Of Tunnels and Barriers

My library added a recent book on the near-death experience (NDE), Evidence of the Afterlife by Jeffrey Long, Harper One, 2010. I checked it out. After a while I realized that I was already aware of Dr. Long. He is behind a rather extensive web site on which hundreds of NDE reports appear; these are contributed voluntarily by the public and hence are something of a mixed bag. The book is intended for the public at large, not for students of the phenomenon. No bibliography; no index. Despite this leaning toward the popular, valuable insights, data, cases, and commentaries make the book valuable.

The book, in turn, led me to consult two already on my shelf. The first of these launched the whole category, Raymond Moody’s Life After Life (1975), the other is At the Hour of Death by Karlis Osis and Erlendur Harakisson (1986). Moody’s book is also an introduction of the subject to the public, but its structure, style, tone and cases on which it reports produce a sense of clarity. Moody built up his cases in extensive interviews with people who’d undergone the experience. These he then studied systematically. Osis and Harakisson studied the deathbed experiences of people who died; not NDEs these. The data they used came from interviewing doctors and nurses. There are some interesting differences between NDEs and deathbed visions; in the first people are brought back and report experiences; in the second they soon die. One difference is that in death-bed cases people experience neither a tunnel nor a barrier that separates this world from that one—but they are visited by apparitions of relatives, friends, or religious figures shortly before they die.

Concerning the tunnel, a subset of NDE subjects (33.8% in Long’s book) report passing through a tunnel, narrow passage, valley, or some such delimited structure; sometimes, not always, they also report sound effects; these that range from highly unpleasant to vibratory to musical.  The barrier comes later. It is reported as a stretch of water, a wall, a fence, a door, and so on: pass the barrier and you cannot return; some 31 percent reported a barrier in Long’s NDE database.

I went back to re-read Moody because, in his careful presentation, the tunnel phenomenon is closely associated with the actual near-death event; the heart stops, breathing stops, a vast pain is felt. When reported, it is the first experience of the NDE and appears to mark the point when the mind/soul leaves the body. The person doesn’t travel any actual distance; in most cases, after passage, he or she is still in the same room where the body is. The tunnel, therefore, must be taken as a passage from the body, not as a trip to a heavenly realm.

The barrier appears later in cases where the subject also reports visions of another realm; the barrier is located there. Interestingly, in many cases, this other-worldly setting overlays the actual room where the subject’s bed or operating table is located and where, even as the heavenly scenes progress, the doctors/nurses labor on the physical body; and the subject is aware of both simultaneously. As a consequence of profound feelings of serenity, the subject wishes to proceed “onward”—and then meets the barrier, only to be prevented from making that move because “the time is not yet.”

In Osis and Harakisson’s work, neither phenomenon is reported, most likely because it doesn’t take place. By contrast, however, the figures that appear convey to the subject their intention of taking the subject away.

This got me thinking. The NDE phenomenon, however evidentiary for the reality of soul-survival, may be something exceptional, not the usual situation at death—because it isn’t actually death yet. When the final hour arrives, there is no need to tunnel out of the body or to worry about barriers. The transition will happen quite naturally.

To this I might add two notes. The first: Multiple excellent, disciplined, and careful studies of the NDE exist, usually carried out by doctors, nurses, or a combination of these two professions. The best are published in scientific journals accessible only by paying rather steep fees or membership dues. I’ve seen a few but have no hard copy to consult. The second: If it all happens anyway, why waste time on this arcane nonsense? Well, if you are on a tall ship sailing, slowly, to China—and you’ve never seen that realm—you might be tempted to read the few sorry books on board your ship that say something about China, your destination. That they are few and sorry is a given if you are under sail rather than traveling by diesel-steam; but whatever their number or quality, you will study those pages with some curiosity.

Re-Reading Life After Life

Reading again Raymond A. Moody’s Life After Life, I was struck, this time, by the quotations from near death experience (NDE) reports concerning the functioning of the spirit or self, particularly its modes of self-perception, communications, and “senses,” thus hearing and seeing. The quotations that deal with time perception or extra-dimensionality also struck me as new—but it has been several years since I’ve last read this book with the requisite concentration it deserves. The book tends to produce a certain amount of trance—the page-turning kind—in part because it was written for the widest possible audience, because the quotations from NDE reports follow each other rapidly, and because the commentary is minimal in order to be maximally accessible.

Moody is generally ignored (so far as I can tell) by the learned—with one notable and, for me, significant exception. Henry Corbin devotes a paragraph to the book in his Prelude to the second edition of Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth. Here is part of that paragraph:

All the more significant then has been the welcome given to a recent study which treats the “life after life” and presents the manifold testimonies of their actual experiences by people who, even though they had not crossed it never to return, had none the less really found themselves on the “threshold,” for their death had already been clinically confirmed. [Here Corbin footnotes Moody’s book.] There is no reason to be surprised that such a book should meet with a moving approval from some, testifying to a nostalgia which nothing has ever succeeded in snuffing out in the human heart. Equally there is no reason for surprise if the same book has been received with scepticism. Certainly, many traditional texts were quoted in connection with the testimonies reported in this book. But how many people knew them? In fact, some of these testimonies cannot be entertained let alone understood except on the condition of having at one’s immediate disposal an ontology of the mundus imaginalis and a metaphysic of the active Imagination as an organ inherent in the soul and regulated in its own right to the world of “subtle corporeity.”

Next to this paragraph I wrote in the margin, in amazement, “My God, I can hardly believe it!!” — Yes, but such are the consequences of writing for the general public rather than staying on the reservation.

Regarding Corbin’s references to imagination, I cannot deal with that in this post beyond saying that he saw the imagination not as an extension of humanity's sensory faculties but as a unique spiritual power, which he, following Paracelsus, called the true imagination rather than the ordinary fancy. Other entries on this blog under Corbin will provide the necessary context.

Reading Moody this time, what Corbin here labels “subtle corporeity” came sharply into focus, namely that selves “see” and “hear” with great acuity but cannot touch or grasp anything material, including living bodies. The hearing does not depend on air vibrations but seems due to thought perception; seeing is odd as well. Perception of the body varies; many perceive themselves as energetic structures, but experience these structures as somewhat extendable and with certain polarities, like up and down; others perceive actual bodies. While focused on this dimension people seem able to extend their attention out great distances and see, at those distances, from up close—while yet retaining a sense of having stayed in place. Reports of what selves see on that side of the Borderzone are complicated by the fact that the experiencers find themselves in an environment with more than three dimensions and a different experience of time. It takes them far less time to experience a great deal, interpreted as a more rapidly flowing time; experiences, like life reviews, while very detailed yet take no time at all. They struggle in expressing the experience in ordinary language the concepts of which are narrowly adapted to a three-dimensional existence and our kind of time.

I got to thinking how unfortunate it is that we are so tribal and clannish in all things, not least in the various arts and sciences. Moody is not viewed as providing extremely valuable data for serious examination for the simple reason that he preferred the more benign and welcoming attention of the general public to the hostile skepticism of those who claim a calling to study how reality works.

Notes on Experiential Evidence

In yesterday’s post, “Held Incognito Inside Bodies,” I refer to evidence drawn from the experiences of individuals. I was referring to near-death and out-of-body experience reports. This is a vast subject, and therefore some additional notes. One need not seek far for documented reports of this sort. The classical source is Raymond A. Moody’s Life After Life. In a segment titled “Out of the Body” (p. 24-29) are a number of cases where people render their own memories in their own words. Many more such experiences are available from The International Association of Near-Death Studies, Inc., accessible from here. Many other resources may be added to these two that someone wishing to look at the evidence directly can examine.

I’ve had occasion to recommend in the past Carl B. Becker’s Paranormal Experience and Survival of Death (available from Amazon.com here). This is the sort of thing serious students will find useful. The book covers the entire field in scholarly detail.

After I’d examined a great deal of this evidence, I came to the conclusion that in the regions beyond the border experiences are of a different kind than they are in the material world. That over there is a world of images (mundus imaginalis, as Henry Corbin called it) where energies dominate and express themselves in feelings, intuitions, and knowledge not supported by hard, physical underpinnings—but, nevertheless, by real and existent forces (animate and inanimate) that behave like matter but are not matter. Visitors to these regions, therefore, clothe these forces in images drawn from their own experience; an active imagination is stirred into action. They may all reach the same boundary, for instance; the boundary will be real; but some will see it as a river, others as a desert, yet others as a wall. For this reason, those experiencing NDEs and OBEs will accurately describe what they see on this side of the border, but what they see on that side will vary based on personal experience, knowledge, and culture. Christians will see figures from the Christian tradition; Hindus will see figures from the Hindu tradition. But indeed it is reasonable to assume that when they encounter higher entities the entities are the same. It is the interpretations given to these beings that will differ from person to person .

In Carl Becker’s book there is a very astute discussion of this subject in a segment titled “An Idealist Next World” on pages 177-188.