"If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black,
it is enough if you prove that one crow is white.” William James
“We
are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings
having a human experience.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“These
are the kind of data I wouldn’t believe, even if they were true.” (A skeptic,
qtd. in Schwartz 122)
YOLO
- You Only Live Once - Do You?
People
have been searching for answers to immortality since humans exist. As more and
more pieces of the puzzle emerge, we come to understand that in this dimension
the full picture might remain elusive, so an interpretation of the clues so far
available is left to the individual. What the character suffering from an
incurable disease in Nadine Gordimer's essay "Terminal" believes is
that once we die, that's it. There will be nothing, an end of consciousness,
not even an awareness of the termination of life. Since she does not want to
wait until she turns into a helpless, bedridden object, she attempts suicide
but is rescued by her husband. It is clear that she is not afraid of dying,
expecting nothing but a black stillness “afterward:”
Ever
since she was a child she had understood it as a deep sleep, that’s all. Ever
since she saw the first bird, lying under a hedge, whose eyes hadn’t openend
when it was poked with a twig. But one can only be aware of a sleep as one
awakens from it, and so one will never be aware of that deep sleep - she had no
fear of death…( 526)
Since
the early 1970s, resuscitation techniques have become so advanced that
thousands of people were brought back from the brink of death. Many who were
saved reported phenomena known as near death experiences (NDE) and out of body
experiences (OBE). NDErs, as the survivors are commonly called, described being
in the presence of a bright, peaceful and loving light and of meeting deceased
loved ones. Almost all who experienced being in that realm wanted to stay there
or cannot wait to go back once they die. Not only do NDErs testify about a life
after death, but they comprehended that we all lived multiple lives.
If
these experiences are true, the current popular credo, “YOLO" must be
false. Backed by mounting research and evidence, scientists can now claim that
there is life after death and that we have to come back until we learn the
lessons we need to fulfill our purpose on earth - a task for which more than
one lifetime is needed. I am saying
that YDOLO – You Don’t Only Live Once!
One
of the biggest doubters of a continuation of life after death was Dr. Eben
Alexander, a neurosurgeon who used scientific
evidence as the basis for his understanding of life and death. In 2008 this
changed when he was the victim of a rare bacterial meningitis infection that inactivated
the neocortex of his brain, putting him into a deep coma. For seven days he experienced
"death." Alexander writes about “flocks of transparent, shimmering
beings arced across the sky…which were quite simply different from anything [he
had] known on this planet. They were more advanced. Higher forms” (3). He also talks
about a booming, glorious sound like a chant, and a woman accompanying him who
had “a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up
to that point worth living” (3). This woman, he found out later, was a deceased
sister he never knew he had (he was adopted). Dr. Alexander also received a message
consisting of three parts: “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever”, “You
have nothing to fear,” and “There is nothing you can do wrong” (4); but the
greatest message of all was LOVE. Alexander claims that all his questions were answered,
transmitted without words, and with the certainty of knowledge that we will
know everything after we die. When he
woke up, he knew that he had been in the presence of a Higher Being. Getting a
glimpse of continued consciousness after bodily death and discovering the truth
had a profound effect on his life, taking away all his fear.
Dr.
Alexander's testimony about what he experienced while he was almost dead is
very similar to other NDE survey results. His statement on the aftereffect of
his NDE contains proof that his had indeed been a near death experience, not a
hallucination, which would not have had a life changing effect.
“Taken
together, it is safe to say that between 1975 and 2005, at least 55 researchers
or teams in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia published at least 65
research studies involving 3,500 NDEs” (Holden 7). Of the thousands of surveys
collected, almost all near death and out of body experiences progressed in a
similar order: an out of body sensation, tunnel or bright light experience,
overwhelming feeling of peace and love, encountering beings of light, going
through a life review, a reluctance to return, and transformation/aftereffects
which get stronger as the years pass.
Stafford
L. Betty, the author of an article on the topic in a major religious journal, explains
that we know a NDE is not a hallucination because NDEs are very similar to each
other. If they were hallucinations, they would be very much different from each
other (196). A near death experience has lifelong aftereffects such as the
NDErs losing their fear of dying. They also reported more happiness, increased
intelligence, and heightened psychic abilities. All experienced an awareness of
total peace and unconditional love. When they returned to life, they were more
empathetic to others’ needs and also more accepting and loving of themselves.
Almost none of the NDErs wanted to come back to their lives unless they felt
they had unfinished business such as raising their children. They encountered
family and friends, but only the ones who had already passed. Throughout an
NDE, many people have an out of body experience and correctly report proceedings
that were going on around them as well as in other rooms while they were in a
death-like coma. During hallucinations, people have no idea what happens around
them. Also, their lives are not transformed and they are not healed, as
happened in many cases of NDEs.
"Three-quarters
of Americans believe in a life after death, but only one-quarter believes in
reincarnation" (Weiss 47). All major religions acknowledge the immortality
of the consciousness, spirit or soul, yet it depends upon people’s expectations
whom they might meet in the afterlife: Jews will not recognize Jesus but
Hashem, Catholics might encounter Mary or the archangel Michael, Christians see
Jesus, and Muslims Allah, but all meet God. Whatever people’s belief of a
Higher Being might be, that's the entity they translate as seeing. Even
atheists described being aware of an intense presence of love and peace.
All
major religions accept the possibility of reincarnation, but at least one was
forbidden to teach it. Jeanette Dunlap, author of Reincarnation And Survival of Life After Death, informs us that an
empirical ruling almost 1500 years ago forbade Christians to believe in
reincarnation:
History
records that the early Christian Church believed in reincarnation and of the
soul's journey back to oneness to God. An Empirical decree by Emperor Justinian
in 545 A.D. forced the ruling cardinals to draft a decree that anyone who
believed that souls come from God and return to God would be punished by death.
Due to this decree, biblical proof of awareness after death needs to be
addressed…there are biblical scriptures illustrating the "awareness of the
dead." (159)
Dunlap
explains that many Christian denominations continue teaching that there is no
awareness after death. Meanwhile, "there is a contemporary attempt that
scientifically studies and verifies reincarnation through past life memories
recall, past life regression, meditation and mediumship" (160). One of the
most famous regression therapists is Dr. Brian Weiss. Through regression
therapy, a hypnosis that leads people into previous lives, Weiss has
encountered thousands of cases where individuals reported detailed accounts of their
prior lives which were later confirmed. Not only that, but he insists that
everyone lived or will live hundreds of lives, and is convinced that we will
meet the same people from past lifetimes over and over again! There is a
genuine recognizing in people who participate in his regression therapy of
seeing their mothers who are now their children or the other way around, people
who were lovers in previous lives who recognized each other as soul mates in
the present one, and groups of people, such as families, reincarnating together
to take on different bodies in the next life, while their souls stay the same.
Dr. Weiss uses the example of one of his patients this happened to:
Jenny
Cockell, a British woman, discovered the children whom she had born during her
previous incarnation as Mary Sutton in Ireland in the early 20th
century. Five of Mary’s children were still alive when Jenny found them in the
1990s. They were able to completely confirm Jenny’s past-life recall of even
minor events in their childhoods, events that occurred more than 70 years prior
to their emotional reunion with Jenny - the reincarnation of their mother, Mary
Sutton. (48)
This
would also explain déjà vu and have-we-met-before sensations.
Discovering
through regression therapy who they were in past life times and how they died
has helped many patients in the present life to let go of fears and health
problems. Weiss calls these “past-live PTSDs” and points out that the way to
validate past-life experiences is through the disappearance of phobias or
illnesses. The only way this is possible is through an actual memory, not
merely by imagining about being healed (83). Dunlap echoes this assertion as
she writes in her article:
Past
life regression can untap realms of hidden memories to discover past life.
Hypnotic regression and past life therapy studies are often used to prove or
verify existence of past lives: 77% of clients' problems were helped and 23% of
clients' problems were considered cured. (162)
Testimonies
exist of scientists who set out to disprove the possibility of life after death
and reincarnation. One such scientist, Dr. Helen Wambach, is mentioned in
Weiss’s book. As she began her experiments and scientific investigation she
realized that the more she uncovered, the more she disproved her own
conviction. At the end of her research she admitted in a publication that she
"now not only believes in reincarnation but knows it" (222). “Thanks
to the tireless efforts of researchers, we can legitimately state now that
reincarnation can be accepted on the basis of clinical data and not solely by
belief” (Weiss 49).
Another
possible way to verify that our consciousness stays intact after our earthly
bodies wear out is through the research done by Dr. Gary E. Schwartz on the beliefs
of Harvard professor William James. In the early 1900s, James was convinced
that our consciousness never dies and continues to attest his hypotheses from
the other side! With the help of two certified mediums James was able to ‘work’
with Schwartz on validating this assertion. Schwartz also met with Susy Smith who
"had published two books supposedly in collaboration with James since he
had passed” (127). Smith claimed that her primary guide from the other side was
William James and that he was interested in participating in more research (Schwartz
127). After establishing that the mediums were authentic and validating that
everything they related in regard to William James was accurate and impossible
to know otherwise, Schwartz concludes that “the totality of the findings
appears to have the ‘look and feel’ of consciousness and intention” (144). It
is interesting to note that when Smith herself passed away she was able to affirm
her own continuing consciousness from the other side. Predictions she had made
while still alive were confirmed through a medium who relayed messages from
Smith after her death. “The emerging spontaneous evidence appeared to be
consistent with the thesis that the survival of consciousness hypothesis…was
potentially viable” (Schwartz 146).
Dr.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who wrote many books on dying and the afterlife, sat at
the deathbed of thousands of patients. Through their accounts, right before
they passed, she acquired absolute certainty that nobody ever dies alone, even
if a person would die in outer space. Each one of us will be met by deceased
loved ones and either sent back if it is not yet our time or be reunited with
deceased friends and family until we chose another body to be born into. Dr.
Kübler-Ross states that:
What
we hear from our friends who have passed over, people who came back to share with
us, is that…you will be given an opportunity, not to be judged by a judgmental God,
but to judge yourself, by having to review every single action, every word, and
every thought of your life. You make your own hell or your own heaven by the way
you have lived. (35) Death does not exist. (17)
There
is more substantiation for life after death and reincarnation: 1) Our pets will
greet us on the other side. “Every research medium the author has worked with
has claimed that animal consciousness is no different from human consciousness
in its essence; i.e. it continues to survive after physical death” (Schwartz
130), and 2) You will not be punished for committing suicide, but you have to
come back to learn the lesson. "There is a commonality among people who
take their own lives - as well as among children who die young - in that their
souls are returned to earth more quickly, for there is still so much that needs
to be learned" (Weiss 223).
After
compiling so much evidence on life after death, what proof do we have that we
only live once? After thousands of near death experience reports trying to
explain the awareness of an indescribable light filled with peace and love many
call "God,” the question is: How could there be only a black void that awaits
us at the end of our earthly life? Doctors, regression therapists, and mediums
have encountered agnostics and atheists who, after coming out of a NDE, admitted
they were wrong. We don't even have to try to wrap our human mind around this
phenomenal idea. When Moses asked God at the burning bush, “What is your name,
whom shall I tell the people sent me,” knowing it was impossible for them to
fully comprehend Him, God replied, “Tell them, I am who I am.” In other words,
don’t try to understand. Just look at where the evidence is pointing.
“The
history of science reminds us of countless instances where what was once
assumed to be science fiction eventually became science fact” (Schwartz 150).
We will one day have to accept, with the development of the necessary tools to attest
that consciousness persists after physical death, that our spirit exists as
never-extinguishable energy. Schwartz emphasizes that the world is at yet
another “paradigm shift,” a change in our basic worldview, just as humans once
had to accept the fact that “the sun does not spin around the earth,” but vice
versa, or that “the earth is round, not flat” (149). We can now add these clues
to our findings:
We are all one.
There
is nothing to fear.
All is love.
We can never die.
We have many lives.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the
Master calls a butterfly.” (Richard Bach, qtd. in Tod Kelly)
Works
Cited
Dr.
Alexander, Eben. “My Proof of Heaven; A neurosurgeon’s journey into the
afterlife.” Newsweek, 00289604, 15 Oct.
2012. Vol. 160. Issue 16. Web. 20 Feb. 2013.
Betty, Stafford L. "Five
Reasons That NDEs Point To Life After Death: A Dialogue." Journal Of
Religion & Psychical Research 28.4 (2005): 195-202. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 20 Feb. 2013.
Brainyquote.com.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Quotes. Web.
17 Apr. 2013.
Dunlap, Jeanetta W.
"Reincarnation And Survival Of Life After Death: "Is There Evidence
That Past Life Memories Suggest Reincarnation?" Journal Of Spirituality
& Paranormal Studies 30.(2007): 157-170. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 20 Feb. 2013.
Gordimer,
Nadine. "Terminal." Reading Literature and Writing Argument. Ed. Missy James and Alan P. Merickel. 4th ed.
Boston: Longman. 2011. 524-526. Print.
Holden,
Miner Janice, Bruce Greyson, and Debbie James. The Handbook of Near- Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation.
Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2009. Print.
Kelly,
Tod. “The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.” Politics
& Foreign Affairs. September 2,
2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Life After Death, revised. Berkeley,
CA: Celestial Arts. 2008. Print.
Lightafterlife.freeforums.org. “Leonora Piper by Graham Jennings.” Two World Issue 4419. 2012. Web. 20 Mar.
2013.
Schwartz, Gary E. “William James and the Search for
Scientific Evidence of Life After Death
Past, Present, and Possible Future.” Journal
of Consciousness Studies.
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Weiss, Brian L. M.D. Miracles Happen; The
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HarperCollins. 2012. Print.
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