Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (15 page)
Read Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience Online
Authors: Pim van Lommel
The Isha Upanishad features an almost literal description of endless consciousness:
The Self seems to move, but is ever still.
He seems far away, but is ever near.
He is within all, and he transcends all.
Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no fear.
Those who see all creatures in themselves
And themselves in all creatures know no grief.
How can the multiplicity of life
Delude the one who sees its unity?
The Self is everywhere. Bright is the Self,
Indivisible, untouched by sin, wise,
Immanent and transcendent. He it is
Who holds the cosmos together.
Contemporary India
The ancient wisdom is still alive in contemporary India, for instance in the work of the philosopher Swami Rama. He is known as the first yogi to submit to tests by Western scientists at the Menninger Institute in the United States. Swami Rama was found to be capable of controlling or altering automatic and unconscious bodily processes through willpower. For example, he could induce a seventeen-second arrhythmia of over three hundred beats per minute without losing consciousness; he could change his blood pressure and body temperature; he could manipulate the brain waves on his EEG into a pattern matching deep sleep; and he could perform feats of telekinesis (moving objects through mind power). Swami Rama writes:
It is not possible to understand what exists after death by intellectual arguments or discussions. The absolute Truth cannot be scientifically proven because it cannot be observed, verified, or demonstrated by sense perceptions…. That is why scientists cannot reach any concrete conclusions on the immortality of the soul and life hereafter, and nothing can convince them either…. The objective world is only one half of the universe. What we perceive with our senses is not a complete world. The other half, which includes the mind, thoughts, and emotions, cannot be explained by the sense perceptions of external objects…. The soul has not been created. It is essentially consciousness and is perfect. After the dissolution of the gross body, everything remains latent. The soul survives. Our souls remain perfect and are not annihilated, dissolved, or destroyed after death…. Life and death are only different names for the same fact—two sides of one coin…. Much of the fear associated with death is the fear that death may be painful. The process of death itself is not painful; it merely changes conditions. Lack of preparation and attachment are the cause of the pain experienced at the time of death.
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According to this doctrine (Vedanta), pure consciousness has a primary presence in the universe while our mind (our thoughts and waking consciousness) is merely a spark or a reflection of this consciousness. The absolute or supreme consciousness is the source and the foundation of the complete Self and of the entire universe.
Tibetan Buddhism
Buddhism originated in the fifth century
B.C.E
. in what was then Hindu India, when Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the future Buddha, was born. Buddhists believe in the cycle of death and rebirth. A person cannot die, but the body can. The terminal period can be either extremely brief or last a considerable time, depending on the time the consciousness needs to vacate the body. There is a continuity of the spirit in a “spirit body,” which is too subtle for the eye to see. Death is like sleeping, and the bardo, the intermediate state immediately after death, lasts a maximum of forty-nine days and is like a dream between death and a new life. The soul begins its new life, according to the Tibetan Buddhists, usually on the fiftieth day after death.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thödol
) contains ancient knowledge passed on orally from generation to generation. It may have been disseminated in written form as early as the beginning of our Christian era and was probably compiled in its current form in the eighth century by Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism. In Tibet he is also known as Guru Rinpoche. The following quotation from this book bears a great resemblance to an out-of-body experience:
When the consciousness-principle getteth outside the body, it sayeth to itself, “Am I dead, or am I not dead?” It cannot determine. It seeth its relatives and connexions as it had been used to seeing them before. It even heareth the wailings…. About this time the deceased can see that the share of food is being set aside, that the body is being stripped of its garments, that the place of the sleeping-rug is being swept; he can hear all the weeping and wailing of his friends and relatives, and, although he can see them and can hear them calling upon him, they cannot hear him calling upon them, so he goeth away displeased. At that time, sounds, lights, and rays—all three—are experienced.
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The ancient Tibetan texts that are recited to accompany the dying and the dead say:
Listen! When the expiration hath ceased, the vital-force will have sunk into the nerve-centre of Wisdom and the Knower will be experiencing the Clear Light of the natural condition…. At that time do not fear that bright, dazzling-yellow, transparent light, but know it to be Wisdom; in that state, keeping thy mind resigned, trust in it earnestly and humbly. If thou knowest it to be the radiance of thine own intellect—although thou exertest not thy humility and faith and prayer to it—the Divine Body and Light will merge into thee inseparably, and thou wilt obtain Buddhahood…. Be not fond of that dull bluish-yellow light from the human world. That is the path of thine accumulated propensities of violent egotism come to receive thee…. At that time fear not the glorious and transparent, radiant and dazzling green light, but know it to be Wisdom; and in that state allow thine intellect to rest in resignation.
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The dead spirit has to go through many more stages, but if the person fails to see everything for the illusion it is, the soul is headed toward rebirth:
Henceforth the body of the past life will become more and more dim and the body of the future life will become more and more clear…. Now the signs and characteristics of the place of birth will come. Enter upon the White Light of the devas, or upon the Yellow Light of human beings.
In his recent book
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,
Sogyal Rinpoche explains the ancient Tibetan wisdom of life and death and human transience in accessible terms. He frequently compares the ancient Tibetan insights with what Westerners know about the NDE and suggests that the former may help Westerners come to terms with death. His book is a good example of a modern interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism. He writes:
Isn’t it about time now that the medical profession should understand that the search for the truth about life and death and the practice of healing are inseparable?…To learn how to die is to learn how to live; to learn how to live is to learn how to act not only in this life, but in the lives to come. To transform yourself truly and learn how to be reborn as a transformed being to help others is really to help the world in the most powerful way of all.
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Ancient Greek Philosophy
One of the greatest philosophers of all time is Plato (427–347
B.C.E
.). He believed that the soul is imprisoned in the body and its sight restricted by the senses. Death to him was an awakening, a remembering of the eternal soul.
Plato attached more value to the immortal soul than to the mortal body. He was of the opinion that all human knowledge is memory, originating in a previous existence. It lies dormant in the soul as a memory and is awoken by a concrete perception. What we tend to regard as reality is, according to Plato, merely a shadow of true reality: the world of ideas. The realm of ideas, in Plato’s philosophy, is a transcendent reality without space or time that is more real than the material world of concrete things.
In
Phaedo
Plato recounts what Socrates told his friends on the day he was to die by drinking from the poisoned cup: “And what is that which is termed death, but this very separation and release of the soul from the body?”
His friends observe, “But in what relates to the soul, men are apt to be incredulous; they fear that when she leaves the body her place may be nowhere, and that on the very day of death she may be destroyed and perish—immediately on her release from the body, issuing forth like smoke or air and vanishing away into nothingness.”
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Socrates responds:
Like children, you are haunted with a fear that when the soul leaves the body, the wind may really blow her away and scatter her…. And is [death] anything but the separation of soul and body?…And being dead is the attainment of this separation; when the soul exists in herself, and is parted from the body and the body is parted from the soul—that is death…. Then the soul is more like to the unseen, and the body to the seen…. The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintelligible, and multi-form, and dissoluble, and changeable…. If the immortal is also imperishable, the soul when attacked by death cannot perish…. That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world, to the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she lives in bliss and is released from the error and folly of men…. And when the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of each severally conveys them, first of all they have sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and piously, or not…. And these must be the souls, not of the good, but of the evil, who are compelled to wander about such places in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life.
Medieval Jewish Mysticism
The Jewish tradition too teaches that death does not destroy the soul. Rather, death represents a transition from one level of consciousness to another, to a spiritual, disembodied consciousness.
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The medieval Midrash and Zohar are the best sources of Jewish views on the afterlife. A Hasidic legend tells the story of Rabbi Elimelech’s encounter with his dead friend Chaim, as agreed before his passing; his friend tells him about life after death:
At the moment of death I did not feel any pain…. After those who had washed and cleaned my body had done their duty, I wished to rise up and send them away. I could not do so and all seemed to me like a dream. After they had put me into the grave and covered it with the ground, and the people who had accompanied my body to the grave had gone home, I rose from my grave…. Suddenly a man as tall as from the earth to the sky appeared to me…. And he took me up from the earth and put me before the Heavenly Court. There they began to weigh and measure my record…. As I looked into Gehinnon I saw many people of my acquaintance and heard their outcries and painful sobs…. I was also able to see the great bliss of the Righteous in Gan Eden on the other side.
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The story bears a striking resemblance to a typical near-death experience.
The Jewish Book of Living and Dying
describes a great many Jewish mystical insights into death that are reminiscent of the contents of modern-day near-death experiences.
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In many ways these medieval Jewish views on human consciousness are similar to the aspects of consciousness that we will discuss later. The Kabbalah, for instance, teaches that the human essence, our consciousness or soul, is a complex phenomenon consisting of different layers. First, there is the individual essence, which survives physical death and is known as
nefesh
(literally, soul of the flesh). The next layer is called the integrating essence. This is part of the nefesh, though separate, and is called
ruach
(literally, spirit). It is the essence of awareness and forms a link with the next layer, the collective essence, or the soul of many individuals; it is akin to Jung’s collective unconscious and is known as
neshama
(literally, breath). The next layer transcends the individual and collective aspects of consciousness to a nonindividual layer of consciousness known as
chaya
(literally, life-force). This life-force essence is the starting point for merging with the supreme, the ultimate consciousness. Here is the unity, omniscience, and love of the supreme consciousness, the divine or cosmic consciousness,
yechida
(literally, singularity or union with the transcendent).
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