Rev. Anthony David
April 8, 2006
Our story today comes from Sukie Miller, Ph. D. Dr. Miller is a psychotherapist who brings a deep knowledge of comparative religions to her work with clients. She has also founded an institute that collects and analyzes the rituals, myths, documents, oral traditions, art forms, and what she calls “afterdeath maps” of cultures around the world. The following story comes from her work with one of her clients, named Vern.
Vern was a highly successful jazz musician, seventy-two years old. He described himself as a man of action and “totally ready to die if it comes to that.” But Vern entered therapy because he had been plagued for years by a recurring nightmare of monsters “screaming my death at me” while pushing him toward a grave already marked with his name.
In the daytime, Vern acted nonchalant about death. But his dreaming self was not so blasé. He had been having this dream for seven years now, ever since he hit sixty-five, and his night terrors and resulting sleep deprivation were ruining his quality of life.
When I started work with him, at first he spoke little of the dream that had led him to my office, alluding to it only in terms of how tired he was, how difficult a task—any task—had become because he was so weary, how greatly he dreaded naps in the afternoon, and so on. When he did finally mention the dream itself, however, I asked him what he thought would happen to him after he died.
“Afterwards? Afterwards? I have no idea,” he responded, implying that my question was stupid and I must be some kind of simpleton to ask it. “It’s now that I’m concerned with,” he explained. “I just want to get some sleep!”
I had something prepared for him, a photograph of a huge sculpture of the Tibetan god Yamantaka. The sculpture portrays Yamantaka standing on top of an animal which is itself crushing down on a human. Yamantaka stands on top of that animal, victorious.
Now, the god Yamantaka is phenomenally ugly. So when I asked Vern about how he would feel about replacing one image for another—the monster images of his dreams with Yamantaka—he replied, “What? He’s worse than my nightmares!” But then said, “Yamantaka is a wisdom figure to Tibetan Buddhists. If to them, Yama is the god of death, Yamantaka is the conqueror of the fear of death. The Tibetans believe that if one were to spend time meditating upon Yamantaka—studying him, becoming used to him, even becoming comfortable with him—one might overcome or transcend the fear of death and find peace of mind.”
And with this, Vern grew quiet. Silent, for a long time. Very unlike his usual manner, which involved a steady stream of chatter and banter. And then he whispered this to me: “You know, I lied to you. I’m not totally ready to die. I’m terrified of it.”
And to this I said, “No kidding.” I said it jokingly, since I knew that Vern could take only so much seriousness. I said, “No kidding. And, you are not the only one!”
And this brought on another long silence from him. I hoped he was considering the profound isolation his fears had trapped him in, and I got lucky. Vern spoke up again: “You mean, other people fear death? It’s not such an unusual thing?”
“No, it’s not unusual at all.”
“And you think that my fear of death is coming out in my dreams?”
“I think there’s a chance of that, yes.” This is what I said, trying to make rational what I suspected was a somewhat bizarre discussion.
“So you want me to pay some attention to this strange Tibetan thing?”
“Why not try?” I said. “I think it’s a useful distinction, between death and the fear of death. Yamantaka is the god who conquers that fear. So take this picture home with you, spend time with it, see what happens.” And that’s what Vern did. He stuffed the picture into his pocket and then abruptly launched into a very funny monologue about city traffic.
Later, Vern described the reassurance he felt knowing that the entire Tibetan culture openly acknowledged the fear of death and actually had a prescription for it. The image of Yamantaka, which came from halfway around the world, gave him the feeling that he was not alone and that through his fear, he was connected to many other people. Fear of death wasn’t so unusual, after all. And Vern’s frightful dreams became less frequent and less powerful. Eventually, during most of the week, Vern was able to sleep peacefully the whole night through….
It was the writer Marcel Proust who once said, “The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new vistas but in having new eyes.” This wonderful quote establishes our direction this morning, for our voyage of discovery is all about seeking out new eyes
with which to appreciate the spiritual theme of this springtime season: life’s triumph over death. This is not a new vista; it is an ancient one that has been celebrated by Christians, Jews, Pagans, and so many others for thousands of years. For Christians, it’s about Jesus bursting the bonds of a brutal death into resurrected new life. For Jews, it’s about the ancient Hebrews’ journey out of slavery in Egypt and their birth as a free people. For Pagans, it’s about winter cycling into spring fertility, flowering plants and fruitful vines, the earth’s rebirth and renewal. The celebrations are many, but the theme is one: life’s triumph over death. And today, we seek out even newer eyes with which to see it, and to go deeper into our voyage of spiritual discovery.
To this end, let’s recall our story from earlier. It’s about a person coming face to face with his own death. Nothing abstract about that. Nothing theoretical. The man in our story today, Vern, is 72 years old, and his death has touched him on the shoulder. His death has made its presence known in a way that cannot be ignored, cannot be hushed up. Suddenly, the great and ancient theme of the springtime season—life triumphing over death—unfolds before him in an immediate, personal, and intimately relevant way.
He is led into a question, and us as well, with him: shall my life triumph over death?
Shall my own soul experience the promise of Easter, or of Exodus, or of nature’s rebirth?
How many of you can relate to Vern and his complex relationship with death? Vern is a divided self. On the one hand, he acts nonchalant about death. He says he’s “totally ready to die of it comes to that.” Dr. Miller asks him what he thinks happens after death,
and he has no idea. Doesn’t really even think about it. In fact, even to ask about it, as Dr. Miller did, is to be, in Vern’s book, a simpleton.
But all that is on the one hand. There’s another hand to deal with. It’s the shadow side of Vern’s life: the part that escapes the scrutiny of his conscious ego or is actively pushed down and repressed by that ego. But what is pushed down pops up. Death invades his dreams. Nightmare images of monsters screaming his death at him, frogmarching him towards a grave already marked with his name. The reality of things is this: he is petrified of death. He is.
It’s all so contrary to the nonchalance of his daytime ego! And so, in him, light and shadow conflict. And he can’t ignore it any longer. The sleep deprivation drags him down. He brings a weariness to everything. And no doubt there is another factor involved here, which the story doesn’t explicitly touch on. I’m talking about the defeat Vern’s ego has experienced through all of this. His ego insists on identifying itself with action and control and mastery; it’s an ego that knows and loves jazz and all that that represents. But the monsters of his dreams don’t play along. They break all the jazz up.
They resist the ego. They are all so foreign and strange. They make the ego feel less sure of itself, unsteady, out of control. This only adds to the weariness Vern brings to everything. He no longer knows who he is. He is being frogmarched into an unknown place in his life. Suddenly, the simpleton asking questions about what happens after death is HIM.
And let’s briefly touch on this, before we go any farther: this act of asking questions about the afterlife. Fear, I think, is a big reason for why people might scoff at such questions. But the fear can take the form of some powerful and seemingly self-evident reservations, of which the big daddy of them all is this: Why ask questions that don’t seem to allow for conclusive answers we can all agree on? Experts today can’t even seem to agree on when biological death actually happens to the human organism—
not to mention when life begins. And now they are going to try to solve the afterlife? Sheesh!
Yet I believe we still need to ask the questions. First of all, I believe that failure to come to generally-agreed upon answers to questions can never be evidence that the questions are unimportant. Perhaps the questions are not being asked in the right way.
Perhaps we simply aren’t evolved enough or advanced enough as a human race to devise better and more effective scientific protocols that are appropriate to the subject under consideration. Perhaps we are already sufficiently evolved and advanced, but because of the disdain of experts and establishment, few resources are being tapped on to do true justice to the questions. Perhaps there are answers out there already, but people aren’t paying attention. In short: the fact that a question is old and still unanswered—as is the question of what happens after death—is no slam against it.
And then consider this. The fact that a question may be impossible to solve conclusively
doesn’t necessarily get us off the hook. For the question may be so tied up in the practical living of our lives that it can’t possibly be avoided. Someone can tell you all about another person’s struggle with death; they can regale you with thousands of years
of other people’s conclusions and answers about it; and while all this material is suggestive, and may even be helpful, it simply can’t live your live for you. You must live your own life; and you must find your own way into the meaning of death. You must find your own doorway. Other people’s ideas can at most be hypotheses; and each new generation takes them up, tests them for themselves, lives into answers that ring true for them; but this inwardness is for themselves alone and simply cannot be passed on to others. All that can be passed on are the external ideas, the possibilities; and so the next generation receives them, and the next, and the next.
Some questions are simply a hook that every person gets caught by, and there’s no way off. Personally, I tend to believe that the question of life after death can be answered rationally, certainly with regard to the bare fact of whether or not it happens,
if not the actual content of it. But even if the question resists all reason and science, still,
I believe we need to face it. Death and life are inextricably bound up together. Ignore the issue of life after death, and life here and now is diminished. Something like Vern’s nightmare dream images will intrude and reduce the quality of life. They will, guaranteed.
In fact, as a way of framing some of the multicultural perspectives on life after death
that I’m about to cover, let me say that even if a person firmly believes that there is no such thing as life after death, and that this multicultural material all has a purely materialistic explanation, still, I would recommend for consideration the very real psychological benefits. Vern, for example, took strength from the Tibetan Buddhist god of the fear of death, Yamantaka. He took a picture of it home with him, spent time with it, allowed the image to soak in. And it helped. It helped heal his sense of isolation. It helped him face his fear. It worked, even if Yamantaka is not real in the sense that you and I are real. Ideas about the afterlife can give here-and-now psychological assistance.
It can help people make their peace with death and address unfinished business, no matter what the ultimate metaphysical truth turns out to be.
And with this, let’s turn to what different cultures and times have to say about what happens after death. Dr. Miller drew from a culture half a world away to help Vern and give him new eyes with which to see his death; and so let us now experience this for ourselves. New eyes.
And we follow Dr. Miller’s lead. Dr. Miller is the founder and director of the Institute for the Study of the Afterdeath, where she and her research associates collect and analyze what she calls the “afterdeath maps” of cultures around the world. She says, “Despite the wide range of differences in imagery and concept that seemed at first to be the data’s most distinctive overall quality, a pattern indeed began to emerge.” She goes on to say that it’s not a rigid and absolute pattern to which every after-death system conforms—there are exceptions of course—and yet a general cross-cultural pattern
nevertheless emerges out of the data.
And the pattern is this. World cultures tend to portray the soul’s journey after death as a four stage process, beginning with the first stage which Dr. Miller calls “the waiting place.” Here, dying is seen as a profound crossing into a mysterious and different dimension of nature. African traditions envision it as a journey from what they call Aye to Orum, where Aye is life as we know it now and Orum is life in a vaster beyond. The crossing from one to another is momentous, and so there is need in a person who has just died to pause, to rest, and to allow the reality of what has just happened to sink in.
Interestingly, world cultures also portray the waiting place as one which is not yet too far off from the dimension of nature we know with our five physical senses. There is a definite difference between Aye and Orum, yes, but in the waiting place they are somehow near by each other. And so, death rituals performed by relatives and friends
for one who just has passed over are meant to help him or her really understand that.
Help it sink in. Help them move on. Here’s how the Gaurani Indians from Brazil do that.
“When a community member dies, the living change their own names, burn down their own houses, pack up, and leave the area—hoping to make it impossible for [a spirit who may be reluctant to leave] to tarry, to follow, and to bother them.” Doesn’t that sound extreme? Isn’t that something? Yet it’s all about helping the dead understand that they really are dead, and need to move on. It’s the same logic that underlies some aspects of the Jewish ritual of sitting shiva following the death of a family member. For seven days, mourners sit on hard wooden benches, and all the mirrors in the house are covered up.
It’s all meant to be a clue that something terribly dramatic has happened. Spirit, you are dead. Don’t tarry. It’s time for you to move on.
Which leads us to the second stage of the afterlife process. Dr. Miller calls it the judgment stage, but I want to reframe that language since it is so charged with negativity. I’ll call it the clarity stage, instead. Ultimately, it’s where the soul finds itself in a place of pure, unadulterated, liberating truth. A place where all one’s self-illusions drop away, and you come to know yourself as you truly are, where you stand.
I find this way of framing things far more helpful, since a word like “judgment” brings up (at least for me) all the times in which I have felt at the mercy of people who did not see me with eyes of compassion, who did not know what my life was like from the inside,
who only knew part of the story, and who knew me only out of some biased agenda of their own. Judgment like this is violence; it is neither just nor fair, and it serves no true good. Yet clarity is another matter entirely. Clarity cuts through all our own self-deceptions and self-condemnations and self-criticism. Clarity is evident in a short saying by Rabbi Zusya, who once said, ”In the world to come, I shall not be asked, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ I shall be asked, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” That’s what I call clarity.
And that’s the proper substance of the second stage of the afterlife journey. Dr. Miller goes on to mention that world cultures have portrayed this stage in all sorts of ways. For some, clarity comes as a result of measuring the soul’s moral goodness. For others, it comes as a result of ascertaining the soul’s place in a karmic interdependent web of infinite relationships, or the soul’s place in the evolution of the universe. For still others, as in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, it’s a matter of the soul being tested by a gauntlet of challenges, to determine just how wise and strong it is. Here, the clarity stage is like an obstacle course. Strange and terrifying images come before the soul,
but each one ultimately represents human greed, or lust, or ignorance, or desire, or pride, or envy, or hatred. Here’s just a taste of what I’m talking about: the image is that of a “wrathful, blood-drinking deity … with three heads, six hands, and four feet firmly postured; the right face is white, the left red, the central dark-brown; the body emits a flame of radiance; the nine eyes are widely open, in a terrifying gaze; the eyebrows quiver like lightning; the protruding teeth glisten and set over one another. The monster gives vent to sonorous utterances of “a-la-la” and “ha-ha,” and piercing whistling sounds.” Imagine this coming at you! But in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the only way for a soul to come to clarity about its level of spiritual development is to determine whether and to what degree it can see through images like this and stay centered, stay at peace, stay solid in Buddhamind.
This is the second stage of the afterlife process, and it leads to the third and fourth stages (which are hard not to treat together): the “realm of possibilities” stage and the “return or rebirth” stage. In the “realm of possibilities” stage, the soul lives into the consequences of the clarity it has achieved in the previous stage. Say, for example, it wasn’t able to face the challenges thrown its way, as in the Tibetan Buddhist system.
Then the soul will not be able to proceed to its higher destiny, which is release from the round of birth and death and release into the boundless bliss of nirvana. It’s just not ready for that. Instead, for a time it will feel devoured and tortured by the images that challenge it; it will enter into a nightmarish, hellish existence; but eventually this will give way to the fourth and final stage of the process, the “rebirth” stage. The soul will take on a new human body, and this becomes a new opportunity for further personal and spiritual development. The soul will keep on doing this—persist through the round of life, afterlife, and rebirth—until it has grown enough to face every afterlife challenge thrown at it, and it becomes ripe and ready to break open into nirvana.
This is but one variant of the third and fourth stages. In many, many traditions around the world, reincarnation or rebirth are seen as part of the soul’s journey, and everything is tuned to that. On the other hand, other traditions—especially Western traditions closer to home—envision a far different end to the soul, one that is more like a one-way ticket to either heaven or hell than anything else. I add this only to attempt to complete the picture, which, in truth, is far more complex that anyone could do justice to in one sermon!
But the task today was not achieving completeness. It was seeking new eyes with which to see the old springtime theme of life triumphant over death. It was realizing that, like Vern from our story today, images of the afterlife from other cultures can help us live more effectively in the here and now.
And that’s really it. That’s the point. For people who believe that there is life after death,
these other images give content and form to a realm that can be so vague and mysterious, or content that is different from what one might already know. And for all of us, whether or not we believe, we can learn something crucial from Dr. Miller’s model. It offers us a pattern that is definitely worth paying attention to exactly because it is one thing that many different people living in different places and times have arrived it. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. When many different people all arrive similar conclusions, there must be something there. At the very least, the “there” that is there
in the four stage model of the afterlife is a powerful way of making meaning in life
which speaks to core human needs: the core human need to find a waiting place after a big change happens, to settle in to what that big change signifies, and to let regrets go and move on; and then the core human need for getting an undistorted picture of oneself as a part of the healing; and then the core human need for a time of exploring the implications and consequences of this newly gained self-clarity; and finally, the core human need for fresh starts, new starts, new beginnings. All these core needs of the human spirit. Needs which perhaps our dead have. Needs which you and I have for sure. So let us help each other to meet such needs. Let us help each other make the meaning of our short lives. These are the new eyes I wish for you today, on this fine Easter morning, to help take you deeper into your spiritual journey. Amen.
John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994).
Sukie Miller, After Death: Mapping the Journey (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997).