Amicus Mortis Posts
March 5, 2019 /

Musings on the grim reaper March 30, 2018

Do we all know we’ll die?

I assumed that we do, however a colleague in an on-line forum seemed to think otherwise.  She felt that the knowledge (and/or perhaps the idea of death?) lies in the back of our minds.  I feel it does too, but why?  Why is it there?  Why isn’t it in the front of our minds? Why is it that we often don’t engage with death or think about death until it somehow touches us personally?  And why is it that generally (not always) it is something like this which often makes us not only notice death, but begin to pay attention to or perhaps contemplate death, not in a morbid way but in a way that enriches how we live our lives?

My research explores after death contact and the impact of that on the experient.  The literature terms these experiences, as amongst other definitions, “extraordinary” but for me they are ordinary and simply a part of life. When I was a child I first became aware of the fact that when people ‘died’ they didn’t really die because I could see them and interact with them.  But as I grew older, the vivacity of those experiences faded.  As I grew and found my place in the world responsibilities and duties overshadowed the vividness of the world I experienced as a child.  I forgot.

On a far grander scale, perhaps humanity’s history corresponds to the child just mentioned, and perhaps in the growth of that history in time, death has been forgotten, has fallen away from the front of the collective mind so to speak, so that now it sits in its recesses and can only be seen or remembered when life, through a death event, makes one remember.

I have always felt that death is somehow intimately linked to the intrinsic spirituality of an individual.  In what state do we want to die?  In what state do I want to die?  How do we want to enter the spiritual universe?  How do I want to enter the spiritual universe?  What do we want to take with us?  What do I want to take with me?  All we can take with us is what we’ve made of ourselves, nothing else, no letters after our names, no titles before them, nothing material, only what we are at that moment in time, only what I am at that moment in time.

I wonder if one of the reasons that we don’t talk about death may be because we have forgotten about it?  Perhaps in humanity’s past people understood why they were alive much better than they do today.  I have found that often, not always, but often, that a death-related event wakes a person up and propels them inward.  They become contemplative, they ponder, they ask meaningful questions and a psychospiritual shift appears to occur within them.  They wonder why they were born, what their purpose in life is, and whether or not there is an afterlife.

Whether we acknowledge it to ourselves or not, I feel that we do know that we die, we just don’t think about it.  And while that may be said, I feel that the real question is, “Why are we alive in the first place if only to die anyway?”  The answer in contained in the question.
March 5, 2019 /

Death down under February 14, 2018

Many people today would agree that death has been ‘sanitised’, because for most of us living in the 21st Century and in Australian society, death occurs in a medical setting.  In earlier years, we were born, and died, at home.  Death was more communal, we were more engaged with the process of caring for the dying and death itself, we washed and prepared the body for burial and we were our own funeral directors. The body was generally kept in the home prior to burial where visiting family and friends could pay their respects, commune with others and spend time with the deceased.  Today, as one attendee said at a recent Death Cafe, “We don’t see the process, we’re just told about the death and then we go to the funeral”.

In contrast to this social shielding (or some may say denial) of death and the dead, Anthropologist and theologian Douglas Davies notes that “talking about death has never been more popular” (2007, 48).  This is an observation that both nationally and internationally does appear to bear some testament because there appears to be an increasing community awareness, and an intent, to reclaim our death and burial and to wrest it from the medicalised model in which “a good death” (De Jong and Clarke 2009, 61), where one has some modicum of choice and control in how, when and where one dies, is not always available.

What is taking place in the national and international community?  Publicised events devoted to raising death-awareness and to promoting death education populate social media platforms.  Death-dedicated websites, blogs and Facebook pages dot the online landscape of the world-wide web.  Workshops, seminars, conferences and MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Course) provide death education, information sharing and professional networking opportunities for those working in an end-of-life context, and hard and soft copy journal articles and books populate library and book store shelves. For all intents and purposes, it appears that many people, Australians included, want to either explore their mortality, perhaps regain a sense of ownership or control over it, or at the very least try to understand and find a sense of meaning in it.

While there is a plethora of international initiatives, in Australia national initiatives are slowly but steadily increasing.

In New South Wales for example, The Groundswell Project (www.thegroundswellproject.com/), a not-for-profit organisation which utilises innovative arts and health programs to create social and cultural change about death and dying was established in 2010, while the Afterlife Explorers Conference  (http://www.afterlifeexplorers.com.au/), which endeavours to unite science and spirituality with the intention of increasing community and individual awareness of the survival of consciousness beyond the body, held its inaugural conference in Sydney in 2015 and has now become an annual event.

Another organisation, Dying with Dignity (https://dwdnsw.org.au/) a not-for-profit which has branches in all Australian states,  actively advocates for the dying and seeks to change legislation to introduce medically assisted dying laws while in 2016, the CareSearch Palliative Care Knowledge Network offered for the first time their Dying2Learn MOOC, a 5-week online course designed to raise awareness and foster social discussion about death and dying in Australia   (https://www.caresearch.com.au/caresearch/tabid/2868/Default.aspx).  In 2015 Michael Barbato, Palliative Care physician, death educator and researcher offered the first of his ongoing Midwifing Death training courses (http://www.midwifingdeath.com.au/), while in 2016 the first annual event of the Festival of Death and Dying (http://deathfest.net/) was held  in Sydney, followed by Melbourne in 2017  (with future plans to hold the event in Adelaide in 2018).

So, maybe the question isn’t “Are we a death-denying society?”, but rather, “Who has ownership of our death?”

 

 
March 5, 2019 /

There’s something about grass … January 10, 2018

Over 30 years ago I had a dream in which grass featured.  It was newly growing, short, brilliantly green and formed a short-carpeted layer over the ground.  The reason I remember it is not because I obviously kept a written record of the dream, but because of what I was told the dream, in particular the grass, symbolised.

The grass was a representation of my inner spiritual life which was young, growing and alive.  It was a dream of hope and encouragement for me, and an indication that my efforts to work on myself were making a tangible difference; something fundamental was occurring and a foundation was being laid down.

Just recently I had a second dream about grass.  I was with my adult-son who was talking animatedly about the lawn, in particular, not to cut it.  I looked down to a thickly carpeted, luxuriously green, bed of beautifully ‘alive’ grass which stood some 2 inches high.  I took some steps, feeling the grass give slightly as it cushioned my feet.  Suddenly I found myself in the grass itself, looking up at the blades and seeing the blue sky stretching overhead.  Each blade towered above me, and as I stood in this ‘forest’ marvelling at all that was around me, I felt something difficult to put into words; a sense of establishment.  Then, and just as suddenly, I found myself back where I was when the dream commenced, standing on the lawn listening to my son talking, again with that sense of animation.

Dreams tell us all sorts of things about our inner self, our lives, and the universe in which we live, and while some dreams can be a replaying of daily events which have occurred, others quite pointedly reveal psychospiritual difficulties which need to be addressed as they do psychospiritual gains.  This is one of those dreams, and it is as much a dream of confirmation as it is of hope and encouragement.

2017 was an exceptionally difficult year and there were many times when I felt that the chaos of external life overshadowed my work efforts.  This dream tells me that didn’t happen.  This dream affirms that my inner spiritual life is alive, and that something foundational has been established, something that will anchor me to the spiritual universe.  In this there is hope, and in this there is affirmation that the best is indeed, yet to be.
March 5, 2019 /

Perfection December 19, 2017

Little things perfection make, but perfection is no little thing.

Graham Bryce, 1928-2017.

December in the Gregorian calendar, and especially in the period leading up Christmas, is often a time for reflection and review.  For many people I know, myself included, the year has been challenging and it seemed that often world events, in a strangely synchronistic way, mirrored the discord and discontent present in many of the lives which touched mine.

On Tuesday, during the week which led up to Christmas, the father of a dear and close friend of mine died.  Although I never had the opportunity of meeting him in person, I nonetheless gleaned aspects of his life through the eyes of his son, my friend Robert.  Robert’s father was fondly known, amongst other things, for pearls of wisdom, one of which is quoted above, “Little things perfection make, but perfection is no little thing”.

Whenever Robert mentioned this in conversation, I would ponder on it because it would turn me inward, on which occasions I would contrast it with my efforts to work upon myself.  As I sat in the funeral service, which took place in the first week of the New Year, I read through the Order of Service.  Something made me turn the booklet over and on the back page was written, Little things perfection make but perfection is no little thing.

I sat reflecting on the year that had gone and the times during which when I felt that I wasn’t working on myself.  Pressures and worries from external life intruded and were a distraction but then, little by little, I remembered, I observed, I non-identified.  I thought about something I had written may years ago; When we die and pass into the spiritual universe our external knowledge disappears; it is our being which grants us entry into a particular spiritual society or community.  And then I saw the relationship between effort and being, which was encompassed in the words spoken by Robert’s father.

It can seem that our efforts are little, but then the aim is indeed, no little thing.

 
March 4, 2019 /

Multidimensional reality November 14, 2017

Lived experiences: Other worldly phenomena

“I was in an utterly black, dark void.  It is very difficult to explain, but I felt as if I were moving in a vacuum, just through blackness.  Yet, I was quite conscious.  It was like being in a cylinder which had no air in it.  It was a feeling of limbo, of being half-way here, and half-way somewhere else.”

“I was more conscious of my mind at the time than of the physical body.  The mind was the most important part, instead of the shape of the body.  And before, all my life, it had been exactly reversed.  The body was my main interest and what was going on in my mind, well, it was just going on, and that’s all.  But after this happened, my mind was the main point of attraction, and the body was second – it was only something to encase my mind.  I didn’t care if I had a body or not.  It didn’t matter because for all I cared my mind was what was important.”

“I knew I was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it, because no one could hear me … I was out of my body, there’s no doubt about it, because I could see my own body there on the operating room table.  My soul was out!  All this made me feel very bad at first, but then, this really bright light came … It was just a tremendous amount of light, nothing like a big bright flash-light, it was just too much light.  And it gave off heat to me; I felt a warm sensation … At first, when the light came, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but then, it asked, it kind of asked me if I was ready to die.  It was like talking to a person but a person wasn’t there … Yet from the moment the light spoke to me, I felt really good – secure and loved.  The love which came from it is just unimaginable, indescribable …”

Thinkers of the day: Other worldly phenomena

“We have learnt that the exploration of the eternal world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating.”

Sir Arthur S. Eddington, (1882-1944).  Science and the unseen world.  1929 Swarthmore Lecture. University of Michigan: Macmillan

 

“Physicists who are trying to understand nature may work in many different fields and by many different methods; one may dig, one may sow, one may reap.  But the final harvest will always be a sheaf of mathematical formulae.  These will never describe nature itself, but only our observations on nature.  Our studies can never put us into contact with reality; we can never penetrate beyond the impressions that reality implants in our minds.”

Sir James H. Jeans (1877-1946). Physics and Philosophy, 1981, p. 15. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.

 

“By and large, the scientific community still holds to the mechanistic viewpoint in which consciousness is seen as an epiphenomenon that mysteriously developed after billions of years of blind, mechanical, material processes.  This is the way of looking at the world with which transpersonal experiences and quantum physics are both incompatible.”

Ronald L. Boyer and Saniel Bonder, (1981).  ‘The Part and the Whole: Death and the Scientific World View (An Interview with Stanislav Grof, M.D.)”.  The Laughing Man, 2(3), 36.

 

“Well, I think the most important finding is that people who come close to death tend to report very similar kinds of experiences. In other words, there is a pattern of experiencing that doesn’t seem to depend on age, circumstances, religious beliefs, and so forth. And it doesn’t seem to make a difference whether they are actually in a biological crisis or just psychologically close to death but physically unharmed. And it is very difficult to explain this experiential pattern through some kind of simple, physiological, biochemical triggering mechanism in the nervous system. It is obviously a much more complex phenomenon.”

Ronald L. Boyer and Saniel Bonder, (1981).  “The Part and the Whole: Death and the Scientific World View (An Interview with Stanislav Grof, M.D.)”.  The Laughing Man, 2(3), 31.

 

“The influences of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to the degree that the walls of space and time have come to look solid, real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits in the world is the sign of insanity.”

Ralph W. Emerson, (1803-1882). “The Oversoul”. Essays. 1845, p. 196. London: H. G. Clarke and Co.

 
March 4, 2019 /

Eternal recurrence October 18, 2017

Some months ago I was randomly flipping through a book published in 1924 by psychiatrist Carl Wickland M.D. “Thirty Years Among the Dead”.  According to the blurb on the inside sleeve jacket:

Carl August Wickland (February 14, 1861 – November 13, 1945) was a psychiatrist, a paranormal researcher and a non-fiction author. Wickland was born in 1861 at Liden, Norland Province, Sweden. His father taught him cabinet making in his youth. Later he studied watchmaking. In 1881 he arrived in St. Paul, Minn. after having emigrated from Sweden the year before. He married Anna W. Anderson in 1896 and they moved to Chicago so that he could attend Durham Medical College from which he graduated in 1900. He became a general practitioner of medicine and specialized in researching mental illnesses. In 1909, Wickland became chief psychiatrist at the National Psychopathic Institute of Chicago. He continued in that position until 1918 when he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California. Wickland, in collaboration with his assistants, Nelle Watts, and Celia and Orlando Goerz, wrote and published in 1924, Thirty Years Among the Dead a book that detailed their experiences in abnormal psychology. Wickland believed that the doctrine of reincarnation was incorrect: The theory of reincarnation can undoubtedly be traced to early stages of mankind when departed spirits took possession of the bodies of sensitive individuals and lived and acted through them, thus seemingly indicating reincarnation. But in reality this was only spirit obsession or possession.

The book provides first-hand accounts of interactions between what are described as discarnate earth-bound entities and the living, citing hundreds of cases of what the author terms ‘spirit possession’, which after being cast out by various means result in the hapless human host returning to a normal temperament.  In reading through Wickland’s accounts, there are a number of consistent themes which emerge from the narrative accounts, one of which is reincarnation, a spiritual belief-system influencing millions of human beings past and present.

When embodied, and prior to physical death, these spiritual beings believed that after death they would reincarnate (be reborn in human form) so they could continue learning life lessons which for whatever reason they didn’t learn the first-time round.  This endless recurrence, according to them, would continue for however many lifetimes it would take for them to perfect themselves.

According to information received from them after physical death however, and as recorded by Wickland, what appears to have happened is that after their death they realised that this belief was a fallacy because try as they might, they could not ever reincarnate.

This ensued great lamentation from all of them in the light of what they now knew; they had wasted their time and they wanted others not to do the same as they had done.  Many of them had lived lives focused on materialism, indolence and self-centredness and with little if any thought of spiritual or related matters.  Now in eternity, they realised they should have focused on living lives of love to others and love to God.

Since experiencing my own bereavements, I’ve become acutely aware of the passing of time and of the reality of how little time we as planetary dwellers do have to live out our lives as embodied beings.  Why are we born, why do we die, and why do I feel that what happens in between those two events is of critical importance to the individual?  Why is it of critical importance to me?  And if it is of critical importance to me, is it of critical importance to others?  According to Wickland’s record, it is, especially if one believes in reincarnation.  Why do I constantly feel that death is trying to teach me how to live?  And why do I feel that this is something deeply and profoundly important to my spiritual well-being and impending spiritual destiny?

Perhaps the following statement offers some insight, “This planetary life is only a preparation for a much greater life” (pers. com. Philip W. Groves, 16 December 1998).  Aye, there’s the rub.

 
March 4, 2019 /

Mortality awareness September 15, 2017

“… the promise of death and the experience of dying,
more than any other force in life, can move a human being to grow.”

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Death: The final stage of growth, 1975.

I came across the term “mortality awareness” (Taylor n.d.)[2] in an online article I read recently.  The author, Steve Taylor, with a depth of insight and sensitivity discusses death as “the great taboo” of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, noting that this death-denying attitude renders potentially transformative aspects of mortality awareness less accessible.  In 2007, some years earlier perhaps than Taylor, Anthropologist and Theologian Douglas Davies wrote an article, Death special: The great taboo, which featured in the New Scientist October issue.  One paragraph in particular resonated with me:

Talking about death has never been more popular, and death is an increasingly common theme for film and television … There are thousands of websites dealing with the subject, many sorts of memorials, growing numbers of journals and courses on death studies, adverts encouraging us to write wills or plan our own funerals, and hundreds of support groups and self-help books. Ideas and theories of grief have become fashionable, and grief counsellors are available to help the bereaved. There is also growing interest in doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia for terminally ill people who desire a managed end to their life.

10 years post Davies’ statement, I would have to say that death literacy is well and truly established.  Dedicated end-of-life conferences and events, organisations raising and promoting death awareness, the natural burial and eco-funeral movement, and the global Death Café social franchise offer a host of options, choices and self-education opportunities for even the most discerning ‘death devotee’.  Why then, do we still so often hear the familiar refrain that contemporary Western society is a death denying-society?

Are we?  I don’t think we are.  We know we die, we know those close to us die, we know people living all over the planet die; death and decay is everywhere.  And nor does Sociologist Allan Kellehear who argued that Western societies are not “death-denying” by any of the major criteria posed in the literature on the subject, furthermore, “to say that our contemporary societies are ‘death-denying’ has no theoretical or practical explanatory value.”  What is it then that the term death-denying is analogous too?

Kübler-Ross, E. (1975). Death: The final stage of growth. NY, NY: Simon & Schuster.

Taylor, S. (n.d.). Mortality and mindfulness: How intense encounters with death can generate spontaneous mindfulness.  Available online https://www.stevenmtaylor.com/academic-articles/mortality-mindfulness-intense-encounters-death-can-generate-spontaneous-mindfulness/

Davies,D. (2007). Death special: The great taboo.  New Scientist, 10 October 2007.  Available online https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626252-000-death-special-the-great-taboo/

Kellehear, A. (1984). Are we a ‘death-denying’ society?  A sociological review. Social Science Medicine, 18(9), 713-723.
March 4, 2019 /

Finding meaning in death August 24, 2017

It seems to me that in Western society, people generally, for whatever reason, find it difficult to come to terms with death, either their own, those close to them, or those around them.  What does it mean to die?  And why should we or would we, even think on such things?  Would finding meaning in death help us understand why we’re alive, what we’re living for, and how we might live our embodied lives differently?  And could this sense of meaning then revision not only how we might live our lives but conceptualise our purpose and help us think about what we’re living for?

Perhaps in humanity’s past people understood why they were alive much better than what we do today.  For example, the ancient Egyptians quite literally lived to die.  The Egyptian Book of the Dead, or rather the English translation of “yeret hur” Coming Forth by Day (its correct name) reveals a sophisticated spiritual belief-system and world-view which suggests that death was very much a part of the social fabric of life, (not just evidenced by the fact that the wealthy spent years building and decorating elaborate tombs well before their death).

To me this suggests a certain comfortability not only with death but with the afterlife – these people knew that they lived beyond death, they knew that how they lived their lives had an influence in shaping their spiritual destiny, and they prepared themselves for this destiny.  In reading the Coffin Texts one can sense that death was incorporated into life and that it was understood, and what’s more, that that understanding had its rightful place in the culture and society; death was embraced in a manner which was not only quite ordinary, but because it was an important transitory event.

Reflecting on this, it appears that our embodied lives are really only a means of preparation for something far more significant.  How do we understand this significance?  What is this significance?  Why aren’t we taught about this significance?

I have thought about death all my life; readers of this blog and those who know me can attest to this.  I was socialised into it as a child and that socialisation has never stopped, something which has made me realise how imperative it is that we do think about death as much as we think about life.  Elliott states it beautifully, “coming to terms with death is a lifetime’s work” as does Angela Tilby. “What is needed here is praeparatio mortis: preparation for death, a spiritual education in coming to terms with our mortality.  This is a task not for the last weeks of life – It is often too late by then …”.

Elliott, H. (2011). Moving beyond the medical model. Journal of holistic healthcare. Vol. 8, Issue 1, May.

Tilby, A. (2011). BBC Radio 4, Thought for the Day, 17 February.
March 4, 2019 /

Meditating on death in the midst of life July 29, 2017

Our first Death Café, after a hiatus of some six months, occurred shortly after the death of Jon Underwood, the iconic founder of the Death Café social enterprise.

As I sat listening to the conversation, I couldn’t help but reflect on this remarkable man, and that how without him what was taking place today, at this very minute, would never have occurred. He was a visionary who pioneered the community death conversation forum and death literate movement; an informal, agenda-free space for people to come together to have conversations about death-related issues. He was also provocative in that he confronted what for many people in the West is a difficult concept; the meaning of their mortality. In social research terms, we can define this as, amongst other things, community development, community capacity building, and the fostering or strengthening of individual resilience.

But Jon was simpler than that. His objective was and always will be, to “increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives”. How we all do this is uniquely individual, yet there is one thing I can be sure of, new trains of thought were generated in the minds of all those who have ever attended a Death Café I’ve had the pleasure to facilitate. And that is thanks to Jon, the first death activist and advocate I’ve had the pleasure and privilege to know.

As always, people came from all walks of life and brought with them varied life experiences, belief systems, and ways of being in the world. Being a palliative care nurse, one attendee “ponders death a lot”, while a medium gently observes, “I rely on death in order to do my work”. Another is curious and wants to know what Death Café is all about, another has friends with cancer which in turn make her think about her own death, and one works in pastoral care.

Topics ranged from the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill, to palliative sedation and end-of-life or terminal restlessness. “What’s going on?” I wondered, “We don’t know” was the response. The impact of deathbed visions on the dying and their carers was another topic which was explored. How is it possible that these things occur, and how merciful is it that they do. We also explored a quote by E M Forster, American essayist and novelist; “Death destroys a man, the idea of death saves him”.

It is a provocative statement, and one, I feel, intended by the author to evoke a response, to make the reader or listener consider the contradiction in the statement, and to invite us all into a relationship with death in order that we might live our lives a little better, a little more meaningfully, and to work toward our spiritual destiny perhaps a little more consciously.

Thank you Jon, without you, none of this would have been possible.
March 4, 2019 /

The sleeper must awaken June 11, 2017

Dune, a science fiction novel written by American author Frank Herbert, was originally published in 1965. In 1984 it was released at the cinema to a worldwide audience. The statement, “The sleeper must awaken” is part of a conversation which takes place during a scene featuring two of the main characters, Duke Leto Atreides and Paul Atreides, his son.

It is the eve of what eventuates into death, betrayal and an epic battle for control of a valuable resource found only on the desert planet Arrakis. The two are standing on a rampart of sorts talking about the future when turning toward his son the Duke says, “Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”

I’m reminded of this because in May I joined a Work exercise group and as it so happened, the fact that I am psychologically asleep (in the Work sense) was brought home to me yet again, vividly and starkly, as was the reality of the human condition, and in particular of my condition as a member of the human race. Charles Tart captures it as follows:

We are dreaming. We are entranced. We are automatized.
We are caught in illusions while thinking we are perceiving reality …
We need to awaken to reality, the reality of the problems
caused by our fragmented selves, so we can discover our deeper selves and the reality of our
world, undistorted by our entranced condition.

Charles Tart, Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential, 1987.

In attempting to undertake the exercise I learnt a valuable lesson; I had to be awake while being awake. The task of completing the exercise served as a two-way mirror which enabled me to see aspects of the Sleep State and to experience the reality of the profoundly blinding nature of what the Sleep State is, of how its cloying nature seduces the mind and obscures the vision without our even being aware of it.

It seems to me that Tart has captured the intensity and sense of urgency that accompanies all work on oneself – death constantly stalks us and we never know when or how it will strike. Will we die without having awoken to the possibilities of our soul growth and evolution, in the Work sense, or will we die as robotic automatons, always thinking we’re awake yet never realising we are not.