The Soul After Death

The subject of life after death, quite suddenly, has become one of widespread popular interest in the Western world. In particular, a number of books purporting to describe “after-death” experiences have been published in the past two years, and reputable scientists and physicians have either authored such books themselves or given them their wholehearted endorsement. One of these, the world-renowned physician and “expert” on problems of death and dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, finds that these researches into after-death experiences “will enlighten many and will confirm what we have been taught for two thousand years — that there is life after death.”

All this, of course, is an abrupt departure from the hitherto-prevailing atmosphere in medical and scientific circles, which in general have viewed death as a “taboo” subject and relegated any idea of after-death survival as belonging to the realm of fantasy or superstition, or at best as a matter of private belief for which there is no objective evidence.

The outward cause of this sudden change of opinion is a simple one: new techniques of resuscitating the “clinically dead” (in particular, by stimulation of the heart when it has stopped beating) have come into widespread use in recent years. Thus, people who have been technically “dead” (without pulse or heartbeat) have been restored to life in large numbers, and many of these people (once the “taboo” on this subject and the fear of being considered “crazy” had worn off) are now speaking about it openly.

But it is the inward cause of this change, as well as its “ideology,” that are most interesting to us: why should this phenomenon have become suddenly so immensely popular, and in terms of what religious or philosophical view is it being generally understood? It has already become one of the “signs of the times,” a symptom of the religious interest of our day; what, then, is its significance? We shall return to these questions after a closer examination of the phenomenon itself.

But first we must ask: on what basis are we to judge this phenomenon? Those who describe it themselves have no clear interpretation of it; often they are searching for such an interpretation in occultist or spiritistic texts. Some religious people (as well as scientists), sensing a danger to their established beliefs, simply deny the experiences as they are described, relegating them usually to the realm of “hallucinations.” This has been done by some Protestants who are committed to the opinion either that the soul is in a state of unconsciousness after death, or that it goes immediately to be “with Christ”; likewise, doctrinaire unbelievers reject the idea that the soul survives at all, no matter what evidence is presented to them. But such experiences cannot be explained merely by denying them; they must be properly understood, both in themselves and in the whole context of what we know concerning the fate of the soul after death.

Unfortunately, some Orthodox Christians also, under the influence of modern materialistic ideas (as filtered through Protestantism and Roman Catholicism), have come to have rather vague and indefinite ideas of the afterlife. The author of one of the new books on after-death experiences (David R. Wheeler, Journey to the Other Side, Ace Books, New York, 1977) made a point of asking the opinions of various “sects” on the state of the soul after death. Thus, he called a priest of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and was given a very general opinion of the existence of heaven and hell, but was told that Orthodoxy does not have “any specific idea of what the hereafter would be like.” The author could only conclude that “the Greek Orthodox view of the hereafter is not clear” (p. 130).

On the contrary, of course, Orthodox Christianity has a quite precise doctrine and view of life after death, beginning from the very moment of death itself. This doctrine is contained in the Holy Scripture (interpreted in the whole context of Christian doctrine), in writings of the Holy Fathers, and (especially as regards the specific experiences of the soul after death) in many Lives of Saints and anthologies of personal experiences of this sort. The entire fourth book of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great, Pope of Rome († 604), for example, is devoted to this subject. In our own days an anthology of these experiences, taken both from ancient Lives of Saints and more recent accounts, has appeared in English (Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave, Jordanville, N.Y., 1968). And just recently there was reprinted an English translation of a remarkable text written in the late 19th century by someone who returned to life after being dead for 36 hours (K. Uekskuell, “Unbelievable for Many but Actually a True Occurrence,” Orthodox Life, July-August, 1976). The Orthodox Christian thus has a whole wealth of literature at his disposal, by means of which it is possible to understand the new “after-death” experiences and evaluate them in the light of the whole Christian doctrine of life after death.

The book that has kindled the contemporary interest in this subject was published in November, 1975, and was written by a young psychiatrist in the southern United States (Dr. Raymond A. Moody, Jr., Life After Life, Mockingbird Books, Atlanta, 1975). He was not then aware of any other studies or literature on this subject, but even as the book was being printed it became evident that there was already great interest in this subject and much had already been written about it. The overwhelming success of Dr. Moody’s book (with over two million copies sold) brought the experiences of the dying into the light of widespread publicity, and in the four years since then a number of books and articles on these experiences have appeared in print. Among the most important are the articles (and forthcoming book) of Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, whose findings duplicate those of Dr. Moody, and the scientific studies of Drs. Osis and Haraldsson. Dr. Moody himself has written a sequel to his book (Reflections on Life After Life, A Bantam-Mockingbird Book, 1977) with supplementary material and further reflections on the subject. The findings of these and other new books (all of which are in basic agreement concerning the phenomena in question) will be discussed below. As a starting point, we will examine Dr. Moody’s first book, which is a fairly objective and systematic approach to the whole subject.

Dr. Moody, in the past ten years, has collected the personal testimonies of some 150 persons who have had actual death or near-death experiences, or who have related to him the experiences of others as they were dying; out of these he has concentrated on some fifty persons with whom he has conducted detailed interviews. He attempts to be objective in presenting this evidence, although he admits that the book “naturally reflects the background, opinions and prejudices of its author” (p. 9) who by religious affiliation is a Methodist of rather liberal views. And in fact there are some drawbacks to the book as an objective study of “after-death” phenomena.

First, the author does not give a single entire “death” experience from start to finish, but gives only excerpts (usually very brief) from each of fifteen separate elements which form his “model” of the “complete” experience of death. But in actual fact the experiences of the dying as described in this and other recent books are often so different in details one from the other that it seems to be at best premature to try to include them all in one “model.” Dr. Moody’s “model” seems in places artificial and contrived, although this, of course, does not lessen the value of the actual testimonies which he gives.

Second, the author has joined together two rather different experiences: actual experiences of “clinical death,” and “near-death” experiences. The author admits the difference between them, but claims that they form a “continuum” (p. 20) and should be studied together. In cases where experiences which begin before death end in the experience of death itself (whether or not the person is revived), there is indeed a “continuum” of experience; but several of the experiences which he describes (the recalling of the events of one’s life in rapid order when one is in danger of drowning; the experience of entering a “tunnel” when one is administered an anesthetic like ether) are fairly commonly experienced by people who have never experienced “clinical death,” and so they perhaps belong to the “model” of some more general experience and may be only incidental to the experience of dying. Some of the books now appearing are even less discriminating in their selection of experiences to record, including “out-of-body” experiences in general together with the actual experiences of death and dying.

Third, the very fact that the author approaches these phenomena “scientifically,” with no clear conception in advance of what the soul actually undergoes at death, lays him open to numerous confusions and misconceptions about this experience, which can never be removed by a mere collection of descriptions of it; those who describe it themselves inevitably add their own interpretations to it. The author himself admits that it is actually impossible to study this question “scientifically,” and in fact he turns for an explanation of it to parallel experiences in such occult writings as those of Swedenborg and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, noting that he intends now to look more closely at “the vast literature on paranormal and occult phenomena” to increase his understanding of the events he has studied (p. 9).

All of these factors will lead us not to expect too much from this book and other similar books; they will not give us a complete and coherent account of what happens to the soul after death. Still, there is a sufficient residue of actual experiences of clinical death in this and other new books to merit one’s serious attention, especially in view of the fact that some people are already interpreting these experiences in a way hostile to the traditional Christian view of the afterlife, as though they “disproved” the existence either of heaven or (especially) of hell. How, then, are we to understand these experiences?

The fifteen elements Dr. Moody describes as belonging to the “complete” experience of dying may be reduced, for purposes of discussion, to several main characteristics of the experience, which we shall here present and compare with the Orthodox literature on this subject.

1. The “Out-of-Body” Experience

The first thing that happens to a person who has died, according to these accounts, is that he leaves his body and exists entirely separate from it, without once losing consciousness. He is often able to observe everything around him, including his own dead body and the resuscitation attempts on it; he feels himself to be in a state of painless warmth and ease, rather as if he were “floating”; he is totally unable to affect his environment by speech or touch, and thus often feels a great “loneliness”; his thought processes usually become much quicker than they had been in the body. Here are some brief excerpts from these experiences:

“The day was bitterly cold, yet while I was in that blackness all I felt was warmth and the most extreme comfort I have ever experienced.... I remember thinking, ‘I must be dead’ ” (p. 27).

“I began to experience the most wonderful feelings. I couldn’t feel a thing in the world except peace, comfort, ease — just quietness” (p. 27).

“I saw them resuscitating me. It was really strange. I wasn’t very high; it was almost like I was on a pedestal, but not above them to any great extent; just maybe looking over them. I tried talking to them, but nobody could hear me, nobody would listen to me” (p. 37).

“People were walking up from all directions to get to the wreck.... As they came real close, I would try to turn around, to get out of their way, but they would just walk through me” (p. 37).

“I was unable to touch anything, unable to communicate with any of the people around. It is an awesome, lonely feeling, a feeling of complete isolation. I knew that I was completely alone, by myself” (p. 43).

Occasionally there is striking “objective proof” that a person is actually outside the body at this time, as when people are able to relate conversations or give precise details of events that occurred, even in adjoining rooms or farther away, while they were “dead.” Among other examples like this, Dr. Kubler-Ross mentions one remarkable case where a blind person “saw” and later described everything clearly in the room where she “died,” although when she came back to life she was once again blind — a striking evidence that it is not the eye that sees (nor the brain that thinks, for the mental faculties become quicker after death), but rather the soul that performs these actions through the physical organs as long as the body is alive, but by its own power when the body is dead. (Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, “Death Does Not Exist,” The Co-Evolution Quarterly, Summer, 1977, pp. 103-4.)

None of this should sound very strange to an Orthodox Christian; the experience here described is what Christians know as the separation of the soul from the body at the moment of death. It is characteristic of our times of unbelief that these people seldom use the Christian vocabulary or realize that it is their soul that has been set free from the body and now experiences everything; they are usually simply puzzled at the new state they find themselves in.

The account of an after-death experience entitled “Unbelievable for Many but Actually a True Occurrence” was written by just such a person: a baptized Orthodox Christian who, in the spirit of the late 19th century, remained indifferent to the truths of his own Faith and even disbelieved in life after death. His experience of some eighty years ago is of great value to us today, and seems even providential in view of the new after-death experiences of today, because it is a single whole experience of what happens to the soul after death (going far beyond the brief and fragmentary experiences described in the new books), made by a sensitive individual who began from the modern state of unbelief and ended by recognizing the truths of Orthodox Christianity — to such an extent that he ended his days as a monk. This little book actually may serve as a “test-case” against which to judge the new experiences. It was approved, as containing nothing opposed to the Orthodox teaching on life after death, by one of the leading Orthodox missionary-printers at the turn of the century, Archbishop Nikon of Vologda.

After describing the final agony of his physical death and the terrible weight pressing him down to earth, the author of this account relates that:

“Suddenly I felt a calm within myself. I opened my eyes, and everything that I saw in the course of that minute, down to the slightest details, registered in my memory with complete clarity.

“I saw that I was standing alone within a room; to the right of me, standing about something in a semi-circle, the whole medical staff was crowded together.... This group struck me with surprise: at the place where they were standing there was a bed. What was it that drew the attention of these people, what were they looking at, when I already was not there, when I was standing in the midst of the room?

“I moved forward and looked where they all were looking: there on the bed I was lying.

“I do not have any recollection of experiencing anything like fear when seeing my double; I only was perplexed: how can this be? I feel myself here, and at the same time I am there also…

“I wanted to touch myself, to take the left hand by the right: my hand went right through my body as through empty space.... I called the doctor, but the atmosphere in which I was found turned out to be entirely unfit for me; it did not receive and transmit the sounds of my voice, and I understood myself to be in a state of utter dissociation from all that was about me. I understood my strange state of solitude, and a feeling of panic came over me. There really was something inexpressibly horrible in this extraordinary solitude….

“I glanced, and here only for the first time the thought emerged: is it possible that that which has happened to me, in our language, in the language of living people, is defined by the word ‘death’? This occurred to me because the body lying on the bed had all the appearance of a corpse….

“With our understanding of the word ‘death’ there is inextricably bound the idea of some kind of destruction, a cessation of life; how could I think that I died when I did not lose self-consciousness for one moment, when I felt myself just as alive, hearing all, seeing all, conscious of all, capable of movement, thought, speech?...

“The dissociation from everything around me, the split in my personality more than anything could have made me understand that which had taken place, if I should have believed in the existence of a soul, if I were religious; but this was not the case and I was guided solely by that which I felt, and the sensation of life was so clear that I was only perplexed with the strange phenomenon, being completely unable to link my feelings with the traditional conception of death, that is to say, while sensing and being conscious of myself, to think that I do not exist….

“Afterwards, in recalling and thinking over my state of being at the time, I noticed only that my mental capacities functioned with striking energy and swiftness” (pp. 16-21).

The state of the soul in the first minutes after death is not described in such detail in the Christian literature of antiquity; there the whole emphasis is always on the much more striking experiences that come later. It is probably only in modern times, when the identification of “life” with “life in the body” has become so complete and pervasive, that we should expect to see such attention paid to those first few minutes when the expectations of most modern men are turned so thoroughly upside down, with the realization: death is not the end, life continues, a whole new state opens up for the soul!

There is certainly nothing in this experience that contradicts the Orthodox teaching on the state of the soul immediately after death. Some, in criticizing this experience, have raised doubts that a person is actually dead if he is revived in a few minutes; but this is only a technical question (which we will comment on in due time). The fact remains that in these few minutes (sometimes in the minutes before death also) there are often experiences that cannot be explained as mere “hallucinations.” Our task here is to discover how we are to understand these

experiences.

2. The Meeting with Others

The soul remains in its initial state of solitude after death for a very short time. Dr. Moody quotes several cases of people who, even before dying, suddenly saw already-dead relatives and friends.

“The doctor gave me up, and told my relatives that I was dying.... I realized that all these people were there, almost in multitudes it seems, hovering around the ceiling of the room. They were all people I had known in my past life, but who had passed on before. I recognized my grandmother and a girl I had known when I was in school, and many other relatives and friends…. It was a very happy occasion, and I felt that they had come to protect or to guide me” (p. 44).

This experience of meeting deceased friends and relatives at death is by no means a new discovery, even among modern scientists. Over fifty years ago it was made the subject of a small book by a pioneer in modern “parapsychology” or psychical research, Sir William Barrett (Death-Bed Visions, Methuen, London, 1926). After the appearance of Dr. Moody’s first book, a much more detailed account of this experience, inspired by Sir William’s book, was published, and it turned out that the two authors of this book had been doing systematic research on the experiences of the dying for many years. Here we should say a word about the findings of this new book (Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson, At the Hour of Death, Avon Books, New York, 1977).

This book is the first thoroughly “scientific” one to appear on the experiences of the dying. It is based on the results of detailed questionnaires and interviews with a randomly selected group of doctors and nurses in the eastern United States and northern India (the latter country being chosen for maximum objectivity, so as to test the differences in experience that might arise from the difference in nationality, psychology, and religion). The material thus obtained includes over a thousand cases of apparitions and visions occurring to the dying (and to a few who returned after being clinically dead). The authors find that in general Dr. Moody’s findings are in harmony with theirs (p. 24). They find that apparitions of dead relatives and friends (and, in India, many apparitions of Hindu “gods”) occur to the dying, often within an hour and usually within a day before death. In about half as many cases there is a vision of some other-worldly, “heaven”-like environment, which produces the same feelings (this “heaven” experience will be discussed below). This study is of special value in that it carefully distinguishes rambling, this-worldly hallucinations from clearly seen other-worldly apparitions and visions, and statistically analyzes the presence of factors such as use of hallucinogenic drugs, high temperatures, and diseases and impairment of the brain, all of which could produce mere hallucinations rather than actual experiences of something outside the patient’s own mind. Very significantly, the authors find that the most coherent and clearly other-worldly experiences occur to the patients who are the most in contact with this-worldly reality and least likely to hallucinate; in particular, those who see apparitions of the dead or spiritual beings are usually in full possession of the mental faculties and see these beings with full awareness of their hospital surroundings. Further, they find that those who hallucinate usually see living persons, whereas the genuine apparitions of the dying seem rather to be of dead persons. The authors, while cautious in their conclusions, find themselves inclined to “acceptance of the after-life hypothesis as the most tenable explanation of our data” (p. 194). This book thus complements the findings of Dr. Moody, and impressively confirms the experience of meeting with the dead and with spiritual beings at the time of death. Whether these beings are actually those whom the dying take them to be is a question that will be discussed below.

Such findings, of course, are somewhat startling when they come from the background of agnosticism and unbelief that has so long characterized the assumptions of modern science. For an Orthodox Christian, on the other hand, there is nothing surprising in them; we know death to be only a transition to another form of existence, and are familiar with many apparitions and visions which occur to the dying, both saints and ordinary sinners. St. Gregory the Great, in describing many of these experiences in his Dialogues, explains this phenomenon of meeting others: “It frequently happens that a soul on the point of death recognizes those with whom it is to share the same eternal dwelling for equal blame or reward” (Dialogues, IV, 36). And specifically with regard to those who have led a righteous life, St. Gregory notes that “it often happens that the saints of heaven appear to the righteous at the hour of death in order to reassure them. And, with the vision of the heavenly company before their minds, they die without experiencing any fear or agony” (Dialogues, IV, 12). He gives examples when angels, martyrs, the Apostle Peter, the Mother of God, and Christ Himself have appeared to the dying (IV, 13-18).

Dr. Moody gives one example of a dying person’s encounter, not with any relative or spiritual being, but with a total stranger: “One woman told of seeing during her out-of-body experience not only her own transparent spiritual body but also another one, that of another person who had died very recently. She did not know who this person was” (Life After Life, p. 45). St. Gregory describes a similar phenomenon in the Dialogues: he relates several incidents when a dying man calls out the name of someone who is dying at the same time in another place. And this is not at all a matter of clairvoyance experienced only by saints, for St. Gregory describes how one ordinary sinner, apparently destined for hell, sends for a certain Stephen, who unknown to him is to die at the same time, to tell him that “our ship is ready to take us to Sicily” (Sicily being a place of much volcanic activity, reminiscent of hell) (Dialogues, IV, 36). Evidently this is a matter of what is now called “extra-sensory perception” (ESP), which becomes particularly acute in many just before death, and of course continues after death when the soul is outside the realm of the physical senses entirely.

Thus, this particular “discovery” of modern psychical research only confirms what the reader of ancient Christian literature already knows concerning encounters at the time of death. These encounters, while they do not seem by any means to occur to everyone before death, still can be called universal in the sense that they occur without regard to nationality, religion, or holiness of life.

The experience of a Christian saint, on the other hand, while sharing the general characteristics which seemingly anyone can experience, has about it another dimension entirely — one that is not subject to definition by psychic researchers. In this experience special signs of God’s favor often are manifest, and the vision from the other world is often visible to all or many who are near, not just to the dying person. Let us quote just one such example, from the same Dialogues of St. Gregory.

“While they stood around Romula’s bed at midnight, a light suddenly shone down from heaven, flooding the entire room. Its splendor and brilliance struck fear and dread into their hearts.... Then they heard the sound of an immense throng. The door of the room was thrown wide open, as if a great number of persons were pushing their way in. Those who stood round the bed had the impression that the room was being crowded with people, but because of their excessive fear and extreme brightness they were unable to see. Fear paralyzed them and the brilliant light dazzled their eyes. Just then a delightful odor filled the air and with its fragrance calmed their souls which were still terrified by the sudden light.... Looking at her spiritual mother Redempta, she said in a pleasant voice, ‘Do not fear, mother, I shall not die yet.’ ” For three days the fragrance remained, and on “the fourth night Romula again called her mistress and asked to receive Holy Communion. Scarcely had Redempta and her other disciple left the bedside when they saw two choirs of singers standing in the square in front of the convent.... The soul of Romula was set free from the body to be conducted directly to heaven. And as the choirs escorted her soul, rising higher and higher, the sound of their singing gradually diminished until finally the music of the psalms and the sweetness of the odor vanished altogether” (Dialogues, IV, 17). Orthodox Christians will remember similar incidents in the lives of many saints (St. Sisoes, St. Thais, Blessed Theophilus of Kiev, etc.).

As we advance further in this study of the experiences of dying and death we should keep well in mind the great differences that exist between the general experience of dying which is now arousing so much interest, and the grace-given experience of death which occurs to righteous Orthodox Christians. This will help us the better to understand some of the puzzling aspects of the death experiences that are now occurring and are being described.

An awareness of this distinction, for example, can help us to identify the apparitions which the dying see. Do relatives and friends actually come from the realm of the dead in order to appear to the dying? And are these apparitions themselves different from the appearances of saints to righteous Christians at their death?

To answer the first of these questions, let us remember that Drs. Osis and Haraldsson report that many dying Hindus see the “gods” of their Hindu Pantheon (Krishna, Shiva, Kali, etc.) rather than those close relatives and friends commonly reported in America. Yet, as St. Paul so clearly teaches, these “gods” are nothing in reality (I Cor. 8:4-5); any real experience of “gods” involves demons (I Cor. 10:20). Who, then, do these dying Hindus actually see? Drs. Osis and Haraldsson believe that the identification of the beings who are encountered is largely the product of subjective interpretation based on religious, cultural and personal background; and this seems indeed a reasonable judgment that will fit most cases. In the American cases also, it must be that the dead relatives who are seen are not actually “present” as the dying believe them to be. St. Gregory the Great says only that the dying man “recognizes” people, whereas to the righteous “the saints of heaven appear” — a distinction which not merely indicates the different experience of the righteous and ordinary sinners when they die, but also is directly bound up with the different afterlife state of the saints and ordinary sinners. The saints have great freedom to intercede for the living and to come to their aid, whereas deceased sinners, save in very special cases, have no contact with the living.

This distinction is set forth quite clearly by Blessed Augustine, the 5th- century Latin Father, in the treatise which he wrote at the request of St. Paulinus of Nola concerning the “care of the dead,” where he tries to reconcile the undoubted fact that saints such as the Martyr Felix of Nola have clearly appeared to believers, with the equally undoubted fact that the dead as a general rule do not appear to the living.

After giving the Orthodox teaching, based on Holy Scripture, that “the souls of the dead are in a place where they do not see the things which go on and transpire in this mortal life” (ch. 13), and his opinion that cases of the seeming manifestations of the dead to the living are usually either through “the workings of angels” or are “false visions” through the working of devils who have in mind such purposes as leading men into a false teaching of the afterlife (ch. 10), Blessed Augustine proceeds to distinguish between the seeming manifestations of the dead, and the true manifestations of saints:

“How do the martyrs by their very benefactions, which are given to those who seek, indicate that they are interested in human affairs, if the dead do not know what the living are doing? For, not alone by the operations of his benefactions, but even to the very eyes of men, did Felix the Confessor appear, when Nola was being besieged by the barbarians. You (Bishop Paulinus) take pious delight in this appearance of his. We heard of this not by uncertain rumors, but from trustworthy witnesses. In truth, things are divinely shown which are different from the usual order nature has given to the separate kinds of created things. Just because our Lord, when He wished, suddenly turned water into wine is no excuse for us not to understand the proper value of water as water. This is a rare, in fact, an isolated instance of such divine operation. Again, the fact that Lazarus rose from the dead does not mean that every dead person rises when he wishes, or that a lifeless person is called back by a living one just as a sleeping person is aroused by one who is awake. Some events are characteristic of human action; others manifest the signs of divine power. Some things happen naturally; others are done in a miraculous manner, although God is present in the natural process, and nature accompanies the miraculous. One must not think, then, that any of the dead can intervene in the affairs of the living merely because the martyrs are present for the healing or the aiding of certain ones. Rather, one should think this: The martyrs through divine power take part in the affairs of the living, but the dead of themselves have no power to intervene in the affairs of the living” (“Care for the Dead,” ch. 16, in Saint Augustine, Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 27, New York, 1955, p. 378).

Indeed, to take one example, Holy Fathers of recent times, such as Elder Ambrose of Optina, teach that the beings contacted at spiritistic seances are demons rather than the spirits of the dead; and those who have thoroughly investigated the phenomena of spiritism, if they have any Christian standard of judgment at all, have come to the same conclusion (see, for example, Simon A. Blackmore, S.J., Spiritism: Facts and Frauds, Benziger Bros., New York, 1924).

Thus, we need not doubt that the saints actually appear to the righteous at death, as is described in many Lives of Saints. To ordinary sinners, on the other hand, there are often apparitions of relatives, friends, or “gods” which correspond to what the dying either expect or are prepared to see. The exact nature of these latter apparitions it is probably impossible to define; they are certainly not mere hallucinations, but seem to be a part of the natural experience of death, a sign to the dying person (as it were) that he is about to enter a new realm where the laws of ordinary material reality no longer hold. There is nothing very extraordinary about this experience, which seems to hold constant for different times, places, and religions.

The experience of “meeting with others” commonly occurs just before death, and is not to be confused with the rather different meeting we will now describe: that with the “being of light.

3. The “Being of Light”

This experience Dr. Moody describes as “perhaps the most incredible common element in the accounts I have studied, and certainly the element which has the most profound effect upon the individual” (Life After Life, p. 45). Most people describe this experience as the appearance of a light which rapidly increases in brightness; and all recognize it as some kind of personal being, filled with warmth and love, to whom the newly-deceased is drawn by a kind of magnetic attraction. The identification of this being seems to depend on one’s religious background; in itself it has no recognizable form. Some call it “Christ,” others call it an “angel”; all seem to understand that it is a being sent from somewhere to guide them. Here are some accounts of this experience:

“I heard the doctors say that I was dead, and that’s when I began to feel as though I were tumbling, actually kind of floating.... Everything was black, except that, way off from me, I could see this light. It was a very, very brilliant light, but not too large at first. It grew larger as I came nearer and nearer to it” (p. 48).

After another person died he felt himself floating “up into this pure crystal clear light.... It’s not any kind of light you can describe on earth. I didn’t actually see a person in this light, and yet it has a special identity, it definitely does. It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love” (p. 48).

“I was out of my body, there’s no doubt about it, because I could see my own body there on the operating room table. My soul was out! All this made me feel very bad at first, but then, this really bright light came. It did seem that it was a little dim at first, but then it was this huge beam.... At first, when the light came, I wasn’t sure what was happening, but then it asked, it kind of asked me if I was ready to die” (p. 48).

Almost always this being begins to communicate with the newly-deceased (more by a kind of “thought-transference” than by spoken words); what he “says” to them is always the same thing, which is interpreted by those who experience it as “Are you prepared to die?” or “What have you done with your life to show me?” (p. 47). Sometimes also, in connection with this being, the dying person sees a kind of flashback of the past events of his life. All emphasize, however, that this being in no way offers any “judgment” of their lives or actions; he merely provokes them to reflect on their lives.

Drs. Osis and Haraldsson have also noted some experiences of such a being in their studies, remarking that the experience of light is “a typical quality of other-worldly visitors” (p. 38) and preferring to follow Dr. Moody in calling the beings seen or felt in this light simply as “figures of light” rather than the spiritual beings and deities the dying often identify them as.

Who — or what — are these “beings of light”?

Many call these beings “angels,” and point to their positive qualities: they are beings of “light,” are full of “love and understanding,” and inculcate the idea of “responsibility” for one’s life. But the angels known to Orthodox Christian experience are very much more definite, both in appearance and in function, than these “beings of light.” In order to understand this, and to begin to see what these “beings of light” may be, it will be necessary here to set forth the Orthodox Christian doctrine of angels, and then to examine, in particular, the nature of the guiding angels of the afterlife.