The song says, “I believe that the heart does go on.” (That would be the theme from the Titanic movie, sung by Celine Dion, “The Heart Will Go On.”) Well, it’s pretty clear to me that something goes on after we die. Does it matter if we don’t believe that while we’re alive?
When my dad died, my mom didn’t realize he was dead until the person with her said so, took the pulse, etc. She thought he was finally asleep comfortably. I don’t think my dad knew he was dead either.
When my mother called me with the news of his death, I was already feeling inexplicable exhaustion. I realized that going to bed was not an option, as I would need to help guide my mother through what came next. But I lay down and asked Jordan to wake me if I didn’t hear the phone. (It was about 9:00 at night.) I got centered in myself, reached out for spiritual help, and to my surprise, the exhaustion increased. And then I sensed my dad. As if he were coming towards me, and I realized I must be a sort of bright light he could perceive because it was close by, and I communicated to him, “No, no, don’t come to me, turn yourself in that direction [indicating the direction towards which to rotate himself] and go with those nice folks, they will take you where you’re going,” and he did. And he left and my severe exhaustion (which I had come to realize was his, and which was my first indicator that he needed redirection — I knew I could not have borne that exhaustion) lifted.
My dad had no belief in God, in an afterlife, in anything following death — I suspect he thought it would be oblivion. I think he initially left his body to escape the pain he was in, but he died as he did that, there was no going back, and he needed to complete the journey.
So I think it’s important whether we believe that some part of us survives the death of our bodies. We need to leave once we’re dead. Too many souls of people who don’t realize they’re dead, or who don’t want to be dead (he’s not the first I’ve encountered), clutter the spiritual atmosphere on earth, and then we all have trouble hearing our guidance — hearing anything, for that matter, from beyond our world and space-time environment. Ethereal pollution, maybe we could call it. When our time on stage is up, we really do need to leave, go back stage and take off our costume and make-up, and go to that cast party that’s being held elsewhere, so that those of us still performing can hear. A lack of belief (which overlaps with atheism) does have a downside to people other than the disbeliever, I think.
What I would submit as an idea is that people keep in mind the possibility that their consciousness will survive their death — just keep it in the back of the mind as a possibility. So when you go, you have a set of directions in your back pocket, something already programmed into your GPS, so to speak, and you can really Go.
I wonder if Jesus was such a lighthouse, and if that role of his became confused with other narratives about his mission.
It has struck me that the apparently fairly common symptom of mental illness that the person believes they are Jesus can be resolved once we see that being a lighthouse is not a role unique to one person; that would not make us Jesus, it would just make Jesus one of many (at least in that respect), a “many” that may include us (or not — I’ve met people who they were doing one thing spiritually, when it was pretty clear to me they were doing something else). And it wouldn’t mean we share all of the attributes of other people, including Jesus, who are lighthouses.
I know plenty of people who “get ghosts,” and in many circles what I’ve just written would not raise any eyebrows. I am also aware that to people who don’t “get ghosts,” what I wrote may seem a little far-fetched, unbelievable, the product of a “fevered” (or worse) mind. I don’t think it is, and I put this post up in the hopes that it will help people who are rationalists and unbelievers have a rational, if still as yet unbelievable, road map whose directions they can follow at some future time, if they should find themselves in need of one.
I told this story to Gita some weeks ago, and she told me that providing this kind of redirection to a confused soul is some kind of recognized good deed in some belief systems. That’s where I live, I guess, somewhere between the rationalist world around me, in which I am an outlier in these respects, and religious belief systems elsewhere, in which I would fit right in about this but probably not about plenty of other things.