The Soul After Death

CHAPTER FOUR The Contemporary Experience of “Heaven”

In Life After Life Dr. Moody remarks that the people he has interviewed do not seem to have experienced anything like “the mythological picture of what lies hereafter” and even tend to disbelieve in the usual view of heaven and hell and the whole “reward-punishment model of the afterlife” (p. 70).

In Reflections on Life After Life, however, he states that his later interviews have indeed revealed widespread after-death experiences of “other realms of being which might well be termed ‘heavenly’” (p. 15). One man found himself in “a countryside with streams, grass, and trees, mountains” (p. 16); one woman was in a similar “beautiful place,” and “off in the distance ... I could see a city. There were buildings — separate buildings. They were gleaming, bright. People were happy in there. There was sparkling water, fountains ... a city of light I guess would be the way to say it” (p. 17).

In actual fact, as some of the other new books reveal, this experience is a rather common one. The Protestant authors mentioned above believe that this experience (at least when its imagery is distinctively Biblical) is a Christian one and is to be sharply distinguished from most of the other “after-death” experiences, which they believe to be demonic deceptions. “Unbelievers seem to experience false doctrine of a kind specifically attributed to Satan in the Bible; believers experience doctrinally accurate events, which might come right out of the scriptures” (Levitt and Weldon, Is There Life After Death?, p. 116). Is this actually true, or are the experiences of believers and unbelievers really much closer than these authors imagine?

The experience which these authors cite as an authentic “Christian” one is that of Betty Malz, who has published a book describing her 28-minute “out-of- the-body” experience while being “clinically dead.” After death she found herself immediately “walking up a beautiful green hill ... I was walking on grass, the most vivid shade of green I have ever seen.” She was accompanied by another walking figure, “a tall, masculine-looking figure in a robe. I wondered if he were an angel.... As we walked together I saw no sun — but light was everywhere. Off to the left there were multi-colored flowers blooming. Also trees, shrubs ... We came upon a magnificent silver structure. It was like a palace except there were no towers. As we walked toward it, I heard voices. They were melodious, harmonious, blending in chorus and I heard the word, ‘Jesus.’... The angel stepped forward and put the palm of his hand upon a gate which I had not noticed before. About twelve feet high, the gate was a solid sheet of pearl.” When the gate opened, “inside I saw what appeared to be a street of a golden color with an overlay of glass or water. The yellow light that appeared was dazzling. There is no way to describe it. I saw no figure, yet I was conscious of a Person. Suddenly I knew that the light was Jesus.” On being invited to enter the gate, she remembered her father who was praying for her, the gates closed, and she returned down the hill, noticing the sun rising above the jeweled wall — which soon was turned into sunrise over the city of Terre Haute, where she returned to her body in the hospital in what was commonly acknowledged as a miracle (Betty Malz, My Glimpse of Eternity, Chosen Books, Waco, Texas, pp. 84-89).

Is this experience really different in kind from most of those that Dr. Moody relates? Is this actually a Christian vision of heaven? (Mrs. Malz is Protestant in belief, and her faith was strengthened by this experience.) The Orthodox Christian reader is not, of course, as convinced of this as are the Protestant authors quoted above. Quite apart from whatever knowledge we may have of how the soul approaches heaven after death, and what it goes through to get there (these will be discussed later) — this experience does not really seem to us to be so very different from the “secular” after-death experiences now being written about. Apart from the “Christian” coloration naturally given to this experience by a believing Protestant (the angel, the hymn, the presence of Jesus), there are several elements in common with the “secular” experiences: the feeling of comfort and peace (which she describes as being in sharp contrast to her months of painful illness), the “being of light” (which others also identify as “Jesus”), the approach to some kind of different realm which lies beyond some kind of “border.” And it is a little strange that she should see the this-worldly sun rise over the jewelled walls, if this is really heaven.... How are we to interpret this experience?

In some of the other new books there are a number of similar experiences, a brief examination of which will give us a much better idea of what is involved.

One book has recently been compiled of “Christian” (mostly Protestant) dying and “after-death” experiences (John Myers, Voices from the Edge of Eternity, Spire Books, Old Tappan, N.J., 1973). In one experience related in this book, a woman “died,” was freed from her body and came to a place of great light looking through a “window of heaven.” “What I saw there made all earthly joys pale into insignificance. I longed to join the merry throng of children singing and frolicking in the apple orchard.... There were both fragrant blossoms and ripe red fruits on the trees. As I sat there drinking in the beauty, gradually I became aware of a Presence; a Presence of joy, harmony and compassion. My heart yearned to become a part of this beauty.” After she returned to her body, after being “dead” for fifteen minutes, “the rest of that day and the next, that other world was far more real to me than the one to which I had returned” (pp. 228-31, reprinted from Guideposts Magazine, 1963). This experience produced a seeming “spiritual” joy comparable to that of Mrs. Malz, and likewise gave a new religious dimension to the person’s life after the experience; but the image of “heaven” that was seen was quite different.

A vivid “after-death” experience was had by a Virginia physician, Dr. George C. Ritchie, Jr. A brief account of it was published in Guideposts Magazine in 1963, and a longer version has been published in book form by Chosen Books with the title Return from Tomorrow. In this account, after a long adventure of being separated from his body (which was pronounced dead), the young George Ritchie returned to the small room where his body lay, and only then did he realize that he was “dead,” whereupon a great light filled the room, which he felt to be Christ, “a presence so comforting, so joyous and all-satisfying, that I wanted to lose myself forever in the wonder of it.” After seeing flashbacks of his life, in answer to the question “What did you do with your time on earth?” he saw three visions. The first two seemed to be of “a very different world occupying the same space” as this earth, but still with many earthly images (streets and countrysides, universities, libraries, laboratories). “Of the final world I had only a glimpse. Now we no longer seemed to be on earth, but immensely far away, out of all relation to it. And there, still at a great distance, I saw a city — but a city, if such a thing is conceivable, constructed out of light ... in which the walls, houses, streets, seemed to give off light, while moving among them were beings as blindingly bright as the One who stood beside me. This was only a moment’s vision, for the next instant the walls of the little room closed around me, the dazzling light faded, and a strange sleep stole over me.” Before this, he had not read anything about life after death; after the experience, he became very active in Protestant church work (Voices from the Edge of Eternity, pp. 56-61).

This striking experience occurred in 1943, and as it turns out, such experiences are not at all unique to the “resuscitation” experiences of the past few years. The Protestant minister Norman Vincent Peale records some similar experiences and has this comment: “Hallucination, a dream, a vision — I do not believe so. I have spent too many years talking to people who have come to the edge of ‘something’ and had a look across, who unanimously have reported beauty, light and peace, to have any doubt in my own mind” (Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking, Prentice-Hall, Inc, New York, 1953, p. 256). Voices from the Edge of Eternity takes numerous examples from three 19th-century anthologies of death-bed visions and near-death experiences; although none of these examples is as detailed as some of the more recent testimonies, they offer abundant proof that the vision of other-worldly apparitions and scenes has been a fairly common occurrence to the dying. In these experiences, those who feel themselves to be Christians and prepared for death have feelings of peace, joy, light, angels, heaven, while unbelievers (in the more fundamentalistic America of the 19th-century!) often see demons and hell.

Having established the fact of these visions, we must now ask the question: what is their nature? Is the vision of heaven really so common among those who, while dying as Christians in the best way they know, are still outside the Church of Christ, the Orthodox Church?

In judging the nature and value of such experiences, we shall begin by repeating our approach to the question of the “meeting with others.” Let us examine the dying experiences of non-Christians in order to see if they are markedly different from those of professed Christians. If non-Christians also commonly see “heaven” while dying or after “death,” then we will have to understand this experience as something natural that may occur to anyone, and not as something specifically Christian. The book of Drs. Osis and Haraldsson has abundant evidence on this point.

These researchers report some 75 cases of “visions of another world” among dying patients. Some people describe unbelievably beautiful meadows and gardens; others see gates opening up to a beautiful countryside or city; many hear other-worldly music. Often a rather worldly imagery is mixed in, as with the American woman who went to a beautiful garden in a taxi, or the Indian woman who rode a cow to her “heaven” (At the Hour of Death, p. 163), or the New Yorker who entered a lush green field, his soul full of “love and happiness” — and could see the buildings of Manhattan and an amusement park in the distance (David Wheeler, Journey to the Other Side, pp. 100-105).

Significantly, Hindus see “heaven” as often as Christians in the Osis- Haraldsson study, and while the latter often see “Jesus” and “angels,” the former just as often see Hindu temples and gods (p. 177). Even more significantly, the depth of the patients’ commitment to or involvement in religion seems to have no effect whatever on their ability to see other-worldly visions; “deeply involved patients saw gardens, gates, and heaven no more often than those of lesser or no involvement” (p. 173). Indeed, one member of the Indian Communist Party, an atheist and materialist, was transported while dying to “a beautiful place, not of this earth.... He heard music and also some singing in the background. When he recognized that he was alive, he was sorry that he had to leave this beautiful place” (p. 179). One person attempted suicide, and while dying reported “I am in heaven. There are so many houses around me, so many streets with big trees bearing sweet fruit and small birds singing in the trees” (p. 178). Most of those who have such experiences feel a great joy, peace, serenity, and acceptance of death; few wish to come back to this life (p. 182).

Thus, it is clear that we must be extremely cautious in interpreting the “visions of heaven” that are seen by dying and “dead” people. As above, when discussing the “meeting with others” in chapter 2, so now also we must clearly distinguish between genuine, grace-given visions of the other world, and a merely natural experience which, even though it may be outside the normal limits of human experience, is not in the least spiritual and tells us nothing about the actual reality of either the heaven or the hell of authentic Christian teaching.

The most important part of our investigation of “after-death” and dying experiences now lies before us: the measuring and judging of them by the yardstick of the authentic Christian teaching and experience of life after death, and a definition of their meaning and their significance for our times. It is already possible here, however, to give a preliminary evaluation of the “heaven” experience so commonly reported today: most, perhaps indeed all, of these experiences have little in common with the Christian vision of heaven. These visions are not spiritual, but worldly. They are so quick, so easily attained, so common, so earthly in their imagery, that there can be no serious comparison of them with the true Christian visions of heaven in the past (some of which will be described below). Even the most “spiritual” thing about some of them — the feeling of the “presence” of Christ — persuades one more of the spiritual immaturity of those who experience it than of anything else. Rather than producing the profound awe, fear of God, and repentance which the authentic experience of God’s presence has evoked in Christian saints (of which St. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus may be taken as a model —Acts 9:3-9), the present-day experiences produce something much more akin to the “comfort” and “peace” of the modern spiritistic and pentecostal movements.

Nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that these experiences are extraordinary; many of them cannot be reduced to mere hallucinations, and they seem to occur outside the limits of earthly life as generally understood, in a realm somewhere between life and death, as it were.

What is this realm? This is the question to which we now turn. In order to answer it, we shall look first of all to authentic Christian testimony, and then — as Dr. Moody and many other writers on this subject are doing — to the writings of modern occultists and others who claim to have travelled in this realm. This latter source, if properly understood, provides a surprising corroboration of Christian truth.

To begin with, then, let us ask the question: what is the realm, in Christian teaching, which the soul first enters after death?