Certainly spiritual
experiences have been well reported in older texts, but the actual model NDE
not nearly so. In fact it was not part
of our collective experience until fairly recently when a few brave souls came
forward to tell us. Now it appears that
this is common to a significant fraction of those closely encountering death.
Part of the reason may
well be that we are now successfully arresting the death spiral way more often
than any time in the recent past. Thus we
are only now able to sample convincingly.
However rare such
reports were in the past, this work makes clear that it informed the formation
of religiosity. After all they are
seriously compelling.
Near-Death Experiences
Have Been Recorded Throughout History
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Reports
of near-death experiences are not a new phenomenon. A great number of them
have been recorded over a period of thousands of years. The ancient religious
texts such as The Tibetan Book
of the Dead, the Bible, and Koran describe
experiences of life after death which remarkably resembles modern NDEs. The
oldest surviving explicit report of a NDE in Western literature comes from
the famed Greek philosopher, Plato, who describes an
event in his tenth book of his legendary book entitled Republic.
Plato discusses the story
of Er, a soldier who awoke on his funeral pyre and described his journey
into the afterlife. But this story is not just a random anecdote for Plato.
He integrated at least three elements of the NDE into his philosophy: the
departure of the soul from the cave of shadows to see the light of truth, the
flight of the soul to a vision of pure celestial being and its subsequent
recollection of the vision of light, which is the very purpose of philosophy.
In
Plato's Republic, he concludes his discussion of immortal soul and ultimate
justice with the story of Er. Traditional Greek culture had no strong faith
in ultimate justice, as monotheistic faiths do. Ancestral spirits lingered in
the dark, miserable underworld, Hades, regardless of their behavior in this
life, with no reward or punishment, as Odysseus learned in his
Odyssey. But Plato, perhaps importing some Orphic, Egyptian or Zoroastrian
themes, drew on the idea of an otherworldly reward or punishment to motivate
virtuous behavior in this life. The first point of Er's story is to report on
this cosmic justice; it is:
"..the
tale of a warrior bold, Er, the son of Armenious, by race a Pamphylian. He
once upon a time was slain in battle, and when the corpses were taken up on
the tenth day already decayed, he was found intact, and having been brought
home, at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day as he lay upon the
pyre, revived, and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in
the world beyond. He said that when his soul went forth from his body he
journeyed with a great company and that they came to a mysterious region
where there were two openings side by side in the Earth, and above and over
against them in the heaven two others, and that judges were sitting between
these, and that after every judgment they bade the righteous journey to the
right and upward through the heaven with tokens attached to them in front of
the judgment passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left
and downward, they too wearing behind signs of all that had befallen them,
and that when he himself drew near they told him that he must be the
messenger to humanity to tell them of that other world, and they charged him
to give ear and to observe everything in the place." (Rep. X,614 b,c,d)
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From the other
tunnels came souls preparing for reincarnation on Earth.
From above came souls happily reporting "delights and visions of a
beauty beyond words." From below came souls lamenting and wailing over a
thousand years of dreadful sufferings, where people were repaid manifold for
any earthly suffering they had caused. Journeying on, the newcomers saw:
"..extended
from above throughout the heaven and the Earth, a straight light like a
pillar, most nearly resembling the rainbow, but brighter and purer ... and
they saw there at the middle of the light the extremities of its fastenings
stretched from heaven, for this light was the girdle of the heavens like the
undergirders of triremes, holding together in like manner the entire
revolving vault." (Rep. X, 616 b,c)
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The
cosmic axis is a rainbow light holding together the eight spheres revolving
around the Earth, each guided by its Fate, a daughter of Necessity. One of
these Fates casts before the crowd to be reincarnated a number of earthly
destinies from which they may choose to be, for example, a tyrant, an animal,
an artist, or, as Odysseus carefully chose, an ordinary citizen who minds his
own business. Then, just before returning to Earth as a shooting star, each
soul is required to drink from the River of Forgetfulness, so that all these
cosmic events will fade from memory. Only Er was not allowed to drink and
forget.
Thus Plato's
cosmology is framed in the story of a NDE, although it obviously has
been elaborated beyond an individual account into a collective cosmology. This amazing vision of the
universal light, immortal soul, reward and punishment, reincarnation and even
tunnels, is echoed 2500 years later in our contemporary NDE reports.
Plato's allegory of the
cave in the Republic similarly reflects the centrality of the cosmic
light of wisdom. Chained inside a cave, looking at a wall dancing with
shadowy figures, residents take there figments to be reality:
"Such prisoners would deem reality to
be nothing else than the shadows of the artificial objects."
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But
then one prisoner is freed and, climbing out of the cave with dazzled eyes,
discovers the blazing sun and the true world that it floods with light.
"When
one was freed from his fetters and compelled to stand up suddenly and turn
his head around and walk and to lift up his eyes to the light, and in doing
all this felt pain and, because of the dazzle and glitter of the light, was
unable to discern the objects whose shadows he formerly saw, what do you
suppose would be his answer if someone told him that what he had seen before
was all a cheat and an illusion, but that now, being nearer to reality and
turned toward more real things, he saw more truly?" (Rep. VII,515 c,d)
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Plato
uses the image to convey the soul's philosophical awakening to the realm of
archetypal forms. Several parallels with NDE reports stand out. The shock of
the discovery through the light, reversing all previous convictions, echoes
loudly the experiencers' radical shift in consciousness. When the wanderer
returns to the cave and attempts to awaken his mates to the true light, he
provokes laughter and even death threats:
"And if it were possible to lay hands
on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they
not kill him?" (Rep. VII, 517a)
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This
reference to Socrates' death reflects the pain of misunderstanding and
rejection felt by survivors of a NDE, and the subsequent difficulty adjusting
to the ordinary world of shadows. The returning bearer of visionary
discoveries is despised for upsetting the cave's established order.
The
flight of the immortal soul toward an incredible vision of pure celestial
being, Plato describes in the Phaedrus.
Drawn out by love and beauty, the soul is carried as on a chariot pulled by
two eager steeds, upward to join a magnificent circular parade of souls (the
Milky Way), each following the Greek god it most favors (Ares for warriors,
Zeus for wise leaders, Hera for royalty, etc.) All parade around the cosmic
cycle, straining for a view of pure being in the center. Those who see more
of it are reincarnated with more memory of the universal forms of pure truth,
justice, beauty, temperance and love:
"..every
human soul has, by reason of her nature, had contemplation of true being;
else would she never have entered into this human creature ... Some, when
they had the vision, had it but for a moment ... Few indeed are left that can
still remember much." (Phaedrus, 249e-250a)
Like
an initiation into a mystery religion, our eternal souls are enlightened by:
"...the
spectacles on which we gaze in the moment of final revelation; pure was the
light that shone around us, and pure were we." (Phadrus, 250c)
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The
purpose of philosophy for Plato is to remember that primal vision of pure,
powerful Light. The very purpose of life is to remember that journey
between lives, that pilgrimage between death and birth, to uncover that
transcendent vision of Light revealed in NDE reports.
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People can assert anything they want... but that doesn't make it true.
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