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I attended a funeral recently, and as I listened to each of the eulogies and reflected on my own relationship with the lady who had died, I found my thoughts wandering to the accomplishments of my own life, not those of my embodied life but to those of my spiritual life.  I am well aware of the accomplishments of this life as I am of its disappointments and unfettered desires, but what about the accomplishments with regard to my next life and those entwined with my spiritual existence?  What can I lay claim to with regard to that?

When I entered the Work over forty years ago, I was taught that unceasing effort was required to understand the spiritual foundation of reality, and that this effort was directly linked to determining one’s spiritual destiny.  Grand words indeed, and while it has taken me a long time to understand the principles and techniques required, especially the kind of effort required, what I know now is that the fulcrum on which everything rests is one’s relationship with God.  One can possess a smart and clever mind, and dazzle in front of others with their knowledge, writing and speech of the Work and of cosmic laws, yet in the absence of a warm and loving relationship with the Divine as well, such individuals are at risk of being held captive by the coldness of their intellect.

Someone once asked me, “How do you love God?”  It’s a fair question, but how to answer it?  I know how I love the Divine, but in truth the answer to the question lies within the person asking it.  My response at the time was, “If you don’t know how to love God, ask God to show you how.”  I was met with a somewhat sardonic smile, and who knows whether or not they did ask or would even be bothered too.  It often seems to me that people in general want a ‘quick fix to enlightenment’ so to speak, and in the West in the 21^st Century living in a modernist era of instant gratification and a throw-away society, additional challenges can assault the individual as we’re pulled in different directions by the demands of contemporary living.

But despite this it can be done, we can love the Divine with all our heart and soul, and with all that we are capable of, it just depends on the decision/s we make.   The Sufi’s say many things, but one of those is that right remembrance is the way to God, and herein lays a metaphorical pathway to the Divine.  To re-member something is to reclaim something, to bring something back which had hitherto been dismembered or taken apart, to make something whole again.  What is it that we are re-membering?  What are we reclaiming?  What are we bringing back to ourselves?  I would say in the first instance, that what we re-member is our relationship with the Divine, with God, and that then, spiritually, all things are possible.

Nami, A. (2022). Forlorn, The Guardian

In September, the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS) are holding their annual conference.  I’m one of the presenters and I’m talking about the intersection of my own lived experience of ‘oneness’ which occurred when I was completing my research study for my PhD, which was a transpersonal study exploring adult bereavement and after-death contact experiences.  There were two reasons why I decided to present on this topic.

The first was to highlight the important role that transpersonal research can play in exploring human experiences which are deemed spiritual or ineffable, or which are concerned with what Rosmarie Anderson (who is a transpersonal psychologist and researcher) defines as being, “of ultimate value”.  The second was to highlight that what I deem to be spiritual experiences, in this case experiences of ‘oneness’, can occur randomly and without provocation, in everyday situations and often when you least expect, which is exactly what happened to me.

The etymology of the word transpersonal has its roots in two separate words of Latin origin; trans, meaning beyond, across or over, and personare, meaning a mask or façade which obscures or veils something behind it.  So when we’re talking about something which is transpersonal, we’re talking about an experience/event which takes us beyond appearances.  It does this because it acts as a portal which moves us beyond the physicality of ourselves and of the known and familiar material world in which we live.

When these events occur we experience a duality; we’re anchored to the material universe yet we experience something beyond it, something totally different because though non-material it is no less real to us at the time.  And when we experience ‘oneness’ this is what happens, we experience the reality of what has always been known to us while simultaneously experiencing another reality which like the material universe, is constantly present though largely unknown and not experienced by most people.  These events challenge the notion of reductionist and strictly empirical views of the universe and of the individual, and they do so because they reveal a spiritual dimension of existence as they do the spiritual foundation of reality.

One of the effects of using transpersonal research methodologies, is the potential transformation of the researcher.  This occurs because while the researcher learns about the topic of enquiry they also learn about themselves using such techniques as intuition, direct knowing, dreamwork, meditation, inner-reflection, self-examination and perhaps solitude, which are all themselves components of the transpersonal research process.  I used Heuristic inquiry which consists of 6 phases or stages each with their characteristics and approaches.  The process commences with what is termed Initial engagement before moving on to Immersion, then to Incubation, Illumination, Explication to the final stage, the Creative Synthesis, and it was at this final stage that I had my experience of oneness.

When we experience such an event, what is happening?  Are we suddenly roused from sleep such that  we feel a sense of profound connection with something beyond ourselves, with something which feels vaster than the material universe?  Do we feel and know with utter conviction that we are connected to everything in a way we’ve never known or experienced before, and that there is a divine and universal love binding everything together?

I believe that experiences of oneness are powerful spiritual events which can transform our understanding of reality, and which can reveal a powerful truth which nothing can distort.   And it seems to me also, that it  doesn’t matter in what circumstances we experience ‘oneness’, what matters is that we do and there’s the miracle, and there’s the gift of grace that comes with it.

Our experience of life, and living, is that it is punctuated with events which ultimately seem to teach us various life-lessons.  Some of these are gained from experiences of profound loss and grief, others from moments of joy, bliss and ecstasy.  Death, the final transition, and it’s meaning in our lives can be difficult to understand and to come to terms with.  Why are we born seemingly only to die?   Why do accidents, which frequently claim lives, happen?  Why are we afraid of dying, or, why do we not really think about it all that much?  What is our final destiny?  Do we go on, or do we cease to exist after physical death?

While there are many people who already have a relationship with the afterlife, there are many who do not and one of the reasons I write this blog is because I want to encourage people to not only reimagine or reframe their relationship with death, but to do that with the afterlife as well.   Belief and knowledge of the afterlife has been documented through history, is evidenced across cultures and religions, eastern and western, and has been debated over and wondered at by people around the globe.  Books have been written about it, artists, poets and musicians have been inspired by it, and movies, telemovies and documentaries have been produced about it.

There is a scene in the series, The Tudors, where King Henry at the end of his life wonders about death.  The scene was inspired by the work, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, in which the author Saint Bede recounts a story relating to King Edwin of Northumbria (AD 627).  The King was in discussion with his counsellors about whether to accept Christianity, which incorporates an afterlife, when one of his advisors makes mention of their ignorance of their final destination.

The advisor makes an allegorical statement, likening ‘life’ to a sparrow flying into a lighted hall at one end before flying out the end at the other.  While inside the sparrow is safe from winter’s tempest which rages outside, but after a short time the sparrow disappears, flying through the hall before “… passing from winter into winter again.  So this life of man appears for a little while”, he declared, “but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all”.

Yes, our life appears for a little while and it does feel at times that we are passing through it as though on our way to another destination, but of what is to follow we do know.  And the reason we know is because so many people, myself included, have had near-death experiences.  These events have taught them that physical death is the putting off of the physical body, which like a shell encloses us while we exist as embodied beings, while we live our life in the flesh.  When death occurs we do not cease to exist, we transform into something which doesn’t require a physical body any more.  But then what?  Ah, now that is the question.

What is the soul in itself?  From an esoteric Christian perspective, soul growth and evolution is one of the driving aims of The Work and of work on oneself.  The soul is the function that enables an individual to move toward the Divine; as such, it is an activity, a principle within us.  The form of every individual is the pattern of the soul rendered material.  It is important to understand that the soul has two sets of force acting upon it, God or the Divine, and matter.

GOD   [Affirming]

       Soul (reconciles the two)

Matter   [Denying]

Matter is inert and non-living.  It resists all flexibility and all life and it expresses the energy of denial.  The soul is poised between this polarity (which is denying) and the Divine (which is affirming).  At every instance the soul is affected by the sheer inertia of matter.  To learn, the soul reconciles this two-fold thrust from creation.  The soul is an important creation between the Divine and the world, and unless it can move to depths and heights it will not grow or learn.  When it reconciles the polarity between the affirming and denying force, it helps make the world function as one whole process.

According to esoteric teachings the soul is formed of the things of love and wisdom given by God.  Life, love and wisdom flow in to sustain the pattern of the soul.  The soul also needs an instrument of knowing and is given the power to generate this instrument.  This instrument of knowing is a spiritual formation, the mind.  The mind is capable of knowing the action of life and the impact of wisdom.  It can feel the urge of the soul passing through it, something that becomes the individual’s natural drift.

The mind is an individual’s most important function because this is the part that looks up or down.  It is the mind that is the instrument of growth and transformation.  The destiny of the soul is wrapped up in the mind.  People often say that they ‘have a soul’.  This is an incorrect statement.  People should say, “I am a soul.”

Life has taught me that there is no death; there is only deathless existence as there are worlds within worlds, metaphorically speaking.  Life has also taught me, as it has others, that the event of death enables a human being to change their form from something that was once material to something non-material.  But there is more to it than that, and to state it so simply is to deny one of deaths’ roles as the doorway to our afterlife.

When we die, we enter the vastness of the spiritual universe, a world largely unexplored by most people.  Before that occurs, our lives can intersect with our death, as in for example when we experience shared-death events or near-death events.  These events teach us that we are more than our material selves and that existence continues after death, albeit in different form.  Such experiences can be deeply profound for the individual, creating psychological shifts and a reorganisation of their inner lives, their world views and belief systems, and ultimately, how they live in the world.

When I was grieving the death of my then husband, who had died in 2004, ‘life’ taught me that I had to find my rhythm with my grief.  I did find it and I found it in a way that was right for me.  Many people have said to me throughout my life that death is a mystery.  Dying isn’t, that’s all too real, but the meaning of death, its purpose in our lives, that doesn’t have to be a mystery and it won’t be if we can find our rhythm with it.  How we do this is intensely personal, unique, and dependent on numerous factors which may interconnect with other facets of our lives, which themselves can be subject to influence and change at any time.

From the perspective of an afterlife and a useful universe, what is death’s use and why would we contemplate it?  It seems to me that when we contemplate death, by default we also contemplate life, and when we contemplate life, we eventually ask ourselves, “What am I living for?”  Some people may never ask themselves that question, yet others, discontent with life are inwardly driven because they know life can be more meaningful and so they search for answers, or a way, or a signpost that will point them in a direction that is right for them.

My journey toward finding my rhythm with death and the afterlife began in my childhood, a formative period during which one of the things I learnt was that I had the power to think for myself.  I also learnt something else; that even though human beings can inflict untold misery, cruelty and suffering on one another, something fundamentally good exists over and above such people as it does the suffering they cause.  It was a harsh lesson for a child to learn, but as young as I was, I knew that my way of being in the world and how I wanted to live in the world was the result of my own inner decisions; it was later in life that I learnt that those inner decisions had to be contrary to life’s influences.  And it’s been that way ever since.