Beyond Heaven and Earth

by Steven H. Propp

  I have found that it is also essential to keep track of any new ideas, any new “leads” or potential sources of information; thus, I keep pocket-sized notepads in every room, and practically at every chair or place where I might stop for a moment. I also carry around a pocket-sized Dictaphone cassette player with me, so that I can keep references whenever I am unable to stop and take notes (while walking from the bus stop when I’m late to work, for example). These notes are critical, since I can’t rely upon my memory when I’m wading my way through such a vast quantity of material.

  Not surprisingly, I find that I have come to resent sleeping. (A far cry from my days in college, when being able to sleep in a couple of extra hours on Saturday mornings was a much-beloved indulgence.) By 15-minute increments each week, I have been able to progressively cut my sleeping time down to only about five hours a day, yet I’m really no “sleepier” during the day than when I was sleeping 8-9 hours per night. (I think that this is because I’m so exhausted when I finally go to sleep, that I go almost immediately into “deep” sleep, which psychologists say is the only sleep that really “refreshes” us.) I’ve also started to use the technique (not quite “subliminal”) of thinking of some question just before I go to sleep at night; that way, my subconscious mind often works on the problem while I sleep, and the answer may be ready by morning.

  I have also undergone a revolution financially, since economy has become a consideration nearly as important to me as time. I sold my car for cash (to buy books, naturally), and I now live in a 1-bedroom cottage, which sits hidden behind my landlady’s house. Having given up teaching, but with my study schedule so all-encompassing that I can’t even begin to think about taking on a demanding job again, I have returned to my summer key data entry job, and am working 20-30 hours per week for a local DP firm that does contractual work for a variety of local businesses. Surprisingly to everyone there, I requested to work the graveyard shift from 11 or 12 PM to 7 or 8 AM, because this way it leaves my mental “prime time” available for my studies. (So what if I’m always dead-tired when I arrive for work, and have to gulp down coffee and tea to stay awake? Key data entry is a job that I can literally do in my sleep.) I also do on-call work for a temporary agency, and get as much work as I want, because I’m willing to work the worst shifts, as well as on weekends.

  So when I need extra money in order to buy books, I just work a few hours overtime, telling myself as I mindlessly key in documents, There, now; I’ve got enough money to buy that book by William R. Alger, Horatio Dresser, or Le Roy Edwin Froom. The hours I work are strictly determined by how much money I need to buy books, versus how much time I have to give up to earn it. My various employers have tried to stimulate me to “show some ambition; you seem like a bright young guy,” but they are singularly unsuccessful. (If only they knew, I think sardonically.) My biggest fear in life now is that a fire might destroy my books and materials; the more so, since I don’t have any insurance—too expensive, and time-consuming, as they expect me to list each one of my hundreds of books— but at least I’ve got backup copies on diskette of my computer files, that I keep stashed at work.

  Similarly, in my matter of my living expenses, everything is subordinated to the need to do everything as cheaply and as quickly as possible, in order to better be able to pursue my studies. I never go out for dinner—not even fast foods with special “Value Meals” (which are actually still a ripoff, since that price includes a large soda that is 40% ice); instead, I buy the cheapest foods, at the cheapest retail outlets I can get to by walking. So what if “day old” bread isn’t as “fresh”? I save enough on this alone to buy another book per week. My only beverages are water from the tap, hot tea, coffee, and milk. Since I sold my car, I walk or take the light rail to work, reading on the way in. (Even though it takes longer, it’s better to spend thirty minutes reading while riding the bus, than spend 20 minutes listening to an audiotape while driving, since you can read three to four times faster than someone can speak.) For clothes, I shop at the thrift stores. Since leaving the monastery, I’ve continued to let my beard grow, and I cut my own hair (very short) with an electric razor. To me now, food isn’t essential, clothes aren’t essential; even other people aren’t essential: only knowledge is essential—the knowledge I need in order to be reunited with my beloved Sophia again.

  For me, time is also of the essence. While it may not be “financially smart” to use my credit card to buy books when I can’t afford to pay it off during my “grace period,” there are cases where my overwhelming need for certain books outweighs mere financial sense. Similarly to the concept of “Present Value” that economists talk about, the “present value” of learning something now outweighs the value to me of learning something at a later time; when I’m “hot on the trail” of a new subject or lead, I need to learn about it now, not later. Thus, my credit card is perpetually at its maximum credit limit (which they keep obligingly increasing, further indulging me), but so what if I’m sabotaging my financial future? Right now I have no dependents, no one that is expecting my financial support. I now have no other goals or ambitions, other than to be reunited with Sophia. So quite frankly, who gives a shit?

  A career? That’s a laugh. I had career plans—wherein Sophia and I would come home each day, share stories about the days we had had, then take refuge in each other’s love, until the time to set out for another day. I had incentives, and motivation (to make her proud of me, as well as to support both her and our baby) to do well at my job, back then; now, I couldn’t care less what anyone’s opinion of me is. So what if my current boss thinks I’m “underutilizing my abilities”? You think I want to end up as some computer analyst, attending boring meetings all day and writing documents no one reads? Computer analysts, program developers, Project Managers, and graveyard shift key data entry people all have one thing in common—we’re all going to die one day; and this is one key data operator that cares a hell of a lot more about that than I do about your opinion of my “wasted potential.”

  I occasionally run into one of my former teaching colleagues, who try to encourage me to go back into teaching, but I scoff at their suggestions. Teaching is a profession for the living, not the dead—and my normal life died the day that Sophia died. How can I in good conscience tell young people that there is a reason for them to study hard, “So that you can grow up and have a spouse and a family, just like…well, maybe like somebody else….” I now know that anything they achieve can be taken away from them, in an instant. If I were still teaching, I couldn’t bullshit my students any longer; I would honestly have to tell them: In life, forget what your parents tell you to do, forget what society tells you to do; just do what you are most inclined to, and don’t bother about the future—because remember, the future comes with no guarantees.

  And believe me, I’m talking from experience.

  * * *

  So what have my studies led me to, thus far?

  It’s amazing. Belief in life after death is one of the oldest documented beliefs of mankind. While not quite “universal,” belief in life after death is almost as prevalent as belief in God; or at least, superhuman spirits. Even in the Old Stone Age, people were sometimes apparently ritually buried, with things such as tools and food they would need in a future life—which we infer from comparison with contemporary tribes with similar practices. Anthropologists have studied pre-literate groups of living peoples, such as the Bushmen in Africa, natives of New Guinea, and many others, with similar practices. The Sudanic-speaking African people that inhabit southwest Nigeria are traditionally practitioners of a religion known as Yoruba, which is animistic or totemic, in which numerous gods are worshipped. Invariably, indigenous people do have beliefs in some form of afterlife, whereby departed spirits can do such things as communicate with, or even haunt, the living.

  The religious beliefs of Native Americans are of particular interest to us in this country. It’s deeply embarr
assing to me now to realize that although I graduated from high school, then had five years of college afterwards, I had still largely thought of the religious beliefs of Native Americans as one large, homogeneous mass. Not only was this a stupid attitude, it was probably racist on my part. There are more than 100 major tribes among Native Americans, who spoke about 300 different languages and thousands of dialects, which can be categorized into linguistic “groups” such as Lakota, Iroquois, Salishan, Pueblo and many more; there are six major divisions of the Apaches alone, and the Iroquois had a great federation of separate nations. Why would the religious beliefs of the Iroquois from the Northeast, the Creeks of the Southeast, the Cherokee in the South, the Sioux from the northern plains, the Blackfeet from southern Canada, the Arapaho from the western plains, the Shoshone of the Midwest, the Comanches from the Northwest, and the Navajos from the Southwest be “all the same,” simply because I ignorantly thought of them all as “Indians”?

  (In fact, much of what I thought I knew about Native American religion and ritual turned out to be myth. The so-called “Ghost Dances” were not long-standing traditional Native American rituals, but were created in the late 19th century by Indian communities rigidly controlled by whites, when Paiutes named Wodziwob (in the late 1860s) and Wovoka (in 1889) returned from trances with messages that Indians could restore their lands and dead kinsmen by following virtuous principles and performing certain rituals. Similarly, although the ritualistic use of peyote had been practiced by Native Americans in Texas and Mexico, and other hallucinogens had been used by other tribal groups, the practice only became widespread in the late 19th century—Carlos Castaneda’s books notwithstanding. Today, the use of peyote is an important sacrament of the modern Native American Church, and its use is even protected by law.)

  Most tribes have their own unique set of religious beliefs; nevertheless, there are certainly spiritual trends common to most Native American groups. Unlike, say, American Christians who practice “separation of church and state” (and whose participation in church on Sunday does not necessarily have a profound effect on their lives the rest of the week), Native American culture was infused with spirituality. They were deeply focused on the cycles of nature; the belief in the spiritual essence of all living beings; the use of various techniques to attempt to control supernatural beings and forces for personal or tribal benefit; they relied upon shamans (the so-called “medicine men”—i.e., traditional healers, and religious authority figures) who used special techniques to care for their communities; the coming-of-age “vision quest,” where a young boy seeks the guidance of supernatural beings; and the view of material and spiritual matters as completely interrelated.

  Unfortunately, since these beliefs and practices were transmitted orally, they are difficult to document historically. Nevertheless, there are some important testaments such as that of Chief Red Jacket, the Iroquois who told Christian missionaries in 1805, “we do not wish to destroy your religion…We only want to enjoy our own”; Black Elk, an Ogala Sioux who left a fascinating account of his own “Great Vision” quest at age nine; the profound and heartbreaking 1853 speech of Chief Seattle of the Suquamish people, where he stated that “Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us,” but also, “There is no death; only a change of worlds”; and most famously, the 1879 speech of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce before members of Congress, where he said that “All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all peoples, and all people should have equal rights upon it.” However difficult it may be to document the historical origin of particular Native American religious beliefs, they clearly believed in an afterlife, and that their departed kinsmen and ancestors were still in communion with the living.

  It is not until we reach the stage of literacy that beliefs in an afterlife become more tangible and easy to study. The ancient Egyptians mummified their dead kings, possibly (though not certainly) with the intent of the soul being able to reunite with the body at some future point; thus, kings such as Tuthakahnmen (the famous “King Tut”) were buried with their vast wealth, perhaps for use in the next life. The most popular Egyptian deity was Osiris, who had both human and divine attributes, and was a deity of nature as well as god of the dead. As presented by the historian Plutarch (in his Moralia, 23), the dead were identified with Osiris, and could thus live forever. Egyptian beliefs are given written form in the so-called Egyptian Book of the Dead; the singular title “book” is misleading, since the texts in the papyrus roll thus translated do not form a single unified work, and were probably written over a long period of time. These texts contain magical formulas, hymns, and prayers that the ancient Egyptians believed would help to guide and protect the intangible soul (called Ka) in its journey into the region of the dead (called Amenti), enabling it to ward off demons attempting to impede its progress, and pass the tests set by the judges in the hall of Osiris, who was god of the underworld. Importantly, these texts also indicated that happiness in the afterlife was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual’s life, with the Devourer of the Dead ready to take the deceased person, should his life be found wanting.

  When we come to the religion of ancient Babylon (from perhaps 2200 BCE), we encounter a religion that had definite interaction with Judaism (and thus Christianity). From biblical times to the present day, the term “Babylon” conjures up images of great wickedness (it is the ultimate symbol of evil used in the Book of Revelation, for example). In the so-called “Babylonian Genesis” or creation story (known as the Enuma Elish, after its first two words, “When above”), the world parents Apsu (the Ocean) and Tiamat (Chaos), bear offspring who oppose and ultimately defeat their parents in battle; it is from the dead body of Tiamat that the heavens and the earth were actually created. For the Babylonians, death was a source of dread and despair, as they believed that at death the disembodied spirit descends to the dark netherworld; they had no hope of an eternal reward for the righteous, and human existence beyond the grave was often a time of punish-ment—never one of joy. The greatest Babylonian literary work, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is based upon a futile quest for eternal life. In Gilgamesh (written about 3000-2000 BCE), the title character was the ruler of Uruk and an oppressor of its citizens, who prayed to his godmother to create a son to challenge him, and she created a wild man named Enkidu, who ultimately challenged Gilgamesh to a wrestling match, but their conflict resulted in the two becoming close friends, who travel together and share many adventures. When the god Ishtar causes Enkidu to die, Gilgamesh seeks out the wise man Utnapishtim to learn the secret of immortality. This sage tells Gilgamesh the story of a great flood (similar in many respects to the flood of Noah told in the Book of Genesis), and ultimately reveals to Gilgamesh the existence of a plant in the sea that can bestow eternal youth. Gilgamesh finds the plant, but later loses it to a serpent during his journey home, and ultimately returns to Uruk, depressed. He prays in the Temple for Enkidu to appear to him, who then reluctantly tells him of the sorrows of the dead in the afterlife, and the text ends on this unhappy note.

  The epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey (set about 1300-1100 BCE, but written later) represent one early period of Greek belief, with their frequent interaction of gods with men. The 9th century BCE poet Hesiod’s Theogony (“Genealogy of the Gods”) is a poem in which the existing body of Greek myths was systematized and expanded, including gods who postdate the poems of Homer. The Theogony recounts the creation of the world out of chaos, the birth of the gods, and their various adventures. The Greeks are extremely important for my research, because they are thought to have been the first people to develop the concept of an eternal “soul,” that exists spiritually after death, without any form of resurrection of the body. Early forms of Greek religion also mentioned a shadowy continuation of life in an underground region known as Hades, which had important implications for later Jewish and Christian beliefs.


  Later from the Greeks came the so-called “Mystery Religions,” such as the Eleusinian Mysteries (which derived their name from the town of Eleusis, near Athens). The “mysteries” (so-called because their ceremonies were kept secret) were sacred rituals that were the most important of the many religious festivals in ancient Greece, and were later adopted by Athens as general festivals. The Eleusinian priesthood led initiation rituals, purification and sacrificial rites, culminating in a great procession from Athens to Eleusis. The purpose of these ceremonies is presumed to be seeking after immortality and happiness in a future world. The later Orphic cult refined and expanded the concepts of Hades, where the soul faced judgment, and might be consigned to an eternal punishment, or a punishment that would end if the living earned indulgences for them. Concepts such as sin and the need for its atonement, “eating” of the body of the god, baptism as an initiatory rite, and the use of blood sacrifices are thought by some scholars to have been influential on the later development of Christianity. (So much so that belligerent anti-Christian writers often accuse Christianity of being “nothing more than a derivation of the Orphic cult.”) The later cult of Mithraism which spread throughout the Roman Empire also had many similarities to later Christianity: the rites of baptism and communion, and use of “holy water”; the adoption of Mithra’s birthday of December 25th as a holy day; and most importantly, the belief in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and a final judgment.