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 Bouvoir’s "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 people’s

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 one’s 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 one’s 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 people’s 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 we’ve 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 post-

mortal 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… I’ll be ok,

I’ll 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 it’s impossible to describe. Verbally it cannot be expressed, it’s 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 it’s just so beautiful. It was eternity. It’s like… I was

always there, and I will always be there…That 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 Moody’s Life After Life, decided to try and add scientific

structure to the study of Near Death Experiences.

It’s fairly easy, if you’re cynical, to either scoff at or just plain disbelieve people’s claims about Near

Death Experiences. In the modern West we’re 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. It’s too easy to write such experiences off as delusions, hallucinations or even complete

falsehoods.

It’s 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 can’t

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 don’t 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 Ring’s 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 natural—to 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 individual’s mind,

stimulates him to review his life and asks him to decide whether he wants to live or die. This stock-

taking may be facilitated by a rapid and vivid visual playback of episodes from the person’s 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 rationally—the 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 into 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.

There’s probably not much you hadn’t 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 one’s mind up about the

accounts that he collects is to hear a few of the first person accounts from people that Ring

collected.

I’ve chosen six of Ring’s 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 . . you’re 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 you’re going just so fast and you’re covering vast, vast distances in just

hundredths of a second.… And then gradually you realize that way, way off in the distance—

again, unmeasurable distance—it 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 tunnel—it’s an extremely brilliant light. It’s pure white. It’s just so

brilliant.… And then, before you is this—excuse 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 doesn’t

hurt your eyes. And the next series of events take place—oh, within a millisecond, they take

place—more or less all at once, but of course in describing them I’ll have to take them one at

a time. The next sensation is this wonderful, wonderful feeling of this light.… It’s almost like

a person. It is not a person, but it is a being of some kind. It is a mass of energy. It doesn’t

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. It’s absolutely instant, absolutely clear. It wouldn’t 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 you’re told is, “Relax, everything is beautiful, everything is OK.” … You’re

immediately put at absolute ease. It’s the most comfortable feeling that you could ever

imagine. You have a feeling of absolute, pure love. It’s the warmest feeling. [But] make sure

you don’t confuse it with warm in temperature, because there’s no temperature involved.

Whatever your senses would feel absolute perfect—if it’s temperature, it’s a perfect

temperature. If it’s either an exciting emotion or a placid emotion, it’s just perfect and you

feel this and you sense this. And it’s 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

can’t 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 life—and it couldn’t 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 you’d 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. It’s 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 don’t 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.… There’s absolutely no question in my mind that the light is the answer.

Upon entering that light … the atmosphere, the energy, it’s total pure energy, it’s total

knowledge, it’s total love, pure love—everything 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, it’s 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 asked—but there were no words; it was a straight

mental instantaneous communication—“What 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 aura—glow—than 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 say—and 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 I’ve had for anything or anybody. It is so hard to describe ’cause it’s 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, I’d 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, you’re just surrounded with love.It’s

not a physical or a sexual love. It is God’s love of man and man’s love of God. It’s an all-

consuming feeling. Her next comments, however, speak again to the phenomenon of the life

review and echo Harold’s and Hank’s observations: You are shown your life—and you do the

judging. Had you done what you should do? You think, “Oh, I gave six dollars to someone

that didn’t have much and that was great of me.” That didn’t mean a thing. It’s the little

things—maybe 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 you’ve done in life? Can you forgive yourself? This

is the judgment.

Account 5: ‘Darryl’.

Darryl’s experience occurred in September 1971. He was talking to a friend over the phone

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 came toward me, it

came to be a person—yet it wasn’t a person. It was a being that radiated. And inside this

radiant luminous light which had a silver tint to it—white, with a silver tint to it—[was] what

looked to be a man.… Now, I didn’t 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 love—this 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

sudden—quote, unquote—“my 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 people’s

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, I’d 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 six 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 described—a city of lights. I moved closer to the lights and

realized they were cities—the 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. Mark’s 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 you

could see the building—and 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 information—I 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 didn’t 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 thought—ideas 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, ecstatic—Bliss. 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 one’s 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 man’s 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. Plato’s

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, Plato’s 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 Plato’s philosophical 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 Plato’s 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 heaven—whether in the

body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into

paradise—whether 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 Ring’s 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 life-

changing 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 one’s 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

one’s 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 wouldn’t 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 Huxley’s 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 doesn’t 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 Huxley’s idea that it is the brain’s 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.

I’ll 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 can’t 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 can’t 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

Christ’s 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.