The Soul After Death

The articular place which the demons inhabit in this fallen world, and the place where the newly departing souls of men encounter them — is the air. Bishop Ignatius further describes this realm, which must be clearly understood before today’s “after-death” experiences become fully understandable.

“The word of God and the Spirit which acts together with it reveal to us, through its chosen vessels, that the space between heaven and earth, the whole azure expanse of the air which is visible to us under the heavens, serves as the dwelling for the fallen angels who have been cast down from heaven…. The holy Apostle Paul calls the fallen angels the spirits of wickedness under the heavens (Eph. 6:12), and their chief the prince of the powers of the air (Eph. 2:2). The fallen angels are dispersed in a multitude throughout the entire transparent immensity which we see above us. They do not cease to disturb all human societies and every person separately; there is no evil deed, no crime, of which they might not be instigators and participants; they incline and instruct men towards sin by all possible means. Your adversary the devil, says the holy Apostle Peter, walketh about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (I Peter 5:8), both during our earthly life and after the separation of the soul from the body. When the soul of a Christian, leaving its earthly dwelling, begins to strive through the aerial spaces towards the homeland on high, the demons stop it, strive to find in it a kinship with themselves, their sinfulness, their fall, and to drag it down to the hell prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). They act thus by the right which they have acquired” (Bishop Ignatius, Collected Works, vol. III, pp. 132-33).

After the fall of Adam, Bishop Ignatius continues, when paradise was closed to man and a cherubim with a flaming sword was set to guard it (Gen. 3:24), the chief of the fallen angels, satan, together with the hordes of spirits subject to him, “stood on the path from earth to paradise, and from that time to the saving suffering and life-giving death of Christ he did not allow on this path a single human soul when it departed from the body. The gates of heaven were closed to men forever. Both the righteous and sinners descended to hell (after death). The eternal gates and the impassable way were opened (only) for our Lord Jesus Christ” (pp. 134-35). After our redemption by Jesus Christ, “all who have openly rejected the Redeemer comprise the inheritance of satan: their souls, after the separation from the body, descend straight to hell. But Christians who are inclined to sin are also unworthy of being immediately translated from earthly life to blessed eternity. Justice itself demands that these inclinations to sin, these betrayals of the Redeemer should be weighed and evaluated. A judging and distinguishing are required in order to define the degree of a Christian soul’s inclination to sin, in order to define what predominates in it — eternal life or eternal death. The unhypocritical Judgment of God awaits every Christian soul after its departure from the body, as the holy Apostle Paul has said: It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment (Heb. 9:27).

“For the testing of souls as they pass through the spaces of the air there have been established by the dark powers separate judgment places and guards in a remarkable order. In the layers of the under-heaven, from earth to heaven itself, stand guarding legions of fallen spirits. Each division is in charge of a special form of sin and tests the soul in it when the soul reaches this division. The aerial demonic guards and judgment places are called in the Patristic writings the toll-houses, and the spirits who serve in them are called the tax-collectors” (vol. III, p. 136).

1. How to Understand the Toll-Houses

Perhaps no aspect of Orthodox eschatology has been so misunderstood as this phenomenon of the aerial toll-houses. Many graduates of today’s modernist Orthodox seminaries are inclined to dismiss the whole phenomenon as some kind of “later addition” to Orthodox teaching, or as some kind of “imaginary” realm without foundation in Scriptural or Patristic texts or in spiritual reality. Such students are the victims of a rationalistic education which is lacking in a refined awareness of the different levels of reality which are often described in Orthodox texts, as well as of the different levels of meaning often present in Scriptural and Patristic writings. The modern rationalistic over-emphasis on the “literal” meaning of texts and a “realistic” or this-worldly understanding of the events described in Scripture and in Lives of Saints — have tended to obscure or even blot out entirely the spiritual meanings and spiritual experiences which are often primary in Orthodox sources. Therefore, Bishop Ignatius — who on the one hand was a “sophisticated” modern intellectual, and on the other a true and simple child of the Church — can well serve as a bridge on which today’s Orthodox intellectuals might find their way back to the true tradition of Orthodoxy.

Before presenting further Bishop Ignatius’ teaching on the aerial toll-houses, let us make note of the cautions of two Orthodox thinkers, one modern and one ancient, for those who enter upon the investigation of other-worldly reality.

In the 19th century, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, in his discussion of the state of souls after death, writes: “One must note that, just as in general in the depictions of the objects of the spiritual world for us who are clothed in flesh, certain features that are more or less sensuous and anthropomorphic are unavoidable — so in particular these features are unavoidably present also in the detailed teaching of the toll-houses which the human soul passes through after the separation from the body. And therefore one must firmly remember the instruction which the angel made to St. Macarius of Alexandria when he had just begun telling him of the toll-houses: ‘Accept earthly things here as the weakest kind of depiction of heavenly things.’ One must picture the toll-houses not in a sense that is crude and sensuous, but — as far as possible for us — in a spiritual sense, and not be tied down to details which, in the various writers and various accounts of the Church herself, are presented in various ways, even though the basic idea of the toll-houses is one and the same.”5

Some specific examples of such details which are not to be interpreted in a “crude and sensuous” way are given by St. Gregory the Dialogist in the Fourth Book of his Dialogues which, as we have already seen, is devoted specifically to the question of life after death.

Thus, when describing the after-death vision of a certain Reparatus, who saw a sinful priest being burned atop a huge pyre, St. Gregory notes: “The pyre of wood which Reparatus saw does not mean that wood is burned in hell. It was meant, rather, to give him a vivid picture of the fires of hell, so that, in describing them to the people, they might learn to fear eternal fire through their experience with natural fire” (Dialogues, IV, 32, pp. 229-30).

Again, after St. Gregory has described how one man was sent back after death because of a “mistake”—someone else with the same name being the one who was actually called out of life (this has occurred also in today’s “after-death” experiences)—St. Gregory adds, “Whenever this occurs, a careful consideration will reveal that it was not an error, but a warning. In His unbounded mercy, the good God allows some souls to return to their bodies shortly after death, so that the sight of hell might at last teach them to fear the eternal punishments in which words alone could not make them believe” (Dialogues, IV, 37, p. 237).

And when one person in an after-death vision saw dwellings of gold in paradise, St. Gregory comments: “Surely, no one with common sense will take the phrase literally.... Since the reward of eternal glory is won by generosity in almsgiving, it seems quite possible to build an eternal dwelling with gold” (Dialogues, IV, 37, p. 241).

Later we shall have some more to say on the difference between visions of the other world and actual “out-of-body” experiences there (the experiences of the toll-houses, and many of today’s “after-death” experiences, clearly belong to the latter category); but for now it is sufficient for us to be aware that we must have a cautious and sober approach to all experiences of the other world. No one aware of Orthodox teaching would say that the toll-houses are not “real,” are not actually experienced by the soul after death. But we must keep in mind that these experiences occur not in our crudely material world; that both time and space, while obviously present, are quite different from our earthly concepts of time and space; and that accounts of these experiences in earthly language invariably fall short of the reality. Anyone who is at home in the kind of Orthodox literature which describes after-death reality will normally know how to distinguish between the spiritual realities described there and the incidental details which may sometimes be expressed in symbolic or imaginative language. Thus, of course, there are no visible “houses” or “booths” in the air where “taxes” are collected, and where there is mention of “scrolls” or writing implements whereby sins are recorded, or “scales” by which virtues are weighed, or “gold” by which “debts” are paid — in all such cases we may properly understand these images to be figurative or interpretive devices used to express the spiritual reality which the soul faces at that time. Whether the soul actually sees these images at the time, due to its lifelong habit of seeing spiritual reality only through bodily forms, or later can remember the experience only by use of such images, or simply finds it impossible to express what it has experienced in any other way — this is all a very secondary question which does not seem to have been important to the Holy Fathers and writers of saints’ lives who have recorded such experiences. What is certain is that there is a testing by demons, who appear in a frightful but human form, accuse the newly-departed of sins and literally try to seize the subtle body of the soul, which is grasped firmly by angels; and all this occurs in the air above us and can be seen by those whose eyes are open to spiritual reality.

Now let us return to Bishop Ignatius’ exposition of the Orthodox teaching of the aerial toll-houses:

2. Patristic Testimony of the Toll-Houses

“The teaching of the toll-houses is the teaching of the Church. There is no doubt whatever (emphasis in the original) that the holy Apostle Paul is speaking of them when he declares that Christians must do battle with the spirits of wickedness under the heavens (Eph. 6:12). We find this teaching in the most ancient Church tradition and in Church prayers” (vol. III, p. 138).

Bishop Ignatius quotes many Holy Fathers who teach concerning the toll-houses. Here we shall quote just a few.

St. Athanasius the Great, in his famous Life of St. Anthony the Great, describes how once St. Anthony, “at the approach of the ninth hour, after beginning to pray before eating food, was suddenly seized by the Spirit and raised up by angels into the heights. The aerial demons opposed his progress: the angels, disputing with them, demanded that the reasons of their opposition be set forth, because Anthony had no sins at all. The demons strove to set forth the sins committed by him from his very birth; but the angels closed the mouths of the slanderers, telling them that they should not count the sins from his birth which had already been blotted out by the grace of Christ; but let them present — if they have any — the sins he committed after he entered into monasticism and dedicated himself to God. In their accusation the demons uttered many brazen lies; but since their slanders were wanting in proof, a free path was opened for Anthony. Immediately he came to himself and saw that he was standing in the same place where he had stood up for prayer. Forgetting about food, he spent the whole night in tears and groanings, reflecting on the multitude of man’s enemies, on the battle against such an army, on the difficulty of the path to heaven through the air, and on the words of the Apostle, who said: Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of this air (Eph. 6:12; Eph. 2:2). The Apostle, knowing that the aerial powers are seeking only one thing, are concerned over it with all fervor, exert themselves and strive to deprive us of a free passage to heaven, exhorts: Take up the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day (Eph. 6:13), that the adversary may be put to shame, having no evil thing to say of us (Titus 2:8).”6

St. John Chrysostom, describing the hour of death, teaches: “Then we will need many prayers, many helpers, many good deeds, a great intercession from angels on the journey through the spaces of the air. If when travelling in a foreign land or a strange city we are in need of a guide, how much more necessary for us are guides and helpers to guide us past the invisible dignities and powers and world-rulers of this air, who are called persecutors and publicans and tax-collectors.”7

St. Macarius the Great writes: “When you hear that there are rivers of dragons, and mouths of lions, and the dark powers under the heavens, and fire that burns and crackles in the members, you think nothing of it, not knowing that unless you receive the earnest of the Holy Spirit (II Cor. 1:22), they hold your soul as it departs from the body, and do not suffer you to rise to heaven”8

St. Isaiah the Recluse, a 6th-century Father of the Philokalia, teaches that Christians should “daily have death before our eyes and take care how to accomplish the departure from the body and how to pass by the powers of darkness who are to meet us in the air” (Homily 5:22). “When the soul leaves the body, angels accompany it; the dark powers come out to meet it, desiring to detain it, and testing it to see if they might find something of their own in it” (Homily 17).

Again, St. Hesychius, Presbyter of Jerusalem (5th century), teaches: “The hour of death will find us, it will come, and it will be impossible to escape it. Oh, if only the prince of the world and the air who is then to meet us might find our iniquities as nothing and insignificant and might not be able to accuse us justly!” (Homily on Sobriety in the Philokalia.)

St. Gregory the Dialogist († 604), in his Homilies on the Gospel, writes: “One must reflect deeply on how frightful the hour of death will be for us, what terror the soul will then experience, what remembrance of all the evils, what forgetfulness of past happiness, what fear, and what apprehension of the Judge. Then the evil spirits will seek out in the departing soul its deeds; then they will present before its view the sins towards which they had disposed it, so as to draw their accomplice to torment. But why do we speak only of the sinful soul, when they come even to the chosen among the dying and seek out their own in them, if they have succeeded with them? Among men there was only One Who before His suffering fearlessly said: Hereafter I talk not much with you: For the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me (John 14:30)” (Homilies on the Gospels, 39, on Luke 19:42-47; Bishop Ignatius, III, p. 278).

St. Ephraim the Syrian († 373) thus describes the hour of death and the judgment at the toll-houses: “When the fearful hosts come, when the divine takers-away command the soul to be translated from the body, when they draw us away by force and lead us away to the unavoidable judgment place — then, seeing them, the poor man ... comes all into a shaking as if from an earthquake, is all in trembling.... The divine takers-away, taking the soul, ascend in the air where stand the chiefs, the authorities and world-rulers of the opposing powers. These are our accusers, the fearful publicans, registrars, tax-collectors; they meet it on the way, register, examine, and count out the sins and debts of this man — the sins of youth and old age, voluntary and involuntary, committed in deed, word, and thought. Great is the fear here, great the trembling of the poor soul, indescribable the want which it suffers then from the incalculable multitudes of its enemies surrounding it there in myriads, slandering it so as not to allow it to ascend to heaven, to dwell in the light of the living, to enter the land of life. But the holy angels, taking the soul, lead it away.”9

The Divine services of the Orthodox Church also contain many references to the toll-houses. Thus, in the Octoechos, the work of St. John Damascene (8th century), we read: “O Virgin, in the hour of my death rescue me from the hands of the demons, and the judgment, and the accusation, and the frightful testing, and the bitter toll-houses, and the fierce prince, and the eternal condemnation, O Mother of God” (Tone 4, Friday, 8th Canticle of the Canon at Matins). Again: “When my soul shall be about to be released from the bond with the flesh, intercede for me, O Sovereign Lady ... that I may pass unhindered through the princes of darkness standing in the air” (Tone 2, Saturday, Aposticha Theotokion at Matins). Bishop Ignatius cites seventeen other such examples from the Divine service books, which of course are not a complete list.

The most thorough discussion among the early Church Fathers of the doctrine of the aerial toll-houses is set forth in the Homily on the Departure of the Soul of St. Cyril of Alexandria († 444) which is always included in editions of the Slavonic Sequential Psalter (that is, the Psalter arranged for use in Divine services). Among much else in this Homily, St. Cyril says: “What fear and trembling await you, O soul, in the day of death! You will see frightful, wild, cruel, unmerciful and shameful demons, like dark Ethiopians, standing before you. The very sight of them is worse than any torment. The soul, seeing them, becomes agitated, is disturbed, troubled, seeks to hide, hastens to the angels of God. The holy angels hold the soul; passing with them through the air and rising, it encounters the toll-houses which guard the path from earth to heaven, detaining the soul and hindering it from ascending further. Each toll-house tests the sins corresponding to it; each sin, each passion has its tax collectors and testers.”

Many other Holy Fathers, before and after St. Cyril, discuss or mention the toll-houses. After quoting many of them, the above-mentioned 19th-century historian of Church dogma concludes: “Such an uninterrupted, constant, and universal usage in the Church of the teaching of the toll-houses, especially among the teachers of the 4th century, indisputably testifies that it was handed down to them from the teachers of the preceding centuries and is founded on apostolic tradition.”10

3. The Toll-Houses in Lives of Saints

The Orthodox Lives of Saints contain numerous accounts — some of them very vivid — of how the soul passes through the toll-houses after death. The most detailed account is to be found in the Life of St. Basil the New (March 26), which describes the passage through the toll-houses of Blessed Theodora, as related by her in a vision to a fellow disciple of the Saint, Gregory. In this account twenty specific toll-houses are mentioned, with the kinds of sins tested in each set forth. Bishop Ignatius quotes this account at some length (vol. III, pp. 151-58). This account already exists in an English translation, however (Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave, pp. 69-87), and it contains nothing significant that is not to be found in other Orthodox sources on the toll-houses, so we shall omit it here in order to give some of these other sources. These other sources are less detailed, but follow the same basic outline of events.

In the account of the Soldier Taxiotes, for example (Lives of Saints, March 28), it is related that he returned to life after six hours in the grave and told of the following experience:

“When I was dying, I saw Ethiopians who appeared before me. Their appearance was very frightful; my soul beholding them was disturbed. Then I saw two splendid youths, and my soul leaped out into their arms. We began slowly to ascend in the air to the heights, as if flying, and we reached the toll-houses that guard the ascent and detain the soul of each man. Each toll-house tested a special form of sin: one lying, another envy, another pride; each sin has its own testers in the air. And I saw that the angels held all my good deeds in a little chest; taking them out, they would compare them with my evil deeds. Thus we passed by all the toll-houses. And when, nearing the gates of heaven, we came to the toll-house of fornication, those who guard the way there detained me and presented to me all my fleshly deeds of fornication, committed from my childhood up to now. The angels who were leading me said: ‘All the bodily sins which you committed in the city, God has forgiven because you repented of them.’ To this my adversaries said to me: ‘But when you left the city, in the village you committed adultery with a farmer’s wife.’ The angels, hearing this and finding no good deed which could be measured out for my sin, left me and went away. Then the evil spirits seized me and, overwhelming me with blows, led me down to earth. The earth opened, and I was let down by narrow and foul-smelling descents into the underground prison of hell.” (The rest of this Life in English may be read in Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave, pp. 169-71.)

Bishop Ignatius quotes also other experiences of the toll-houses in the Lives of St. Eustratius the Great Martyr (4th century, Dec. 13), St. Niphon of Constantia in Cyprus, who saw many souls ascending through the toll-houses (4th century, Dec. 23), St. Symeon the fool for Christ of Emesa (6th century, July 21), St. John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria (7th century, Prologue for Dec. 19), St. Symeon of Wondrous Mountain (7th century, Prologue for March 13); and St. Macarius the Great (4th century, Jan. 19).

Bishop Ignatius was unacquainted with many early Orthodox sources in the West which were never translated into Greek or Russian; but these too abound in descriptions of the toll-houses. The name of “toll-houses,” it would seem, is restricted to Eastern sources, but the reality described in Western sources is identical.

St. Columba, for example, the founder of the island monastery of Iona in Scotland († 597), many times in his life saw the battle of the demons in the air for the souls of the newly departed. St. Adamnan († 704) relates these in his Life of the Saint; here is one incident:

St. Columba called together his monks one day, telling them: “Now let us help by prayer the monks of the Abbot Comgell, drowning at this hour in the Lough of the Calf; for behold, at this moment they are warring in the air against hostile powers who try to snatch away the soul of a stranger who is drowning along with them.” Then, after prayer, he said: “Give thanks to Christ, for now the holy angels have met these holy souls, and have delivered that stranger and triumphantly rescued him from the warring demons.”11

St. Boniface, the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon “Apostle to the Germans,” relates in one of his letters the account given to him personally by a monk of the monastery at Wenlock who died and came back to life after some hours. “Angels of such pure splendor bore him up as he came forth from the body that he could not bear to gaze upon them.... ‘They carried me up,’ he said, ‘high into the air ...’ He reported further that in the space of time while he was out of the body, a greater multitude of souls left their bodies and gathered in the place where he was than he had thought to form the whole race of mankind on earth. He said also that there was a crowd of evil spirits and a glorious choir of the higher angels. And he said that the wretched spirits and the holy angels had a violent dispute concerning the souls that had come forth from their bodies, the demons bringing charges against them and aggravating the burden of their sins, the angels lightening the burden and making excuses for them.

“He heard all his own sins, which he had committed from his youth on and had failed to confess or had forgotten or had not recognized as sins, crying out against him, each in its own voice, and accusing him grievously.... Everything he had done in all the days of his life and had neglected to confess and many which he had not known to be sinful, all these were now shouted at him in terrifying words. In the same way the evil spirits, chiming in with the vices, accusing and bearing witness, naming the very times and places, brought proofs of his evil deeds.... And so, with his sins all piled up and reckoned out, those ancient enemies declared him guilty and unquestionably subject to their jurisdiction.

“ ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘the poor little virtues which I had displayed unworthily and imperfectly spoke out in my defense.... And those angelic spirits in their boundless love defended and supported me, while the virtues, greatly magnified as they were, seemed to me far greater and more excellent than could ever have been practiced by my own strength.’ ”12

4. A Modern Experience of the Toll-Houses

The reaction of a typical “enlightened” man of modern times when he personally encountered the toll-houses after his “clinical death” (which lasted for 36 hours) may be seen in the book already mentioned above, “Unbelievable for Many but Actually a True Occurrence.” “Having taken me by the arms, the angels carried me right through the wall of the ward into the street. It had already grown dark, snow was silently falling in large flakes. I saw this, but the cold and in general the difference in temperature between the room and outside I did not feel. Evidently these like phenomena lost their significance for my changed body. We began quickly to ascend. And the degree to which we had ascended, the increasingly greater became the expanse of space that was revealed before our eyes, and finally it took on such terrifyingly vast proportions that I was seized with a fear from the realization of my insignificance in comparison to this desert of infinity....

“The conception of time was absent in my mental state at this time, and I do not know how long we were moving upwards, when suddenly there was heard at first an indistinct noise, and following this, having emerged from somewhere, with shrieks and rowdy laughter, a throng of some hideous beings began rapidly to approach us.

“Evil spirits! — I suddenly comprehended and appraised with unusual rapidity that resulted from the horror I experienced at that time, a horror of a special kind and until then never before experienced by me. Evil spirits! O, how much irony, how much of the most sincere kind of laughter this would have aroused in me but a few days ago. Even a few hours ago somebody’s report, not even that he saw evil spirits with his own eyes, but only that he believed in their existence as in something fundamentally real, would have aroused a similar reaction! As was proper for an ‘educated’ man at the close of the 19th century, I understood this to mean foolish inclinations, passions in a human being, and that is why the very word itself had for me, not the significance of a name, but a term which defined a certain abstract conception. And suddenly this certain ‘abstract conception’ appeared before me as a living personification!...

“Having surrounded us on all sides, with shrieks and rowdy sounds the evil spirits demanded that I be given over to them; they tried somehow to seize and tear me away from the angels, but evidently did not dare to do this. In the midst of their rowdy howling, unimaginable and just as repugnant to one’s hearing as their sight was for my eyes, I sometimes caught up words and whole phrases. ‘He is ours: he has renounced God’ — they suddenly cried out almost in unison, and here they lunged at us with such boldness that for a moment fear froze the flow of all thought in my mind. ‘That is a lie! That is untrue!’ — I wanted to shout, coming to myself; but an obliging memory bound my tongue. In some way unknown to me, I suddenly recalled such a slight, insignificant occurrence, which in addition was related to so remote a period of my youth that, it seems, I in no way could have been able to recall it to mind.”

Here the author recalls an incident from his school years: Once, in a philosophical discussion such as students have, one of his comrades expressed the opinion: “Why must I believe? Is it also not possible that God does not exist?” To this the author replied: “Maybe not.” Now, confronted with the demon-accusers of the toll-houses, the author recalls:

“This phrase was in the full sense of the word an ‘idle statement’: the unreasonable talk of my friend could not have aroused within me a doubt in the existence of God. I did not particularly listen to his talking — and now it turned out that this idle statement of mine did not disappear without leaving a trace in the air. I had to justify myself, to defend myself from the accusation that was directed against me, and in such a manner the New Testament statement was verified in practice: We really shall have to give an account for all our idle words, if not by the Will of God, Who sees the secrets of man’s heart, then by the anger of the enemy of salvation.

“This accusation evidently was the strongest argument that the evil spirits had for my perdition, they seemed to derive new strength in this for the daring of their attacks on me, and now with furious bellowing they spun about us, preventing us from going any further.

“I recalled a prayer and began praying, appealing for help to those holy ones whose names I knew and whose names came to mind. But this did not frighten my enemies. A sad, ignorant Christian only in name, I now, it seems, almost for the first time in my life remembered Her Who is called the Intercessor for Christians.

“And evidently my appeal to Her was intense, evidently my soul was filled with terror, because hardly had I remembered and pronounced Her name, when about us there suddenly appeared a kind of white mist which soon began to enfold within itself the ugly throng of evil spirits. It concealed them from my eyes before they could withdraw from us. Their bellowing and cackling was still heard for a long while, but according to how it gradually weakened in intensity and became more dull, I was able to judge that the terrible pursuit was gradually being left behind.”13

5. The Toll-Houses Experienced before Death

Thus, it may be seen from innumerable clear examples how important and vivid an experience for the soul is the encounter with the demons of the aerial toll-houses after death. This experience, however, is not necessarily limited to the time just after death. We have seen above that the experience of St. Anthony the Great with the toll-houses was during an “out-of-body” experience while standing at prayer. Similarly, St. John of the Ladder describes an experience which occurred to one monk before his death:

“On the day before his death, he went into an ecstasy of mind and with open eyes he looked to the right and left of his bed and, as if he were being called to account by someone, in the hearing of all the bystanders he said: ‘Yes indeed, that is true; but that is why I fasted for so many years.’ And then again: ‘Yes, it is quite true; but I wept and served the brethren.’ And again: ‘No, you are slandering me.’ And sometimes he would say: ‘Yes, it is true. Yes, I do not know what to say to this. But in God there is mercy.’ And it was truly an awful and horrible sight — this invisible and merciless inquisition. And what was most terrible, he was accused of what he had not done. How amazing! Of several of his sins the hesychast and hermit said: ‘I do not know what to say to this,’ although he had been a monk for nearly forty years and had the gift of tears….

And while thus being called to account he was parted from his body, leaving us in uncertainty as to his judgment, or end, or sentence, or how the trial ended.”14

Indeed, the encounter with the toll-houses after death is only a specific and final form of the general battle in which each Christian soul is engaged during his whole lifetime. Bishop Ignatius writes: “Just as the resurrection of the Christian soul from the death of sin is accomplished during its earthly wandering, precisely so is mystically accomplished, here on earth, its testing by the aerial powers, its captivity by them or deliverance from them; at the journey through the air (after death) this freedom or captivity is only made manifest” (Vol. III, p. 159). Some saints, such as Macarius the Great — whose passage through the toll-houses was seen by several of his disciples — ascend through the demonic “tax-collectors” without opposition, because they have already fought them and won the battle in this life. Here is the incident from his Life:

“When the time came for the death of St. Macarius, the Cherubim who was his guardian angel, accompanied by a multitude of the heavenly host, came for his soul. With the ranks of angels there also descended choirs of apostles, prophets, martyrs, hierarchs, monks and righteous ones. The demons disposed themselves in ranks and crowds in their toll-houses in order to behold the passage of the God-bearing soul. It began to ascend. Standing far from it, the dark spirits shouted from their toll-houses: ‘O Macarius, what glory you have been vouchsafed!’ The humble man answered them: ‘No! I still fear, because I do not know whether I have done anything good.’ Meanwhile he swiftly ascended to heaven. From other higher toll-houses the aerial powers again cried out: ‘Just so! You have escaped us, Macarius.’ ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I still need to flee.’ When he already had come to the gates of heaven, lamenting out of malice and envy, they cried out: ‘Just so! You did escape us, Macarius!’ He replied: ‘Guarded by the power of my Christ, I have escaped your nets!’ ” (Patericon of Scetis.)

“The great saints of God pass through the aerial guards of the dark powers with such great freedom because during earthly life they enter into uncompromising battle with them and, gaining the victory over them, acquire in the depths of their heart complete freedom from sin, become the temple and sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, making their rational dwelling-place inaccessible for the fallen angels” (Bishop Ignatius, vol. III, pp. 158-59).

6. The Particular Judgment

In Orthodox dogmatic theology the passage through the aerial toll-houses is a part of the particular judgment by means of which the fate of the soul is determined until the Last Judgment. Both the particular judgment and the Last Judgment are accomplished by angels, who serve as the instruments of God’s justice: At the end of the world, the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire (Matt. 13:49).

Orthodox Christians are fortunate to have the teaching of the aerial toll-houses and the particular judgment clearly set forth in numerous Patristic writings and Lives of Saints, but actually any person who carefully reflects on nothing more than the Holy Scripture will come to a very similar teaching. Thus, the Protestant Evangelist Billy Graham writes in his book on angels: “At the moment of death the spirit departs from the body and moves through the atmosphere. But the Scripture teaches us that the devil lurks there. He is ‘the prince of the power of the air’ (Eph. 2:2). If the eyes of our understanding were opened, one would probably see the air filled with demons, the enemies of Christ. If satan could hinder the angel of Daniel for three weeks on his mission to earth, we can imagine the opposition a Christian may encounter at death….

The moment of death is satan’s final opportunity to attack the true believer; but God has sent His angels to guard us at that time.”15

7. The Toll-Houses: A Touchstone of Authentic After-Death Experience

All that has been described in this chapter is quite clearly not the same as the “flashbacks” of ones life that are so often described today in “after-death” experiences. The latter experience — which often occurs before death also — has nothing of the Divine, nothing of judgment, about it; it seems to be rather a psychological experience, a recapitulation of one’s own conscience. The lack of judgment and even the “sense of humor” which many have described in the invisible being who attends the “flashbacks” is, first of all, a reflection of the terrible lack of seriousness which most people in the Western world now have with regard to life and death. And this is also why even the Hindus of “backward” India have more frightening experiences of death than do most Westerners: even without the true enlightenment of Christianity, they have still preserved a more serious attitude to life than have most people in the frivolous “post-Christian” West.

The passage through the toll-houses — which is a kind of touchstone of authentic after-death experience — is not described at all in today’s experiences, and the reason for this is not far to seek. From many signs — the absence of the angels who come for the soul, the absence of judgment, the frivolousness of many of the accounts, even the very shortness of the time involved (usually some five to ten minutes, compared with the several hours to several days in the incidents from saints’ Lives and other Orthodox sources) — it is clear that today’s experiences, although sometimes very striking and not explainable by any natural laws known to medical science, are not very profound. If these are actual experiences of death, then they involve only the very beginning of the soul’s after-death journey; they occur in the anteroom of death, as it were, before God’s decree for the soul has become final (manifested by the coming of the angels for the soul), while there is still a possibility for the soul to return to the body by natural means.

It still remains for us, however, to give a satisfactory explanation of the experiences that are occurring today. What are these beautiful landscapes that are often seen? Where is this “heavenly” city that is beheld? What is this whole “out-of-the-body” realm which is undeniably being contacted today?

The answer to these questions may be found in an investigation of a rather different kind of literature from the Orthodox sources mentioned above — a literature which is also based on personal experience, and is much more thorough in its observations and conclusions than the “after-death” experience of today. This is the literature to which Dr. Moody and other investigators are also turning, and in which they are finding indeed remarkable parallels to the clinical cases that have inspired the contemporary interest in life after death.

8. The Teaching of Bishop Theophan the Recluse on the Aerial Toll-Houses

Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov was the leading defender of the Orthodox teaching of the aerial toll-houses in 19th-century Russia, when unbelievers and modernists were already beginning to scoff at it; but Bishop Theophan the Recluse was no less a firm defender of this teaching, which he saw as an integral part of the whole Orthodox teaching on the unseen warfare or spiritual struggle against demons. Here we give one of his statements on the toll-houses, which is part of his commentary on the eightieth verse of Psalm 118: Let my heart be blameless in Thy statutes, that I may not be put to shame.

“The prophet does not mention how and where one ‘may not be put to shame.’ The nearest ‘not being put to shame’ occurs during the arising of inward battles....

“The second moment of not being put to shame is the time of death and the passage through the toll-houses. No matter how absurd the idea of the toll-houses may seem to our ‘wise men,’ they will not escape passing through them. What do these toll-gatherers seek in those who pass through? They seek whether people might have some of their goods. What kind of goods? Passions. Therefore, in the person whose heart is pure and a stranger to passions, they cannot find anything to wrangle over; on the contrary, the opposing quality will strike them like arrows of lightning. To this someone who has a little education expressed the following thought: The toll-houses are something frightful. But it is quite possible that the demons, instead of something frightful, might present something seductive. They might present something deceptive and seductive, according to all the kinds of passions, to the soul as it passes through one after the other. When, during the course of earthly life, the passions have been banished from the heart and the virtues opposed to them have been planted, then no matter what seductive thing you might present, the soul, having no kind of sympathy for it, passes it by, turning away from it with disgust. But when the heart has not been cleansed, the soul will rush to whatever passion the heart has most sympathy for; and the demons will take it like a friend, and then they know where to put it. Therefore, it is very doubtful that a soul, as long as there remain in it sympathies for the objects of any passion, will not be put to shame at the toll-houses. Being put to shame here means that the soul itself is thrown into hell.

“But the final being put to shame is at the Last Judgment, before the face of the All-seeing Judge....”16