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Cultural traditions and stories relating to Christmas speak of different things, yet to me there seems to be some common underlying themes.  Advent, the period of preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus at Christmas, lasts for 40 days and commences on the Sunday closest to November 30.  Each Sunday before Christmas a candle is lit to symbolize one of four weekly themes: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. In some churches and homes, a fifth candle bigger than the others, is lit to represent Christ as the light of the world.

Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights which commemorates the recovery of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Second Temple at the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2^nd Century BCE, also incorporates the use of candles.  Again, I can’t but help draw a parallel between these two profound expressions of hope after adversity, and of light as an illuminator and correspondence for truth.  The eight-day festival is characterised by, amongst other devotional acts, the nightly lighting of the menorah.  The menorah candlestick holds nine flames one of which, the Shamash is used to light all the others.

The Hanukkah story is one of light over darkness. It commemorates the victory of the Maccabees, ****Jewish freedom fighters, who defeated the Seleucid Greek rulers of Judea and restored the Temple service in Jerusalem more than 2000 ****years ago. The culmination of the miracle came when a small jar of pure oil, enough to fuel the Temple menorah for a single day, burned for eight days.

Hanukkah marks the Jewish struggle in the Land of Israel to preserve Jewish identity and self-determination. Together with the miracle of the oil, the candles recall the unbroken attachment of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland.

Lighting the menorah is an act of memory and continuity. Each flame affirms that Jewish identity, history, and connection to the Land of Israel cannot be erased.

Hanukkah has been observed for over two millennia: through expulsions and pogroms, through crusader massacres, through ghettos and death camps, and today, through antizionist Jew-hatred.

Hanukkah is a festival of light – ****and of Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel.

Anon.  (Written 14^th December before the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach.)

This December, Hanukkah and Christmas were marred by an appalling act of terrorism and murder directed toward the Jewish community.  Instead of light, blood cast it’s terrible shadow as two gunmen shot indiscriminately at men, women and children who had gathered to celebrate Hanukkah, wreaking a devastating and heartbreaking toll.

History contains endless stories of the dank darkness of mankind’s evil deeds which have cast their ill-intent toward others, but so too have there been stories of light and those who have embodied it who rose to meet and overcome that darkness.  Darkness, like the dark of the starless night lasts only a little while, and in the end, as with the coming of the dawn and the rising sun, it always fades away … and we continue.

Photo by Eliezer Muller on Unsplash

An education which leaves untouched the entire region of transcendental thought is an education which has nothing important to say about the meaning of human life.

Geiger, The Long Way Home, p. 3, 1963.

Many people fear death.  Why?  Is it due to our lack of understanding of its purpose in our lives, of its inevitability?  Or is it because we think when we die, we cease to exist and simply can’t abide the thought?  And is this, I wonder, where our fascination and curiosity about ghosts, stories of hauntings and things that go bump in the night might come from?   Is there a homing beacon within us drawing us to such accounts, not just because ghost stories reflect cultural and social norms and values, but because something deep within us intrinsically knows our existence continues beyond physical death, and that somehow, we seek validation through such accounts?

The question is, are human beings more than their body?

I believe the phenomena of after-death contact suggests they are.  Is there another reality beyond what is known and experienced through the physical senses?  I believe after-death contact suggests there is.  Does existence continue in this reality, albeit in different form?  I believe after-death contact suggests it does.  And are those from this reality able to positively influence the lives of the living?  I believe after-death contact suggests they can.  Is physical death the passageway through which human beings pass to reach “the other side”?  I believe after-death contact suggests it is.  Is death merely a biomedical phenomenon for the individual, or, because it is a passageway to another existence, something more meaningful?  I believe after-death contact suggests it is.

After-death contact, like other other-worldly phenomena, is difficult to explain.  Acknowledging and accepting its existence is one matter, but truly understanding the conditions which bring about its occurrence is another.  And while biographical self-accounts not only challenge and invite us to consider notions of our own mortality, the afterlife and our ongoing existence after death, it is my hope that people will draw their own conclusions and come to their own decisions.

After-death contact isn’t just “other-worldly phenomena” however.  It is unique because it brings hope.  I like to see this as the hope that despite the pain and suffering we experience in life when someone we love, or who is close to us dies, that something fundamentally good is at work in people’s lives of an uplifting nature.  And though stories of such encounters between the living and the dead can be challenging, the lived experience of such events educate us with the realisation that we don’t “die” when we die.

And because after-death contact, as an idea, extends an invitation to consider life from an alternate transpersonal or spiritual perspective, it brings with it the hope that human beings can grow beyond what they think they are at a given moment in time.  Remember too, when after-death contact occurs it is the deceased who are reaching out to the living, not the other way around.  Importantly, what is also suggested by these encounters is that death is not an impermeable barrier between the living and the dead.

The appearance and reappearance of the dead in our lives, of our loved ones, evidences the fact that the deceased can exist in two worlds simultaneously, their world and ours.  Even if their appearance in our world is only brief, it is enough because it’s ramifications are so powerful.

My experience of life, and living, is that life is punctuated with events which ultimately serve to teach us life-lessons.  Some of these are gained from experiences of profound loss and grief, others from moments of joy, bliss and ecstasy.  Death, the final transition, and it’s meaning in our lives can be difficult to understand and to come to terms with.  Why are we born seemingly only to die?   Why do accidents, which frequently claim lives, happen?  Why are we afraid of dying, or, why do we not really think about it all that much?  What is our final destiny?  Do we go on, or do we cease to exist after physical death?

While there are many people who already have a relationship with the afterlife, there are many who don’t and one of the reasons I write this blog is because I want to encourage people to not only reimagine or reframe their relationship with death, but to do that with the afterlife as well.   Belief and knowledge of the afterlife has been documented throughout history, is evidenced across cultures and religions, eastern and western, and has been debated over and wondered at by people for millennia.  Books have been written about it, artists, poets and musicians have been inspired by it, and movies, telemovies and documentaries have been produced about it.

There is a scene in the series, The Tudors, where King Henry at the end of his life wonders about death.  The scene was inspired by the work, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in which the author Saint Bede recounts a story relating to King Edwin of Northumbria (AD 627).  The King was in discussion with his counsellors about whether to accept Christianity, which incorporates an afterlife, when one of his advisors makes mention of their ignorance of their final destination.

The advisor makes an allegorical statement, likening ‘life’ to a sparrow flying into a lighted hall at one end before flying out the end at the other.  While inside the sparrow is safe from winter’s tempest which rages outside, but after a short time the sparrow disappears, flying through the hall before “… passing from winter into winter again.  So, this life of man appears for a little while”, he declared, “but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all”.

Yes, our life appears for a little while and it does feel at times that we’re simply passing through it on our way to another destination, but of what is to follow we do know.  And the reason we know is because so many people, me included, have had near-death experiences.  These events teach us that physical death is the putting off of the physical body, which like a shell encloses us while we exist as embodied beings living our lives in the flesh.  When death occurs, we do not cease to exist, we simply transform into something which doesn’t require a physical body anymore.  But what then?  Ah, now that is the question.

Death has always fascinated me, because of what comes after it, and because I’ve always known we don’t die when we die.  Similarly, I’ve always been fascinated by the meaning of death, which is possibly the same thing.

Pondering on this drew me to my bookshelves (which are replete with death and dying literature) and to Herman Feifel’s edited volume, The Meaning of Death (1959, McGraw-Hill Book Company).  In the preface Feifel writes, “There is no book on the American scene which offers a multi-faceted approach to its problems.”  65 years ago I would have agreed, but these days, and with the burgeoning growth of death literacy, I think the situation is otherwise.

Carl Jung wrote, “The birth of a human being is pregnant with meaning, why not death?”  Why not indeed.  Why don’t we think about death in this way, especially in the West?  And, what is attained with death?  Why are we born if only to die?  And so I am back at the beginning.  This preoccupation of mine is defined by what Viktor Frankl terms as the will-to-meaning, “the most human phenomenon of all”.  Something which I believe is entwined with the concept of what life is expecting from us.

Does death remind us of the importance of our lives, of how we want to live and for what purpose?  If death is a constant reminder of our mortality, does it by its very nature compel us to consider the meaning of how we live our lives?  Does the shock of its impact thrust us into an awareness of meaning, is this its purpose, and its necessity?

We need to know we die, as upsetting as that can be at times.  And we need to search for and find the meaning of our lives before time runs out.  We all have different ways of seeing the world as we do of experiencing our relationships with spirit, with the universe, with God.  Some believe we return to earthly existence, traversing an endless loop of dying and being reborn in pursuit of perfection of the self.  Some  believe at death we cease to exist.  While others like me believe we pass this way only once, so rendering time infinitely precious.

The New Year has begun and in reflecting on the events of the previous 12 months, I wonder once again at how quickly time passes and at how much life experience can be packed into such a short space of time.   I was told many years ago that my entire life would be like this because it was necessary for a huge amount of experience to be condensed into a short timeframe.

For example, during 2024, and in addition to working full-time, writing and working on my book, running a monthly Death Café (and of course working on myself), I was also the guardian and carer for a friend who subsequently died in September.  In addition to this, I became involved in voluntary work for a not-for-profit startup, actively fought antisemitism, commenced job hunting for a new role and received a diagnosis from a Psychologist that I was neurodivergent (which actually explained a lot). Naturally, by December I was mentally and physically exhausted.  I had planned to travel to South Korea for a month’s holiday, however several days prior to the date on which I would have been flying out of Sydney I had a freak accident which severely injured one of my ankles rendering me unable to walk.

Although I knew during the year I was doing far too much and needed to let go of some things, I didn’t.  However, higher life with its innate intelligence finally stepped in to save me from myself and pulled the rug out from under my feet quite literally stopping me dead in my tracks.  The instant the accident happened, I knew that it was an intended event and not simply a coincidence.  And so I chose to surrender, and while I rested my ankle at home and underwent rehabilitation and physiotherapy, I gradually began to let go of people and other things I had attached myself too.

As the awful bruising and swelling gradually disappeared, and I rediscovered the joys of sitting by the seaside, I thought about the New Year and what my goals might be in a greatly modified lifestyle.  Of course, the first thing which came up was ‘write’, so one of my new projects is to complete another book I have already started about the impact of after-death-contact on the lives of those experiencing it.

There will be other projects but hopefully not other ‘freak’ accidents, and no doubt the year will unfold as it needs to and while we have no control over the events that occur in our lives, I know we can choose how to respond to them.

The New Year awaits.