A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

My personal experience

Many years ago at a time of personal crisis, I woke from sleep one night, and I’m sure that I stayed on the bed, but it felt as if I was held above the bed, and as sure as day, God spoke to me. I don’t imagine that anyone else awake in the room would have heard anything, and the message in one sense wasn’t telling me anything original, but the words of reassurance struck deep. To hear them spoken directly, personally to me, is a very different experience from reading them cold off the printed page. And they instantly took away my sense of anxiety. I now knew that God loved, accepted and trusted me whatever. I think that God has nearly always been real for me, but I had never had an experience like that before, I was overwhelmed by it.

‘The Alister Hardy Research Unit’ in the late 1960s put an advertisement in the Sunday papers inviting people to write to them if “you have ever been aware of, or influenced by, a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which was different from your everyday self.” They were encouraged by the high level of response they had, and commissioned surveys that suggested that 66% of adults questioned claim to have had an experience of this sort at some time in their lives. These experiences fell into two categories and my experience was typical of one of them. They found that, contrary to certain commonly held stereotypes, those who have experienced them are more likely than other people to be psychologically well balanced and to be happy, typically speak of one of the outcomes of their experience as an increasing desire to care for those close to them, as well as a sense of responsibility for the larger community and the physical environment.” 

My experience dramatically changed my life. I have had a number of further, similar experiences, including three where I was addressed by persons whom I knew to be dead. They have all had the authenticity of my first experience and have left me in no doubt that life in some sense continues beyond death.

1          I’ve thought for a long time that birth and death are connected. The question of where we come from, and where do we go are two aspects of the same question. I was present at the birth of each of my four daughters, and in each a rudimentary knowledge of the biology of the process seemed inadequate for the awe and wonder of the arrival of new life. I’ve been with somebody at their death and visited one of my daughters in the mortuary after she died. She looked exactly as she had when alive, but the essential life force had gone, where to? It made no sense to think that it had somehow just disappeared. Where did she come from at her birth and where did she go to at her death?

It appears to be a common feature of life, and one seemingly necessary for our growth, that we are forever having to leave the familiar for the unknown: from the very beginning when we leave our mother’s womb for what awaits us outside; through to leaving home for nursery and school; to leaving one school for another; to leaving the home and family unit we’ve grown up in to start another; to leaving one job to start another; and so on, with finally having to leave all that we’ve loved and valued when our death calls us.

Life is certainly constantly teaching us to learn to let go and to embrace the new, the different, the other., and we might reasonably wonder why? It seems to be the way we grow. And life is full of these little deaths, as if it was preparing us for what? Maybe for death and for what will seem like a final letting go: although hopefully by then we will have learnt that it will be a letting go into something new, and that we can trust that it will be alright.

Suppose that we took on board Deepak Chopra’s sense that every life is framed by two mysteries: birth and death. But we only consider one of them, birth, as a miracle. The reality, I suspect, is that death is equally a miracle. Maybe we should view death as a gateway into something beyond, just as birth was? Do you know the story of the twins in the womb? 

 In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”

The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”

The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”

The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”

The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover if there is life, then why has no one has ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”

The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”

The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her this world would not and could not exist.”

Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”

To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and you really listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.” 

2          This is surely true on a corporate level too. We humans have our origins in Africa, but most of our ancestors left that original home for new homes across the globe. And we have never ceased from doing that: humans have always been on the move. We’ve always been migrants: we’re all immigrants if you go back generations. Does this pattern teach us something new, or might it be a regular reminder of a deeper reality we have known before and that we can’t easily forget? Is it somehow hard-wired into us all? James Hollis in his book ‘What matters most?’ suggests that “We are all exiles, whether we know it or not, for who among us feels truly, vitally linked to the four great orders of mystery: the cosmos, nature, the tribe, and self? He quotes Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf approvingly, “We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.”  I wonder if it doesn’t work in much the same way that migrating birds are able to find their way home across vast distances.

He also reminds us that most cultures have a myth of an original expulsion from Paradise, as Jews, Christians and Muslims do in the Genesis story. Feeling expelled from Paradise might just another way of saying that we have memories of a home that we have left behind. Perhaps our memories are not just things of our past, but also a blueprint for our destination. As Rubem Alves says: ‘what we have lost makes itself present as longing & desire’.

3          Some years ago Roy Gregory and I edited a book entitled ‘The God you already know’. The thrust of the book was that most people with whom we came into contact, in a spiritual direction setting, deep down knew already what they needed to know about God. They mostly didn’t need new information. What they did need was to get in touch with what they already knew and begin to honour and trust it. Hence our title.

What we didn’t ask in that book was, why is this so? Why do people already seem to know both what they need to know about God, and also what they need to do to deepen their relationship with God? How did they acquire this knowledge? Where did it come from? I wondered if maybe we brought it with us at our birth? It struck me that those who work with children, nurturing their spiritual development, might have some insight into this. So I read Rebecca Nye’s book ‘Children’s Spirituality’ and read that many workers in this field have come to the conclusion that nurturing spirituality in children is more a matter of nurturing and encouraging what children already in some sense innately know, rather than rushing to put ‘in’ what they appear not to have: i.e. that children seem to come with some knowledge of the divine ‘fitted as standard’.

Poets seem to have recognised this too. Here are the words by William Wordsworth in ‘Intimations of Immortality’ from Recollections of Early Childhood.’  

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily further from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

I name these spiritual insights that all humans appear to be fitted with as Memories of Home, the Home from which we came at our birth. They are ‘eternal verities’ which seem to share certain common characteristics. They are not easy to define; yet there is general agreement about what constitutes them; we reckon that we’d recognise them when we saw them; and crucially, while expressions of them may vary, knowledge of them seems to be common across all cultures and times. I name them thus:

Memories of whence we came: 

Beauty, truth and peace

Memories based on our search for Another: 

Curiosity, creativity, music, vision, awe, wonder. 

Memories based on relationships:                          

Love, security, sexuality, goodness, healing, compassion, hospitality, generosity, kindness, 

friendship, laughter, justice. 

Now why is this? Why this universal knowledge of things non-material? Where does it come from, and why do we all seem to possess it? I reckon that the simplest answer is that we bring it with us at our birth and it constitutes what, deep down, we expect to find when we die, having hopefully experienced it in our lives.

4          Temporary Death Experiences

Recent surveys have shown that between 10-25% of people who recover from a cardiac arrest report they have had an experience during it that is now called a ‘Temporary Death Experience’, a TDE, because they were clinically dead at the time. These TDEs have a number of common features:

A sense of entering into light.

A sense of journeying, typically into an English country garden.

A meeting with dead relatives who welcome them and sometimes send them back.

But the features which are the most memorable and significant for the person concerned are the peace and calmness and, in the deeper experiences, the intense compassion, love and light that are experienced. They are life enhancing in that the person feels safe and cared for, and on their return to life has little or no fear of death.

5          Near Death Experiences

This is consistent with Near Death Experiences, NDEs, where people do not clinically die, but have an experience which they describe as nearly dying. A Gallup Survey in the US in 1982 suggested that 4% of the population had had an experience of this sort. Peter Fenwick, the leading authority on NDEs in the UK says that a blueprint of a characteristic NDE will include:

An overwhelming feeling of peace, joy and bliss.

The person leaves their body and can look down on themselves and is sometimes able to describe in accurate detail what took place in the operating theatre where their body lies.

They may enter darkness, usually a dark tunnel, and at the end they see a pinpoint of light, which as they approach it, grows larger and larger.

The approaching light is described as white or golden, but not painful to the eyes. Very often it seems to act almost as a magnet, drawing the person towards itself.

They may meet a ‘being’ of light, sometimes a religious figure, sometimes simply a presence, that is warm and welcoming.

Sometimes people sense that there is some sort of barrier between them and the light, which in some way marks a point of no return.

People often say they have visited another country, usually an idyllic pastoral scene, or that they have glimpsed such a place beyond the barrier.

Occasionally other people are encountered too, usually dead relatives, more rarely friends who are still alive, or strangers.

At some point the person may see events from their life flash before them. For some events are unfolded to them which are to take place in the future. And some are told that there are tasks ahead of them which they must go back and complete.

Often people want to stay, but in every case realise that this is impossible, that it is not yet their time to go. Sometimes they make the decision to go back themselves, usually because they realise that they are still needed by their families.

The return to the body is usually rapid.

            For most, the NDE, like the TDE, is one of the most profound people have ever had. Often the person returns changed in some way, though not always permanently. Virtually everyone reports that they have no fear of death, though they don’t particularly want to die.

6          End of Life Experiences

Peter Fenwick and his wife Elizabeth have written a book entitled ‘The Art of Dying’ that discusses some of the above but also evidence about the actual process of dying, what they refer to as ‘End of Life Experiences’ ELEs. 

One of them is what they call ‘Deathbed Visions’ that some dying people describe, usually in a clear or only moderately impaired, consciousness. The Fenwicks admit that they don’t know how common these experiences are, but they seem to be more common than previously thought. They are not dependent on religious belief.

The visions are nearly always seen as welcoming and the dying person responds with interest and joy. They are usually of dead relatives, frequently someone the dying person had a close emotional contact with, and their purpose seems to be to help the person through the dying process. Sometimes this process is taken even further, so that not only does the visitor appear in the room, but the dying person may journey with them to an intermediate reality that they perceive as being more real than the real world, and interpenetrated by light, love and compassion. Sometimes the dying person gets out of bed to try to go with their vision.

They may drift in and out of this area in the days or hours preceding death. Both relatives and strangers may be seen, but nearly always they are experienced as a comforting presence, there to help with the dying process and holding out a promise of a continuation of consciousness. There are many accounts of the ‘visitors’ making their first appearance in the days or weeks before death, and occasionally the ‘visitor’ may be given short shrift if their appearance is thought to be premature.

Like the NDEs there are feelings of absolute peace, bliss or joy, and the experience of light. In all the concept of journey is central, probably because the message of the ‘visitors’ suggests continuity and not finality. Its an optimistic message. The TDEs are more narrative than deathbed visions and more detailed in terms of the world in which the vision is occurring. The TDE is a journey with a beginning, middle and end, which is the return. In all three the other world into which the person moves has a quality of absolute reality.

Put all of the above together and I think that we have a model consistent with that which John’s Gospel attributes to Jesus, i.e that He came from God, to be born into our world in order to incarnate something of God, before returning to God after His death. My assumption is that that is true for each of us as well. As the old saying goes “Life is a bridge, pass over it but don’t build a house on it.”