Exploring Death: Not Living in the Present
The most popular and widely used method for exploring death remains the choice not to be alive in the present. The mind can easily put itself somewhere else, choosing to live outside present-time. We live in the past and blame it for being inadequate in the present or we live in the future and dread what might or might not be. Thus, our fantasies allow us to escape living in the now. We are as good as dead to the present.
Of course, we are not really dead, only pretend-dead, but there is little difference. Both allow us to escape what is around us in the present moment. How often does the mind wander from this experience and go to tomorrow, next week, or last week? And this moment is lost. We will not remember what was said. We will have to check someone’s notes. Then we lose that moment as we try to recapture this one. All because we were so busy living in another time instead of the present. We killed the moment which brings life.
When we live in the present moment, we experience what is real. We do not experience fear, disappointment and death. We are stimulated by our surroundings and enthusiastic about what we are doing.
The less conscious we are of life, the deader we are. When Jesus says, “Let the dead bury the dead,” he is referring to the living as “dead”—unconscious to life. The total lack of consciousness is a step deeper into the fantasy of annihilation and non-existence, but it is not real either. Total lack of consciousness can deprive us of the physical body, but it is not real, and it is not the same as death.
Death is Birth into Life
The Dead Saints often describe death as a birth into life—the Afterlife. That death is not real and an untruth accepted and taught by humankind. David, an 18-year-old atheist until his near-death experience, encountered Jesus:
I was 18 years old when I felt immense pain in my chest. I had been diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat which I had my whole life. I felt my heart stop beating and then I experienced blackness. The next thing I know I’m looking at my body. Then I see myself, but have no real feeling of “oh, that’s me.” I didn’t care. It was an empty vessel. Big whoop. I didn’t need my glasses and I no longer had Tourette’s Syndrome. I felt a warm Light behind me and when I turned around, I was in this beautiful warm sunny garden. Everything was alive. Then I heard His voice...
He [Jesus] said, ‘Death is a lie men tell themselves. We never truly die. You leave this Earth once you’ve learned all you can and then return to the spirit world.’
He showed me they [the dead] can see us whenever they desire, but we here in the physical world have complete free will. There was a part in this beautiful world where I wanted to go. But he said, no, that if I went there I couldn’t come back. Suddenly, a beautiful Light shown towards us. It was a Light I knew was Jesus.
He said, ‘You must go back now.’
And I said, ‘No. I wanna stay.’
He replied, ‘You promised you would do this. You have much left to do.’
With that, I was slammed into my body and I awoke gasping for breath.3
Janet, who died from an injected drug of unknown type, came back astounded that the beliefs and untruths about death could not continue:
Three of us were in an empty house, making lots of preparations to do complete house decorating. Walls stripped, etc. We were in the kitchen. The two men with me were not drug addicts, but recreational drug users. They had been given a drug. They had small needles to inject with it. I was given an injection.
…They lived. I collapsed and died.
I know the next details, as I observed, was in a different dimension. Between them, they picked up my body and moved me into the main hallway. Lying on the floor, they checked for a pulse, to hear any breathing, and then gave me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, using movements to press on my chest for lungs. Nothing happened. I lay there lifeless.
They gave up and were in shock, so they leaned back on the radiator and didn’t know what to do, rolled themselves cigarettes, and smoked them looking at my body lying upon the floor, discussing wrapping my body in bin liners and how to get rid of me, and dispose of the body.
…Meanwhile, I had risen up. I could see through the floorboards...into the floor above...I saw the wooden framework within the building as I was rising up. I was just going higher up and higher up through the building...I was in the banisters...moving through the floors... walls...a totally different dimension...I was a living entity that could move through things...that did not appear to be solid as they had been to me before. I saw them, but moved through them....no emotion....no joy, no sadness, no pain, nothing like that at all...but then, something, I don’t quite know what, made me turn around. Then I saw myself on the floor. They had finished their cigarettes, and then one said I was ‘dead.’
My instant reaction was ‘they think I am dead.’ That is a lie. It cannot be allowed. The lie of death is not acceptable. My complete whole being found the untruth just unacceptable. I could not allow it. It could not be allowed in the entity I had become, or was. It was principled, all consuming, in a way I find hard to describe other than it could not sustain that which was not truth. It was truth...and very, very alive…
The men were spooked a bit by me and started to tell other people I had come back from the dead. I thought I would not be believed, so, kept a lot to myself. But I had, and have, a complete certainty we do not die. We continue to live, but in a different dimension as a different type of entity. There should be no fear of death. None whatsoever.4
Fears about Death
The only thing that allows fear to exist is our belief in it. Fear appears to be real, but it is an illusion. So what is fear? A definition coined by Zig Zigglar: False Evidence Appearing Real perhaps best describes it. Fear is a fantasy we create to prove to ourselves something is real. It stems from a belief in lack or limitation. It is a belief that something…like God’s love for you… can be withheld from you. It is not the truth.
Fear has many soldiers. Worry. We believe it’s alright to worry. For example, if your daughter is two hours late coming home, you worry. Was she in a car accident? Was she raped? Or, God forbid, even killed? You may go through every possible scenario, imagining all the bad things that could happen. Your daughter walks through the door two hours late. You scold her and ground her for a month. In the end, your fears were unwarranted.
Fear is a fantasy imagining bad things happening. Fear causes you to lie to God, yourself, and others. Instead of fear, we should invoke prudence to make our decisions.
The Fear of Pain
Besides modern medicine and morphine drips to ease suffering, patients who are dying find themselves floating outside the physical body, erasing all pain. Kathleen had a medical emergency on the operating table when she experienced her NDE:
I was so afraid to die. I was afraid of the pain I thought I would feel. Then I heard the doctors say, oh Lord, we’re losing her! I then felt a pulling whoosh up and then was at the ceiling watching it all! I felt no pain at all. I did, however, feel the fainting sick feeling you get before passing out and I felt light and heard a buzzing noise. I then watched the doctors working on me. He (the doctor) was swearing terrible. I remember thinking, good Lord, He (God) can hear him! I was embarrassed for them all in the ER. I then went up but don’t remember moving. I just was in a really beautiful meadow of sorts, trees, stream, fish, grass, etc.
Then, I was in a place of the most beautiful silver white color - that’s the best way I can describe the color of this place! The feeling was one of utter joy and love!! I mean real complete love. Not of this Earth. And peace, such peace! 5
The Fear of Loss
Beverly was raised in a conservative Jewish family in Philadelphia. The culture was materialistic and judgmental. Bookish, shy and serious, she went through her teens as an atheist. Since learning of the Holocaust at age eight, she had turned angrily against any early belief in God. How co
uld God exist and permit such a thing to occur? At age 17, just after graduating high school, she was devastated when a sudden, fatal heart attack took the life of her father. When he died, she felt abandoned. To add insult to injury, she learned during the mourning period that the prayers of her mother, sister and herself did not count because they were women. Furious, she turned to Eastern mysticism for comfort. During the summer of 1970, she moved to California, looking for adventure, a new life, and inner peace. Then, while staying in Venice Beach outside of Los Angeles in July 1970, she had a motorcycle accident which led to her near-death experience after being transported by ambulance to the hospital ER:
I lay down on the bed, becoming an agnostic as many atheists do in times of trial, and prayed from the bottom of my heart for God to take me. Somehow, an unexpected peace descended upon me. I found myself floating on the ceiling over the bed looking down at my unconscious body. I barely had time to realize the glorious strangeness of the situation—that I was me but not in my body —when I was joined by a radiant being bathed in a shimmering white glow. Like myself, this being flew but had no wings. I felt a reverent awe when I turned to Him; this was no ordinary angel or spirit, but he had been sent to deliver me. Such love and gentleness emanated from his being, I felt I was in the presence of the Messiah.
…I then remember traveling a long distance upward toward the Light. I believe I was moving very fast and through an immeasurable vastness, but this entire realm seemed to be outside of time and space. Finally, I reached my destination. It was only when I emerged from the other end that I realized I was no longer accompanied by the being who had brought me there. But I wasn’t alone. There, before me, was the living presence of the Light. Within it, I sensed an all-pervading intelligence, wisdom, compassion, love, and truth. There was neither form nor sex to this perfect Being. It, which I shall in the future call He, in keeping without our commonly accepted syntax, contained everything, as white Light contains all the colors of a rainbow when penetrating a prism. And deep within me came an instant and wondrous recognition: I was actually facing God. 6
Beverly’s actions after the accident revealed her transformation. In the past, she was painfully shy and felt herself unworthy of being loved. No longer an atheist, she went out with her head swathed in bandages and landed a job in one week, made many friends, and got involved in her first real romance. Since then, she has married and become a mother. Although it’s been 36 years since her heavenly voyage, Beverly’s memory of her Dead Saint experience never diminished. Even in the face of ridicule and disbelief, she never doubted its reality. Nothing that intense and life changing could possibly have been a dream or hallucination.
She concludes her testimonial on NDERF offering inspiring counsel to anyone who fears the oblivion of death, or who grieves the loss of family or friend:
For anyone who grieves or fears annihilation in death, I assure you of this: there is no death, nor does love ever end. Modern physics assures us matter does not die, but is instead transformed into energy. I see the body as a coat housing the immortal consciousness within. When our Mission is complete we remove the coat and take on our glorious form, complete with the full spiritual understanding we vainly seek during our Earth days. Then, having graduated this temporary school, we get our report card in the life review, with extra credit for love, forgiveness, and service to others. Now we can continue on our journey unencumbered, free, and truly alive. Someday you who are reading this and I will be together in this realm of Love, Light, and unending bliss.7
Fear Blinds Us
Everything in this life is dying from the minute it’s born. It’s one thing to say it, to repeat it and know it intellectually. It’s quite another to actually sit there and see it, really see it, and it’s a very strange experience. All the things we all think so important—wealth, having a partner, a big house, possessions in a hundred years’ time, will be gone or belong to somebody else! We don’t matter, not in the greater scheme of things. We take years accumulating wealth to ensure security, and then we die. Clichéd though it may be…we can’t take it with us. We all know this. So why do we do it?
The lie or illusion of death blinds us to the truth about eternal life. It does not matter what religion we believe in. If we act as if life will end when we die, then fear rules our life. You do not know the Christ, the Living One. As the Zen saying goes, “You do not know what you do not do.”
The Zen of Death
Enlightened men and women over the millennia have tried to communicate transformational mystical experiences through language but language is, by its very nature, inadequate for the task. Words cannot describe experiences that are, by their very nature, indescribable and ineffable. This limitation is captured by an ancient Chinese teaching tale about a stonecutter who was training his son to sharpen swords. Teaching was difficult. Too much pressure cut the sword edge too deeply. Too light pressure would not properly sharpen the blade. Teaching the correct pressure was only communicated through “doing and experiencing,” not by words written or spoken. The same applies to playing a violin or hitting a baseball or riding a bicycle. Words, however wise, written in books are but skeletons—frameworks for the truth, but not the truth itself.
Such puzzles/paradoxes can drive the mind mad, but this Zen tale essentially attempts to describe the importance of gaining knowledge by direct experience. Is death a lie? I can only share the sacred periphery of an answer through the dry bones of words. To invoke a realization of the Truth, to KNOW it for ourselves we must experience what death is NOT.
~A few hours after reading the end of Chapter 1 of “An Autobiography of a Yogi,8 Yogananda describes his miraculous capture of two kites as a child. Two hours later, Delynn and I attended a Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza, in Virginia Beach. In the show, the hero flew two kites. One kite was flown by a young boy at the beginning of the show to represent his childhood, and one kite at the end of the show, symbolizing the freedom of innocence he found at the end of his life. As we shall see later in the Chronicles, it was another breadcrumb revealing the Law of 2’s. ~Chronicle 794
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Endnotes
1Elizabeth S NDE, #2113, 02.02.10, NDERF.org
2Dion Fortune 1968. Through the Gates of Death. Great Britain: Society of Inner Light. p. 7.
3David NDE, #3240, 01.14.13, NDERF.org
4Janet M NDE, #2639, 03.14.11, NDERF.org
5Kathleen’s NDE, #213, 03.02.03, NDERF.org
6Beverly B NDE-like, #1031, 02.25.07, NDERF.org
7Ibid. #1031.
8Paramahansa Yogananda 1981, 1987, 2007. Autobiography of a Yogi. Authorized by the International Publications Council of Self-Realization Fellowship.
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Earth University
March 1984. Hearthfire Lodge, New Market, VA. Reprinted with permission from FIL Archives.
~A DC DREAM: It was my 56th birthday, 2015. In the dream, I was having a birthday party, when Felton Jones sat next to me on the sofa. Even though he had passed away in 2007 at the age of 86, he was apparently very much alive in my dream. The birthday party was potluck and he had picked out a plate of what looked to be some sort of tempura vegetables to eat. Felton seemed rather coy and did not speak much—at least I don’t remember anything he said. It was definitely him. ~Chronicle 589
April 1982
Hearthfire Lodge, New Market, Virginia
I was staring out a second floor window of Hearthfire Lodge when an old, brown 60’s Oldsmobile drove up in a thick cloud of dust that settled on the massive 100-year-old spruces lining the drive. The car circled the roundabout in front of the house and parked nearby. A thin, tall, graying man stepped out of the car and stood looking up at the house. I couldn’t see from the second floor, but my mentor, Paul Solomon, had already come out the front door and was welcoming someone he seemed to know well.
We soon learned our unexpected mystery guest
was Felton Jones. We had all heard that name. Paul had often talked about the Zen master he had studied with back in ‘70’s. No one could have guessed, looking at him, and meeting him, that this lanky, matter-of-fact, chain-smoking American, was in any way a spiritual master, especially in so exacting and so traditional a Japanese art as Bonsai! But so he was. And what was he doing here? I had been learning Christian and Eastern mysticism from Paul Solomon in our little country school, but Zen was so…. Zen. It was something I didn’t rationally understand.
When Felton Jones showed up, he never identified himself as a teacher, Zen master, or even a sensei of Bonsai. Actually, as I subsequently learned, if you ask three different teachers of Zen if they are Zen masters, they will all deny it anyway!
It was mid-morning and a warm spring day. There were 12 of us living at Hearthfire at the time, including Paul Solomon. He and Felton talked briefly, then without explanation, they left in Paul’s yellow Pacer in another cloud of gravel dust. Really? We all thought there would be some kind of Bonsai demonstration or class. We were mystified. And with the ubiquitous cell phone a couple of decades into the future, there was no way to satisfy our curiosity. We just hung around, waited…and waited.
Hours later, they returned with a dozen small nursery specimens, azaleas, junipers, and pines, one for each of us at the Lodge. Each plant was to be become a trained Bonsai, a term that means literally “tree in a pot.” Paul and our small class, spent most of the afternoon gently guided by the Bonsai master, pruning, shaping, and wiring our trees. Hours went by.
When Felton got to me, he asked me to choose one of the plant specimens on the table. I had no idea how to choose a good Bonsai, but I settled on a pretty, two-foot high, small leafed red azalea. It hadn’t bloomed yet. It seemed to have a nice trunk, but it looked like an Azalea bush, not a Bonsai. He and I stared at the tree for a few minutes, when suddenly he took his concave Japanese cutters and pruned off one of the major trunks on the plant. I was shocked. How could he cut off that much?
The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife Page 5
