3 - Parallels

The events of the various stages of the experience of dying are, to say the very least, unusual. 1 fence, my surprise has been compounded as over the years I have come across quite a number of striking parallels to them. These parallels occur in ancient and/or highly esoteric writings from the literature of several very diverse civilizations, cultures, and eras.

The Bible

In our society The Bible is the most widely read and discussed book dealing with matters relating to the nature of the spiritual aspect of man and to life after death. On the whole, however, The Bible has relatively little to say about the events that transpire upon death, or about the precise nature of the after-death world This is especially -rue of the Old Testament. According to some Biblical scholars, only two passages in all of the Old Testament speak unequivocally of life after death:

Isaiah 26:19: Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust for . . . the earth shall cast out the dead.'

Daniel 12:2: And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Notice that in both of these passages there is strong suggestion that a resurrection of the physical body will occur and that the state of physical death is compared here, again, to sleep.

Still, as is evident from the preceding chapter, a few persons have drawn upon specific Biblical concepts when trying to elucidate or to explain to me what happened to them. For instance, it will be remembered that one man identified the dark enclosure he went through at the moment of death as the Biblical "valley of the shadow of death." Two persons mentioned Jesus' claim, "I am the light of the world." Apparently, it was at least partly on the basis of that phrase that both identified the light they met as Christ. One of them told me, "I didn't ever see a person in this light, but to me the light was a Christ-consciousness, a oneness with all things, a perfect love. I think that Jesus meant it literally when he said he was the light of the world."

In addition, in my own reading I have come across a few seeming parallels which none of my subjects have mentioned. The most interesting ones occur in the writings of the apostle Paul. Paul was a persecutor of Christians until he had his famous vision and conversion on the road to Damascus. He says:

Acts 26:13-26: At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, "Said, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."

And I said, "Who art thou, Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness, both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in which I will appear unto thee ...."

Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision . . . . And as I thus spake for myself, Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad."

But I said, "I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness."

This episode obviously bears some resemblance to the encounter with the being of light in near death experiences. First of all, the being is endowed with personality, though no physical form is seen, and a "voice" which asks a question and issues instructions emanates from it. When Paul tries to' tell others, he is mocked and labeled as "insane." Nonetheless, the vision changed the course of his life: He henceforth became the leading proponent of Christianity as a way of life, entailing love of others.

There are differences, too, of course. Paul did not come near death in the course of his vision Also, interestingly enough, Paul reports that he was blinded by the light and was unable to see for three days afterward. This runs contrary to the reports of those who say that though the light was indescribably brilliant, it in no way blinded them, or kept them from seeing things around them.

In his discussions of the nature of the afterlife, Paul says that some challenge the Christian concept of the afterlife by asking what kind of body the dead will have:

1 Corinthians 15:35-52: But some man will say, "How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?" Thou fool. . . (of) that which` thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain .... But God give,' it a body as it hath pleased him, and to ever, seed his own body .... There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another.... So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised in ii corruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised glory: It is sown in weakness; it is raised power: It is sown a natural body, it is raised spiritual body. There is a natural body, and the is a spiritual body .... Behold I show you a mystery We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.

Interestingly, Paul's brief sketch of the nature of the "spiritual body" corresponds very well with the accounts of those who have found themselves out of their bodies. In all cases, the immateriality of the spiritual body-its lack of physical substance-is stressed, as are its lack of limitations. Paul says, for example, that whereas the physical body was weak and ugly, the spiritual body will be strong and beautiful. This reminds one of the account of a near-death experience in which the spiritual body seemed whole and complete even when the physical body could be seen to be mutilated, and of another in which the spiritual body seemed to be of no particular age, i.e., not limited by time.

Plato

The philosopher Plato, who was one of the greatest thinkers of all time, lived in Athens from 428 to 348 B.C. He left us a body of thought in the form of some twenty-two philosophical plays or dialogues, most of which include his teacher Socrates as chief interlocutor, and a small number of letters.

Plato believed strongly in the use of reason, logic,  and argument in the attainment of truth and wisdom, but only up to a point, for in addition he was a great visionary who suggested that ultimately truth can only come to one in an almost mystical experience of enlightenment and insight. He accepted that there were planes and dimensions of reality other than the sensible, physical world and believed that the physical realm could be understood only by reference to these other, "higher" planes of reality. Accordingly, he was interested mainly in the incorporeal, conscious component of man-the soul-and saw the physical body only as the temporary vehicle of the soul. It is not surprising, then, that he was interested in the fate of the soul after physical death and that several of his dialogues-especially Phaedo, Gorgias, and The Republic-deal in part with that very topic.

Plato's writings are full of descriptions of death which are precisely like those which were discussed in the previous chapter. For instance, Plato defines death as the separation of the incorporeal part of a living person, the soul, from the physical part, the body. What is more, this incorporeal part of man is subject to many fewer limitations than is the physical part. Hence, Plato specifically points out that time is not an element of the realms beyond the physical, sensible world. The other realms are eternal, and, in Plato's striking phrase, what we call time is but the "moving, unreal reflection of eternity."

Plato discusses in various passages how the soul which has been separated from its body may meet and converse with the departed spirits of others and be guided through the transition from physical life to the next realm by guardian spirits. He mentions how some might expect to be met at the time of their death by a boat which takes them across a body of water to "the other shore" of their after-death existence. In Phaedo both the dramatic setting and the thrust of the arguments and words used drive home the point that the body is the prison of the soul and that, correspondingly, death is like an escape or release from that prison. While, as we saw in the first chapter, Plato articulates (through Socrates) the ancient view of death as a sleeping and a forgetting, he does so only ultimately to disavow it and, indeed, to turn it around 180�. 

According to Plato, the soul comes into the physical body from a higher and more divine realm of being., For him it is birth which is the sleeping and the forgetting, since the soul, in being born into the body, goes from a state of great awareness to a much less conscious one and in the meantime forgets the truths it knew while in its previous out-of-body state. Death, by implication, is an awakening and remembering. Plato remarks that the soul that has been separated from the body upon death can think and reason even more clearly than before, and that it can recognize things in their true nature far more readily. Furthermore, soon after death it faces a "judgment" in which a divine being displays before the soul all the things -both good and bad- which it has done in its life and makes the soul face them.

In Book X of The Republic perhaps the most striking similarity of all occurs. There Plato recounts the myth of Er, a Greek soldier. Er went away to a battle in which many Greeks were killed, and when his countrymen went to collect the bodies of their war dead his body was among them. It was lain, along with all the others, upon a funeral pyre to be burned. After some time his body revived, and Er described what he had seen in his journey to the realms beyond. First of all, Er said, his soul went out of his body, he joined with a group of other spirits,  and they went to a place where there were "openings" or "passage.: ways" apparently leading from the earth into the, realms of the afterlife. Here the other souls were :' stopped and judged by divine beings, who could.' see at a glance, in some sort of display, all the', things that the soul had done while in its earthly life. Er, however, was not judged. Instead, the beings told him that he must go back to inform me in the physical world concerning what the other world was like. After seeing many other sights, Er was sent back, but he said that he was ignorant of how he was returned to his physical body. He merely woke up and found himself upon the funeral pyre.

It is important to bear in mind that Plato himself warns us that he meant his descriptions of the precise details of the world the soul will enter after death to be "probabilities, at best." Though he does not doubt that survival of bodily death does occur, he insists that in trying to explain the afterlife while still in our present physical life we face two strong disadvantages. First of all, our souls are imprisoned in physical bodies and are thus limited in what they can experience and learn by our physical senses. Vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell each in its own way may fool us. Our eyes may make an enormous object seem small if at is far away, we may mishear what someone Says to us, and so on. All this may result in our staving false opinions or impressions of the nature of things. So, our souls cannot see reality in itself until they are liberated from the distractions and inaccuracies of the physical senses.

Secondly, Plato says human language is inadequate to express the ultimate realities directly. Words conceal rather than reveal the inner natures of things. It follows that no human words can do more than indicate-by analogy, through myth, and in other indirect ways-the true character of that which lies beyond the physical realm.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

This remarkable work was compiled from the teachings of sages over many centuries in prehistoric Tibet and passed down through these early generations by word of mouth. It was finally writ. ten down, apparently, in the eighth century A.D., but even then was hidden to keep it secret from outsiders.

The form which. this unusual book takes shaped by the many interrelated uses to which it was put. First of all, the wise men who wrote it regarded dying as, in effect, a skill-something which could be done either artfully or in an unbecoming manner, depending upon whether one had the requisite knowledge to do it well. So, the book was read as part of the funeral ceremony, or to the dying person during the closing moments of his life. It thus was thought to serve two functions. The first was to help the dying person keep in mind the nature of each new wondrous phenomenon as he experienced it. The second `vas to help those still living think positive thoughts and not hold the dying one back with their love and emotional concern, so that he could enter into the after death planes in a proper frame of mind, re-. leased from all bodily concerns.

To effect these ends, the book contains lengthy description of the various stages through which the soul goes after physical death. The correspondence between the early stages of death which it relates and those which have been re: counted to me by those who have come near t0 death is nothing short of fantastic.

First of all, in the Tibetan account the mind or soul of the dying person departs from the body. At some time thereafter his soul enters a "swoon" and he finds himself in a void-not a physical void, but one which is, in effect, subject to its own kind of limits, and one in which his consciousness still exists. He may hear alarming and disturbing noises and sounds, described as roaring, thundering, and whistling noises, like the wind, and usually finds himself and his surroundings enveloped in a grey, misty illumination.

He is surprised to find himself out of his physical body. He sees and hears his relatives and friends mourning over his body and preparing it for the funeral and yet when he tries to respond to them they neither hear nor see him. He does not yet realize that he is dead, and he is confused. He asks himself whether he is dead or not, and, when he finally realizes that he is, wonders where he should go or what he should do. A great regret comes over him, and he is depressed about his state. For a while he remains near the places with which he has been familiar while in physical life.

He notices that he is still in a body-called the "shining" body-which does not appear to consist of material substance. Thus, he can go through rocks, walls, and even mountains without encountering any resistance. Travel is almost instantaneous. Wherever he wishes to be, he arrives there in only a moment. His thought and perception are less limited; his mind becomes very lucid and his senses seem more keen and more perfect and closer in nature to the divine. If he has been in physical life blind or deaf or crippled, he is surprised to find that in his "shining" body all his senses, as well as all the powers of his physical body, have been restored and intensified. He may encounter other beings in the same kind of body, and may meet what is called a clear or pure light. The Tibetans counsel the dying one approaching this light to try to have only love and compassion towards others.

The book also describes the feelings of immense peace and contentment which the dying one experiences, and also a kind of "mirror" in which his entire life, all deeds both good and bad, are reflected for both him and the beings judging him to see vividly. In this situation, there can be no misrepresentation; lying about one's life is impossible.

In short, even though The Tibetan Book o f the Dead includes many later stages of death which none of my subjects have gone so far as to experience, it is quite obvious that there is a striking similarity between the account in this ancient manuscript and the events which have been related to me by twentieth-century Americans.

Emanuel Swedenborg

Swedenborg, who lived from 1688 until 1772, was born in Stockholm. He was quite renowned in his day and made respectable contributions in various fields of natural science. His writings, at first oriented towards anatomy, physiology, and psychology, gained quite a bit of recognition. Later in his life, however, he underwent a religious crisis and began to tell of experiences in which he had purportedly been in communication with spiritual entities from beyond.

His later works abound with vivid descriptions of what life after death is like. Again, the correlation between what he writes of some of his spiritual experiences and what those who have, come hack from close calls with death report is amazing. For instance, Swedenborg describes how, when the bodily functions of respiration and circulation .:ease,

Still man does not die, but is only separated from the corporeal part which was of use to him in the world .... Man, when he dies, only passes from one world into another. (2)

He claims that he himself has been through the early events of .death, and has had experiences out of his body.

I was brought into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost into the state of the dying; yet the interior life with thought remaining entire, so that I perceived and retained in memory the things which occurred, and which occur to those who are resuscitated from the dead . . . . Especially it was given to perceive . . . that there was a drawing and . . . pulling of . . r mind, thus of my spirit, from the body.

During this experience, he encounters beings whom he identifies as "angels." They ask him, in effect, if he is prepared to die.

Those angels first inquired what my thought was, whether it was like the thought of those who die, which is usually about eternal life; and that they wished to keep my mind in that thought.

Yet, the communication which takes place between Swedenborg and the spirits is not of an earthly, human kind. It is instead almost a direct transfer of thoughts. Hence, there is no possibility of misunderstanding.

Whereas spirits converse with each other by a universal language .... Every man, immediately after death, comes into this universal language . . . which is proper to his spirit ....

The speech of an angel or a spirit with man is heard as sonorously as the speech of a man with a man; yet it is not heard by others who stand near, but by himself alone; the reason is, because the speech of an angel or spirit flows first into the man's thought...

The newly dead person does not realize that he is dead, for he is still in a "body" which resembles his physical body in several respects.

The first state of man after death is similar to his state in the world, because then in like manner he is in externals . . . . Hence, he knows no otherwise than that he is still in the world .... Therefore, after they have wondered that they are in a body, and in every sense which they had in the world . . . they come into a desire of knowing what heaven is, and what hell is.

Yet, the spiritual state is less limited. Perception, thought, and memory are more perfect, and time and space no longer pose the obstacles they do in physical life.

All the faculties of spirits . . . are in a more perfect state, as well their sensations as their thoughts and perceptions.

The dying man may meet with other departed spirits whom he knew while in life. They are there to help him during his passage into the beyond.

The spirit of man recently departed from the world is . . . recognized by his friends, and by those whom he had known in the world . . wherefore they are instructed by their friends concerning the state of eternal life ....

His past life may be shown to him in a vision. He remembers every detail of it, and there is no possibility of his lying or concealing anything.

The interior memory . . . is such that there are inscribed in it all the particular things . . which man has at any time thought, spoken, and done . . . from his earliest infancy to extreme old age. Man has with him the memory of all these things when he comes into another life, and is successively brought into all recollection of them. . . . All that he had spoken and done . . . are made manifest before the angels, in a light as clear as clears as day . . . and . . . there is nothing so concealed in the world that it is not manifested after death . . as if seen in effigy, when the spirit is viewed in the light of heaven.

Swedenborg describes too the "light of the Lord" which permeates the hereafter, a light of ineffable brightness which he has glimpsed himself. It is a light of truth and of understanding.

So again in the writings of Swedenborg, as before in The Bible, the works of Plato, and The Tibetan Book o f the Dead, we find striking parallels to the events of contemporary near-death experiences. The question naturally arises, though, as to whether this parallelism is really all that surprising. Some might suggest, for instance, that the authors of these various works could have influenced one another. Such an assertion could be supported in some cases, but not in others. Plato admits that he derived some of his insights partly from the religious mysticism of the East, so he might have been influenced by the same tradition which produced The Tibetan Book o f the Dead. The ideas of Greek philosophy, in turn, influenced certain New Testament writers, and so it could be argued that Paul's discussion of the spiritual body has some of its roots in Plato.

On the other hand, in most cases it is not easy to establish that such influence could have taken place. Each writer seems to bring up a few interesting details which also recur in my interviews, yet which he could not have gotten from earlier authors. Swedenborg read The Bible and was familiar with Plato. However, he several times alludes to the fact that someone who has just died may not realize that he is dead for some time. This fact, which comes out again and again in the narratives of those who have come very close to death, is apparently not mentioned either in The Bible or by Plato. Yet, it is emphasized in The Tibetan Book o f the Dead, a work which Swedenborg could not possibly have read Indeed, it was not even translated until 1927.

Is it possible that the near-death experiences I have collected were influenced by works of the kind which I have discussed? All of the persons with whom I have talked had some exposure prior to their experiences to The Bible, and two or three knew something about the ideas of Plato. On the other hand, none were aware of the existence of such esoterica as the works of Swedenborg or The Tibetan Book o f the Dead. Yet, many details which do not appear in The Bible, or even in Plato, constantly crop up in the accounts which I have gathered, and these correspond exactly with phenomena and events mentioned in the more unusual sources.

It must be acknowledged that the existence of the similarities and parallels among the writings of ancient thinkers and the reports of modern Americans who survive close brushes with death remains a striking, and, so far, not definitively explicable fact. How is it, we might well ask ourselves, that the wisdom of Tibetan sages, the theology and visions of Paul, the strange insights and myths of Plato, and the spiritual revelations of Swedenborg all agree so well, both among themselves and with the narratives of contemporary individuals who have come as close as anyone alive to the state of death?

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Notes:

(1) All quotations from The Bible are taken from the King James Version.

(2) All Swedenborg quotations are taken from Compendium of the Theological and Spiritual Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (Boston: Crosby and Nichols, 1853), pp. 160-197.

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