Читать книгу There Is Life After Death - Tom Harpur - Страница 11
Оглавление“Oh, their eyes, their eyes are so beautiful!”
CHARLES TEMPLETON, a one-time associate of Billy Graham, was a leading light in Canadian media for many years. He began as a charismatic, evangelistic star with Youth for Christ (an independent Christian youth organization) and then made headlines when he announced in 1957 that he had lost his faith and was leaving the ministry forever. Active as a politician for a time, then as a radio and television commentator, newspaper editor and a novelist, he quickly gained a reputation as the country’s most articulate agnostic. In his 1996 book, Farewell to God, he set out myriad reasons why he found it impossible to be a believer. Yet, as I watched his career and got to know him personally—we worked together on his earlier book, Jesus, and he would often call me at home on Sundays to discuss my column—he always seemed to me a God-haunted man. Templeton, whom I had visited in his home not long before his death from Alzheimer’s disease, June 7, 2001, had a remarkable visionary experience on his deathbed. He saw a vision of angels “waiting for me on the other side.” Madeleine, his wife, was alone with him in the hospital room when it occurred and she called me the day following his funeral to tell me what had happened. She asked whether I’d be interested in hearing of Charles’s encounter with “something quite transcendent and wonderful.” Although I had already sent off a tribute to Charles to the paper, this was too interesting to miss and I wrote the following account that appeared in a front-page Toronto Star story a day later:
“Charles had been ill for seven years when his condition suddenly worsened and he required full-time hospital care. There were times when he seemed ‘very sweet’ and others when he had furious rages. He had grown worse in the three weeks leading up to his death, even fighting with the nurses at times.
“He always quieted down when his wife was there and this was the case when she visited him on the afternoon of June 6, about 24 hours before he died. He’d had a terrible, rage-ridden morning but became quite calm as she kissed and soothed his forehead.
“Suddenly he became very animated and alive, looking intensely towards the ceiling of the room, with his blue eyes ‘shining more blue than I’d ever seen before.’ He cried out: ‘Look at them, look at them . . . they’re so beautiful . . . they’re waiting for me.’ Then with great joy in his voice, he said: ‘Oh, their eyes, their eyes are so beautiful! . . . I’m coming!’
“Madeleine Templeton describes herself as ‘somewhere between an atheist and a deist’ but she spoke with deep emotion as she described what happened. ‘It’s such a surprise and such a tremendous comfort,’ she said.”
Recent polls in North America reveal a remarkable upsurge in the number of people reporting that they have had one or more paranormal experiences. For example, priest-sociologist Father Andrew Greeley has done several major surveys showing that millions of Americans undergo psychic and mystical experiences, from extra-sensory perception (67 percent of all adults) to being in some form of contact with the dead (42 percent). In all, Greeley and his associates have discovered that 74 percent of Americans believe in a life after death where they will be reunited with their loved ones.1 In a special survey of Canadian beliefs about life after death, published in 1983 as Death and Beyond: A Canadian Profile, University of Lethbridge sociologist Reginald Bibby found that 40 percent of the population believed it might be possible to communicate with the dead. Only one in three ruled it out as a total impossibility. Some 70 percent said they believe in “something after death.” A 1990 Gallup poll of Canadians had almost identical findings. Slightly over 70 percent of those interviewed stated they “believe in heaven.”2
Greeley, whom I got to know in Rome during the year of the three Popes, 1978, says he first became interested in what are generally referred to as “paranormal” experiences in the early 1970s when he began to be aware of just how many people have them “even if they don’t tell anyone.” He found that in the case of those North American adults who now believe they have had experiences of contact with someone who has died, the dead person is usually a spouse or sibling. Studies were conducted in 1973 and 1986 at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Council. Greeley’s data show that there had been a marked increase in the number of people claiming to have had contact with the dead—from 27 percent in 1973 up to 42 percent in 1986. Among widows alone, the figures are 51 percent in 1973 and 67 percent in 1986. What is perhaps most striking is that there seems to be a split between scientific belief and personal realities. Greeley stated, “For example, 26 percent of the 30 percent of Americans who do not believe in life after death still say they’ve been in personal contact with the dead.”
Belief in a hereafter appears to be increasing among North Americans. A 2000 Harris poll showed that 86 percent believe in the survival of the soul after death and another 9 percent say simply they don’t know. A 2003 Barna Group poll reported that eight out of ten Americans believe in an afterlife of some sort—over 80 percent, in fact—while again approximately 9 percent say it may be true but they’re not certain.
At the same time (2003) www.religioustolerance.org, which tracks religious trends, recorded that 51 percent or roughly half of Americans believe that ghosts exist. Those between 25 and 29 years of age were more likely (65 percent) to say they believed than their seniors—persons 64 and over. The figure for the latter group was 27 percent. One interesting statistic was reported in a Washington Post special feature on religious trends on April 24, 2000. The story by Washington polling director Richard Morin said that even Americans who say they have “no religious preference” are expressing greater belief in the hereafter, 63 percent of them today compared with 44 percent three decades ago. Overall, the proportion of people who believe in life after death rose from 77 percent in 1973 to 82 percent in 1998, Morin says.
Greeley has quoted a theologian friend, Father John Shea, who says encounters with the deceased may well be real and the cause, not the result, of man’s tenacious belief in life after death. One argument in support of this thesis is that Greeley and his colleagues found that many of the widows who reported contact with a dead spouse said they had not believed in life after death before their experience. Another important finding in this study was that the people making such reports were “anything but religious nuts or psychiatric cases.” In fact, Greeley maintained, “They are . . . ordinary Americans, somewhat above the norm in education and intelligence and somewhat less than average in religious involvement.” Subsequent studies bear out these findings.
Other researchers have confirmed the vividness of these experiences. At the University of North Carolina, a team led by an associate professor of family medicine, P. Richard Olson, found that nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of widows at two Asheville nursing homes felt they had been in touch with a dead person at least once or twice. Of those reporting such contact, 78 percent said they saw the deceased. Some 50 percent said they heard, 21 percent touched, 32 percent felt the presence, 18 percent talked with the departed one and 46 percent had some combination of these experiences. Most found the contact “helpful” and not one had mentioned it to her doctor! Greeley himself did another survey in 1984, which, among widows and widowers in the general population, just about replicated Olson’s findings in North Carolina.3
In England, Oxford biologist David Hay, director of the Alister Hardy Research Centre, conducts scientific research in religion. In one large survey of English nurses, he discovered that two-thirds of them reported mystical events, “brought on mainly by close involvement with people in dire and dying moments.”4 In the spring issue (1990) of the Oxford University magazine Oxford Today, Peter Snow reports that the Alister Hardy Centre has recorded thousands of mystical experiences by ordinary Britons as well. Visions, out-of-body “trips” and transcendental dreams have been coded for computerization by the centre. One staggering statistic emerges, he says: Nearly 40 percent of the British population will have a profound religious or spiritual experience at some time in their lives. “Clearly there is something in us struggling to get out,” Snow concludes.
Colin Wilson cites similar results obtained by Dr. Karlis Osis of the New York Parapsychology Foundation. In 1960, Osis sent out ten thousand questionnaires to nurses asking about their patients’ deathbed visions, and found that in a large number of cases, at the moment of death, the dying believed they saw a dead relative. The same discovery was made, Wilson relates, when Sir William Barrett, founder of the Society for Psychical Research, was gathering materials for his own book, Death-bed Visions. For a modern and insightful look at how the dying often communicate their feelings, read Final Gifts, written by two hospice nurses, Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley.
Before reading further, I want to make one thing clear. Although I was raised in an intensely religious home and have not just studied but have experienced the spiritual dimension of reality all my life, I have never had what I would label a paranormal experience of any kind. One doesn’t go around looking for such experiences. They either happen or they don’t and, in my case, it seems they don’t. In other words, there is no hidden agenda here.
At the same time, however, when I was a parish priest I’ve had first-hand encounters with some seemingly extraordinary phenomena. Several times when attending the deathbed of a parishioner, something was either said or observed to lead me to the conclusion that the dying person had had a vision or foretaste of a glory to come. One such incident stands out in my memory and illustrates what I mean.
One day in June, many years ago, I was leaving the hospital closest to my church, St. Margaret’s-in-the-Pines, in West Hill, Ontario, when a young couple stopped me in the entrance. They had spotted my Roman collar and, not knowing a minister themselves, suddenly asked me for help. They said the woman’s mother was in a coma suffering from a terminal illness. They asked me whether I would mind paying her a brief visit. We went up to a private room, one of those reserved for the dying, and I saw the patient, a woman in her mid-sixties, lying unconscious under an oxygen tent. I said a brief prayer at her bedside and, because I had learned that even when in a coma our sense of hearing can often still be operative, I read a brief passage to her from the New Testament. It is the one that speaks eloquently of the fact that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God, not even death itself. Then I put my hand through the opening of the tent and placed it on her forehead as I said a final blessing.
Two days later, the daughter called me to say that, to their complete surprise, her mother had regained consciousness for a brief time the following day and had told her in great detail about my visit. “She said she heard the prayer and the reading and that suddenly her whole being had been flooded with an incredible sense of light,” the daughter said. “It seemed to envelop her and give her an assurance of wholeness and peace she had never known before. She had a kind of radiance about her face that was quite wonderful to see.” The dying woman relapsed into the coma shortly afterwards and died peacefully later that evening.
Since I had been only too aware of my own limitations on that occasion—it had been a very hot day, I was tired and looking forward to getting home and there seemed to be nothing anyone could do for her at that point—I am certain that whatever happened had absolutely nothing to do with me. Yet I know that something strange and spiritually healing did occur.
Because of my university background in the classics, particularly in ancient history, coupled with my training in journalism, I have always been reluctant to accept things on the basis of secondhand evidence. A couple of times over the past few years, most recently in June 2005, I decided to test the life-after-death-poll experiences with the readers of my syndicated Toronto Star column. In a brief footnote to the column, I said simply: “I am doing some research and would like to hear from you on the following: Do you believe in life beyond death? Have you ever experienced anything that amounts to solid evidence for this as far as you yourself are concerned? Please write briefly . . .”5 I was quite aware it was not a scientific poll. It wasn’t intended to be; there was little point in duplicating the many that had already been done by qualified researchers. What I wanted was a live sample, as it were, to get the flavour or feel of this phenomenon for myself.
I received hundreds of letters in answer to my requests. While some were brief, most ran to several pages. They came from people of all ages, all walks of life and from various regions of the country. Roughly 3 percent of the respondents said they did not believe in a life after death. Typical of these was the man from a small Ontario town who concluded his articulate rebuttal with the words “What is after your life is what was before your life—nothing. Sorry, but at times the truth hurts.” Another skeptic wrote as follows: “I find it sad that so many people’s grip on their life is so precarious that rather than face the bleak truth of their mortality they will embrace any preposterous delusion promising them immortality.” To cover all his bases, though, he added, “In any case, from what I have read and heard of heaven I am sure I would find it incredibly boring and unpleasant existing under the critical eye of a humourless dictator whose compassion is all too capricious and fleeting.”
For illumination on how paranormal experiences that are not properly understood can be a risk to one’s mental and emotional health, I refer the reader to Dr. Yvonne Kason’s book, A Farther Shore, mentioned in the bibliography. Dr. Kason discusses how millions of people today who have undergone religious experiences are greatly at risk of slipping into mental illnesses or of being misdiagnosed because psychiatrists and clergy tend to be the least skilled at helping people in spiritual crisis.
The overwhelming majority, however, obviously wrote because they now feel positively about a future life. Several themes or characteristics stood out sharply as I read and reread what they had to say. Most of those who described one or more mystical experiences involving some form of “contact” with a deceased person said that this was the first time they had ever told anyone else about it. They expressed sincere relief not only at the opportunity to share this with somebody else, but also at learning that they were not going to be looked upon as eccentric or even deranged for talking about such intimate and unusual psychic happenings. I was also greatly impressed by the number of respondents who prefaced their story with the observation that they had not previously held strong convictions about an afterlife. In other words, it seems that it was an unusual experience that awakened belief in them, rather than the other way around. Greeley’s research has uncovered the same phenomenon. Closely related to this was the way in which the psychic event, in most instances, came unexpectedly as to place and time, as well as content. There were certain similarities, on the one hand, but there was a striking range of variables on the other. To tell the truth, I was surprised by the originality or creativity involved in whatever it is that is going on at such times. As you will see, people report a wide variety of visual and auditory experiences. At times, a fragrance is the vehicle; often electrical disturbances seem to occur with no explanation.
One final word about the methodology. The content of the letters described several stages. The process was admittedly a subjective one. While nearly every letter was interesting, some were obviously more interesting than others. All I can say is that, using whatever critical powers I have, I gradually sifted them down to a final score or so. The overriding criterion was believability: Does this account have about it the ring of authenticity and of truth-telling? This is what Colin Wilson refers to as the “boggle threshold”—how far do we feel or intuit we can trust the person concerned? The credibility of any witness, whether in a court of law or elsewhere, has much to do with how sane and balanced they seem in other ways. None of this, of course, makes any prejudgment about the status of such reports as hard evidence of a life to come. More on that later.
• M.B. is a widow whose husband died in 1984. They were “always very happy together” and his death has left a great void. She writes: “I have had the feeling many times that my husband was there in the room with me, but it is one particular experience that I wish to tell you about. I had stretched out on the chesterfield for a nap before watching a program due to come on TV in an hour. I fell sound asleep but soon the presence of someone standing beside me caused me to wake up. I knew it was Jack, my husband. There he was. He bent over and offered me a bottle of beer. I remember thinking ‘Oh yes, he’s taken the cap off and he wants to pour it into two glasses for us’ (we had always done this and really consumed very little; in fact, I haven’t bought any since I’ve been alone). I reached out to touch him but, in a flash, he was gone! But I actually saw him. And I had a warm feeling for days after. I know it must have been an apparition—but it was the most realistic one I have ever known. I speak to him and feel he guides me in many things.”
• F.P.’s father who died at the age of ninety-six remained completely lucid and alert to the very end. She had visited him the day before, a Sunday, and they had talked about Christmas plans and the new house his son had bought. He wanted to see it “when the weather gets better.” Out of the blue, the old man asked her: “What do you know about double vision?” When she asked if he had some problem with his eyes, he said: “Not really, but this morning when I came into my room there was a woman sitting on my bed.” She asked him whether he knew the woman (there were no women in the wing of the seniors’ home where he lived) and he answered that she had had her back to the doorway. He turned to leave the room and, glancing back as he did so, noticed the woman “was gone.” F.P. felt intuitively that it had been the spirit-form “of my mother who died long ago.” When she went home, she told her husband she had a strange feeling her father’s death was not too far away. Although her father seemed normal for the rest of the day, after he went to bed that night his heart began to fail and he was rushed to the hospital for oxygen. A few hours later, he died. His daughter comments: “While his death came as a surprise, since he was normal when I left him, it wasn’t the shock it might have been because of what he told me he had seen. I can’t explain it, but I accept what happened as a real event.”
• S. J. writes: “One day I received a call and was told that my beloved grandmother, who was in the final stages of ALS, was near death. Earlier that day, I was told she had spoken about ‘going home’ repeatedly, an expression that I found unsettling as she had never used it before. She had turned against God and did not spend much time worrying about her eternal soul. Yet in the last three weeks of her life, she had spoken at length about seeing her long-dead mother, being surrounded by unknown children and conversing with people who had long since left this world. Late that night, I was alone with her. I climbed into the chair with her, placed her head into the crook of my arm and wrapped myself around her. I wanted to comfort her, to cradle her; I thought that even catatonic as she was, she would feel me there and be comforted by it. I did not close my eyes, and was just being still, when everything changed. My vision blurred and I felt energy all around me, an energy so great it caused a visual disturbance in the room. My entire body felt electrified and, although I had never felt it before, it was so purely alive, so strong, that I knew what I was feeling was a different energy, another form of life, in the room. In my arms, Nan seemed to still and settle and I knew, as well, that in that moment her soul had gone forward and away from me. She died six minutes later—her breath just sputtered, and then stopped. It was so peaceful and natural that it changed every opinion I had ever formed about life and death. I was only left to wonder where she had gone, and wait for the day when that wonderful energy comes for me.”
• M.H. begins her letter with the terse statement “I doubt a lot. I’m not superstitious; I’m fairly intelligent.” She then relates how on Mother’s Day a few years ago she was with her grandmother, holding her hand as the old lady was dying. She says she told her over and over, even though she seemed unconscious, that she would help her with dying and that she would soon see her mother and sister, to be with them as she had longed to be. “She died at about 4 P.M. After about ten minutes, while I was looking at her, not touching, I felt a sudden and very powerful aura in the room. It felt as though my grandmother was all around me, in the air of the room, and as though she was most intensely projecting her personality toward me. I have never felt anyone, ever, as strongly as then. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I have tried to analyze it, tried to be objective, but those few minutes were so incredible, so very happy, and the world all around was brilliant, jubilant, everything in super-Technicolor. I can’t begin to explain how powerful it was.”
• J.D. was devastated at losing her father a few years ago. She writes: “He had a treasured pocket watch that, after he died, I kept on a shelf near where I watch TV. I wound it carefully each night and still do. Several times while I was looking through our album of his pictures or reading his letters from the past and feeling very sad, I would become aware that the watch was ticking more loudly than usual. These spells of enhanced ticking went on for about five months and I wavered between thinking my father was present and thinking something was wrong mechanically with the watch. It then stopped. This past Father’s Day, I was relaxing in the TV room, involved in a program. The watch began to tick loudly. Without thinking, I said: ‘Oh, are you here? Then please show me—flick the lights on and off or do something with the lights to show me you’re here,’—not my exact words but close. Nothing happened immediately and I really didn’t expect it to. I became interested in my program again. About two minutes later, I was stunned when the lamp that my daughter had given her grandfather flicked on. I sat frozen for a minute. I ran upstairs to tell my husband, then went back downstairs and turned it off. The lamp had a trilight bulb in it. By the time I had sat down, it flicked on again, flicked up to the strongest light level, then flicked off! I feel that something otherworldly happened, but my rational mind has trouble with this. I don’t know how it’s possible, but this light had never done this before or since. I have only told my family and a close friend about this since they know I’m not given to imaginings.”
• A.G. lost his wife five years ago. The day after her sudden death, he was alone in the house thinking how glad he was that her will, which they had often discussed, had been finally drawn up only a couple of days before she died. “I spoke her name and said I had fulfilled all her wishes. The room was suddenly filled with her perfume and looking up I saw a form all in white which gradually faded away. I knew then that she knew what I had said. I firmly believe that my wife’s spirit remained in the house for some time afterwards. This has been on my mind a lot and I am very glad to write to you about it because when I mentioned the above to anyone I got funny looks. But, I’m certain I did not just imagine it.”
• S.H. writes: “My grandmother, who died ten years ago, wore an uncommon type of perfume that had a way of completely enveloping one in a sense of calm, serenity and peace. Five years ago, my mother became terminally ill. During one of several heart-to-heart talks, she stated that it would be so good to see her mother (my grandmother) again because she had missed her terribly. She said my grandmother had told her that when it was my mother’s time to pass the veil, Grandmother would be waiting there to show her the way. When my mother neared the end, my sisters, brother and father were in her bedroom, telling her to let go, that we wanted her to be at peace and that we would promise to be there for each other as she had been for us. Suddenly the room became incredibly still and filled with the unmistakable aroma of my grandmother’s perfume. I had not smelled that smell in ten years, but never forgot it . . . that unmistakable aroma of love and peace. My mother died at that very instant, but I knew my grandmother had kept her promise. My father, brother and sisters all smelled the presence.”
• J.P. writes: “When other people close to me had died I quite often smelled something unusual, such as cigarette smoke, or natural gas, shortly after the time of their death. There was never any logical explanation for the scent. One night after my mother died I could smell the gas fireplace. I went downstairs to make sure everything was okay and lay down on the couch. I was just beginning to fall asleep when I was awakened by a light and an indescribable sensation. The light was amazingly brilliant and the feeling was one of complete love. I had the sensation of being held very close. Even that description seems grossly inadequate. Words cannot describe the experience. And my mother spoke to me. I don’t even know how to describe how she spoke to me. She was not in a human or physical form. But I could hear her voice and feel her embrace through the embrace of light.”
• R.B., an Anglican priest, who says he feels somewhat “ridiculous and exposed” in recounting several paranormal experiences of his own and of his immediate family, tells the following: “My maternal grandfather died in 1965. My mother often thought of him and wondered ‘how he was.’ About 1968–69, she answered the telephone one day only to hear his voice faintly at the other end, as through static. She was deeply traumatized and asked: ‘Dad, where are you?’ He replied: ‘You know where I am. I’m OK.’ Then the phone went dead. It was years before I heard that story because, of course, my mother thought everyone would think she was crazy. My eldest sister was greatly relieved, however, because, as she explained to us, she ‘knew’ she had seen my grandfather about 1971 but had been afraid to speak of it to anyone else.”
• G.C. writes: “My father was in the palliative unit, dying. The room was lit by the light on the wall, over the head of his bed, shining toward the ceiling. I was standing close to his head when there appeared a spiral of ‘smoke’ from his head. I looked to the others in the room for confirmation that this was happening, but no one else was registering the surprise and excitement that I was feeling. The ribbon of ‘smoke’ was pure white and dense and absolutely exquisite. It was 1.5 to 2 inches wide, and moved slowly in a spiral, disappearing about 15 inches from where it began. After about half a minute it wasn’t there anymore. Dad died about 45 minutes later. My niece and I are both trained in Radiance Technique, a therapy similar to Reike, which helps people reveal and neutralize difficult energy life patterns. As a point of interest, about a half hour before the smoke occurred, we were gently touching Dad’s abdomen while doing Radiance.”
• H.B. describes a “vision” she had the night after her mother died: “My mother stood before me, smiling, and told me not to grieve for her, that we would eventually be together again. Even before I woke from it, I was surprised that I had had no difficulty recognizing her. She appeared to be about seventeen or eighteen. She was wearing a long garment of a beautiful mulberry shade, and she had a radiance as if, as I thought later, she had seen God. My mother was forty-one when I was born so I never knew her except as a middle-aged and then elderly woman. Her favourite colour was a shade of mulberry, but I had never seen her wear it. Then, as now, it is a most difficult dye to achieve. I told my husband about the experience and, while he was very kind and sympathetic, he thought I had become unstrung by grief and was raving. Until now, I have never told anyone else about it but remain convinced that it was what it seemed to be: a genuine message from my mother who had gone on to a higher life. The memory has not faded but remains as vivid as when I experienced it some thirty years ago.”
• D.W. lived in Owen Sound, Ontario, and his mother was quite ill in hospital in London, over 150 kilometres away. He was driving down to visit her and stopped overnight at his aunt’s home in Goderich. In the middle of the night he was awakened to see his mother as a younger woman standing at the foot of the bed. She told him she had come to say good-bye. In the morning, when he got up, his aunt informed him that his mother had died during the night. He knew that “it hadn’t been a dream; it had really been her.”
• R.M. writes: “My son passed away in August of 2001. In November of that year my husband and I many times both heard the phone ring once and then stop. When we would answer there was no one there. My husband heard the door-bell ring several times and again there was no one there. He even walked all around the outside of the house to make sure it wasn’t just neighbour children playing a prank. Then around 3 A.M. one morning I again heard the phone ring and then stop. I lay pondering the realization that perhaps it really wasn’t the phone when I clearly heard my son’s voice say “Hi!” We heard this ring many times after and it was reassuring to know that he could be with us wherever we went. One morning I was awakened by the ring and as my bed faces out into the hallway I was surprised and intrigued to see what I can describe best as a small ‘dance of fire’ taking place in front of the door to my son’s bedroom. This only lasted about one minute and then disappeared. The surest and most amazing sign of his presence happened last summer on the anniversary of his death. I went to his room and talked to him for a short time and then was looking in his closet for some photographs which I had stored there. I couldn’t see well and was just thinking to myself I should turn the light on, when suddenly the light on his desk turned on. It was amazing how that changed my mood from feeling very sad to feeling much better. I had to run downstairs to find my husband and tell him. We have also had some strange coincidences happen—one being that his budgie bird died last year on his birthday.”
• A baptist minister, T.B., was away at college in Evanston, Illinois, when he got word that his father had died. He came back to Canada for the funeral feeling very badly that he had been away and had not seen his father in over a year. “We had always been close in a quiet, empathetic way.” Life went on, and that summer he and his wife were vacationing at a small lake in Wisconsin. T.B. got up at six o’clock one morning and wandered down to the deserted shore. “As I stood gazing across the water, I suddenly became aware of my father’s presence. I simply cannot describe the sensation. There was nothing visual or auditory—just a ‘spirit’ awareness that he was there. I never moved a muscle. It lasted for maybe five minutes and left as quickly as it came. I believe God allowed Dad’s spirit to return to communicate with me since I had been away at the time of his death . . . I have never had a similar experience nor sought one. Whatever the explanation, I know beyond all doubt that my father was there with me.”
• J.W. writes: “I live in an apartment on a very busy and noisy street, but I always slept soundly through the noise. Recently, I was awakened by an unusual swishing sound. For a while I lay listening, trying to identify it and it seemed to me that it was in my bedroom. Just as I realized this, the sound stopped and I felt a nudge and a warm, solid body slid in behind me. I felt the weight of his arm over my shoulder. I knew of a certainty it was my first husband who had died thirty-one years ago! For a moment he put his cheek against mine (and I felt the after-shave stubble) then he rested his head beside mine. I cannot describe the happiness I felt for around twelve to fifteen seconds before I felt his arm grow lighter as did his body and I was alone. I looked at the clock, it was 11:50 P.M., and I went back to sleep. In the morning I asked myself many questions: How is it that I was so accepting and without fear or surprise? It never happened again.”
• W.K. had what could be described as an “auditory” experience some three and a half years after the death of her mother. She describes herself as having been “fairly neutral” on the subject of life after death prior to this. The death of her mother came after she had been living with W.K. for four years, and the two were very close. At the time of the event, W.K. had been having a series of medical tests and had an appointment to go into hospital for more. Her mother was the furthest thing from her thoughts as she wrestled with her growing reluctance to go to the hospital. “Much to my surprise, since I wasn’t even thinking of her, my mother’s voice came into my head and all she said was: ‘Go on, you can do it!’ It was definitely her voice and not a thought—she had an English accent which I could never imitate. I want to stress I know the difference between a voice and a thought! At the same time it wasn’t coming in my ear but inside my head.” She concludes her letter, “I am not a religious person and would love to hear an explanation as I’m sure nobody believes me.”
• B.R. writes: “My wife’s father suffered from cancer and died at our home several years ago. That evening, a light bulb in the kitchen, which had been changed recently, started to mysteriously ‘blink.’ My wife is convinced that this was her father’s way of communicating to us that all was well. It continued for some time. Another incident happened a few years ago when my mother passed away in her 97th year. We were living in Muskoka at the time, and had visited my mother in Toronto the day before she died. After the telephone call from her retirement residence, we were discussing funeral plans when all of a sudden a heavy fridge magnet detached itself and flew across the room. For years she was always critical of my enjoyment of beer, so my wife and I were especially amused, thinking it was more than significant that the hurling fridge magnet was a beer stein!”
• F.N. writes: “We lived in Kent, not far from London, during World War II. Many enemy bombers flew over Kent on their way to London, and indeed Kent was hit very hard. My sister was a nurse in St. Mary’s in Paddington, London. There was a bombing at the hospital and my sister received serious injuries while trying to help move patients to a safer wing. She was very ill and in a great deal of pain for several months, eventually going into a coma and dying just before Christmas in 1943. During the war it was common to put a blanket over the windows at night to ensure that no light could be seen on the outside, to ensure safety from the bombs. One night in the summer following my sister’s death, when I was seven, an air-raid warning sounded. We had become used to them but we would go down and sit under the stairs, known as the safest place in a house. During this raid, my mother, father, two brothers and myself, heard my sister Rita’s voice say: ‘Mum, the blanket on the window is down at the corner, quick— the planes are coming.’ Sure enough, the blanket had fallen away, leaving an area where light would have shone through.”
• S.B. describes a time she was on a bus with some friends in London, England: “A woman opened a car door on the wrong side and a man on a bicycle swerved violently to avoid a collision. So did the bus driver. The bus hit the cyclist and dragged him some distance before coming to a stop on the sidewalk. We were all pretty shaken and everybody was staring, not doing anything. I got off the bus and tried to help the young man. Someone ran to call an ambulance and I covered him with my coat. He was fully conscious, so I sat on the curb amid all the glass and the blood and tried to console him. Later that night I was in bed reading—at about 2 A.M.—when this man appeared. I was scared at first, but all he did was to mouth ‘Thank you.’ There was no sound. I was still shaking the next day when the papers reported the accident and said he had died at 2 A.M.”
• M.F-E. writes: “A few nights after my father died, I was awakened by a brilliant golden light coming in under the curtain. It moved across the floor and up the wall and became a glowing oval. Inside this shape a door frame appeared and a dark silhouette moved from a great distance beyond and, on reaching the frame, waved, and then receded. Then the mandala shape moved down the wall, across the floor, and out under the curtain. To be sure I wasn’t dreaming, I turned on the light and checked the time—4:15 A.M., twenty-four hours after his death. I had definitely felt his presence.”
• A.G. wrote to tell of an unexplained happening just after his wife died on July 15, 1986. Attached to his letter is a sworn affidavit signed by the nurse who was in attendance at the time of his wife’s death. A.G.’s wife fell ill with cancer in January 1986. During her illness he took care of her and, although they had been childhood sweethearts, marrying soon after leaving school, they became even closer as they discussed every aspect of dying. “My wife helped me plan the life I would lead after she died and I asked her to try to find a way of letting me know if there was indeed a life after death and if there was, was she happy.” Sometime between one and three hours after his wife ceased breathing and had been pronounced dead by the coroner, “she closed her mouth and smiled with unmistakable bliss. Her face that was so drawn and haggard due to the stress leading to her death became once again full and happy in appearance. Her colour returned and her countenance took on a look that I can only describe as the appearance I remember when she was about fifteen to twenty years younger. I felt I was witnessing a miracle.” The nurse confirms the “miracle” in her statement, noting that the woman was indeed smiling and that she “looked twenty years younger.” A.G. discussed the case with the undertaker and two attending physicians. “They know that it actually happened but they stated that it is impossible. For the body’s mouth to close and for a smile to appear, the brain would have to be alive. This, of course, is not possible after hours of not breathing.” As far as A.G. is concerned, what happened was his wife’s way of assuring him she was still alive, although in a new mode, and that she was happy. He concludes: “I have written to you because I feel that not to record this event in some form is wrong. It did happen.”
• M.M. says that her husband, who was a “total disbeliever in God,” died in 1982 after being ill for some time. She says they both knew he was leaving her but that they never spoke of this. When she reached her doorstep, still stunned and in shock after coming from the hospital and seeing his dead body, M.M. felt a sudden sense of desolation. “Where is this Comforter Jesus spoke of?” she asked herself. Immediately she felt a powerful presence at her left shoulder. “It was so strong that I even turned to see who it was; and my heart was touched by something which seemed to say ‘You will be alright!’” She was able to carry through all the arrangements for the funeral and to care for the needs of her family “almost as though someone were guiding me.” About a week later, she accidentally locked herself out of the house. (She could see her keys inside on the kitchen table.) It took her about forty-five minutes to open a basement window that her husband had previously nailed shut. “And I would take an oath he was there watching me and laughing, his presence was so strong.” M.M. goes on to say that the whole experience has taught her there is a “centre where we can ‘radio’ for help when we get beyond our depth in this life.” She admits her friends wouldn’t understand her if she related any of this to them, “but I felt compelled to pass this along to you.”
• A.M. writes that fifteen years ago she was very ill at home. One day she awoke to find a tall, well-dressed man standing just outside her bedroom door. When she looked at him, he asked, “Are you ready?” “I quickly said ‘No,’” she relates. For many years, she supposed she had dreamed this odd incident. Seven years ago, her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Near the end, she brought him home from hospital, as he had expressed a deep wish to die at home. “As our two sons helped the ambulance men carry my husband to the bedroom, my husband pointed to the same spot where I had seen the stranger and asked me, ‘Who is he?’ When I asked him later who was who, he described the same well-dressed man I had seen years before. I have never told anyone about this, but felt I had to write. No, I do not know who this man was, and as we bought the house new thirty years ago no one else had lived here. I still wonder who this stranger was.” (This theme of a friendly stranger, sometimes male, sometimes female, who comes at the hour of approaching death and in some way helps the dying person, appeared in several of the responses I received.)
• B.Y., who says he was raised in the United Church of Canada but always felt very skeptical about such beliefs as those concerning life after death, had been very close to his grandmother as a boy. He was in his early twenties and recently married, when he learned that she was quite ill in hospital in a northern town many miles away. One morning, he awoke very early and saw his grandmother standing at the entrance to his bedroom. “She was wearing the mauve suit that I always recognized as one of her favourites. Her face was very taut and sunken and would have looked terrible had it not been for the fact that she looked joyful at the same time. She just stood there silently. I closed my eyes before taking another look. She was gone but the phone began to ring. It woke my wife— it was on her side of the bed—and as she reached for it, I told her ‘Grandma is dead.’ She picked the phone up and my aunt told her what I already knew.” (I received several other letters corroborating this kind of telepathic awareness, sometimes with apparitions, sometimes not, communicating the fact of a loved one’s demise.)
• R.H. of Toronto had never given much thought to what happens at or after death. Her mother, to whom she was devoted, had once told her, “When we die, that’s the end,” and she had mentally agreed. Mother and daughter had been through great times of crisis and difficulty together, first as refugees in Europe and then as immigrants in Canada. Her mother died during the night of June 25, 1977, and was buried on Monday, June 27. A few weeks later, in obedience to something her mother had said a few days before she died—“When this is all over, you must take a holiday”—R.H. and her husband were travelling by train down the beautiful Agawa Canyon in northwestern Ontario. She was thinking how sad it was that her mother wouldn’t be able to see “all this” anymore when, “Suddenly, she spoke to me, but not with a voice one hears with one’s ears. It came right through my heart some way and Mother had reverted to her native tongue, German. Translated, what she said went like this: You can’t do anything for me anymore. Don’t grieve so. We will be together again. Please look after yourself!” All the words, she says, seemed underlined as though to emphasize their importance. As the train moved on, “It was not as though we were moving from her, but as if she was moving away from me as she seemed to float away, unable to stay. This experience gave me strength. My plucky, courageous mother . . . had to let me know that we will be together again one day.” She concludes that while skeptics may not see this as “solid evidence” of anything, it was “proof enough” for her.
• The final example in this mini-review of phenomena is perhaps the strangest of all. E.M. of Oakville, Ontario, had lost her son some years before she wrote me her story: “We were a young family that had just moved into our new home in Oakville. Our street was the last one bordering farmland between Oakville and Bronte. We drove past these old farms on our way to church each Sunday. In one field we passed, an old grey horse spent the days of his retirement watching the traffic go past. Our son, Bobby, almost seven, was delighted by that horse. We had Sunday conversations about it over many months. Bobby would say, ‘That horse is lonely. I could be his friend. Can we take him home?’ I would have to answer, ‘No, dear. You can’t just take somebody else’s horse.’ He once replied, ‘I have four dollars saved up. I could buy him from the farmer.’ But, of course, even if he had had more money we didn’t have a stable, etc. Bobby insisted he could build a small house, cut grass and feed him: ‘He really is my horse,’ he argued. Ten weeks later, Bobby was dead. He drowned while playing with some friends. My spirit silently screamed, ‘Where are you, my little one? I know where your body is, but where are you?’ Now our street is a crescent shape with about fifty homes on it. We live near the middle of the crescent. The horse’s field was almost a mile from us with orchards, lanes and old farms between us. The Sunday following Bobby’s burial, when we were getting ready to drive to church, we looked out and there on our front lawn, peacefully cropping the grass, was the old grey horse. Only the spirit that never dies, the spirit of Bobby, could have known the perfect assurance this meant for us that there is, without doubt, a life of the spirit after bodily death. Thank you for letting me tell this reality. It is true.”
Ghosts and Apparitions
The following experience of one of my correspondents, S.D., does not involve anyone she knows personally: “Twenty years ago we bought a lovely old historic home in a small Ontario town. At the time of the move I was studying for my Ph.D. orals. Several events transpired after we moved in. I used to read in a bright sunroom at the back of the house. Every day about 3 P.M. I’d hear someone open the front door and climb the stairs to the second floor. The first few times I went into the front foyer and yelled up the stairs to my daughter, asking, ‘What are you doing home from school so early?’ Of course, there was never an answer. (My husband often heard this same sound of the front door opening and footsteps on the stairs.) One day I went up to the third floor and found all my Ph.D. reading materials strewn around the room and the dresser moved. I was quick to blame a family member for this, but they were all adamant that they’d had nothing to do with this phenomenon and I finally had to accept that fact. The interesting thing is this: the dresser had been placed against a wall in front of a curled lip of old linoleum; the large piece of furniture had to be picked up, lifted over the curled lip, and could not have been slid along, thus requiring two fairly strong people.”
There are a number of responses we can make to such testimonials. The determined skeptic will naturally scoff at all of this and dismiss it out of hand. The true believer will tend to take it all as some kind of proof positive that humans survive death in some mysterious way. Both responses, I believe, are inadequate. In spite of every attempt to be as scientific as possible in methodology and outlook, none of the results of the surveys—either my own or those of the experts— can claim to be scientific proof. About that, we must be very clear. These experiences cannot be repeated in a laboratory under scientific conditions; they cannot be verified by any normal, empirical methods. They are, by their very nature, highly subjective.
Having said that, however, it should once more be pointed out that simply to dismiss them on those grounds as nonsense would in itself be highly unscientific. Something major, something highly significant, clearly is going on here, and it would be irresponsible to try to ignore it or brush it away. The fact that intelligent, non-religious people, as well as those with faith in life after death, have had such experiences, together with the vividness and unexpectedness of the happenings themselves, combine to suggest there is much more to all of this than wishful thinking or projection. Whatever else we may say, these experiences are intensely real to the millions who have them. The possibility, even the probability that they witness an objective reality “out there” has to be taken with full seriousness. I was personally enormously intrigued by what my readers had to say, and this was what led me to look further into the topic for the next chapter: the near-death experience. For those interested in reading more on this subject, I would recommend the book Hello From Heaven mentioned in the bibliography.
Lack of Communication
A friend of mine wrote: “As you know, my father died twenty-three years ago. I adored him and we were very emotionally close. And, he was a Christian with a great faith. He and I had a sort of pact, which we mentioned from time to time. He promised me that wherever he was in the afterlife, he would let me know that ‘all was well’ by moving or shaking whatever dining room fixture was in my home, wherever that happened to be. Well, I have seen and heard nothing! I know you likely have some explanation, that it was a promise made which should not, or could not, be kept. In my heart he is still very much with me always, and I know I should be content with that. But nonetheless, I’m disappointed.”
During the interval between the first edition of Life after Death and this revised and updated version, I have heard from several people writing variations on the same theme. Loved ones have solemnly undertaken to “come through” or give a sign of some kind that all was well and that they were fully alive on the other side. But, they have felt, heard or seen nothing to confirm that promised message. On the other hand, most of those who have reported meaningful evidence of contact of some kind were not expecting it or, in many cases, didn’t believe it was even a remote possibility.
Total honesty leaves one little choice here other than to confess there is no obvious answer. I certainly don’t have a ready, easy explanation. I am aware of hundreds of cases where a sign was undertaken and where the person concerned is fully convinced that some form of it has actually been made manifest. I must add, though, that hardly ever has it been exactly as promised or forecast. A sense of the quixotic, or a wry humour, often seems to slant the phenomenon in some way. It’s almost as though some higher intelligence were saying: “You can’t command these things, you know.” Some of us perhaps may need to learn more trust, more confidence, in God’s ultimate caring and comfort. Perhaps, in some cases, it’s really a very positive thing. Our loved one may be so caught up in amazing, new creative tasks or learning untold heavenly mysteries as to be wholly occupied with “things above.” In truth, I do not know.
One final story before we move on. When the bishop gave me my first parish, out in the wilds of Scarborough, Ontario, he sent me a young priest from the Church of South India, who was studying at Wycliffe College, to be my Sunday assistant. His name was T.K. George, a small, gentle man of deep faith and intelligence. Just as I was writing this chapter a letter came from a former parishioner of mine saying that she had just heard from T.K.’s wife. She wrote that my former associate had died very peacefully at his home in India after a long illness. What she particularly wanted to share with those who had known him was that, just before the moment of his last breath, he told his wife he could see “[his] spiritual body coming to meet [him].”6
