Life After Death?

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Chris: I am wondering what you understand about the subject of life after death. What do you think happens to you when you die?

Tony: I have formed a fairly clear idea of this from experiences I met over the last 30 years. So from these I have worked out something that, for me at least, is not only based on my own, but also on other people's experience.

I know that if you went out to people in the street and asked if they believe in life after death, some would smile and say they do not believe that there is any life continuing after physical death. In fact they might have a sort of supercilious view of those who do believe, because as far as they are concerned there is no evidence at all that consciousness survives physical death.

Many of the things we take for granted in life, and believe in very fully, are extremely subjective when we look at them directly as Joss asked Ellie to do. Such things are very difficult to grasp and pin down on a laboratory table to investigate. And when we look at the subject of life after death, we are talking about whether consciousness survives the death of the body. In doing so we have to remember in the first place that consciousness itself is by no means understandable scientifically. Nobody has yet arrived at an agreeable definition of what it is -- certainly not in any laboratory sense. As far as how it exists or what its possibilities are, we are at the foot of a mountain, most of which is covered in clouds. So to scientifically say there is or is not life after death is not possible. We do not know scientifically whether awareness survives the body's breakdown. What we can do though is to look at subjective human experience, just as Joss asked Ellie to do. So to prove the existence of consciousness after the death of the body means we are entering an area beyond what we can at the moment measure with instruments.

Therefore what I am going to say is about subjective experience connected with consciousness. My experience of this is as real to me as the pains and pleasures of love that I have experienced, but hard to produce any physical model of. It is not like a piece of tissue you can put under the microscope. But I must add that the advances in brain scanning might be taking us nearer to understanding.

The first step in this is to recognise that our physical body, like any other thing that has a beginning also has an end. It dies. Change is a fundamental part of cosmic and physical events. The personality, what we call self, also has a beginning, it develops, and it ends. Those are observable and basic facts of physical life. The question is, does anything of that personality survive? Does self awareness exist beyond physical death?

Well, would your personal awareness survive the loss of an arm? Would 'you' survive losing both legs? What is the difference then between losing your whole body?

To answer that question it is helpful to recognise that within change there are certain constants. Within the changing seasons of the year, the seasons themselves remain as an overlying constant. This paradox is everywhere in nature. Wherever there is death there is also a constant. For instance the human body that is born and dies, has also been alive since the beginning of life on this planet. It is the unbroken trail of cellular lives from the beginning. Nowhere in that line was there death, otherwise you would not exist as a physical body. Your body is also, in every moment, changing. Yet along with that change there is a constancy that gives you continued life day by day, despite the death of millions of cells.

We also have to carefully look at what we consider survival after death means. Do we mean that our personality, exactly as it is, continues in some way? But that doesn't even happen while we are alive. We are constantly going through change and transformation of one sort or another. Strangely enough, despite the incredibly powerful changes that occur from infancy to possible old age, there is still a sense of constancy within all that change.

Then we come to the question of what it is to be a person anyway. If we take a look at your body, as already suggested, it is an outcrop of living cells that have subdivided and subdivided through millions of years. It certainly wasn't formed by you personally, but by the action and lives of thousands of previous beings and various environments.

As for your sense of self, that probably depends on the language you learned and viewpoints it contains about life, and what it is to be a person. Whatever you believe, those beliefs did not originate with you. All of them are thousands of years old. Do you honestly believe you in any way originated what you think or how you look at the world? Do you honestly believe that you exist without any influence from the past? Do you honestly believe that your present personality has not inherited massive amounts from other beings who pre-existed you? See: Archetype of the Paradigm

Well, you may agree that you have inherited, incorporated, and are expressing a great deal from what pre existed you. But in common with a prevailing belief that also pre-existed you, you may see this as a purely physical phenomena. But we come back to the question of what is consciousness. What is this consciousness that knows itself? Evidence suggests that it is not simply a product of the brain. In fact, Sir Auckland Geddes, and one-time British diplomat to the US, who himself met a powerful near death experience, said that the mind is not in the brain, the brain is in the mind.

However, remember another fundamental. If you were born blind no careful words on my part, no crafted explanations, could give you an experience of light and colour. If you lived amongst people, the majority of whom were blind, and you yourself were blind, and only a few people talked of light, you would probably think them quite irrational and a little crazy. Perhaps they would need to be pitied. Similarly, if you knew nothing of love, no talk of mine could convince you of its existence. You would probably think me fanciful and with a vivid imagination.

So, take time to consider what constancy within change means in your life and your death. Take time to consider what it means that your life is an expression of what lived prior to your own physical birth. Take time to recognise that what you are convinced of in terms of consciousness needing the body is simply a long held THEORY that started with Newtonian physics which believed that the atom was the fundamental particle in the universe, and so all things were material. That 'truth', now moved on from, meant death was the end of awareness. Read the investigations into near death experiences. Ask yourself what you are at the very base of your being, when arms, legs, body and brain have gone. In the widest sense, how is it you exist? Somewhere in those speculations I believe you will gain insight into how your living and dying body and personality can also be a part of a constant that does not die. See: Closer to the Light.

A death scene as witnessed by Andrew Jackson Davis

The strongest personal evidence for me of survival arose from an incredible out of body experience I had. During it I became aware of what was happening hundreds of miles away, and this was later verified. From this I understood that whatever my personal consciousness is, it could operate quite separately from my physical senses and body. In a way that I still do not understand, in that state I could observe what was happening in what we call the physical world, and could in a very limited way, interact with it. Since that time I have had many other experiences that have developed my view of life after death more fully. My present viewpoint is perhaps explainable by something that we each experience. Early in each day there are things that you do that you pass on during the day to other experiences. But even late in the day you can look back and remember what you did. The strange thing about this is that the event and its direct experiences are gone. In a sense they are dead, yet the memory of them remains. You might even say that the person you were at that time, during those moments, died. Yet here you are, remembering the events, and having a sense of continuity. If there is survival after death, there must presumably be something that continues to exist despite the body and brain dying. Well, that isn't an unusual thing in nature. In fact it is quite an everyday process. The tulip that blooms in spring dies and rots away, yet beneath the soil the bulb remains and will next year produce another tulip flower that is quite unique, yet emerging from the same source. It absorbed the essence of the previous flower and creates anew. To read on go to Life Within Change.

Life within Change and Constancy

Rudolf Steiner explains parts of this process very clearly. He points out that from conception through to death our physical body goes through a process of continuous change. There is never a moment when changes are not going on in the body. Also, part of this change is that physical impressions last for moments only. One impression gives way to another continuously through the day and the years. But as mentioned above, something in our nature builds up a sense of self and meaning from these fleeting experiences. In fact, without these experiences through our senses we would not develop as a person. So in quite a real way our personality, or our soul as it used to be called, feeds on physical experience and develops a defined self from them. This is similar to the way the body builds up its defined shape through the continuous passage of food water and air -- physical substance -- through it. See: Steiners teachings about life and death.

If we are lucky, during our lifetime we can observe that not only our physical experiences lead to the development of our personality; not only does our personality gather understanding from the many separate experiences we meet; but occasionally the concepts we arrive at are seen to gather into a higher synthesis again. At such times we glimpse or experience a universal understanding. We see how the everyday things that we experience, the concepts that arise from them, in some way connect with the universal principles in the cosmos and in life. With wonder we see that the ordinary everyday things and events around us are expressions of processes and human endeavours that flow through our lives from ancient times, perhaps even from the timeless.

This sense of the universal which in some cases is called enlightenment, or cosmic consciousness, is an experience of what has been called the spirit. In other words it is an experience of the constant underlying the ever shifting experiences of our body and our personality. And just as our personality gathers the shifting impressions of our senses into a realisation of its own continuing existence, so the spirit gathers experiences of the personality into its own continuity. This is like the tulip bulb hidden behind the short flowering of the tulip. The question to ask yourself is - What is it that in myself is the constant underlying the shifting experiences of my life?

One way of understanding this might be in saying that just as your genetic material is the gathered experience of thousands of lives, so your personality is the gathered material, the essence of thousands and millions of experiences; and your spirit is the gathered material of the finest realisations and concepts gathered by your personality. It is very likely that the cosmic processes that we experience as humans and see as universal in nature do not stop there, but have yet a higher synthesis.

The difficulty with accepting these ideas is not that we cannot see them working in nature, but some of us fail to grasp personally what our spirit is. Only a few of us have the wonder of a direct experience of it. This is because it is the very thing with which we try to grasp it with. As Laing says in his poem The Bird of Paradise, “The truth I am trying to grasp is the grasp that is trying to grasp it.” Your spirit, the constant within change, is the very foundation of your personal awareness. It is what exists behind the constant shifting sense impressions, thoughts and feelings. It is the blank mirror in which all your personal experiences seem to have existence. Take away all the images of your thoughts and emotions, your sense impressions, and you have the clear beingness of your spirit. Try looking at the mirror of your consciousness instead of the images, thoughts and sense impressions the mirror reflects.

I died. The experience carried on, so I was then a bodiless and exterior observer of what was happening. I was a point of awareness watching, and there was my dead body lying on the ground. As I watched I saw my father -- who was already dead -- approach the dead body and lift it and carry it across a threshold. He placed it in a meadow and stood back. As I watched, the dead body was resurrected. A wonderful change took place in it. The body, no longer physical, was brought to life. I was witness to what brought it to life. It was a wonderful and joyous experience to see the resurrection. What brought life to that dead form was everything that I had given of myself to another person. I may have given an idea; I may have given anger that reached into their being and taught them something. I may have given that person warmth or support. I may have been a parent for them, or given myself in some other way. But I realised as I saw the resurrection that it is not simply the thought of giving something to another person, but it is what reaches into them and is absorbed to become a living part of their nature. It is something that then lives in them. It therefore has life. It may even pass on from them to others and have life in many people.

But I also saw that what I had received from other people, that I had left myself open to receive from others, their ideas, their love, their anger, their personality, their traits, their abilities; whatever I had taken into myself from them was also what gave me a spiritual life after death.

What I understood from the experience was that we only gain a life beyond physical death from what we have given to and received from others. It is only what life itself takes up and absorbs of our nature; it is only what life in us has taken from others that continues our life after death. It is only what exists beyond the boundaries of the personal self that can live on. Just as the flow of food, water and air keeps our body alive, so, as we take in from the life of others, and flow to them, does our spirit keep alive.

To read on go to Death is Life Without Form

Death is Life Without Form

I had another similar experience, again in a seed group, while working in Spain. This time the experience led me to see that what we call death is in fact life unclothed. What I mean is that when we look at each other, or at the world of nature, we see life expressed in form. But usually we do not look to see what is behind that form. We do not see the universal principle that enters into the myriad forms of life.

So what I experienced in Spain was that as the forms drop away, what we are left with is life without its clothing. We meet the essence of what gives us life, what gives the people around us existence, what exists in animals and plants, what animates and informs the children and people we love. Then we know we have met death in every moment of life, because life and death are one and the same. We have seen death in every face we look upon.

I tried to put my experience into words in the following way:

Of a sudden I see the face of Death. I hear its voice. I know it - For we have met Often and always. Death has the features of A child I made cry; The profile of My loved woman; Your countenance. Have I known you? Then I have known Death. Have I betrayed any? Then I have betrayed Death. And its face is beauty. For it is all things - Naked, Undressed of flesh, Leafless, Exposed, Unclad Life - Without the garment That our selfhood is.

And the waters in me rose To tears. Bathing me in regret That I had So often Forgotten My love For the Naked Beauty.

The message of this experience is very similar to what I learned from the first experience in Greece. It is that because the essence of life lies behind all its forms, what we give or receive from each other we give and receive from life itself. Therefore life itself remembers, and our life exists in the essence that lies behind all things.

Another experience explains something that is again very similar in its message, but looks at it from another angle. This time it was during an exploration of a dream that I met death face-to-face.

I dreamt I was in my bed and was woken by something falling onto the foot of the bed -- or that I could feel moving at the foot of the bed. The dream was very real because all my surroundings were exactly the same as in waking life. I was very frightened of whatever it was crawling up towards me over the top of the bed. I caught hold of it in my right hand, gripping very tightly, and saying, "I will destroy you. I will destroy you!"

When I explored the dream I came across a very strong fear of death. This was so strong I could hardly breathe and felt I was having an asthma attack. But in fact it was fear that was paralysing me. I had noticed the signs of ageing in my body and this had prompted my feelings about death. But here it was creeping up on me, and if it touched me I felt it would pervade my whole body and kill me. But I wanted to confront death. In the imagery of the dream here it was, and I wanted to walk up to face it and know the truth of it. So I let feelings of fear consume me without trying to suppress them or run away from them. It felt as if I were walking way up close to this threatening creature to look it in the eye. And when I did that suddenly all fear and tension had gone. I could breathe easily again. That was surprising and I couldn't understand how I could move so fast from one feeling to another. So I backtracked to see if I could play the whole thing through again in slow motion to understand how to meet death with calmness. What I saw as I did this was that it was all to do with identification. My fear had arisen because I identified my real self with my body. And my body I identified with the corpses of rabbits I had seen in the field, eaten away by maggots, and that was my image of death. Because I identified with the rotting corpse my feelings responded with fear and paralysis as I came face-to-face with death. But there was a part of me that felt so alive despite what was happening to my body. In that way I was identified with life, with the spirit, the essence that gave life to my body. As soon as I identified with that the fear disappeared.

An Egyptian burial - British Museum

So once again we have here a reference to the constant, the permanent, the unchanging that lies within or behind the changing and impermanent. That is really the kernel of anything I have to say about death.

We only miss seeing this when we hold on to concrete ideas about what our life is or means. We only miss it when we believe we know what life and death are really about. Such rigid certainty about what is in the end our own ignorance shuts us off from any further knowing. It is only as we drop our concrete ideas of things; only as we learn the art of unknowing, that we open to the mystery of things and perhaps can gain a glimpse beyond the boundaries of our everyday concepts.

Can We Prepare for Death?

Chris: Do you think we can prepare ourselves for death?

Tony: I believe there is a great deal to be learned from the accounts people have given of their near death experiences. Very often in these accounts we learn that the person goes through a review of their life. This review enables them to fully experience each moment of their life, each aspect of relationships, what other people felt in such relationships. They experienced again the many decisions or turning points in their life. Such reviews are a sort of harvesting of their experience. In some cases the person even says that a being of light led them into and through the review and asked them what they had brought, what they had gathered from their life.

Today, many people have learned, through various forms of psychotherapy, through drugs or meditation, to experience such reviews of their life. They are seldom done in one full session as happens in the near death experience. But they are still a profound meeting with what one has harvested and what one has thereby learned from the powerful moments in one's life.

To me this is a form of dying before you die. To do this requires a level of openness and surrender to what we have defined as ones spiritual life. So the surrender, the review, is to me a way of clearing the past, so that when you do die there is less work to be done as you have already learned to do the work and have carried out some of it.

The only other preparation for death that I can see as being really relevant is to recognise what you identify with. Do you fully identify with your body? Or have you managed to glimpse and identify at all with the permanent aspect of yourself? If you begin to find an identification with the constant in your being, then that is perhaps one of the most powerful ways of preparing for death.

Chris: You told me that when you were at my mother's funeral something happened to you that was very impressive. What was that?

Tony: In describing this I have to say first that I did not go to your mother's funeral with any sense of seeking an experience or looking for some sort of insight into what was going on. I went to be with you as your friend. And, as you know, the service was far from inspiring. The priest was stumbling over what he was reading, didn't remember your mother's name, and so there was some level of irritation with most of us because of what was happening.

Chris: He couldn't even get the right name. It certainly wasn't a celebration of my mother's life in any sensitive way.

Tony: So I wasn't moved by the ceremony. I was there involved in what was going on around me. But suddenly it seemed that something opened in me and I could see or sense that all the people there, although they were not attempting to do what I was now sensing, were producing something by their very presence as a group. The funeral itself, the fact that everybody was there to be part of your mother's funeral, acted as some sort of focus. It focussed their attention, their feelings and their thoughts as a lens might do. It focused all their mental and emotional energy on your mother's spirit. I saw her lifted, buoyed up by it. I suppose it would be right to say it was almost like she was brought awake by it also. So she was energised and lifted up to be with her chosen spiritual love, who was Christ. And what I had thought to be a funeral became a wedding as she was united with her love. That was a very wonderful thing to see.

Chris: Do you then believe in reincarnation?

Tony: I don't necessarily believe in it in the sense of one's personality being transported into another lifetime. But taking into account what was said about life being a balance between the changing and the constant, about the essence that lies behind the forms, and that the essence absorbs experience; taking that into account I believe the essence dips into different forms again and again.

However, I realise that sounds somewhat impersonal and I find my experience of it is not impersonal at all. I don't think, for instance, that Tony as a distinct personality will be reincarnated at some time. What I do see is that Tony is a small part of the spirit that has existed throughout all-time. That spirit, of which I as Tony only reflect a small part, when I die will absorb the lessons of this life. At some other period that spirit will dip into human life again.

The reason I believe that is because I appear to have memories of past individuals whose lives link with mine in the present. There are aspects of those lives that influence this life.

This same rose will never bloom again, but a similar rose will arise from the same roots..

But there is a way of thinking about this that I believe makes it reasonably straightforward. It doesn't seem to be a mysterious thing, and I don't know why people make of it such a mystery. If you look at a tree, you can see it incorporates many, many past trees. It didn't suddenly emerge out of a vacuum, out of nothing. It has its present existence out of what existed in the past. Of course, because in our culture we still are labouring under the world view that the atom is the fundamental particle or material in the universe, we still see ourselves and a tree as simply a physical process. All our calculations about this leave out the factor of consciousness. Even trees have a form of sentience. They respond to light, to weather conditions, to their environment. Did Tony suddenly gain the type of awareness, perceptions, concepts suddenly in the here and now? Of course I didn't. Thousands of people pre-existed me who gave words, concepts skills that have together formed who I am. There are ideas, longings, weaknesses and blindness of which I am a very particular mixture. As I have gained insight into my being it really does seem that I am part of a stream of influence flowing through history.

Tony's in print Books in the UK or USA

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