic (possibly W. T. Stead, the spiritualist) whose heartfelt story was told by Colonel Archibald Gracie, a survivor. After the ship had gone down, some of those left swimming, including Gracie, climbed on a capsized auxiliary raft. Gracie later told of a moment, referring to it as "a transcendent piece of heroism that will remain fixed in my memory as the most sublime and coolest exhibition of courage and cheerful resignation to fate and fearlessness of death." When the "hero," swimming in the 28-degree cold, approached the raft, someone shouted that there was no room for him. The unidentified man calmly responded: "All right, boys; good luck and God bless you!"
Bibliography
Currie, Ian, 1992, Visions of Immortality, Element Books, Victoria, B.C
De Montaigne, Michel, 1987 The Complete Essays, Penguin Books, New York.
Fairchilde, Lily, 1997, Voices from the Afterlife, St. Martin's Griffin, New York
Farr, Sidney Saylor, 1993, What Tom Sawyer Learned from Dying, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., Norfolk, VA.
Gilbert, Alice, 1948, Philip in Two Worlds, Andrew Dakers Limited, London
Gracie, Archibald, 1960, The Story of the Titanic as Told by Its Survivors, Dover Publications, New York
James, William, 1961, The Varieties of Religions Experience, Collier Books, New York
Jung, C.G., 1989, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Vintage Books, New York
Keller, Helen, 1994, Light in My Darkness, Chrysalis Books, West Chester, PA
Kircher, Pamela, 1995, Love is the Link, Larson Publications, Burdett, NY
Lodge, Oliver, 1916, Raymond or Life and Death, George H. Doran Co., New York
Ring, Kenneth, 1998, Lessons from the Light, Insight Books, New York
Rinpochi, Sogyal, 1994, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Harper San Francisco
Ritchie, George, 1978, My Glimpse of Eternity, Guideposts, Carmel, NY
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1976, Heaven & Hell, Swedenborg Foundation, W.Chester, PA
Taylor, Ruth, 1975, Witness from Beyond, Foreward Books, So. Portland, Maine
Note from the Editor: This remarkably instructive article was originally published in the Vol. 23, Number 2, April 2000 of The Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Inc., and its publication kindly authorized by its author, Mr. Michael E. Tymn.
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10:00 to 10:20 AM - Opening Remarks
10:20 to 11:20 AM - 150 Years of the Spiritist Doctrine and the Mission of Spiritists, by Nestor João Masotti, President of the Brazilian Spiritist Fdederation and Secretary General of the International Spiritist Council, Brasilia, DF. Brazil
11:20 to 12:10 PM - Lessons from The Spiritis' Book for a Healthy Life, by Sonia Doi, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, Maryland, and President of the U. S. Spiritist Medical Association, Washington, D.C.
12:10 to 1:40 PM - Lunch Break
1:40 to 2:40 PM - To Be a Spiritist in a Changing World, by José Raul Teixeira, Ph.D., Professor of Physics, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2:40 to 3:30 PM - Kardec's 1862 Missionary Journey and The Spirits' Book: Context and Impact, by John Zerio, Ph.D, Professor of International Marketing, School of International Management, Thunderbird University, Phoenix, Arizona
3:30 to 4:00 PM - Coffee Break
4:00 to 4:50 PM - At the Right Time: Scientific & Religious Context for The Spirits' Book, by Daniel Assisi, Director of Technology, Camino Nuevo Charter Academy, Los Angeles, California
4:50 to 5:50 PM - The Spirits' Book and the Modern Conquests of Science, by Divaldo Pereira Franco, international Spiritist Lecturer, recipient of close to 600 honorary titles and decorations, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
5:50 to 6:00 PM - Closing
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| ° ARTICLES |
Abstract: The
serious student of psychical research is certain to encounter friends,
relatives, associates and acquaintances who are puzzled by his
interest, especially his interest in death and, concomitantly, the
survival of consciousness. Some will scoff, some will snicker, some
will smirk, some will simply smile and sympathetically shake their
heads. The author often finds himself musing over such reactions,
reciprocally puzzled by the obstinacy of some and the credulity of
others, all the while subjecting his own views to a critical
examination. This article represents such random musing.
The only really blind
are those who
will not see the truth
- those who shut their eyes to spiritual vision
Helen Keller (Keller 1994, 154)
- those who shut their eyes to spiritual vision
Helen Keller (Keller 1994, 154)
"When you're dead, you're dead," my doctor proclaimed quite authoritatively, as if his medical training had qualified him in subjects beyond the earthly shell. His comment was prompted by having noticed a book about near-death experiences I had brought to read in his waiting room.
"The most important thing to know about death is that you'd better make the most of what time you have," the doctor added in such a way as to clearly drive across the point that he does not believe in the survival of consciousness.
While I fully agreed with his comment about making the most of this lifetime, I doubted that we were anywhere near agreement on our underlying reasons. As I have come to understand it, life is a learning experience aimed at an ultimate graduation to something much greater - a Godhead that no human can really comprehend - and death, except for those ready to graduate, is merely a transition to another phase of that learning experience. Can anyone who does not believe in survival of consciousness view life as a learning experience? Where would the lessons be applied? What is the point of it all?
The doctor expressed concern that my interest in such a morbid subject might indicate depression, perhaps even thoughts of suicide. I informed him that such was definitely not the case. I wanted to explain to him that I consider death a very positive and uplifting subject, that the study of it helps me embrace this life in a much more courageous and fulfilling way, that it helps me be a better person, that it just simply makes me feel good. I wanted to recite the words of transpersonal counselor and author Lily Fairchilde:
"We cannot begin to live fully until we come to terms with the reality of death. We cannot know true courage until we look death in the face and see that it is not a voracious monster with yawning jaws that will eventually gobble up everything we hold precious, but instead a thing of beauty and wonder and great adventure. We will never be free to love fully and without fear until we know deep in our hearts the truth that love never dies, but lives on, along with those we have loved, forever." (Fairchilde, 1997, intro xviii)
I wanted to engage the good doctor in a discussion on the subject, to ask him how much, if anything, he knows about near-death experiences, whether he is aware of the growing body of evidence - even if no more purely scientific than his profession - gathered by reputable physicians and scientists in support of the validity of the NDE. I wanted to ask him if he has investigated psychic phenomena and the paranormal or if he has come to his conclusions from the superficial remarks of his colleagues. I wanted to ask him how much of his profession is probability, or just possibility, rather than certainty.
Cynical Snickers
But I hesitated and said nothing. I knew he did not have the time to discuss the subject in a meaningful way. It is far too complex, too subjective, too abstract, too controversial, too paradoxical. One cannot in a few minutes turn a subject of supposed morbidity into one of joyfulness, a subject of chaos into one of orderliness and serenity, a subject of dread into one of great expectation. Moreover, I suspected that he would reply with the standard scientific theory that NDEs are nothing more than hallucinations of an oxygen-deprived brain, perhaps enhanced by drugs, and that other psychic and paranormal experiences are figments of the imagination or just plain bunk. If he were like most of my scientifically-minded friends and acquaintances, he would most probably react with a cynical snicker at the mere suggestion that he could possibly be so gullible as to even consider so much folly and fantasy. Such snickers seem endemic to scientists and other skeptics, especially those reared in orthodox religion but then "enlightened" by college professors eager to ravage innocent minds and perhaps establish themselves as mini gods.
I understand the scientific method and I know the scientific mindset, but I must admit to not fully grasping why scientists are always looking for reasons to reject survival evidence rather than for reasons to accept it. It seems like it would be a much more positive approach to recognize that there are things outside the scope of science, and to open the mind to the likelihood that there is a spiritual world that cannot be completely understood by the limited human intellect. The eminent Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung had this to say about such attitudes:
"In response to this understandable skepticism, I suggest the following considerations: If there is something we cannot know, we must necessarily abandon it as an intellectual problem. For example, I do not know or what reason the universe has come into being, and shall never know. Therefore, I must drop this question as a scientific or intellectual problems. But if an idea about it is offered to me - in dreams or in mythic tradition - I ought of take note of it. I even ought to build up a conception on the basis of such hints, even though it will forever remain a hypothesis which I know cannot be proved. A man should be able to say he has done his best to form a conception of life after death, or to create some image of it - even if he must confess his failure. Not to have done so is a vital loss." (Jung 1989, 301-302)
As I drove home from the doctor's office, many thoughts concerning his comments raced through my mind: He seems like a caring physician and serves his fellow man in an very honorable way . Does it make any difference what he believes? It would seem that a person who can do good without regard to reward or punishment in an afterlife is a better person than one who is motivated by such reward or punishment. Philosopher-psychologist William James put it this way: "If religion be a function by which either God's cause or man's cause is to be really advanced, then he who lives the life of it, however narrowly, is a better servant than he who merely knows about it, however much. Knowledge about life is one thing, effective occupation of a place in life with its dynamic currents passing through your being is another." (James 1961, 380)
On the other hand, my thoughts continued, will his attitude about survival cause him to be earthbound or flounder in the lower ethers in a state of unconsciousness or semiconsciousness, perhaps not even realizing he is "dead," before at some future time - whatever form time takes or doesn't take in that realm -awakening to his new surroundings? In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche wrote:
"The teachings make it clear that if all we know of mind is the aspect of mind that dissolves when we die, we will be left with no idea of what continues, no knowledge of the new dimension of the deeper reality of the mind. So it is vital for us all to familiarize ourselves with the nature of the mind while we are still alive. Only then will we be prepared when it reveals itself spontaneously." (Rinpoche 1994, 12).
This Eastern belief is present in much of Western mysticism, including the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th Century scientist who abandoned his scientific career at the age of 56 and devoted his remaining 30 years to spiritual meditation and mediumistic trances in which he traveled out-of-body to spiritual realms and conversed with spirits. He wrote:
"People who have not believed, in the world, in any life of the soul after the life of the body, are acutely embarrassed when they realize that they are alive. [They] make friends of others with like mind and are separate from people who were in faith. For the most part, they are attached to some hellish community, because people of this sort have denied the divine..." (Swedenborg 1976, 349)
But even Swedenborg, said to be one of three people who might have had an IQ higher than Einstein, gets that cynical snicker from most modern-day scientists. There is the assumption that he must have crossed the line that separates genius from lunacy
My thoughts about my doctor's beliefs continued: But even if he is able to make a conscious transition to a comfortable realm on the "other side," would it not be more consoling to him in his remaining years on this plane to know that he has a soul that will live on? ....How does his attitude toward survival influence his teenage children? Why bring children into the world if all you can offer them is 20 some odd years of growing under your tutelage before you cut them loose for 50 or 60 years of physical decay and then total extinction? What a selfish and cruel act propagation seems in that light.
As Jung saw it, the skeptic "marches toward nothingness" while the believer "Follows the tracks of life and lives right to his death." (Jung, 306)
I wondered if my doctor might be one of those skeptics who claim to be able to quell the inner voices, focus on the present, and live fully without any trepidation toward what they must see as the obliteration of the personality, all the while contributing to the welfare of society and future generations. On the one hand, it seems like such a courageous and unselfish attitude, but when we ask to what end the legacy, to what generation full fruition, it seems more foolish and myopic. I suspect that William James hit upon the truth of it when he wrote:
"I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But when I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word 'bosh!' Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow 'scientific' bounds." (James, 401)
As I continued to ponder my doctor's beliefs, a voice in my mind harshly ordered me to halt. Who are you to judge? the voice scolded me. Who says you have it figured out? Are you not being a little self-righteous? What are your qualifications to question anyone?
A somewhat softer voice intruded, but was in agreement with the first voice. Just do your own thing. If the doctor and others like him choose to stumble over their own egos, that's their problem.
But then a dissenting voice pushed its way between the other two. No, that's not the attitude. This whole thing is about love, not romantic love, but the caring and compassionate kind. How can one who anticipates total extinction not have at least some deep-seated festering fears concerning the future, whether he is fully conscious of them or not? You're not trying to "save" hint. You're just trying to offer him a little comfort. How call you possibly walk away from such an opportunity and still assume that you are on the path of truth, the path of love? If you can just plant a seed that might sprout at some later date, it is your duty to do it.
The
Death Paradox
The mind rebelled at being an arena for such debate and proceeded to shut off the voices, tuning back into the material world. A few days later, however, the musing resumed as I attended the funeral of a neighbor. As I observed the mourners, the words of French essayist Michel de Montaigne came to mind:
"They come and they go and they trot and they dance, and never a word about death. All well and good. Yet when death does come - to them, their wives, their children, their friends - catching them unawares and unprepared, then what storms of passion overwhelm them, what cries, what fury, what despair!" (de Montaigne 1987, 95)
I couldn't help but wonder about the negativity associated with death by most present and contrast that with the attitude of many people whose views on death have changed following a near-death experience. I recalled a video on NDEs in which several experiencers were interviewed. One of them quipped that upon hearing of the death of a friend's father, he wanted to say, "Well, good for him," but he decided it would be more appropriate to offer condolences. Another comment that came to mind was that of John Van Luyk, as reported by author Ian Currie:
"I can hardly find words for it - the most beautiful experience of my life. I had the most peaceful, contented feeling - but I wish there were different words available to describe it. If you called it peaceful to the 10th power- that would be getting close to it. When they jolted me out of that, I was really mad. The experience changed my whole outlook on death. I think very different of it now - I'm not afraid of it at all. As a matter of fact, I sometimes tell my kids that dying is the most beautiful experience you can have but they look at me as if I'm some kind of nut. So far as death is concerned, I can recommend it to anybody." (Currie 1992, 202)
As I resumed reading the book I had taken to my doctor's office, Lessons from the Light, by Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino, I came upon Dr. Ring's discussion of veridicality studies, those which have in some way been corroborated by witnesses and are not simply unsupported individual reports. Ring, one of the founders of the International Association of Near-Death Studies, begins with the now well-known "shoe on the ledge" case. In that NDE, a woman who had suffered a severe heart attack while visiting relatives in Seattle had an out-of-body experience during a cardiac arrest in the hospital. While still recovering in her hospital bed, she told a social worker of her OBE and how she had looked down from the ceiling watching the medical team at work on her before suddenly finding herself outside the hospital. She vividly recalled seeing a tennis shoe on the ledge of the third floor. She described the shoe in detail to the skeptical social worker, who checked it out and found the shoe in the exact place and exactly as the patient had described it. The social worker concluded that the patient could have in no way seen the shoe otherwise.
While such veridical NDEs are understandably few, it is a bit difficult to write off the hundreds of other documented cases as mere hallucinations. It does seem very strange that dying brains would have such very similar hallucinations. One would think that the variety of hallucinations would be as diverse as nightly dreams. It is also difficult to believe that the "being of light," the instantaneous life review, and the conscious decision as to whether to return to the body or not, common among many near-death experiencers, are all neurological effects or hallucinations. NDE researcher Pamela M. Kircher, M.D., writes:
"When people undergo a life review, each instant in their lives is reviewed, not just the 'big' ones. They find that it matters how they treat people in the grocery line or on the freeway. In the life review, they often experience the event, from their own perspective and from the perspective of the person with whom they were interacting." (Kircher 1995, 94)
Tom Sawyer, a Rochester, N.Y. resident who had an NDE in 1978 when his pickup truck fell on him as he worked under it, tells of reliving an encounter with a man he almost hit with his hotrod when he was 19. The pedestrian said something to him, which prompted Sawyer to get out of his vehicle and assault the man. During his life review, Sawyer, who says he was an avowed agnostic before his NDE, experienced the attack from the victim's perspective.
"[I experienced my] fist come directly into my face. And I felt the indignation, the rage, the embarrassment, the frustration, the physical pain. I felt my teeth going through my lower lip - in other words I was in that man's eyes. I was in that man's body..." (Farr 1993, 33)
More than the experience itself, NDE researchers point to the after effects of the experience as proof that these are not mere hallucinations. Ring observes:
".....we know that the NDE tends to bring about lasting changes in personal values and beliefs: NDErs appreciate life more fully, experience increased feelings of self-worth, have a more compassionate regard for others and, indeed, for all life, develop a heightened ecological sensitivity, and report a decrease in purely materialistic and self-seeking values. Their religious orientation tends to change, too, and becomes more universalistic, inclusive, and spiritual in expression." (Ring 1998, 4)
Surely, the skeptics cannot believe that such transformation is simply a neurological happening. Perhaps some of them believe that experiencers like Tom Sawyer are embellishing their stories so that they can sell books or otherwise profit from them. Does the skeptic truly believe that Carl Jung contrived his NDE in order to profit from it? Jung's NDE in 1944 came after he broke his foot and then had a heart attack. He recalled visualizing the earth from high above it and experiencing everything he had ever done and everything that had ever happened to him. In reflecting on his NDE, Jung wrote:
"I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible. It was not a product of my imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective about them; they all had a quality of absolute objectivity." Jung, 291)
Subdued
Smirks
A few days later, as I watched the movie Saving Private Ryan, my thoughts returned to death. An early scene showed a foot soldier having his arm blown off as he charged the enemy on the Normandy beach. Yet, he continued to run, seemingly unaware that he had lost a member of his body. I recalled seeing photographs of the phantom counterparts of missing limbs and reading credible accounts of people who, shortly after amputation of a leg, forgot to use their crutches and then walked several steps on their phantom legs.
The thoughts flowed: With all the evidence to support the existence of an astral body - soul body, spirit body, etheric body, double, whatever name be assigned to it (or even a third body reported by some) - why does mainstream science turn its head and not attempt to examine the relationship here between the NDE and that phantom counterpart? Why does science not make a real effort to study people who have the ability to loosen the astral body from the physical body and have out-of-body experiences? Their numbers are not limited to those having NDEs or to the likes of Swedenborg, Oliver Fox, Sylvan Muldoon, Frederick Sculthorp and other well-documented astral projectionists of the past; there are so many now incarnate who have this ability. Moreover, there are reportedly many doctors and nurses who have witnessed deathbed apparitions of the dying person. Why can't science see the links?
While the movie was set in World War II, my thoughts wandered back to World War I and to the esteemed British physicist Sir Oliver Lodge and his book, Raymond or Life and Death. I recalled how an agnostic friend had been scanning the books in my personal library during a party in my home and had randomly pulled Raymond from the shelf to browse it. To satisfy his curiosity, I explained how Lodge's son, Raymond, had been killed on the battlefield in France and had communicated with Lodge through the famous medium Gladys Osborne Leonard. I mentioned the evidential material that Lodge received, information that no one but Raymond had knowledge of, and which was later verified by the elder Lodge as being true. I explained to my guest how Lodge, one of the most respected scientists of the early part of this Century, subjected all of the information to every scientific test before eventually concluding, beyond a reasonable doubt, that his disincamate son had actually communicated with him through Leonard. But my guest, whose attitude on such matters is "I have to see it to believe it," responded with only a subdued smirk and shake of his head. Later, after my guests had departed, I pulled Raymond back off the shelf and began rereading some of Lodge's words, including these:
"Death is not a word to fear, any more than birth is. We change our state at birth, and come into the world of air and sense and myriad existence; we change our state at death and enter a region of - what? Of ether, I think, and still more myriad existence; a region in which communion is more akin to what we here call telepath, and where intercourse is not conducted by the accustomed indirect physical processes; but a region in which beauty and knowledge are as vivid as they are here: a region in which progress is possible, and in which 'admiration, hope and love' are even more real and dominant." (Lodge 1916, 296)
Sympathetic Smiles
My musing continued but with a 180 degree shift. Rather than the obstinacy of the skeptic, my thoughts turned to the credulity of my aging parents. Since all they have been taught by the Catholic Church is a heaven in which Jesus walks on clouds and angels play harps, a hell in which the devil reigns supreme over an inferno, and in between a purgatory which is just as bad as hell except that it is not eternal, it is understandable why they look upon death as that "voracious monster" of which Fairchilde spoke. Moreover, they have been taught that except perhaps for Mother Teresa and a saintly few like her, everyone who is "saved" must spend some time, possibly decades or centuries, in the flames of purgatory. How can anyone anticipating such an environment not look upon death with fear and great anxiety?
The thoughts raced through my mind during a visit with my parents: How is it possible for the Church to have done such a poor job in preparing its faithful for death? How can I possibly share with them what I have come to understand about the "other side" without rocking the foundations of their faith? If I can convince them that the Church has given them a distorted picture of the afterlife, will it cause them to lose faith altogether and perhaps become even more fearful and anxious in their final years? Is it better to say nothing? What chance is there that they will accept what I want to tell them when it is not consistent with what they have been told by popes and priests? How can their son, a "heathen" who hasn't attended Mass in 30 years and leans toward a belief in reincarnation, possibly know about such things?
I wanted to share with them the discoveries of Swedenborg, Leonard, Edgar Cayce, Alice Bailey, Rudolf Steiner, and other mystics or clairvoyants who were able to "cross through the veil" while still incarnate and then report on it. I wanted to share with them how their discoveries strongly suggests various planes, spheres, or realms making up the nonmaterial world. I wanted to tell them how so much of this is apparently beyond the human vocabulary and why therefore the Church was forced to use imagery through metaphors, similes, and symbols to describe it. I wanted to tell them how that "fire" the church has indoctrinated them with is really a "fire of the mind" on the very low planes, what they would call hell. I wanted to read to them the words of Alvin Mattson, a Lutheran minister, who made his transition in 1970, as channeled through the British clairvoyant Margaret Flavell Tweddell. Mattson, who found himself on an intermediate plane, reported:
"From this point we can progress to higher planes - to higher levels of consciousness. By 'higher' planes I do not mean spatially higher but rather those planes which have a finer vibration... The astral world is almost a replica of your world, except that it is of a finer substance and we are not 'bound' by our objective reality as you are. On the astral plane we are conscious of our personalities and the modes of life we carried out on earth. Therefore, we have denominations on this plane and we continue to practice the rites of our respective churches ...On numerous occasions since I arrived here, I have been permitted to go into the higher planes where there is a unity of God-praise, not a segregation of the praise of God." (Taylor 1975, 41-44)
I wanted to tell my parents how even St. Paul talked about a plurality of heavens (2. COR 12:2-4). I wanted to tell them that those intermediate planes, what they call purgatory, are reportedly quite pleasant, not a blazing inferno. I wanted to tell them that a belief in out-of-body travel, channeling, and other psychic phenomena, does not mean forsaking Jesus or the Bible. I wanted to mention how Swedenborg, Sculthorp, Sawyer, and Mattson all met Jesus during their out-of-body travels. Since my parents put doctors on a pedestal with priests, I wanted to tell them about George G. Ritchie, M.D., who had an NDE in 1943, and how he encountered Jesus as a brilliant light:
"For now I saw that it was not light but a Man made out of light, though this seemed no more possible to my mind than the incredible intensity of the brightness that made up His form." (Ritchie 1978, 48-49)
I wanted to tell them how Dr. Ritchie, like so many others, also saw every moment of his life played out before him. I wanted to tell them how Mattson reported seeing Jesus:
"When I first saw Him, the light and the glory and the surging of power was so tremendous. It was like an avalanche of feeling over me. At the present time I just don't feel that I have found a way in which to describe what it was like - an indescribable contentment and uplifting, a tremendous ecstasy of feeling on all planes, being completely out of yourself, an unusually vivid knowledge of the intense, sympathetic love around you -the warmth of it, the light of it - something that is not external but is part of you. It s like a sunrise on a mountain that is covered with snow, when the colors come down and reflect on you - a dazzling brilliance that would make you close your eyes and yet feel it in every pore or your body. This is the feeling that you have as you come toward the LIGHT." (Taylor, 36-37)
As some evidence that these encounters with Jesus were not mere hallucinations, I wanted to tell my parents that Ritchie, Mattson, Sculthorp, and others all mentioned that Jesus did not look exactly like the pictures we have of Him; and yet, they still knew it was Him. There was so much I wanted to say, but I knew it would bring only sympathetic smiles. My success in communicating with my parents was no greater than with my doctor or my house guest. I again considered my duty or responsibility, if any, in this regard and recalled the words of Alice Gilbert, which she says were telepathically transmitted to her by her son Philip from the "other side":
"To follow another soul into the mire, to walk by its side there protecting it from the ultimate dregs - this must not be done even by love. Each soul has to trudge alone - only so, it can learn to fly." (Gilbert 1948, 25)
The musing continued, however: Does my interest in this subject indicate a twisted personality, as some would suggest? Does it detract from the "real life" things I am or should be involved with? Does it interfere with grasping the lessons of this lifetime? Could it be that 1 am the blind one, not them? Am I the spiritually-challenged one? Or perhaps the reality-challenged?
To each question, my answer, after some deliberation, is always a definitive, if not totally objective, "NO!" To "practice" death for an hour or so a day, as I usually do, seems no less important than the hour a day I give to physical exercise to better enrich the quality of this lifetime. As de Montaigne wrote:
"To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Knowing how to die gives us freedom from subjection and constraint." (de Montaigne, 96)
And yet I am constrained slightly by those cynical snickers, those subdued smirks, those sympathetic smiles of my associates, friends, and relatives. Whenever I feel so constrained, though, I recall the reaction of Professor James to such skepticism: BOSH!
Still, I concern myself with the spiritually challenged and wonder if I should resign myself to emulating an unidentified victim of the Titanic (possibly W. T. Stead, the spiritualist) whose heartfelt story was told by Colonel Archibald Gracie, a survivor. After the ship had gone down, some of those left swimming, including Gracie, climbed on a capsized auxiliary raft. Gracie later told of a moment, referring to it as "a transcendent piece of heroism that will remain fixed in my memory as the most sublime and coolest exhibition of courage and cheerful resignation to fate and fearlessness of death." When the "hero," swimming in the 28-degree cold, approached the raft, someone shouted that there was no room for him. The unidentified man calmly responded: "All right, boys; good luck and God bless you!"
Bibliography
Currie, Ian, 1992, Visions of Immortality, Element Books, Victoria, B.C
De Montaigne, Michel, 1987 The Complete Essays, Penguin Books, New York.
Fairchilde, Lily, 1997, Voices from the Afterlife, St. Martin's Griffin, New York
Farr, Sidney Saylor, 1993, What Tom Sawyer Learned from Dying, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., Norfolk, VA.
Gilbert, Alice, 1948, Philip in Two Worlds, Andrew Dakers Limited, London
Gracie, Archibald, 1960, The Story of the Titanic as Told by Its Survivors, Dover Publications, New York
James, William, 1961, The Varieties of Religions Experience, Collier Books, New York
Jung, C.G., 1989, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Vintage Books, New York
Keller, Helen, 1994, Light in My Darkness, Chrysalis Books, West Chester, PA
Kircher, Pamela, 1995, Love is the Link, Larson Publications, Burdett, NY
Lodge, Oliver, 1916, Raymond or Life and Death, George H. Doran Co., New York
Ring, Kenneth, 1998, Lessons from the Light, Insight Books, New York
Rinpochi, Sogyal, 1994, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Harper San Francisco
Ritchie, George, 1978, My Glimpse of Eternity, Guideposts, Carmel, NY
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1976, Heaven & Hell, Swedenborg Foundation, W.Chester, PA
Taylor, Ruth, 1975, Witness from Beyond, Foreward Books, So. Portland, Maine
Note from the Editor: This remarkably instructive article was originally published in the Vol. 23, Number 2, April 2000 of The Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Inc., and its publication kindly authorized by its author, Mr. Michael E. Tymn.
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