Amicus Mortis Posts

What is it about houses and ghosts and things that go bump in the night that is so fascinating?  Why does belief in the afterlife and the presence of disembodied spirits, or ghosts as they are so commonly known, have such deep historical and cultural roots?  And why am I not the only one drawn to such tales?   Why does this otherworldly phenomena touch an inner nerve within so many of us?

Pliny the Younger for example, Roman writer and politician from the first and second century in a letter to Licinius Sura, documented three tales of ghostly goings on which occurred in a house in Athens.  While in Mexico, the Day of the Dead rather than being a sad occasion, is a widely practiced social and cultural event where the dead are treated as guests of honour who are warmly welcomed to family festivities.  In Japan, the notion of Obakeyashiki (お化け屋敷) or ghost houses, is deeply rooted in Japanese folklore and the belief in supernatural beings called ‘yokai’, which include various types of ghosts and spirits who either come to visit or who live with them.

Why has this subject area had such a prolific outpouring in literature, screen and campfire tales, so much so that the ghostly haunted house has evolved into its own genre?   Nowadays, the haunted house and its ghostly inhabitants is a much-loved horror genre blending paranormal activity with psychological terror, with the house usually the locale where, generally, nefarious events take place. Although it must be said that not all ghosts are hell-bent on revenge from the grave and for me as for others, ghost stories and ghosts have always been a topic of fascination and lately I’ve been wondering why.

Is it because some of us intuitively know or perhaps sense the presence of non-material reality and those who inhabit it?  Are we ‘hard-wired’ to feel and ponder, to consider ‘reality’ from outside a strictly scientific paradigm and mindset?  And do ghost stories, which reinforce cultural and social values also function as a reminding factor?  What is this phenomena telling us, what is it inviting us to know?

The sleep state is pernicious with many of us unaware of its devastating impact on our lives.  Experiencing ghostly phenomena can shock us into an awareness of other forms of reality and can prompt us to consider ourselves as something other than purely flesh and bone.  Is the message being conveyed through ghost stories and their inhabitants, one such that corporeal existence is temporary and that we need to think about, consider or possibly even prepare for our afterlife?  And if we’re not born to simply die and fade away, what then is the purpose for our being born?  What is the purpose for our existence?

I had a freak accident recently, a week or so prior to Christmas, slipping suddenly when walking and badly twisting one of my ankles while traversing a path I’ve walked hundreds of times.  I wasn’t rushing, nothing was obstructing my way, nothing had been spilt on the surface.  As I struggled to right myself my mind was instantly calibrating what had happened, and why.  Though caught by surprise because it happened so fast, thoughts raced through my mind as a feeling of intentionality gripped me.

I have recently been advised to slow down, to take something off my plate.  While age does play a part in slowing one down, my mind is as active now as it was when I was a young girl; that will never slow down.  But it’s not about that.  As we run out of time it’s about pursuing those things that are meaningful, those things that are important, those things that will make a difference.  I remember being told many years ago that as we age or mature, our reading choices should also become more selective, so too our interests; this accident has reinforced that.

As I slowly hobbled along afterward with my ankle strapped for the days that followed, I felt that life had intentionally made me stop, that it had made me slow down on purpose.  I moved slowly among crowds of people constantly rushing past me, amidst the excitement and intensity of pre-Christmas shopping, and I saw how oblivious they were to the maelstrom of life, to their identification with it as I had been, until I had quite literally been pulled from it.

It was shocking to experience this, to feel it so powerfully, and I understood the lesson being taught; that one must be mindful at all times of where one is within oneself.  It is fitting that this year of my life end with this teaching lesson, with the strong reminder to remember what is important, what is meaningful, and to not get lost along the way.  The teaching has always been this; be in the world, but not of it.

I first met Sol well over ten years ago.  I had been invited to sit on a not-for-profit committee of management board and was attending the yearly AGM.  I was being introduced to the other committee members and I turned around to see an aged man looking at me and smiling.  I was instantly captivated by him, not because of his smile, but because of what I saw within him; a great white light, glowing brilliantly.  I knew in that instant we would become friends, and we did.  Over the years, and as I came to know him, I saw the reason for the light.  He was a man generous of spirit, warm hearted, loving, non-judgmental, deeply understanding of human nature, sensitive and empathic.  He was the father I wished I had had in life and though he wasn’t, he loved me always as his daughter.  In addition to being friends we were colleagues, collaborating on a number of projects for the community centre and in this capacity, I came to appreciate his incredible business acumen as well.

He was a widower and in time met a lady (20 years his junior) who naturally began to take up much of his time.  Although our friendship remained close the dynamic changed, the result, I think, of certain insecurities of his companion.  Eventually I barely saw him.  Every so often there would be a phone call, and we would catch up but the space between us grew bigger.  Then out of the blue I saw him.  When I ‘see’ people in this way, I see with eyes inside my eyes.  Some people may call it a vision but the only way I can describe it is as I experience it.  It’s like seeing material and non-material reality simultaneously.  It is always sudden and unexpected and often catches me unawares.

He was surrounded by darkness, reaching toward me with his right arm outstretched, and calling for me; he was afraid.  I knew he had had a number of minor brushes with cancer in the past and wondered if his situation had taken a turn for the worse.  Around this time I made contact with a mutual friend who informed me that he had stage-4 cancer and was very unwell.  I wondered why his companion had not contacted me.  This sparked a flurry of phone calls and text messages to Sol, none of which were responded to. My partner at the time also made repeated attempts to contact him, again, nothing.  Eventually he did respond and we all agreed to meet; it was one week before Christmas.

Seeing him after so long was a shock.  He was obviously gravely ill, thin, and walking with a cane while having to be supported.  As I embraced him I felt the sickness within him, eating him from the inside out, and as he looked into my eyes no words needed to be spoken.  The four of us sat and chatted as though everything was okay, but it wasn’t.  Eventually the word ‘cancer’ was spoken and then I was able to ask direct questions.  “What treatment have you been having?” “How has that been for you?”  “What treatment protocols are in place?”

As he spoke I began to understand that he wanted to maintain a semblance of privacy about what was taking place in his life and that by doing this he was maintaining a feeling of control when everything else was spinning out of control.  He wanted to die on his terms one of which was that he wanted people to remember him as he was and not as he is at the moment.  As we said our goodbyes, and I held him in my arms, I knew I wouldn’t see him again, and I grieved that knowing. We had talked at length about death many times in the past, before he had met his companion, and I grieved the knowing that I could not companion him at this time of his life.

Christmas came and went and all the while I kept texting and phoning.  He did manage to call in the following January but I missed it, having instead to be content with a voice-mail message on my phone.  He sounded so tired, and I could hear the effort it cost him even to speak.  My partner and I often talked about him and wondered at the role of his companion.  Why hadn’t she called?  Why did I feel that she had somehow nurtured the space that had come between us?

And then I saw Sol unexpectedly in a vision.  He was standing bathed in luminescent yellow light.  He was smiling at me because he knew I could see him and I felt that a great burden had lifted off him.  Had he become reconciled to his imminent death?  Was his fear gone?  I knew something had happened because I could see it and I knew that whatever had happened, it was joyous for him.  I told my partner and he wondered if Sol had died.  I said no, that surely, we would have been contacted, but in my mind I wondered.

The last two weeks of my husband’s life when he was in the palliative care ward, I experienced events like this.  I would see him standing outside his body bathed in light and knew that he was getting ready to leave.  I understood this to be a kind of spiritual ‘loosening up’, so that when his physical body ceased functioning, and he found himself in the spiritual universe it wouldn’t be too much of a shock for him.  Was Sol being readied?  Was he too experiencing that same ‘loosening up’?

As it so happened, two days after this experience my partner received a telephone call informing him that Sol had passed away two days ago.  He had died at the exact time that I had seen him because he had come to tell me … even in death his actions were motivated by love.

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.