The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife
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There are other Hebrew words translated as sin as well, but the common Greek word for sin used in the New Testament is hamartia.35 This word derives from a technical word used in archery. It comes from the ancient story of King David written in Isaiah and means, literally, to “miss the mark.” Sin simply means failing to hit the target. It means being less than perfect. It doesn’t mean the sinner is a criminal, or evil. It just means more practice is needed to get it right.
Scripture tells us David was a man after God’s own heart. In spite of David’s “sins,” God considered David a friend. In Psalms 27:11, David asked God to “teach him,” using the Hebrew verb yara, a verb about shooting arrows, but also the root word for Torah. David wasn’t asking God for archery lessons, so why does he choose this verb and how does it relate to sin? David was asking God to “teach him” to become a better person using the metaphor of archery. If you practice daily, God says your aim will get better and better, until one day you may finally shout, “Bull’s eye!”
From the perspective of Zen, however, there is no target to hit. We are the target. The same metaphor is used in the movie The Matrix, when Neo realizes he doesn’t need to bend the spoon, that he IS the spoon.
Religion gives us rules as guidelines for living a holy life, not nails to crucify others and ourselves. Repeatedly we discover in stories of the Dead Saints we are judged by love, and when we look more closely at the Bible, this begins to make more sense. Pre-marital sex, homosexuality, eating pork, and shellfish, charging interest on loans, and violating the Sabbath, are among the many restrictions that were a part of the Old Testament Law Code.
However, Romans 10:4 says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth.” Hebrews 8:13 says, “A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” Since Christ fulfilled the law, love overcomes it, and that is all that really matters.
A Dead Saint’s Point of View of Sin
I have included a few Afterlife commentaries on what are considered sins by the noisiest of the self-appointed religious: abortion, divorce and suicide. The few testimonials I draw from are not exhaustive, but are a small sampling for a much larger study that needs to be done.
Abortion
Is the decision to have an abortion wrong? What do the Dead Saints say about it? Randy describes her own guilt about her abortion:
I started to feel a panic about whether or not I would go to Hell for having had an abortion. The Light communicated to me I was completely loved and the difficulty of the human condition was totally understood. I was told ‘EVERYTHING IS COMPLETELY ALRIGHT.’ I can’t communicate the intense and all-encompassing nature of that statement, but it completely washed away every single fear I ever had.36
Mary had experienced life-long guilt about aborting her fetus at age 21:
As I had an abortion when I was 21, several years before (& incidentally, THAT is the experience that truly shook up my life and put me on a different course), I expressed my never-ending guilt for having taken away the life of my unborn being. Instantly, I focused on what seemed like a star, a bright Light, and I knew that that was the soul of that being. It was irrelevant whether it was a male or female. I put forward my feeling of sorrow and guilt and was in turn washed over by a feeling of complete forgiveness - unlike any earthly forgiveness.37
What happens to the spirits of the aborted, or those who die at birth? Mary reports aborted babies, and those who die at birth, continue growing in Heaven:
Then I saw babies as far as the eye could see and then some. They were ‘our precious abortion babies’ said the angel. But when I told him they were all different ages, he told me, ‘You don’t stay a baby, but will grow to about 34 or 36 [years of age they would have been in Earth years]’ 38
If a woman can extend her belief system, I believe she can communicate with the incoming soul about her ethical dilemma. She should watch her dreams. They may carry a message about the importance of her choice. Again, setting an absolute rule of right and wrong doesn’t solve a woman’s dilemma about abortion. Nor does a decision to abort condemn her to Hell, or keep her from entering the Kingdom.
Divorce
Bolette describes an NDE where she is told a divorce would happen later in her life:
I was told I would be divorced from my husband later on, because we couldn’t go on together, my former husband and me. That we both had something else to do and I should look at it as a joyful thing for me. It would give me joy and much freedom to be divorced, but it wasn’t to happen just yet. I should forgive my then-husband and his actions and attitude. I should with joy and gratitude go on with my life after, even though he would hurt me deeply, because it was required for me to let go of him. 39
Sylvia in her NDE wondered why she didn’t feel married to her husband:
I searched for many years for the answers of “why I didn’t feel married to my husband, after this near-death experience, and also as to why my two small sons didn’t seem like they belonged to me. I visited many churches, talked to many pastors, went to several doctors but none could give me even the remotest clue. God pointed [her] to a story in the King James Version of the Bible about the woman who had many husbands who passed away and the disciples asked the Lord to whom would she be a wife to once in Heaven? His reply was ‘to none of these.’ 40
Robert sees his ex-wife during his NDE:
I instantly knew the Light was pure goodness and love, like nothing I had ever felt before or since. I noticed some people near me and walked over to them. One was my mother and another was my first wife…they would be watching over me and we would all be together again. Before I could respond, I opened my eyes and found myself lying on the ground.41
Suicide
In all cases, I have read and researched, God responds to suicides in a loving, non-condemning manner. From the viewpoint of the Dead Saints, suicide is not condoned, but neither is it condemned However; there are repercussions to acts of rash suicide. However, most suicides are not born of well thought out endings. Most are rash acts born of desperation to escape the mental and the emotional agony of witnessing or experiencing pain. It is this type of suicide, the deliberate aborting of the Earth University Mission, I am addressing.
I believe there is a root cause to the belief that leaving through suicide is a mistake or a sin. The evidence brought forth by the Dead Saints indicates we made a commitment before we were born to complete our Mission on Earth. I also believe those who commit rash acts of suicide do not understand the repercussions of withdrawing from Earth University before their appointed time. For example, 13-year-old Lisa, decided to commit suicide by drowning. Choosing this path was in a way, an intentional act of disobedience:
I felt a presence with me, and I knew this presence was our Creator. Through thought, He presented me with a question, ‘Do you really want to hurt your family like this.’
This Presence asked me through thought. He did not stop me, but wanted me to weigh the price of my decision to allow myself to cross the line and die, or to choose life. I argued no one seemed to care whether I lived or died anyway, so what was the point of life? Then I was reminded of my sister and mother— and how much grief my death would cause them. That alone almost made me want to get up from the water right there, but I still stubbornly remained floating and tried to see what would happen if I did die.
With this intention I had, I felt God showed me if I did decide to go against what I knew He wanted for me at that time to know that I would be causing a great disobedience in my life and I could actually FEEL this friction of disobedience—that I was really pushing things.
This felt very uncomfortable so I decided then to get up out of the water mainly for that reason alone even though I also knew I didn’t want my mother to suffer any grief over me…I realized this was a supernatural experience I was permitted as a type
of lesson about suicide’s repercussions.42
We see another example through Nicole’s NDE when she saw the consequences that would occur from suicide:
[Then] either a Seraphim or God Himself, flew right over my sleeping body (my spirit returned to my body, and waited to be collected by angels) and said, in the most loving of voice. ‘I can’t take you now honey, I’m sorry.’
…I also heard the same voice, God, who said, ‘I’m sorry doll, but sometimes when people attempt suicide, and it’s not their time to go, they end up in situations just to pass time away, until it’s time for that lifetime to end. And sometimes they end up in situations such as this. This is what happens.’
The voice was so soothing, so loving. I knew this was a time to learn.43
The Dead Saints teach if you choose suicide to depart Earth University before your scheduled “Graduation,”— your appointed time of death— you may have to repeat your classes all over again. Bummer.
Observing Dark Marks Within a Soul
So, then, isn’t there a consequence to making mistakes? Committing sin? Missing the mark? Who serves up justice when evil kills, rapes, pillages, and steals? Who judges the just and the unjust? Does it mean we have no rules to live by? How will love guide us to rightfully approach mistakes in ourselves and in others? Certainly, the Word of God can guide us, but in the end it is the Divine spark of God within, the Word, the Christ, who becomes our conscience and helps us decide what is good and what is not.
Drawing from the Dead Saints, justice comes swiftly at the end of life during the Life Review, of this there is no doubt. There are consequences for the decisions and actions we take. Decisions and actions which create fear, hate, anger, pain, and imbalance are evil and must be paid for. Decisions and actions, which create love, joy and balance, are rewarded. They glorify God and the Light. One of the more interesting finds in my research show how wrong decisions and actions affect us. Lucia observed black marks on a soul who had done many “bad things”:
All of a sudden, I was standing at the head of my body, looking to my left. I did not see my body (that I can remember) but my vantage point was from there. To my left, the head nurse started screaming I was having a severe allergic reaction. She started running towards the cot and then tripped over someone’s I.V. I remained calm, watching this like I had no stake in this. Like a scientist observes something under his microscope.
The next thing I remember I was flying at some high speed through a tube. It was bright colors of purples, reds, and blues. Then, I found myself in a tunnel. Everything I saw from here on was in shades of blacks, whites, grays, silver. I was walking. Something from my left side reached out towards me. Someone on my right side slapped the “hand” away. It fell to the floor of the tunnel. I turned & helped it back up. I took its hands & positioned them back to the walls of the tunnel. I knew the one on my right was my guardian angel/guide, who was protecting me. The one on my left was a soul who had done a lot of “bad” things & was terrified of going into the Light. I could see marks on this soul. They appeared almost like veins on its “body.”
The soul was lit from within and these black marks were all over it.44
Is Any Religion the “Right” Religion?
While this book is mainly focused upon the Western Christian religion, I have included a few testimonials from the Dead Saints who refer to other religions. Jean says each religion has something valuable to teach:
[The nurse] came to my room and talked to me soothingly, while she took my blood pressure. It was 0/30 and thus, my long journey through near death began.
…I found myself in a city and was told this was the City of God. I was at a water fountain with a man in a long white linen robe tied around the waist with a cord. He told me I could ask any question I wanted and said he would take me on a tour. Because I had been raised at a time where Catholics said to even go into another Christian church was a mortal sin, and Lutherans said those Catholics were going to go Hell, because they had statuary in their churches and prayed to the Saints.
I had a very pressing question [to ask God].
The first question I asked was, ‘What is the right religion?’
I was told, ‘They all are. Each religion is a pathway trying to reach the same place.’ I was shown a mountain, with each religious group trying to reach the top, separated from each other by distance, but each one was trying to get to the same place. I was then told people choose to be born into whichever religion or group that will help them achieve the lessons they are sent here to learn.45
Alexander’s NDE encounter describes the reason for many religions:
Religion was created to teach humans the basic laws of Nature or God. God being the intelligent Being he is, understood humans in different Societies, needed different instructional manuals (so to speak). i.e. French, English, Spanish, Hebrew, Islam, Chinese, etc. God knew you can’t explain to a Jew in Chinese why he should not eat pork. I felt the fighting between religious groups was very distasteful, and man was using religion for his own personal gains of power. Massive power in the hands of a few seemed to be one of the major issues of my enlightenment. This is what came across to me while in the Light.46
A Few Concluding Thoughts Regarding the Governing Laws of Religion Are Not Absolute
First: Wise men who wrote the Old and New Testaments knew any concept communicated in words, is only analogous/approximate to reality, which means the communication, the written word is symbolic and of itself is not the truth. Put another way: At the very heart of sacred teachings and sacred Scripture are paradoxes. Nothing is mysterious we can see, because it can be explained. The mysterious concepts are those we have to use points of reference/analogies to define. The only way we can reveal their meaning is to describe what they are not. That is, by its very nature, paradoxical, and without grasping the paradox the teaching doesn’t work.
Second: the Spirit of the Law transcends the Letter of the Law. If indeed, the Word of God contains inaccuracies, if they are fallible due to mistranslation and error, it is up to us to have a close relationship with the Spirit of God, so we might know the Truth, and make our judgments accordingly.
Third: Throughout the Chronicles, we find different religions use different names for the Creator God, our Source of Life and consciousness. A prayer in April 2015, read before a large audience at Westminster Abbey in England, acknowledged all faiths who believe in a Creator God who gives life and breath to all things:
We may quibble over conflicting doctrines and cavil over contradictory revelations, but if St. Paul can address a meeting of the Areopagus47 (the Greek worship of the unknown God) and exhort the incipient virtue in the ignorance of Athenian religiosity, whether you call the Creator of the universe ‘God’, ‘Jehovah’, ‘YHWH’, ‘I Am’ or ‘Allah,’ you are acknowledging (in mirrors darkly) the One who does not live in temples built by human hands, and the One who gives everyone life and breath and everything else.
[author’s note: As Hebrew and Arabic are closely related Semitic languages, it is commonly accepted that Allah (root, ilāh) and the Biblical Elohim are cognate derivations of same origin, as is Eloah, a Hebrew word which is used (e.g. in the Book of Job) to mean ‘(the) God’ and also ‘god or gods’ as is the case of Elohim.]
Finally, perhaps Cynthia and Amy’s face-to-face encounters with God sum up the laws governing the “right religion” required to enter Heaven:
Cynthia at age 12 asked God during her NDE:
‘Is there just one religion that will make it into Heaven?’
He said, ‘All who believe and have faith, even those who don’t outwardly think they do. It depends on their hearts.’ 48
Amy at age 17 asked God about religion:
I’d also wondered at religion while I was there, and I quickly received the knowing that this wasn’t important in the way I imagined it was prior to my NDE: That one’s religion,
no matter which they joined or didn’t join on Earth, was what was written in their own heart. It was about who the person was, not what label they wore or who or what they worshipped or believed in.49
Wisdom from the mouths of babes.
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Endnotes
1Wikipedia. The legendary story describes seventy or seventy-two Jewish scholars who were asked by the Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus to translate the Torah from Biblical Hebrew into Greek, for inclusion in the Library of Alexandria. This legend is first found in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas to his brother Philocrates, and is repeated, with embellishments, by Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and by various later sources, including St. Augustine. A version of the legend is found in the Tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud: King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one’s room and said: “Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher.” God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did. Philo of Alexandria, who relied extensively on the Septuagint, says the number of scholars was chosen by selecting six scholars from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.
2Stan Tenen 2011. The Alphabet That Changed the World: How Genesis Preserves a Science of Consciousness in Geometry and Gesture. Berkley, California: North Atlantic Books (Penguin Random House).
3Paul Solomon 1982. Trail of the Mystery Schools. 8 CD’s. Ireland, UK. Paul Solomon Foundation. www.paulsolomon.com.
4William Fulke’s English translation of the New Testament from the Latin Vulgate in 1589, pointed out the controversy over the Hebrew and Greek translations was a Roman Catholic view, not his, “The question is whether the original text, in Hebrew or in Greek, has been so corrupted, either by the carelessness of copyists or by the malice of the Jews and heretics, that it can no longer be held as the judge of controversies and the norm by which all versions without exception are to be judged. The Roman Catholics affirm this, we deny it.” See also William Fulke, D.D. Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. A Defence of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the English Tongue, Against the cavils of George Martin. Printed at University Press, 1843. pp.113-114.