These researchers report some 75 cases of “visions of another world” among dying patients. Some people describe unbelievably beautiful meadows and gardens; others see gates opening up to a beautiful countryside or city; many hear other-worldly music. Often a rather worldly imagery is mixed in, as with the American woman who went to a beautiful garden in a taxi, or the Indian woman who rode a cow to her “heaven” (At the Hour of Death, p. 163), or the New Yorker who entered a lush green field, his soul full of “love and happiness” — and could see the buildings of Manhattan and an amusement park in the distance (David Wheeler, Journey to the Other Side, pp. 100-105).
Significantly, Hindus see “heaven” as often as Christians in the Osis- Haraldsson study, and while the latter often see “Jesus” and “angels,” the former just as often see Hindu temples and gods (p. 177). Even more significantly, the depth of the patients’ commitment to or involvement in religion seems to have no effect whatever on their ability to see other-worldly visions; “deeply involved patients saw gardens, gates, and heaven no more often than those of lesser or no involvement” (p. 173). Indeed, one member of the Indian Communist Party, an atheist and materialist, was transported while dying to “a beautiful place, not of this earth.... He heard music and also some singing in the background. When he recognized that he was alive, he was sorry that he had to leave this beautiful place” (p. 179). One person attempted suicide, and while dying reported “I am in heaven. There are so many houses around me, so many streets with big trees bearing sweet fruit and small birds singing in the trees” (p. 178). Most of those who have such experiences feel a great joy, peace, serenity, and acceptance of death; few wish to come back to this life (p. 182).
Thus, it is clear that we must be extremely cautious in interpreting the “visions of heaven” that are seen by dying and “dead” people. As above, when discussing the “meeting with others” in chapter 2, so now also we must clearly distinguish between genuine, grace-given visions of the other world, and a merely natural experience which, even though it may be outside the normal limits of human experience, is not in the least spiritual and tells us nothing about the actual reality of either the heaven or the hell of authentic Christian teaching.
The most important part of our investigation of “after-death” and dying experiences now lies before us: the measuring and judging of them by the yardstick of the authentic Christian teaching and experience of life after death, and a definition of their meaning and their significance for our times. It is already possible here, however, to give a preliminary evaluation of the “heaven” experience so commonly reported today: most, perhaps indeed all, of these experiences have little in common with the Christian vision of heaven. These visions are not spiritual, but worldly. They are so quick, so easily attained, so common, so earthly in their imagery, that there can be no serious comparison of them with the true Christian visions of heaven in the past (some of which will be described below). Even the most “spiritual” thing about some of them — the feeling of the “presence” of Christ — persuades one more of the spiritual immaturity of those who experience it than of anything else. Rather than producing the profound awe, fear of God, and repentance which the authentic experience of God’s presence has evoked in Christian saints (of which St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus may be taken as a model —Acts 9:3-9), the present-day experiences produce something much more akin to the “comfort” and “peace” of the modern spiritistic and pentecostal movements.
Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that these experiences are extraordinary; many of them cannot be reduced to mere hallucinations, and they seem to occur outside the limits of earthly life as generally understood, in a realm somewhere between life and death, as it were.
What is this realm? This is the question to which we now turn. In order to answer it, we shall look first of all to authentic Christian testimony, and then — as Dr. Moody and many other writers on this subject are doing — to the writings of modern occultists and others who claim to have travelled in this realm. This latter source, if properly understood, provides a surprising corroboration of Christian truth.
To begin with, then, let us ask the question: what is the realm, in Christian teaching, which the soul first enters after death?
CHAPTER FIVE
The Aerial Realm of Spirits
In order to understand what is the realm into which the soul enters at death, we must look at it in the whole context of man’s nature. We shall have to know of man’s nature before his fall, the changes it underwent after the fall, and the capabilities man has for entering into contact with spiritual beings.
Perhaps the most concise Orthodox discussion of these subjects is to be found in the same book of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov which we have already quoted concerning the Orthodox doctrine of angels (Vol. III of his Collected Works). Bishop Ignatius devoted one chapter of this book to a discussion of “the sensuous perception of spirits” — that is, angelic and demonic apparitions to men. In what follows we shall quote this chapter, which gives the Orthodox Patristic teaching, soberly and precisely handed down by one of the great Orthodox Fathers of modern times. (Titles added by translator.)
1. Man’s Original Nature
“Before the fall of man, his body was immortal, a stranger to infirmities, a stranger to its present crudeness and heaviness, a stranger to the sinful and fleshly feelings that are now natural to it (St. Macarius the Great, Homily 4). His senses were incomparably more subtle, their activity was incomparably broader and totally free. Being clothed with such a body, with such organs of sense, man was capable of the sensuous perception of spirits, to which rank he himself belonged in soul; he was capable of communion with them, of that Divine vision and communion with God which is natural to holy spirits. The holy body of man did not serve as a hindrance to this, did not separate man from the world of spirits. Man, clothed in a body, was capable of dwelling in paradise, in which now only saints, and only in their souls, are capable of remaining, into which the bodies of the saints also will ascend after the resurrection. Then these bodies will leave in the grave the crudeness which they assumed after the fall; then they will become spiritual, even spirits, in the expression of St. Macarius the Great (Homily 6, ch. 13), and will manifest in themselves those qualities which were given them at their creation.2 Then men will again enter the rank of the holy spirits and will be in open communion with them. We may see an example of the body that will be at the same time both body and spirit in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ after His resurrection.
2. The Fall of Man
“By the fall both the soul and body of man were changed. In the strict sense the fall was for them also a death. That which we see and call death is in essence only the separation of the soul from the body, both of which had already before this been put to death by an eternal death! The infirmities of our body, its subjection to the hostile influence of various substances from the material world, its crudeness — these are a consequence of the fall. By reason of the fall our body entered into the same rank as the bodies of animals; it exists with an animal life, the life of its fallen nature. It serves for the soul as a prison and tomb.
2
There is, however, a distinction in subtlety between the body of man in paradise before his fall, and his body in heaven after the resurrection. See Homily 45, ch. 5, of St. Symeon the New Theologian, in