Death and the Afterlife

David Griffiths There is no such thing as a natural death. Nothing that happens to Man is ever natural, since his presence calls the whole world into question. All men must die, but for every man his death is an accident. And even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation." Well, you may agree with the words or not, but those are the key strings of The Lord of the Rings. JRR Tolkien paraphrasing Simone de Bouvoirs "A Very Easy Death"

I think as well as offering glimpses of the inherent truth and beauty in tradition and myth, as Tolkien says here, another key string in his work is mortality and how it ruins our plans. Men in Middle Earth are seen as weak, flighty and short-lived to the immortal elves a bit like moths. But in men, due to their short life-spans, a fire of life and vitality burns and drives them that is alien to the elves. What they are most envious of is what men are most terrified of death, which is called The Gift of Iluvatar (Iluvatar being The Absolute God). In death, which is a mystery to all but Iluvatar, man finds spiritual eternity while the elves are doomed to an eternity of material existence. From the point of view of us mortals, death is not a gift at all. At least not how we may understand it from a view of ignorance and fear, which is our natural viewpoint. Until we actually experience death first hand it is only really through pondering it from a spiritual viewpoint that any kind of light can be shone into that particularly gloomy cavern. When pondering the purpose of religion one of the things that perhaps comes to many peoples minds is the fact that it offers answers and hope to man about his mortality. Individuals who count on their faith to answer difficult metaphysical questions often choose to believe the accepted dogma and teachings of their religion, belief system or culture to answer the questions about our fate beyond death, whether they be the eternal paradise or punishment of Christianity, the cycle of Rebirth of Hinduism and Buddhism, or the utter nothingness of Atheism. In Gnostic systems of spirituality, we prefer to answer our questions using knowledge rather than faith. This means we seek to know the answers about things for ourselves rather than adopt a systemic belief system that requires little thought of ones own. This knowledge is gained either through experiential, subjective or spiritual knowledge, or hard, quantifiable knowledge. Dealing with questions about God, spirituality and mortality through ones own experiential knowledge, rather than faith, enables us to answer a question only through our own deductions, perceptions and experience. So we might deduce, for instance, that God exists because we can use our intellectual faculties to conclude that the Universe must have an origin. Rationally, it could not manifest ex nihilo (out of nothing), so must therefore have been brought into being by an external agent or First Cause that pre-exists it and is independent of it. In addition to this, we may also have felt a great certainty that the beauty, love and wonder that we find in each other, in the world and in the wider cosmos all point very powerfully towards the existence of an awesome Spirit which fills the universe and humanity with purpose and meaning , while giving us the ability to sense this truth with our combined and inseparable intellectual, physical, emotional and intuitive senses.

When it comes to death however, we cannot really speak with any certainty or knowledge. So what do we do if we want to look at the issue? In response to most peoples correlation between the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife, the first question I found myself asking was how, if at all, can a knowledge of God equate to a knowledge of what lies beyond death? I sense that part of the answer is because the unusual sentience of man is so strongly tied with his awareness of his mortality so therefore his spirituality which is the emotional expression of his unusual sentience is greatly influenced by his perceptions of death and what may lie beyond it. Like God, Death is one of the greatest Unknowns to us: and it is the greatest Unknowns that produce our greatest drives and fuel the need to ask the greatest questions. Because they are both such great Unknowns, God and Death are massively correlated in our minds, as are the related concepts of Infinity and Nothingness. Because these Unknowns are correlated so strongly with each other, belief in God and belief in the afterlife frequently co-exist. Yet logically, the existence of God need not necessarily mean that there is a continuation of consciousness after death. Personally, I will admit that I approached the question of the afterlife utterly unsure of my position on the existence of it. I firmly believe in The Divine because I feel I have both rationalised and experienced Its existence and have felt some noticeable changes in my being because of these experiences. But despite this, I have hitherto felt no such conviction regarding the afterlife. Despite the fact that we can never truly know what happens after death until weve experienced it ourselves, what I want to attempt to do here, in the interest of sticking to principles of Gnosis, is look at some of the only evidence there is regarding the possibility of the continuation of postmortal consciousness in the form of Near Death Experiences to see if they can reveal anything of value about the nature of death and what may follow it.

And I felt myself going. I was in a great deal of pain, it was a very frightening experience, but I began to slip I just sort of, felt myself going, and I remember trying to hold on Ill be ok, Ill be ok And it got to the point where I just couldn't And everything began to just become very quiet. And I can remember with every ounce of strength I had I wanted to say goodbye to my wife, it was important to me And I did, I remember just turning my head, looking at her and saying I'm gonna die, goodbye Joan and I did. It was then that I experienced experienced what we call a near death experience, for me there was nothing near about it, it was there. It was a total immersion in light, brightness, warmth, peace, security I did not have an out-of-body experience, I did not see my body or anyone about me, I just immediately went into this beautiful bright light. It's difficult to describe, matter of fact its impossible to describe. Verbally it cannot be expressed, its something which becomes you and you become it I could say that I was peace, I was love, I was the brightness It was part of me And its just so beautiful. It was eternity. Its like I was always there, and I will always be thereThat my existence on earth was just a very brief instant. I could say that I was peace, I was love, I was the brightness It was part of me - Anathema, Internal Landscapes.

The quote in that song is from an interview with a man named Joe Geraci in a programme made by Kenneth Ring (which you can find on YouTube). Ring was a professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut who, after reading Raymond Moodys Life After Life, decided to try and add scientific structure to the study of Near Death Experiences. Its fairly easy, if youre cynical, to either scoff at or just plain disbelieve peoples claims abo ut Near Death Experiences. In the modern West were completely conditioned towards cynicism. Most of us probably have some form of awareness about the idea of Near Death Experiences from the media, and have made up our minds one way or another. I know I have historically been such a person. Its too easy to write such experiences off as delusions, hallucinations or even complete falsehoods. Its one of the strengths and weaknesses of the modern West that we always require scientific proofs before we believe anything. Sure, it helps us progress medically and technologically, but it also makes us very cynical and mechanical creatures. As well-disposed towards science as I am, I do believe that there are some things which cannot be proved by its methods; things like the existence of God, life on planets billions of light years away, and, of course life after death. Scientific truth, though important, is not the only truth. Therefore, to some extent, I believe when science cant provide answers we must use our critical skills to analyse case studies that seem to have common strands of truth in them; like the accounts of witnesses in court, or historical documents, such accounts are evidence in their own right even if they dont have results that can be reproduced in a laboratory. This is why, if you are looking for a trustworthy source about some of the possible answers regarding death and the afterlife, you should probably read some of Kenneth Rings work. Having an academic, scientific background and an open mind about the possibilities of the accounts he collected and analysed, he seems about as credible a source that one can encounter on the subject of NDEs. In his first book Life at Death he provided a composite description of the pattern of events in NDEs that represents what he calls a complete experience. The experience begins with a feeling of easeful peace and a sense of well-being, which soon culminates in a sense of overwhelming joy and happiness. This ecstatic tone, although fluctuating in intensity from case to case, tends to persist as a constant emotional ground as other features of the experience begin to unfold. At this point, the person is aware that he feels no pain nor does he have any other bodily sensations. Everything is quiet. These cues may suggest to him that he is either in the process of dying or has already died. He may then be aware of a transitory buzzing or windlike sound, but, in any event, he finds himself looking down on his physical body, as though viewing it from some external vantage point. At this time, he finds that he can see and hear perfectly; indeed, his vision and hearing tend to be more acute than usual. He is aware of the actions and conversations taking place in the physical environment, in relation to which he finds himself in the role of a passive, detached spectator. All this seems very real even quite naturalto him; it does not seem at all like a dream or an hallucination. His mental state is one of clarity and alertness. At some point, he may find himself in a state of dual awareness. While he continues to be able to perceive the physical scene around him, he may also become aware of another reality and feel himself being drawn into it. He drifts or is ushered into a dark void or tunnel and feels as though he is floating through it. Although he may feel lonely for a time, the experience here is predominately

peaceful and serene. All is extremely quiet and the individual is aware only of his mind and of the feeling of floating. All at once, he becomes sensitive to, but does not see, a presence. The presence, who may be heard to speak or who may instead merely induce thoughts into the individuals mind, stimulates him to review his life and asks him to decide whether he wants to live or die. This stocktaking may be facilitated by a rapid and vivid visual playback of episodes from the persons life. At this stage, he has no awareness of time or space, and the concepts themselves are meaningless. Neither is he any longer identified with his body. Only the mind is present and it is weighing logically and rationallythe alternatives that confront him at this threshold separating life from death: to go further into this experience or to return to earthly life. Usually the individual decides to return on the basis, not of his own preference, but on the perceived needs of his loved ones, whom his death would necessarily leave behind. Once the decision is made, the experience tends to be abruptly terminated. Sometimes, however, the decisional crisis occurs later or is altogether absent, and the individual undergoes further experiences. He may, for example, continue to float through the dark void toward a magnetic and brilliant golden light, from which emanates feelings of love, warmth and total acceptance. Or he may enter i nto a world of light and preternatural beauty, to be (temporarily) reunited with deceased loved ones before being told, in effect, that it is not yet his time and that he has to return to life. In any event whether the individual chooses or is commanded to return to his earthly body and worldly commitments, he does return. Typically, however, he has no recollection how he has effected his re-entry, for at this point he tends to lose all awareness. Very occasionally, however, the individual may remember returning to his body with a jolt or an agonizing wrenching sensation. He may even suspect that he re-enters through the head. Afterward, when he is able to recount his experience, he finds that there are simply no words adequate to convey the feelings and quality of awareness he remembers. He may also be or become reticent to discuss it with others, either because he feels no one will really be able to understand it or because he fears he will be disbelieved or ridiculed. Theres probably not much you hadnt already heard before when you heard that rather cold and factual summary of the events of an NDE. And you probably had thoughts of your own on the truth and validity of them, as well. I think, then, that a better way to make ones mind up about the accounts that he collects is to hear a few of the first person accounts from people that Ring collected. Ive chosen six of Rings accounts to read out here, the first is quite long and detailed, while the others have been chosen because of the things that they reveal which, to me, seem to be the most relevant from a spiritual point of view. Account 1: Tom Sawyer. He begins here by referring to his experience while still in the tunnel: Then all this time, the speed is increasing. Gradually, you realize . . youre going [at] at least the speed of light. It might possibly be the speed of light or possibly even faster than the speed of light. You do realize that youre going just so fast and youre covering vast, vast distances in just hundredths of a second. And then gradually you realize that way, way off in the distance again, unmeasurable distanceit appears that it might be the end of the tunnel. And all you can see is a white light. And again, remember that you are traveling at extreme speed. [But] this whole process only takes [say] one minute and again emphasizing that you

might have traveled to infinity, just an unlimited number of miles. You then realize that you are coming to the end of this tunnel and that this light is not just a brilliance from whatever is at the end of the tunnelits an extremely brilliant light. Its pure white. Its just so brilliant. And then, before you is thisexcuse me [he pauses here]is this most magnificent, just gorgeous, beautiful, bright, white or blue-white light [another pause]. It is so bright, it is brighter than a light that would immediately blind you, but this absolutely does not hurt your eyes at all. It is so bright, so brilliant, and so beautiful, but it doesnt hurt your eyes. And the next series of events take placeoh, within a millisecond, they take placemore or less all at once, but of course in describing them Ill have to take them one at a time. The next sensation is this wonderful, wonderful feeling of this light. Its almost like a person. It is not a person, but it is a being of some kind. It is a mass of energy. It doesnt have a character like you would describe another person, but it has a character in that it is more than just a thing. It is something to communicate to and acknowledge. And also in size, it just covers the entire vista before you. And it totally engulfs whatever the horizon might be. Then the light immediately communicates to you. This communication is what you might call telepathic. Its absolutely instant, absolutely clear. It wouldnt even matter if a different language was being spoken whatever you thought and attempted to speak, it would be instant and absolutely clear. There would never be a doubtful statement made. The first thing youre told is, Relax, everything is beautiful, everything is OK. Youre immediately put at absolute ease. Its the most comfortable feeling that you could ever imagine. You have a feeling of absolute, pure love. Its the warmest feeling. [But] make sure you dont confuse it with warm in temperature, because theres no temperature involved. Whatever your senses would feel absolute perfectif its temperature, its a perfect temperature. If its either an exciting emotion or a placid emotion, its just perfect and you feel this and you sense this. And its so absolutely vivid and clear. Then the thing is, the light communicates to you and for the first time in your life is a feeling of true, pure love. It cant be compared to the love of your wife, the love of your children, or some people consider a very intense sexual experience as love and they consider [it] possibly the most beautiful moment in their lifeand it couldnt even begin to compare. All of these wonderful, wonderful feelings combined could not possibly compare to the feeling, the true love. If you can imagine what pure love would be, this would be the feeling that youd get from this brilliant white light. Tom then goes on to describe another key aspect of the core NDE that our previous excerpts only hinted at but that will become increasingly prominent in many of the accounts to follow. The second most magnificent experience is you realize that you are suddenly in communications with absolute, total knowledge. Its hard to describe. You can think of a question and immediately know the answer to it. As simple as that. And it can be any question whatsoever. It can be on any subject. It can be on a subject that you dont know anything about, that you are not in the proper position even to understand and the light will give you the instantaneous correct answer and make you understand it. Needless to say, I had many questions answered, many pieces of information given to me, some of which is very personal, some of which is religiously orientated one of the religious -orientated questions was in regards to an afterlife and this was definitely answered through the experience itself. Theres absolutely no question in my mind that the light is the answer.

Upon entering that light the atmosphere, the energy, its total pure energy, its total knowledge, its total love, pure loveeverything about it is definitely the afterlife, if you will. Tom concludes this account with a statement clearly implied by what he had already described; it is a recurrent motif in all these narratives: As a result of that [experience], I have very little apprehension about dying my natural death because if death is anything, anything at all like what I experienced, its gotta be the most wonderful thing to look forward to, absolutely the most wonderful thing.

Account 2: Harold In April 1977, while raking leaves in front of his house, Harold suffered a heart attack. He describes the unfolding of his core experience as follows: A brilliant white-yellow warm pillar of light confronted me. I was now in a light golden cellular embodiment and the greatest feeling of warmth and love and tenderness became part of me. My consciousness or soul was at the foot or base. When I tried to look up (not exactly so, but the closest words I can use) I saw the sweet smile and love of my father at the time when I was a young child and he held me and loved me. I felt this love permeating my being. (I had never any conscious remembrance of this nor thought of my father for years.) Instantly my entire life was laid bare and open to this wonderful presence, GOD. I felt inside my being his forgiveness for the things in my life I was ashamed of, as though they were not of great importance. I was askedbut there were no words; it was a straight mental instantaneous communicationWhat had I done to benefit or advance the human race? At the same time all my life was presented instantly in front of me and I was shown or made to understand what counted. I am not going into this any further but, believe me, what I had counted in life as unimportant was my salvation and what I thought was important was nil.

Account 3: Hank. November 1975, when he was just nineteen years old, Hank was badly injured in an automobile accident. He suffered numerous physical injuries and it was thought for some time that he would not survive them. In the first part of his NDE, he found himself in something like a very large room in which he became aware of other beings. At one point, from the forward left-hand corner of the room, another being entered. This being was of an even brighter auraglowthan we were. His glow was almost like reaching out, so to speak; it just came out and engulfed you. It filled every corner of the room. Even though the brightness was intense you could still make out something of the features, that kind of thing. The brightness did not hurt your eyes. It had a kind of golden -type white mostly white, I would sayand I could make out a form of him. The feeling was so intense, it was almost as if I could have been completely engulfed by it, and the light also provided a warmth and love. I had the warmth and love toward this person so intense, total trust, not like a love Ive had for anything or anybody. It is so hard to describe cause its hard to realize a total surrendering-type love, a total love that kind of immerses you. The kind that no matter what he would have told me, Id have done

Account 4: Belle. I met this beautiful being of light. It is the most beautiful person and it is not at all effeminate. Masculine, filled with love, pulsating love, youre just surrounded with love.Its not a physical or a sexual love. It is Gods love of man and mans love of God. Its an all consuming feeling. Her next comments, however, speak again to the phenomenon of the life review and echo Harolds and Hanks observations: You are shown your lifeand you do the judging. Had you done what you should do? You think, Oh, I gave six dollars to someone that didnt have much and that was great of me. That didnt mean a thing. Its the little thingsmaybe a hurt child that you helped or just to stop to say hello to a shut-in. Those are the things that are most important. You are judging yourself. You have been forgiven all your sins, but are you able to forgive yourself for not doing the things you should have done and some little cheaty things that maybe youve done in life? Can you forgive yourself? This is the judgment.

Account 5: Darryl. Darryls experience occurred in September 1971. He was talking to a friend over the ph one one evening during an electrical storm. When lightning struck his house, he was electrocuted and he learned afterwards that he went nine minutes without pulse or respiration.As his experience developed, he too became aware of a light: as the light ca me toward me, it came to be a personyet it wasnt a person. It was a being that radiated. And inside this radiant luminous light which had a silver tint to itwhite, with a silver tint to it[was] what looked to be a man. Now, I didnt know exactly who this was, you know, but it was the first person that showed up and I had this feeling that the closer this light got to me, the more awesome and the more pure this lovethis feeling that I would call love And this person said, Do you know where you are? I never got a chance to answer that question, for all of a

suddenquote, unquotemy life passed before me. But it was not my life that passed before me nor was it a three-dimensional caricature of the events in my life. What occurred was every emotion I have ever felt in my life, I felt. And my eyes were showing me the basis of how that emotion affected my life. What my life had done so far to affect other peoples lives using the feeling of pure love that was surrounding me as the point of comparison. And I had done a terrible job. God! I mean it. You know, Id done a horrible job, using love as the point of comparison. Lookin at yourself from the point of how much love you have spread to other people is devastatin. You will never get over it. I am si x years away from that day [of his NDE] and I am not over it yet. Later, Darryl found himself moving toward something that other core NDErs have also describeda city of lights. I moved closer to the lights and realized they were citiesthe cities were built of light. At the moment I realized what it was we were there. There was no more traveling or floating along this path. I stood in the square of a brilliant, beautiful city and I will describe the city. The building I went in was a cathedral. It was built like St. Marks or the Sistine Chapel, but the bricks or blocks appeared to be made of Plexiglas. They were square, they had dimension to em, except you could see through em and in the center of each one of these was this gold and silver light. And y ou could see the buildingand yet could not for the radiance. Now, this cathedral was literally built of knowledge. This was a place of learning I had come to. I could sense it. Cause literally all informationI begun to be bombarded with data. Information was coming at me from every direction. It was almost as if I was stickin my head in a stream and each drop of water was a piece of information and it was flowing past me as if my head was under it.

Account 6: Carole, By my side there was a Being with a magnificent presence. I could not see an exact form, but instead, a radiation of light that lit up everything about me and spoke with a voice that held the deepest tenderness one can ever imagine as this loving yet powerful Being spoke to me, I understood vast meanings, much beyond my ability to explain. I understood life and death, and instantly, any fear I had, ended. There was a totality, a completeness in the realization that I could continue to experience and that there was absolutely no reason to continue my frantic struggle to exist. For what seemed to be endless time, I experienced this Presence. The Light Being, pure, powerful, all-expansive, was without a form and it could be said that great waves of awareness flowed to me and into my mind. As I responded to these revelations, I knew them to be so. Of course, it didnt matter if one lived or died, it was all so clear. There was a complete trust and greater understanding of what these words meant.It seemed whole Truths revealed themselves to me. Waves of thoughtideas greater and purer than I had ever tried to figure out came to me. Thoughts, clear without effort revealed themselves in total wholeness, although not in logical sequence. I, of course, being in that magnificent Presence, understood it all. I realized that consciousness is life. We will live in and through much, but this consciousness we know that is behind our personality will continue. I knew now that the purpose of life does not depend on me; it has its own purpose. I realized that the flow of it will continue even as I will continue. New serenity entered my being. As this occurred, an intensity of feeling rushed through me, as if the light that surrounded that Being was bathing me, penetrating every part of me. As I absorbed the

energy, I sensed what I can only describe as bliss. That is such a little word, but the feeling was dynamic, rolling, magnificent, expanding, ecstaticBliss. It whirled around me and, entering my chest, flowed through me, and I was immersed in love and awareness for ineffable time. Ring then draws the accounts together with a summary of how NDEs seem to unfold like this And so, we remember (1) the incredible speed and sense of acceleration as one approaches (2) the light that (3) glows with an overwhelming brilliance and yet (4) does not hurt ones eyes. We remember that one feels in the presence of the light (5) pure love, (6) total acceptance, (7) forgiveness of sins, and (8) a sense of homecoming; that (9) communication with the light is instantaneous and nonverbal and that the light (10) imparts knowledge of a universal nature as well as (11) enables one to see or understand his entire life so that (12) it is clear what truly matters in life. We also remember that one may be aware of (13) transcendental music, (14) paradisiacal environments, and (15) cities of light as one progresses farther into the experience. And that, finally, (16) once having encountered the light, one yearns to remain with it forever. In summary regarding the context of NDEs, Ring established the following conclusions. Those cases who came closest to death, or were clinically dead, told of being outside of their bodies, of moving through a void or dark tunnel toward a luminous light, of meeting with departed relatives and friends, of having a feeling of great comfort and bliss and of being surrounded by compassionate love, a feeling so beautiful they longed to remain, and when they returned to the "earthly" realm, they were affected by this feeling the rest of their lives. No one type of person was especially likely to have this experience. It cut across race, gender, age, education, marital status, and social class. Religious orientation was not a factor affecting either the likelihood or the depth of the NDE. An atheist was as likely to have one as was a devoutly religious person. Regardless of their prior attitudes - whether skeptical or deeply religious - and regardless of the many variations in religious beliefs and degrees of skepticism from tolerant disbelief to outspoken atheism - most of these people were convinced that they had been in the presence of some supreme and loving power and had a glimpse of a life yet to come. Drugs, anaesthesia and medication did not seem to be a factor in inducing these impressions and exquisite feelings of a NDE. Indeed, drugs and anaesthesia seemed to be more likely to cause a person to forget memories of a NDE. He definitely concluded that NDEs are not hallucinations because hallucinations are rambling, unconnected, often unintelligible and vary widely, whereas NDEs tend to have similar elements of a clear, connected pattern. Based on the information of those who had reported such incidents, the moment of death was often one of unparalleled beauty, peace and comfort - a feeling of total love and total acceptance. This was possible even for those involved in horrible accidents in which they suffered very serious

injuries. Dr. Ring found there was a tremendous comfort potential in this information for people who were facing death. After going through a NDE, people reported a loss of fear of death as well as a greater appreciation of life. They also reported stronger feelings of self-acceptance and a greater concern and sense of caring for other people. They had less interest in material things for their own sake. Many tended to become more spiritual - though not necessarily more involved in organized religion. Almost all subjects who experienced a NDE found their lives transformed and a change in their attitudes and values, and in their inclination to love and to help others. Dr. Ring was convinced that these were absolutely authentic experiences and noted that since returning, many of them had occasion to think about what might have been.' And their subsequent lives were powerful testimony to our common ability to live more deeply, more appreciatively, more lovingly, and more spiritually.

Ancient Reports of Near Death Experiences

The Ascent of the Blessed, Hieronymous Bosch, from the polyptic Visions of the Hereafter, 1504.

From this painting we can probably assume that such experiences are pretty consistent through the centuries and have been related by man for many centuries. They may even hold the keys to many

of mans assumptions regarding death and the afterlife in ancient texts such as the Great Liberation through Hearing found in the 8th Century Tibetan text Bardo Thodol, or Book of the Dead, which seems to be in accord with the plethora of contemporary Occidental accounts of life after death in its revelations. In this text, the recently departed experience a white light, feelings of intense happiness and joy and encounters with divine beings in the moments immediately after death. In our own Western spiritual traditions, we can cite a couple of major ancient sources as conveyors of experiences that are aesthetically similar to NDEs. Plato is one source of something that sounds similar to a Near Death experience, and St Paul is another. In the Myth of Er in Book X of The Republic, Plato tells a tale of a warrior who returns to life after dying in a battle, who said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, and they told him that he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at either opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them; and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, some descending out of heaven clean and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the meadow, where they encamped as at a festival; and those who knew one another embraced and conversed, the souls which came from earth curiously enquiring about the things above, and the souls which came from heaven about the things beneath. And they told one another of what had happened by the way, those from below weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the things which they had endured and seen in their journey beneath the earth (now the journey lasted a thousand years), while those from above were describing heavenly delights and visions of inconceivable beauty. In an allegory that predates Christianity by about 400 years, themes such as the immortality of the soul and the concept of reward and punishment in the afterlife are introduced to the West. Platos allegorical account here relates to a phenomena that was seemingly known about amongst the learned of ancient Athens, and is used here as a device to show how human consciousness is a sort of transmitter between the divine realm, the realm of forms, and the material realm. It is Philosophy, in this myth, that is passed between the Divine and man, with the NDE being used as an allegorical tool. I think, though, that we could just as easily say that what we call Gnosis or direct spiritual experience filters through the unconscious in this way too. Er eventually returns to his body after twelve days, not remembering how, but carrying with him a memory of the afterlife which he had been instructed to convey to mankind by the gods as evidenced by his not being required to drink from the memory erasing waters of the Lethe in the Plains of Oblivion. Like the Bardo Thodol of the Tibetans, aspects of this account seem to be of a broadly similar structure to the Near Death Experiences reported in our own age. Though it uses

some of the accepted aesthetics of the NDE, Platos account must largely be seen as a way of explaining philosophy or gnosis as a gift from the divine realm of forms that God allows a few selected men to transmit back to his fellow men. In Platos philosophi cal form it appears that the realm beyond death and the realm of the Divine are plainly equated with each other. With NDEs apparently being such a universal phenomenon, I think Platos myth of Er was probably based upon a knowledge of them. As Ring summarised the death experience often leads to a heightened spiritual awareness, which Plato recounts in his myth. In the Christian tradition, St Paul seems to vaguely allude to his knowledge of one who experienced a similar thing to Er in II Corinthians 12: 2-4, though the knowledge gained beyond appears to be unspeakable (either as a taboo or as something that just cannot be expressed) rather than something to be shared with his fellow man. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heavenwhether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradisewhether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. There is a greatly elaborated and mythified version of this story in the Apocalypse of Paul from the Nag Hammadi library, which adds the elements of an out of body awareness and also an awareness of the presence of an extraneous spiritual entity to the account. Then the Holy Spirit who was speaking with him caught him up on high to the third heaven, and he passed beyond to the fourth heaven. The Holy Spirit spoke to him, saying, "Look and see your likeness upon the earth." And he looked down and saw those who were upon the earth. He stared and saw those who were upon the [...]. Then he gazed down and saw the twelve apostles at his right and at his left in the creation; and the Spirit was going before them. And so, in this mythical account, Paul goes upwards and onwards until he reaches level 10 of the heavenly realm in his journeys until, we assume, he eventually returns to earth with a superior knowledge of God of which man may not utter (but invariably attempts to anyway).

The Biological Case

One of the more surprising accounts in Rings collection related to a woman who had experienced a classic NDE, who went on to reveal that the major facet missing in her experience was that she was nowhere near death when she had the experience. She was at the funeral of a dear friend, delivering a heartfelt eulogy to the congregation, when she quite suddenly had an experience with golden lights, a divine presence and feelings of overwhelming love and communication coming from it. Ring explains that profound religious experiences can lead to such phenomena occurring and goes on to cite Kundalini yoga as another example of a method through which a profound NDE-like experience can be attained without nearing death. In the case of Kundalini, long known to be capable of producing largely strange physiological and psychological affects, the experience of enlightenment, ecstasy and the consciousness detaching from the body seem to correlate with many of the symptoms of a near death experience.

Though similar to NDEs, extreme religious experiences and Kundalini yoga do not seem as immersive or extreme in nature as the experiences encountered in proximity to death. One type of experience which does seem as immersive and extreme, however, is that caused by a chemical known as DMT.

N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) molecule

N, N-Dimethyltriptamine is a small, simple molecule found in plants and animal brains in negligible amounts. It is hypothesised, but not proved, that it is produced in the pineal gland, that mysterious part of the brain that Descartes was so interested in, seeing it the seat of the soul, and that is also equated with the Third Eye chakra that people who practice Kundalini Yoga seek to activate in their practices In order to attain enlightenment. If DMT really is produced there that could prove quite an interesting connection between biological and spiritual aspects of the brain and the mind. In the human brain it is thought it serves to add colour, meaning and inspiration to consciousness, having an affect on things like dream states and imagination. Too little of it and human thought can become flat and dull. Too much of it and things can become rather too vivid. Extract it into a chemically unbound freebase and smoke or inject it and it produces a vastly profound and lifechanging trip that is very similar to a near death experience. Those who have used it in experiments report seeing a white light with which their consciousness, which seems to them to be completely detached from their body, merges. They feel that their humanity and time itself no longer exist. They see symbols which emanate the sum of all knowledge and meaning and have visions of otherworldly machines, patterns and shining cities. They feel that they have entered the divine realm, filled with amazing patterns and saturations of colour, peopled by winged entities that move in an otherworldly manner, that are described as angelic. These beings directly communicate with the person having the experience and seem to have been expecting them when they arrive then go on to act as their guides. On returning to normality, one individual described the fifteen or so minutes that they were in this realm as feeling like 1,000 years of experience. What does become obvious when comparing DMT and NDEs, is that NDEs appear to be a bit more real feeling to the party involved, often starting off with looking down at ones own body, and clear

but often mundane thoughts about things going on in the environment. There is then the shift in experience in the NDE as a darkness or tunnel appears in the scene towards the subject feels compelled to enter, being called on by the light at the other side of it. Then, the dying person experiences the light and may eventually go on to have experiences with entities, the attainment of knowledge, shining cities, etc., as found, in a rather more psychedelic form, in DMT trips. Another possible difference is that DMT seems to instantly catapult someone directly into that strange, otherworldly realm without the passive out of body experiences from the scene of the event or any of the feelings of peace, the life review, the appearance of loved ones or the apparent unfolding of ones future life. Maybe this is just a question of how much DMT the brain is subjected to or whether it is endogenous or extraneous in origin. Or maybe they are both very real, very similar spiritual voyages that differ because of their contexts one person lies on the ground, mangled and dying with the wheel of a truck on his chest while the other is sitting in his living room dribbling with a hot glass pipe on his lap. Although having a clear biological basis, like NDEs and other profound religious and meditative experiences, DMT experiences pose a question about the mind and the psyche that is more than purely biological. That question is: do these experiences actually involve a detachment of consciousness from the physical body? Those who experience all of the above phenomena certainly seem to think that this is the case. But unless you experience it for yourself I think you can only ever speculate on whether this is so or not. Even if you did experience such a thing for yourself, you still wouldnt know for a verifiable scientific fact that a detachment of mind and body is what had happened. But the level of conviction in people who have had such experiences is great. They can turn atheistic, materialistic or generally ignorant people into spiritually aware beings, and they usually have profoundly life-changing effects upon them as well. One viewpoint regarding consciousness, after Huxleys Doors of Perception, is that when subjected to something like an NDE or DMT, it becomes altered by it in such a way that information usually inhibited by the brain is now permitted as the filtering mechanism that bars us from fully perceiving the realm of the divine is ripped away leaving the human mind exposed to that usually prohibited information. It could be said that DMT is a mediator between consciousness and the non-corporeal reality of spirit a gateway between two fundamentally joined aspects of humanity - the spiritual dimension and the realm of matter. Or rather, it could be seen as something that breaches the wall between these two realms that a materialistic society such as ours has so sturdily reinforced, psychosocially. The same could also be said about NDEs and extreme religious states, in which endogenous DMT may play a role.

Conclusion
Death, unsurprisingly perhaps, seems to be a highly spiritual experience perhaps even the most profound spiritual experience that we will ever experience in the mortal realm. It may very well have a biological input as the brain, starved of oxygen and blood desperately fires electrical impulses out in its dying moments alongside larger than usual secretions of Dimethyltryptamine, thus producing an NDE. But this doesnt make the experience unspiritual or merely biological. All human emotions

and experiences have a biological, chemical element to them, and this fact need not in any way detract from the existence or validity of what we call the spiritual. Human emotions, like love, though comprised of chemicals and electrical impulses, are not meaningless. Like the humans that bear them, they are simultaneously carnal and divine by nature. Our biology itself, it seems, acts as a gateway to deeper spiritual states, and the chemicals and electrical impulses released upon death are the last, and apparently most extreme, of these gateways: for they are the final gateway between the mortal, symbiotic state of humanity as a soul housed by a body and the disembodied post-mortal state of pure spirit. Whether we believe in the afterlife or not, Death, it seems, is a catalyst of spiritual awareness and Gnosis to those who survive it. It has a profound spiritual effect on the subject, imparting a perceived knowledge of God that directly affects how that the person involved chooses to spend the rest of their lives. These people frequently continue their lives feeling the need to do good, to do more of worth, to love people more and generally make the world a better place. And what else would God want someone who had directly experienced him to do? Occasionally, NDErs also seem to gain access to some kind of direct knowledge of spiritual truths and occasionally knowledge of the future and answers to earthly questions, though more often than not the nature of much of the knowledge imparted seems to become lost in translation to material mortality, coming back gradually in broken, dream like form as their conscious brains filter out that knowledge, acting like a biological Lethe, in a way that reflects Huxleys idea that it is the brains job not to produce consciousness but to act as a reducing valve in order to moderate it. So are NDEs a glimpse into the Great Beyond or a purely biological phenomenon? That question is still impossible to answer. As interesting and inspiring NDEs are and I think they do offer us some feasible evidence of an afterlife it remains the case that we still do not know for sure whether the consciousness exists beyond death or not. As far as we know, after all the apparent pleasantness of the bodily process of dying is finished, there may still be utter darkness and nothingness waiting for us. If NDEs are an entirely chemical phenomena we have the comfort of knowing that the event of death itself is probably very pleasant and in itself, nothing to be frightened of. And that, in its own right, is a comfort. Ill admit that I am more convinced now that life continues beyond death than I was before, and that my ideas about love, God and spirituality are strengthened by the accounts related by Ring. I also believe that these are real experiences that have been genuinely recalled by the subjects. But as the subjects actually survived we cant tell for sure whether they represent the ultimate reality of death. Nor do we know what happens next after those initial death experiences are over, if they are indeed genuine experiences of an afterlife. Despite our own personal biases, we still cannot truly answer the questions that death forces us to consider. The accounts of NDEs do offer a nebulous, evidence-based hope a tangible possibility that death is more of a beginning than an end: and being a pneumatic by nature, I prefer to think about death spiritually and positively. But I cant make any definitive statements on my beliefs regarding the truth of these things. The only ones who can do that, I think, are those who have actually walked the boundaries between life and death which the myths and mysteries of our ancestors, in the form of the descent into the

underworld, or return from the realm of death, be it Odin hanging on the tree for nine days, or Christs crucifixion and resurrection revealed to be the ultimate way to truly know divinity. In short, the only way to ever know the truth about death is to find out for ourselves, which I believe it is our duty to put off for as long as we can. And so, despite my previous uncertainty about the relationship between God and death, I feel I now have a greater appreciation of the connection. In NDEs God, love and death, are inseparably linked. So if NDEs do represent a genuine spiritual enlightenment from God that occur in order to give man hope and live a more spiritually enlightened and generally more loving life, then they seem to do their job rather well.