In occult literature, however, exactly the opposite is the case: the chief emphasis is on the soul’s experience in the “out-of-body” realm, while the ultimate state of the soul is usually left vague or open to personal opinions and guesses, supposedly based on these experiences. Today’s researchers are much more easily attracted to the experiences of occult writers (which seem to be capable of at least some degree of “scientific” investigation) than to the teaching of Christianity, which requires a commitment of belief and trust and the leading of a spiritual life in accord with it.
In this chapter we will try to point out some of the pitfalls of this approach, which is by no means as “objective” as it seems to some people, and offer an evaluation of the occult “out-of-body” experiences from the point of view of Orthodox Christianity. In order to do this, we must look at some of the occult literature which today’s researchers are using to elucidate “after-death” experiences.
1. The Tibetan Book of the Dead
The Tibetan Book of the Dead17 is an 8th-century Buddhist book which probably hands down pre-Buddhist traditions from a much earlier period. Its Tibetan title is “Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane,” and it is described by the English editor as “a mystic manual for guidance through the other world of many illusions and realms” (p. 2). It is read at the body of the newly-deceased for the benefit of the soul, because, as the text itself says, “during the moments of death various misleading illusions occur” (p. 151). These, as the editor notes, “are not visions of reality, but nothing more than ... (one’s own) intellectual impulses which have assumed personified form (p. 31). In the later stages of the 49 days of “after-death” experiences described in the book, there are visions of both “peaceful” and “wrathful” deities — all of which, in accordance with Buddhist doctrine, are regarded as illusionary. (We shall discuss below, in examining the nature of this realm, why these visions are indeed largely illusionary.) The end of this whole process is the final fall of the soul into a “reincarnation” (also discussed below), which Buddhist teaching regards as an evil to be avoided by Buddhist training. Dr. C. G. Jung, in his Psychological Commentary on the book, finds these visions very similar to descriptions of the after-death world in the spiritistic literature of the modern West — both “give one a sickening impression of the utter inanity and banality of communications from the ‘spirit world.’ ” (p. 11).
In two respects there are striking similarities between the Tibetan Book of the Dead and today’s experiences, and this accounts for the interest of Dr. Moody and other researchers in this book. First, the “out-of-body” experience described in the first moments of death is essentially the same as that described in today’s experiences (as well as in Orthodox literature): the soul of the deceased appears as a “shining illusory body” which is visible to other beings of like nature but not to men in the flesh; at first it does not know whether it is alive or dead; it sees people around the body, hears the wailing of mourners, and has all sense faculties; it has unimpeded motion and can go through solid objects (pp. 98-100, 156-60). Second, there is a “primary clear light seen at the moment of death” (p. 89), which today’s researchers identify with the “being of light” described by many people today.
There is no reason to doubt that what is described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead is based on some kind of “out-of-body” experience; but we shall see below that the actual after-death state is only one of these experiences, and we must beware of accepting just any “out-of-body” experience as a revelation of what actually happens to the soul after death. The experiences of Western mediums also can be genuine; but they certainly do not transmit actual messages from the dead, as they pretend to do.
There is some similarity between the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the much earlier Egyptian Book of the Dead.18 The latter describes the soul after death as undergoing many transformations and encountering many “gods.” There is no living tradition of interpretation of this book, however, and without this the modern reader can only guess at the meaning of some of its symbolism. According to this book the deceased takes in succession the form of a swallow, a hawk of gold, a serpent with human legs and feet, a crocodile, a heron, a lotus flower, etc., and meets strange “gods” and other-worldly beings (the “Four Holy Apes,” the hippopotamus-goddess, various gods with heads of dogs, jackals, apes, birds, etc.).
The elaborate and confused experiences of the “after-death” realm as described in this book are in sharp contrast to the clarity and simplicity of Christian experiences. Although also based, it may well be, on some kind of actual “out-of-body” experiences, this book is as full of illusory visions as the Tibetan Book of the Dead and certainly cannot be taken as an actual description of the state of the soul after death.
2. The Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg
Another of the occult texts which contemporary researchers are investigating holds more hope for being understood, for it is from our own modern times, is thoroughly Western in mentality, and purports to be Christian. The writings of the Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1722) describe the visions of another world which began to appear to him in mid-life. Before the visions began, he was a typical intellectual of 18th-century Europe, fluent in many languages, a scholar and scientist and inventor, a man active in public life as an overseer of Sweden’s mining industries and a member of the House of Nobles — in short, a “universal man” in the early age of science, when it was still possible for one man to master almost all the knowledge of his day. He wrote some 150 scientific works, some of which (such as his 4-volume anatomical treatise, The Brain) were far ahead of his time.
Then, in the 56th year of his life, he turned his attention to the invisible world and in the last 25 years of his life he produced an immense number of religious works describing heaven, hell, angels and spirits — all based on his own personal experience.
His descriptions of the invisible realms are disconcertingly earth-like: in general, however, they are in agreement with the descriptions of most occult literature. When a person dies, according to Swedenborg’s account, he enters the “world of spirits,” which is halfway between heaven and hell.19 This world although it is spiritual and not material, is so much like material reality that a person does not know at first that he has died (461); he has the same kind of “body” and sense faculties as when in his earthly body. At the moment of death there is a vision of light — something bright and hazy (450) — and there is a “review” of one’s life and its good and evil deeds. He meets his friends and acquaintances from this world (494), and for some time he continues an existence very similar to the one he had on earth, except that everything is much more “inward”; one is drawn to those things and persons for which one has love, and reality is determined by thought — as soon as one thinks of a loved one, that person becomes present as though called (494). Once one becomes used to being in this spirit world, he is taught by his friends concerning heaven and hell, and is taken to various cities, gardens and parks (495).
19
Emanuel Swedenborg,