Looking at near death experiences, there is a great consistency in reports. The vast majority spoke of a tremendous feeling of peace that came over them. They also felt that they had moved into total darkness and moved through this darkness at tremendous speed, eventually slowing to find themselves going down the tunnel toward the light at the far end.
Many near death experience survivors speak of the sound of wonderful music as they traveled the tunnel. Now I can’t help wondering about this music. If we were watching a movie based on these experiences, I’m sure we would hear light classical music in the background – lots of strings. Yet if the newly deceased is of the young “hip” generation, would that music be rap? Or what they term “hip-hop”? Would it be – in contrast to that light classical, elevator music – a cacophony? I can only hope that if I die in a plane crash, for example, we won’t all be going down the same tunnel and I’ll have to suffer the sounds of grating guitars and synthetic instruments. At least let me have my own tunnel!
In Tibetan Buddhism there is what are termed the “Six Bardos”. The Bardo Thodol, often referred to as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a guide that is read aloud to the dead while they are in the state between death and reincarnation. It is believed that the spirit remains in the body at that time. The First Bardo comes at the very moment of death when there dawns “the clear light of the ultimate reality.”
Many different cultures believe that the transition between death and the afterlife is a problematic one in that the newly released spirit can lose its way to the other world. Such “lost” spirits then tend to hang around their relatives, frequently causing them problems. A Shaman is then needed to act as a psychopomp – a guide for the departed, who will lead them to the afterlife.
In the Romani, or Gypsy, culture, when a man dies his body is placed in the vardo – the wagon, or home on wheels – along with all his possessions. This is then set alight and everything is completely burned. Gypsies are very much afraid of ghosts and of the possibility that the deceased may come back to haunt them. So when everything connected to the dead person has been burned, then his name is never again mentioned, for to do so might draw back his spirit.
In the religion of Vodoun it is believed that the spirit of the dead can be captured in what’s known as a “govi” jar. These govi jars – containing the spirits of all the people who have died in the local village – are kept by the Mambo, or priestess of the Hounfor. There is a ceremony that is very much like a Spiritualist séance, where the Mambo sits in a canvas tent – much like a cabinet – and the “hounsi-kanso”, or initiates, bring her the jars. One at a time, they are passed to her under the flap of the tent. She will open a jar and then the voice of the departed spirit can be heard speaking. The relatives can then ask questions and receive answers.
We hear of the “silver cord” which connects the physical body to the astral body or ethereal double. This silver cord is infinitely elastic and maintains the connection between the two bodies during sleep, when the astral goes off on its many journeys. But at death, the silver cord breaks, allowing the ethereal double, or the spirit, to leave and journey on. As a young man, Andrew Jackson Davis was pursuing his personal psychic development and was able to put himself into a state of trance at will. It has been reported that his psychic development allowed him, one time, to sit beside a dying woman and to observe her spirit leaving her body, in the form of the silver cord separating and departing. He recorded details of this experience in his book The Great Harmonia (1852).
Speaking of silver cords, there is also a silver hammer that features in death rituals. Every pope has a chief of staff, called the Camerlengo. When a pope dies, the Camerlengo must certify that the pontiff is indeed dead. The ritual tradition is to strike the pope on the forehead with a silver hammer, call his baptismal name three times and place a cloth over his mouth. If the pope does not respond, the Camerlengo declares him dead, authorizes a death certificate and then seals the papal living apartments. Later, the silver hammer is used to break the papal ring and seal, so no documents can be forged in his name. I don’t know whether or not the Camerlengo’s name is Maxwell.
In 1864, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, there was established a house for consumptives – those suffering from late stage tuberculosis. In April of 1901 there was an interesting experiment tried there. For years Dr. Duncan Macdougall had wanted to prove the existence of the human soul. He said “It is unthinkable that personality and consciousness can be attributes of that which does not occupy space.” In other words, he felt that they must not only occupy space but in doing so must be measurable. If they occupy space, he thought, then they must weigh something. He placed a bed on a large Fairbanks scale and arranged that when one of the patients at the consumptives’ house was close to death, he be placed in the bed. With two other physicians in attendance - Drs. Sproull and Grant – the patient and the scale were carefully watched. At 5:30pm, on April 10, 1901, Patient #1 expired. At the very moment of death, according to the report that appeared in the journal American Medicine, “the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce” or twenty-one grams. Over the years Macdougall repeated the experiment on a number of patients.
