CHAPTER NINE
The Meaning of Today’s “After-Death ” Experiences
If they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
1. What do Today’s Experiences “Prove”?
Thus we have seen that the “after-death” and “out-of-body” experiences which are so much under discussion today are quite distinct from the genuine experiences of the other world which have been manifested over the centuries in the lives of God-pleasing men and women. Further, the contemporary experiences have been so emphasized and have become so “fashionable” in recent years not because they are actually “new” (there were whole collections of similar experiences in 19th-century England and America), nor necessarily because they have been occurring with more frequency in these years, but chiefly because the public mind in the Western world, and especially in America, was “ready” for them. The public interest seems to be part of a widespread reaction against 20th-century materialism and unbelief, a sign of a more widespread interest in religion. Here we shall ask what the significance of this new “religious” interest might be.
But first, let us state once more what these experiences “prove” about the truth of religion. Most investigators seem to agree with Dr. Moody that the experiences do not corroborate the “conventional” Christian view of heaven (Life after Life, pp. 70, 98); even the experiences of those who think they saw heaven do not hold up when compared with authentic visions of heaven in the past; even the experiences of hell are more “hints” than any kind of proof of the actual existence of hell.
One must therefore qualify as exaggerated the statement of Dr. Kubler-Ross that contemporary “after-death” research “will confirm what we have been taught for two thousand years — that there is life after death,” and that it will help us “to know, rather than to believe” this (Foreword to Life after Life, pp. 7-8). Actually, these experiences may be said to “prove” no more than a minimum doctrine of the bare survival of the human soul outside the body, and of the bare existence of a non-material reality, while giving decisively no information on the further state or even existence of the soul after the first few minutes of “death,” nor of the ultimate nature of the non-material realm. From this point of view the contemporary experiences are much less satisfactory than the accounts given over the centuries in Lives of Saints and other Christian sources; we know much more from these latter sources — provided, of course, that we trust those who have given this information to the same degree that the contemporary researchers trust those whom they have interviewed. But even so, our basic attitude towards the other world still remains one of belief rather than knowledge; we may know with reasonable certainty that there is “something” after death — but exactly what it is, we believe rather than know.
Further, that which Dr. Kubler-Ross and others of like mind think they know about life after death, based on “after-death” experiences, is in open contradiction to what Orthodox Christians believe about it, based on revealed Christian teaching and also on “after-death” experiences in Orthodox literature. The Christian after-death experiences all affirm the existence of heaven, hell, and judgment, of the need for repentance, struggle, and fear of losing one’s soul eternally; while the contemporary experiences, like those of shamans, pagan initiates, and mediums, seem to point to a “summerland” of pleasant experiences in the “other world,” where there is no judgment but only “growth,” and death is not to be feared but only welcomed as a “friend” that introduces one to the pleasures of “life after death.”
We have already discussed in earlier chapters the reason for the difference in these two experiences: the Christian experience is of the genuinely other world of heaven and hell, while the spiritistic experience is only of the aerial part of this world, the “astral plane” of the fallen spirits. Today’s experiences clearly belong to the latter category — but we could not know this unless we accepted (on faith) the Christian revelation of the nature of the other world. Similarly, if Dr. Kubler-Ross and other researchers accept (or are sympathetic to) a non-Christian interpretation of these experiences, it is not because today’s experiences prove this interpretation, but because these researchers themselves already have faith in a non-Christian interpretation of them.
The significance of today’s experiences, therefore, lies in the fact that they are becoming widely known at just the right time to serve as a “confirmation” of a non-Christian view of life after death; they are being used as part of a non-Christian religious movement. Let us look now more closely at the nature of this religious movement.
2. The Connection with Occultism
Over and over again, in the investigators of “after-death” experiences, one may see a more or less evident connection with occult ideas and practices. Here we may define “occult” (which literally refers to what is “hidden”) as pertaining to any contacts of men with unseen spirits and powers in a way forbidden by God’s revelation (see Leviticus 19:31, 20:6, etc.). This contact may be sought by men (as in spiritistic seances) or instigated by the fallen spirits (when they appear spontaneously to men). The opposite of “occult” is “spiritual” or “religious,” which terms refer to that contact with God and His angels and saints which is permitted by God: prayer on man’s part, and true, grace-giving manifestations of God, angels, and saints on the other.
As an example of this occult connection, Dr. Hans Holzer (Beyond This Life, Pinnacle Books, Los Angeles, 1977) finds the significance of “after-death” experiences to lie in their opening men up to communication with the dead, and he finds them to give the same kind of messages as those provided by the “dead” at spiritistic seances. Dr. Moody, and indeed very many of today’s researchers, as we have seen, look to occult texts such as the writings of Swedenborg and the Tibetan Book of the Dead to explain today’s experiences. Robert Crookall, perhaps the most scientific investigator in this field, uses the communications of mediums as one of his primary sources of information on the “other world.” Robert Monroe and others involved in “out-of-body” experiences are open practitioners of occult experimentation, even to the extent of receiving guidance and advice from the “discarnate entities” they encounter.
Most symptomatic of all these investigators, perhaps, is the woman who has become the leading spokesman for the new attitude towards death which is emerging from today’s “after-death” experiences: Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.