In his 20s, Helder accidentally received an overdose of pain meds, died, and experienced life without his body, so he knew what to look forward to. Helder lived a fearless life. He said, “The many years we spent caring for the dying taught us that death is a life event and is not the end of consciousness. At death, the conscious, True Self, with all memories, now healed, remains, and still, one with Her.”

The spiritual concept of ‘Self/self’ as the complete oneness of all things, is embedded deep in the ‘Perrineal Wisdom Tradition’ and being the contribution of the Indus River civilization, is around 7000 years old. It teaches that the Creator Spirit is the original and ultimate Self, and all She created is that same self. So…the unity of all things is not only propositional but the structure of Reality. This is why Helder could say with a straight face, as we also should say, “I and the Father are one.”

And, at this point in his life, he pointed out, “I have nothing left to lose and nothing left to gain. I do not need to be convinced and have no interest in conversions. I am afraid on behalf of no one. ‘Death is the mother of all fears,’ some say. Overcoming his fear of death, fear slunk away.

• • •

“Do not disdain your body. For the soul is just as safe in its body as in the kingdom of heaven…though not so certain. It is just as daring…but not so strong; just as powerful, but not so constant; just as loving, but not so joyful; just as gentle, but not so rich; just as holy, but not yet so sinless; just as content, but not so complete.”

—Mechthild of Magdeburg

Unexpected Death.

Diagnosed with Spinal Meningitis and admitted to the hospital with crippling pain like I had never experienced in my young life, they wanted to draw some spinal fluid during the treatment, and it was necessary to withdraw from pain meds for 12 hours before the spinal tap. I was in a very weakened state of pain when the time arrived for the procedure. Immediately after the procedure, a nurse injected me with a pain med and told me to lie still. It may have resulted from the 12 hours with no relief that the med had the effect on me it did.

My first recollection afterward was, “I don’t remember ever being asleep like this. I don’t think that I like it. I am going to wake up.”

(Of course, that is a little odd, isn’t it? I mean, I never remember thinking about anything before while sleeping. Thinking conscious thoughts is for being awake.)

I expected that, having awakened, I would just sit up as though I had just been awake with my eyes closed. But nothing happened. I just laid there. So…I ran a little inventory. “OK, toes, wiggle,” nothing. “Fingers, move.” Again, nothing. Breathing…Heartbeat? Nope. I then realized I must be dead. I didn’t feel shocked or panicked, only a bit puzzled. Like…So what should I be doing about this?”

Next, I felt myself draining from my body, between my shoulder blades, as it could feel like a sink of water trickling down the drain. Before long, I was…standing at my bedside, looking down at my body. Now, this was a curiosity. No longer puzzled, I knew what I had just experienced. “So…this is what it feels like.”

Fascination set in, and I began taking stock, paying close attention, and running an inventory of my circumstances. I first noticed that I was no longer in pain, a huge relief. The second was that I was exhausted, no, more like weary, which I attributed to my spending the last ten days racked with pain.

Walking around the room a little, I felt like I had fingers and toes, unlike lying in bed.

• • •

Looking back on this, I have wondered if my experience that people, post-amputation, describe when they feel like the severed limb is still there when it is not. Or the patient who moves to scratch the itch on their ankle, long gone. I seemed to have a memory of an entire body, or was I experiencing a resurrection body?” It had never occurred to me to question that my thoughts differed from what I knew was me. The functions of my brain dictated my behaviors. But, wow…here I was, totally separate from my body, lying there on its back, looking up at the ceiling with this blank stare, and me standing next to it, feeling and thinking with all my memory and reasoning skills intact! I realized then that I was not my body, and the clutter that is my thought life was not all there was to me. My self was quite me apart from the dictates of my biology.

(Father Richard teaches that the mind and our thoughts are the sources of the separate self. He often says, “The false self is who you think you are. Your thinking does not make it true. Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2013), 36.

Now, looking back on 90% of my life, instead of looking forward to 90%, I affirm the teachings of the perennial wisdom tradition, reaching back over 4500 years, that I am not my thoughts (contrary to the enlightenment statement of Descartes). I am created with a TRUE self, created in the Spirit’s image that She has a relationship with, and I have a FALSE self, un-created, which She does not know since it exists primarily in my mind. I experienced the activity of my TRUE self without imposing the filters of my false self.)

• • •

Turning my attention to my body, I did a more careful examination. I held my hands in front of me and, looking down at them, saw…the grey tiles of the hospital room floor. No hands and feet, and I noticed I did not feel the coolness of the floor as I ought to have since I had no shoes on. Bending over to get a good look at my face, close up, walking around the hospital bed to get a good look from all angles, still no anxiety. That done, I began to notice and explore my immediate surroundings. My interest might have been keener, except that I was so…weary and needed rest. Giving in to the need, I found that there was rest available. I relaxed into a warm, slowly moving, comforting, and lovely current.

(I was curious that I could be weary without the burden of a body. I suspect it is the natural state for our Spirit to be joined to a body of flesh. To be separated like I was experiencing is an abnormal state of being.)

• • •

I aroused my first feeling of anxiety since this adventure began with the thought, “I am alone,” and “This can’t be right. There ought to be someone here with me, an old friend, some familiar face, a guide, or an Angel, maybe even”.

(Like every other being in all the Spirit’s Good creations in the right relationship with Her, Human Beings seek union with the Spirit in all things and with all other creatures, animate and inanimate.)

I accepted I was resting in a current that had carried me some distance from my body. I could see my body, but now through a round window, like looking out the end of a long tunnel or perhaps a ship’s portal.

Now, wanting to see more of the room where I had been, I raised up and could see more of the floor. Leaning left, I could see more of the room and my body by bending to the right, and so on. And, the thought of being alone nagged at me again, “This just can’t be right. There must be some mix-up”. Convinced now that something was out of order, and while it was very tempting to continue resting in the lovely stream, I determined to return to my body lying on the bed. The restful current that was so peace-filled now was no longer entirely benevolent.

Easier said… in my weakened state of being, the prospect of swimming back upstream against the strength of this seemingly irresistible current was daunting.

• • •

I am not sure exactly what it was, an act of might or spiritual authority that I exerted against the flow, but whatever it was came from deep inside me. Slowly at first, but gathering strength and confidence as I moved, I resisted the comfortable flow. I progressed against it until I was clearly closing the distance between myself and the round portal. While I did not know how I would accomplish the feat, I had only one thought in mind: returning to the body that I had slipped out of.

By the time I crossed the liminal space of the portal, I seemed to travel with some velocity; My feet never even touched the floor of the room. My eyes flew open, and my Mother, who was just now coming into the room, said, “You shouldn’t be sitting up! The doctor said you were to lie perfectly still.”

(Note to myself: There is no way I will lie down on that bed!)

• • •

The first and most obvious benefit of this experience is that I no longer fear death. Death is to me now, life, like I never had before experienced, and yet, so natural and so comfortable. My consciousness never skipped a beat when my biology ceased functioning, and I experienced no deep dark. As Thich Nhat Hanh prolific author, poet, teacher, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh was exiled from Vietnam after opposing the war in the 1960s and became a leading voice in a movement he called ‘engaged Buddhism,’ the application of Buddhist principles to political and social reform. Traveling widely on speaking tours in the United States and Europe (he was fluent in English and French), Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced tik nyaht Hahn) was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism, urging the embrace of mindfulness, which his website describes as ‘the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment.’ Dr. King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, but the prize was not awarded to anyone that year. ‘I do not personally know of anyone more worthy than this gentle monk from Vietnam,’ Dr. King wrote to the Nobel Institute in Norway. ‘His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.’ once said, death is only where the river takes a little bend.

You might think that in my many years as a Hospice Chaplain, I should have shared my experience often with the dying. I have shared my story with the dying and their remainders, grieving for them only twice. I have shared my experience only with those who, in my experience, could receive it and benefit from it.

Over the years, I have embraced the wisdom of answering only the questions someone is asking, not the ones I believe they should have. Very few ask questions about suffering and death.

Second, I understood that the biology that is my brain is not the manager or origin of my thoughts, reason, and memory. That responsibility belongs to the part of me created in the image of God, my true self. I embrace the age-old understanding.

This differentiation is vital to my perception of Reality. My true self can and does, out of necessity, regularly address and confront my false self with Reality as I understand it. This knowledge allows me to separate from my false self, critically examine my thoughts and deeds, and critique my self.

St Francis prayed, “Who are you, God, and who am I?” He understood that to know God, he must first know himself. Knowing my false self intimately, even if I cannot always discern the difference between the stories it has made up out of a need for self-preservation and reality, provides me the opportunity to enter the silence that is the Holy with open hands and an open, honest, and reflective self.”

“To the follower of the yoga of action, The body and the mind, the sense-organs and the intellect are instruments only: He knows himself [to be] other than the instrument [body only], and thus his heart grows pure.”

—Krishna, Bhagavad-Gita