Author: Michele T Knight

Readers of this blog know that I’ve thought about death for as long as I can remember. In fact, a  large part of my childhood was dedicated to wondering why things, people, insects our family dog, her puppies, died.  Why did it happen and where did they go when they died?   Life eventually taught me there is no death, not in the spiritual sense, and that death as an event in our life is simply the putting off of the physical body.

Eventually then, death comes to stand at every door.

When that occurs do we run shrieking in terror away from the door, do we stand transfixed and unable to move, or do we open it, an act which heralds our rebirth into the spiritual universe where we can take our place as functional members in the greater eternal body of spiritual society?

A friend of mine is actively dying.  Cancer is robbing him of his strength and vitality and every day it seems death comes to stand at his door, waiting patiently.  As I share his journey and watch his physical life slowly ebb away, I’m reminded again of the fleetingness of our lives and of the importance of living well, and of dying well.

What does this mean?  For me it means to have lived a life with purpose, to have served others, to have grown my  spiritual life and to have cleaved to the Divine, to God.  And when death comes to stand at my door, it means to open it willingly, to step gladly into eternity, and to be with my spiritual community who made their presence known to me all those years ago when they came to me as a small child.

My friend is not having a good death.  He is suffering physically, spiritually and psychologically.  He wants to be alone.  He wants to die at home in his mother’s bed.  His house is not in order.  He is unable to see the enormity of life, the vastness of it, the profundity of it nor can he see those things which have always taken my own breath away.  His is a death of barrenness.  He does not see that above the muck and mire of infallible human existence and all its suffering there is a stillness, an order, a deep serenity which gently announces its presence to all and which touches the soul and warms the heart.

I hope to be by the bedside of my friend, to hold his hand and to say goodbye knowing that despite his fears and apprehension, he has loved ones waiting for him who will greet him warmly, and who will thank God for his safe return home.

I have a book in my library, Measuring the Immeasurable: The scientific case for spirituality (Sounds True, 2008) which contains chapters from contributing authors discussing a diverse range of topics relating to research and spiritual methodologies and ways of being.  However, one chapter from the anthology by contributing author Charles Tart entitled “Consciousness”, caught my eye.  It’s a beautifully written chapter which not only inspires pure enjoyment, but one which explores the intersection of psychology, transpersonal psychology and parapsychology in a context of understanding consciousness, a particular passion of mine.

My own book, Consciousness and the search for reality, will shortly be available and in it I also discuss the relationship and intersection between spiritual psychology, the individual, higher life, and consciousness.  The word roots for consciousness provide a clue for my approach in that consciousness means ‘knowing together’, which in the context of spiritual psychology is seeing and knowing everything in ourselves.  But what does this mean?  How do we do this?  And if we do, what then?

Most people think they are conscious however the truth is that we often go through our day in at times what seems to amount to a dreamy state of abstract awareness.  Writing about consciousness in a Western post-modern epoch is challenging, especially because there are so many opinions from so many people.  Which of these can we trust?  Which of these resonate with us such that we know we have found a truth?  It is difficult because people in good faith are searching for something with which to connect, for something which will answer what may be a burning question they have.  Fuelled by a force they may not quite understand, they are driven to search relentlessly, to know, to experience something above and beyond themselves.

It is hard to be a human being.  Life is difficult for all of us in different ways and death, disaster and trauma never seem to be far away.  But there is something good in the Universe, there is something which is striving to bring us to our greatest happiness, we just need to connect with what that is.  Tart in his chapter recounts Maurice Bucke’s spiritual-mystical experience.  Described in full, it is an astonishing event which Bucke himself describes as ‘an aftertaste of heaven’.  We can all have these experiences, we don’t have to be ‘special’, we just have to be open to them.

For the  past four weeks I’ve been living in a hotel in Seoul in South Korea.  I say living because although technically I’ve been on holiday, my time in the country hasn’t felt like a holiday, it’s felt like life, like how I live my life on a day to day basis wherever I am.  What is different of course, is that I’m alone in the country and embedded in a non-English speaking culture and society experiencing a bombardment of new and diverse impressions.   And as I wrote somewhere a while ago, for me it’s not so much about time or locale, its more about state.  State of being that is.

Three out of the 34 television channels available on the TV in my hotel room feature English-speaking programs, and two of those are CNN and the BBC.  When coverage of the Hamas war and the American presidential race starts to wear thin, I find myself channel-surfing through a kaleidoscope of colour and entertainment, which at times is mesmerising, especially for someone who doesn’t haven’t a television in their home.

I’ve watched several movies, all in Korean and without English subtitles, about death and the afterlife, and ghosts.  And what always strikes me is how comfortable people here are with this genre and in particular with the afterlife and the understanding and belief that after physical death our lives and existence continues in a different way.  This leads me to the topic of Shamanism, which though sometimes frowned upon and considered something of a relic of the past, is nonetheless highly respected, with most Shamans being women (the term is ‘mudang’).  Among other duties, Shamans interact with spirits in the spirit world usually providing assistance to help with their transition into the afterlife.

I’m writing about this because at the time I was conducting research for my thesis, and was completing preparatory field work, I spoke about some of the interactions I experienced with my deceased husband with an Anglican nun, who told me in no uncertain terms that such things were considered evil by Sydney churches, and that a person who talked about such things would be considered possessed.  When I spoke about these things with the guide from the Museum of Shamanism I visited, the reaction was completely different; he smiled knowingly, and nodded.  Why do you have to travel a thousand miles to be understood?

At core of course is a shared belief in the afterlife, and in our ongoing existence of life beyond this earthly life. In reflecting on my association with South Korea, this being my second trip, I finally came to understand why the country resonates with me, why it calls to me so persistently; it’s the visibility of the dead in everyday society.  This isn’t just evidenced by the presence of Shamans and Shamanism in Korean society, the dead are everywhere, in myths and songs, in popular K-dramas and in historical plays and dramas enacted before audiences on stages in theatre house.

Their sociological and psychospiritual visibility is precisely because of the attitudes of the living and no wonder I feel so at home in this foreign culture.  It is precisely because of this visibility, this shared understanding and acceptance of our mortality and immortality, and the hope that it brings.  What about this is so difficult to understand, and why are the dead by their presence in our lives so often feared, misunderstood or reviled?  When we face the dead, ghosts, or spirits, we are really only looking at reflections of ourselves.

Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash

In an attempt to make sense of the ongoing and horrific conflict in the Middle East, I turned to Swedenborg and to the small booklet, Peace and War (The Swedenborg Society, 1977), which is a selected series of quotations drawn from some of his works.  While I understand that war and the devastation and loss of life it creates is motivated and driven by human beings for many reasons, I wanted to understand what was occurring from a spiritual perspective.   Perhaps I was trying to find a sense of meaning behind the horror and brutality of it, a pathway of sorts through the terror and confusion in my own mind as well as a means of coming to terms with the gross and constant misappropriation and distortion of the truth playing out in the global media and social domain.

Swedenborg tells us that wars occur because a man’s life’s love has “become such as to desire to rule over others, and at length over all, and to possess the wealth of the world, and at length all wealth”.  He then tells us something else, that unless these evils broke out, “man would not see them and therefore would not acknowledge them, and thus could not be induced to resist them.”  The fortunes of war, when victories occur, are brought about by the working of divine providence flowing into the minds of men and women from heaven who seek to oppose and overcome the threat.  And the ugly sickening brutality, the cruelty and inhumanity of war and the actions thereof, flow from hell into the minds of the men and women who perpetrate such deeds.

We are a violent and despite our technical prowess, uncivilised race.  We have always sought to dominate one another, to take from one another, to kill one another, to harm one another.  And women and children have borne the brunt of much brutality and marginalisation because of it.  But, and there is a big ‘but’, there have always been those who have fought against injustice with shared values, and there will always be those who will rise up after those who stood before them have died.  There is something in us, I’ve always felt it, that can transcend the darkness, that is capable of change, and which is worthy of life in all its sacredness.

I think back to my Judeo-Christian roots and to the presence of Christ in the world.  Why here?  Why us?  What did the Divine-made-manifest see in us that was worthy of such sacrifice, that was worthy of living among us?  And that is what gives me hope, that is what helps me find a sense of meaning in the horror of our humanity.

My feeling is that if it were never to happen again, the power of the experience could permanently affect the attitude toward life.  A single glimpse of heaven is enough to confirm its existence even if it is never experienced again.

Abram Maslow, Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences 1964, p.75.

How are we to understand the ‘transpersonal’ and how are we to normalise that which is considered transpersonal?  What does this mean, what does it require from us, and why might we consider ‘normalising’ it?

The transpersonal realm refers to those experiences which are defined as transcendental, spiritual  or non-ordinary states of consciousness or awareness.  When they occur, the individual experiences a different kind of reality, an alternate non-material reality which exists beyond space and linear time as we know it.  Such experiences can be very powerful because they can introduce into the mind  different ways of thinking about the self, about life, and about the afterlife.  They can make us question what is real and what is not, what is important, or what is not important.  Sometimes, they can even make us question our sanity because they are so unfamiliar.

Then again, sometimes such experiences are actively sought by an individual, while for others they can occur randomly or spontaneously at particular moments when they might for example be feeling intense emotional states, engaged in contemplation or in prayer or meditation or in moments of solitude.  Irrespective of the nature of the manifestations or when or how often they may occur, they invariably have a profound impact on the mind, body and spirit of the individual … it’s almost as though a veil is removed from the eyes and ‘reality’ is experienced for the first time.

This can be very challenging, especially for first time experiencers who may feel the need to explore and further understand what has happened, and finding someone to speak with about such phenomena can be difficult.  There are organisations and practitioners who can help, and who do provide relevant information online via their websites and social media platforms, such as IANDS, the International Association for Near-Death Studies, and ACISTE, the American Centre for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences.

However, none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the contributing work toward this field of enquiry by Rhea White, a prominent American parapsychologist who was instrumental in founding the Exceptional Human Experience (EHE) Network.  The EHE, like IANDS and ACISTE, provides a wealth of information about transpersonal or exceptional experiences, including links to relevant books, websites and for those who wish to record their own account, a guide to writing your own EHE autobiography.

Even though the transpersonal has become a rather large money-making industry, what we can never lose sight of is the opportunity such profound experiences provide to everyone.  They are vital teaching moments which open our eyes and shock us out of the complacency of our day-to-day lives.  They offer us the invitation to ask questions about ourselves, about God, about the way we’ve lived our life, and about what we are and where we are going, both in this life and in the next.