To work alongside a person who is soon to make the transition we call death is one of the greatest privileges of spiritual counselling. Of course, on the purely factual level, no one knows exactly what lies beyond death - no traveller has returned with sufficient authenticity to provide us with the authoritative information. Even Jesus' appearances after the resurrection were distinctly fragmentary according to the tradition that has come down to us, and He left no account of what He had experienced during the period between His death and His resurrection. And yet, on an altogether deeper level, the soul spans the middle ground that includes both the present moment in time and the life of eternity. We begin to know the secret of survival as we come to a deeper knowledge of our own depths.
The privilege of acting as a companion, albeit discontinuously, to someone who is soon to die, is that one enters into the interim phase of life with him; as one encourages, so one is shown the light, and the advent of death loses its terror to become instead a welcoming light on the way to full development of the personality. A preoccupation with death is unhealthy inasmuch as it can easily degenerate into morbid curiosity and a way of evading the challenge of earthly existence. But when life on earth and death are seen as a continuous process, and the advent of death brings one more fully to life in the present moment, the preparation for death becomes the crowning glory of existence.
If death tells us anything at all it is this, that we should concentrate on the priorities of each passing moment, so that it may be spent as profitably and perfectly as possible. This perfection mirrors the nature of God, and its essential quality is love. Therefore, when we begin to contemplate the great things of life, we are brought down to the one aspect that alone does not recede from us into a mist of insubstantiality. This is our relationship with other people, who, no doubt in a different form, will be there to meet us when we have been released from the body of our humiliation. Quoting St John of the Cross once more, when the evening comes we shall be judged on love.
The end of our life is a summary of the way we have treated our fellow men. It shows us how we have played our part in the greater world it has been our good fortune to encounter and experience. As we have sown, so we shall reap, except for the modifying factor of the forgiveness always available to the one who repents and opens himself to the inflow of divine love. Without forgiveness there is no love, without love no growth, without growth no continuing life. This pattern of soul development, I am persuaded, illuminates the life beyond death no less than our brief span on earth.
Death is a moment of recession and concentration. All our possessions recede from us, so that our domain, which may once have encompassed considerable estates and costly possessions, now finds its focus in a single room, ultimately a bed where we play out the final act of a life's drama. The three events which cancel the social and intellectual inequalities that play an apparently unfair part in our mortal life are misfortune, illness and death. Misfortune cuts the individual down to the size of a struggling child bereft of conceit and worldly wisdom. Ill health reduces him to a helpless child dependent on the goodwill of his friends and attendants. Though the rich man may have much more extensive quarters in which to live, his poor state of health precludes any real enjoyment of them; his last abode is to be a bed, perhaps at home or else in a hospital. The third inevitable event of life, which is death, is the absolute leveller of us all. The dying are freed from the incubus of their possessions, including the reputation they once boasted and the company they enjoyed. All they now have is the inner reality of the soul; what they have made of this during their stay on earth is the theme of their future concern in the new life ahead of them, and the basis of the judgment they will have to bear.
Few people confront the imminence of their death directly even when they know they are seriously ill. The spark of hope burns fiercely in the breasts of all who are psychologically balanced. It is right to affirm life rather than to deny it. The importance of life on earth is that it affords the personality an unsurpassed opportunity for growth into maturity. This maturing process, comparable to the bland warmth of an early autumn day, always involves relationships with our fellows on the hard terrain of practical, demanding physical encounter. Our earthly work is governed by the time-space environment in which we live. Time and space provide the disciplines under which we grow into self-regulating units. Time is an especially harsh taskmaster, urging us on and not permitting a delay in the right actions we are called on to perform. We work on a knife-edge of transience, but the fruit of the action of a moment may determine the quality of the remainder of our life on earth. Space limits the scope of our activity so that our effective work is restricted to a small area with a limited number of people.
It is salutary to consider the short time allowed to Jesus for His ministry - little more than three years - and the limited area in which He taught and served - merely that of Palestine. But every moment of His time with mankind was spent in intensive self-giving activity, the most important element of which was constant prayer. He died when He had completed His task, and among the more poignant of His utterances from the Cross were the words 'It is accomplished' (John 19:30). The full impact of His life, which had apparently ended on a mute note of failure, was in all probability hidden from Him at that stage as well as from those who considered themselves His disciples. Today the complex media of communication can transcend the limitations of space, bringing news and teaching to the remotest communities, but in the end it is the personal touch that matters; on this psychic communion depends the willingness of the newcomer to embrace the new teaching and carry it out in his daily life.
There is a time to die. This shows itself when one's worldly task has attained completion and one's personality is approaching integration. A premature death, especially one undergone in violent circumstances, can thwart this slow unfolding and maturation of the personality by curtailing the work in store for it. While God's final purpose cannot be frustrated, an interference in its fruition can impede the soul's growth and the person's service to the world. Therefore we should see that life is usefully prolonged, remembering that the soul grows in adversity no less than in prosperity. But a time comes when it is called to another realm, and then we should collaborate with nature in easing its onward passage. This does not imply what is called euthanasia. It is not our business to terminate life directly no matter how meaningless it may appear. But we can ease the person's onward passage to death by masterly inactivity. The practice of non-interference in another person's life is not to be confused with disinterest; it is, on the contrary, the deepest concern, which shows itself in loving action aimed at making the last part of life as tolerable as possible without attempting to prolong it artificially. The razor's edge between euthanasia on the one hand and a cruel prolongation of suffering on the other is traversed not so much by the guidance of human expertise as by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit given to those who pray assiduously. In other words, the dilemma is resolved not by legal sanction but by the inspiration of God. Furthermore each case is unique, a law unto itself.
When a person is facing death, he often knows intuitively that it is approaching, but tries to shield his loved ones from this knowledge. They in turn would most likely do their best to reassure him that he was going to recover, endeavouring to conceal their knowledge of the probable outcome from him. Should a person be told that he is shortly to die? My own experience suggests that an emphatic statement to that effect is seldom justified, even if the person asks directly. It is wiser to stress the seriousness of the condition, urging him to put his affairs in order if he has not already done so - and indeed our affairs should always be in order, for no one knows with certainty how any illness will terminate. The course of even such a fearful disease as widespread cancer is not as invariably relentless as some would think; while the great majority of cases deteriorate and die rapidly, a few may remain stationary for a considerable time and a very few may remit, or disappear, completely and permanently.
The more experience one has in the various disciplines of life, the less dogmatic does one become. Some people who are deeply religious and appear to believe in an afterlife are visibly shocked when the subject of their imminent death is broached in earnest; they seem to have little contact with their soul despite their religious beliefs. The same is not infrequently true of those who are interested in occultism and spiritualism; they may appear to be very knowledgeable about the fate of the discarnate soul in general, but are strangely remote from their own in particular. A person who is in contact with his own depths - and such an individual has a calm, silent repose about him - often knows the truth of his situation long before his medical attendants have come to a final conclusion, and he moves into the darkness of the unknown realm illumined by the light from within. Therefore it is wisest not to broach the subject of death until the dying person has done so, when it should be discussed openly and without fear. He should be made aware of the happiness in store for him as he moves effortlessly towards a new life. The process of dying is as gently progressive as is one's assisted movement on an escalator; one stands still in confidence as one is carried in the direction one seeks. It is the soul that is in charge, since the body is failing fast and the reasoning mind is completely out of its depth as a new, non-rational experience is upon it. A calm faith issues from the soul as the person is guided on the unknown, yet well-frequented, path to greater life - unknown to the personal consciousness yet well trodden in the collective unconscious. All this, of course, applies especially to the person who has lived a useful life in caring relationship with those around him.
In this respect the spiritual preparation for death is something of a vastly different order from investigating matters psychical and 'occult'. These can, even if aspects of the teachings of various 'esoteric' schools are indeed accurate, serve to separate the person from his own centre and divert his attention from the living God into remote realms of speculation that have little to do with the urgent responsibilities of his present relationships with those around him. It is the deeper realities of the great mystical tradition of the world that should guide the thoughts of those who are moving towards the final point of earthly existence. The same realities should illumine the way of the counsellor in his great task of comfort and companionship for the dying.
As the soul breaks free from its physical moorings and lies more loosely in its relation to the body in which it worked faithfully for its own learning and for the resurrection of the body also, so it is able to effect psychic communion with the unseen world of eternity with a facility necessarily denied it during its time of densest incarnation. While we live creatively in the world, we function as a complete person with the properties of a person - body, mind, soul and spirit - acting in unity as a totality. Highly psychic people can be at a serious disadvantage if their working life is subject to constant disruption by the inflow of extraneous information of questionable practical use and great emotional tension. But when the time of bodily dissolution is at hand, the non-physical elements of the personality attain some degree of autonomy, so that they can function with an independence that would be impermissible during the time of active work in the world. It is not unusual for those close to death to get direct impressions of their friends and relatives now on the other side of life; the dying may be in direct communication with deceased colleagues. Numerous instances have been cited in which a dying person became apprised of the recent death of a friend through this type of communication; until then neither he nor members of his family had been aware of the demise of that person. The figure of a loved one may appear at the moment of death to take the person on his mysterious journey to the realms of the afterlife; sometimes this figure is a stranger, but its mission is the same. These apparitions are indeed hallucinations inasmuch as the object sensed has no physical reality and is a private experience. But their clarity and special relationship to the dying person together with the factual information they may impart suggest that they are not simply the product of a deranged mind.
All this is, of course, the preserve of psychical research, a subject that should be of at least some interest to anyone engaged in counselling, although some people respond more positively to its unusual manifestations than do others who may shun phenomena that lie outside the accepted canons of rational thinking. Be this as it may, the important point is that such phenomena, albeit of a private nature, should be treated with respect as possibly direct psychical communication between a dying person and members of his peer group who are now in the life beyond death. Our ignorance about these matters gives us no right to deride them or to dismiss them summarily as the psychopathology of a diseased brain. If we are open and humble we can learn much from what the dying are experiencing and attempting to tell us about the realms beyond death. This is part of the privilege of attending an alert, though dying, person.
As we are lifted beyond the mortal plane, so the vanities of our life are discarded, and we move in a realm of pure spirit where what we are as people comes across directly and without subterfuge. The same process of vigorous analysis confronts those who work with the dying; their insincerity and hypocrisy are mercilessly laid bare, as is the shallow learning of the person whose knowledge is acquired at second hand from books and lectures. Only those whose souls have been refined in the school of experience and whose wisdom has been gained in the vale of suffering can be useful counsellors to those on the way to a new life. In fact the same requirements are true of all counselling, but in the situation of death, their stark necessity is especially apparent. The counsellor should not impress on others his own views about survival of the personality so much as infuse a warm love and expectation by his presence. Likewise the use of Biblical texts is unhelpful until one can embody a text in one's own life. What is true to us flows from us to the person in need, because it comes from the heart and not merely the head. This statement should not be taken as a rejection of intellectual ways of attaining truth; it simply emphasises the need for private experience to confirm what we may believe on trust so as to make it credible to other people also. We give what we have experienced, and as we attend the final communications of those who are soon to die, so we are enlightened and comforted. The truth that all real communication is primarily psychic in quality is borne out by our relationship with dying friends no less than with those who seek our help because of an intractable personal problem. We do not supply the answer directly, but instead give the word that releases the power to think and act that was previously unavailable to the person in difficulty. It was unavailable because it was locked up in a psyche paralysed by fear and desolation.
The dying have to come to terms with their past life; those interesting cases of near-death experience in which a person has almost passed the point of no return from death but has been resuscitated just in time from a heart attack or an accident such as drowning or exposure to cold, tell of a panoramic playback of the past life of the individual with its salient features of crisis and choice. What the mind had stored over a period of many years is brought back to a completely changed consciousness in a matter of seconds. A similar raising of consciousness to cosmic proportions is a well-known concomitant of mystical experience. Sometimes the experience is one of blissful release that culminates in an encounter with a Christ-like figure of light who welcomes the newly-arrived person to a realm of fresh promise and understanding in the world of the life to come. Sometimes, however, the encounter may be quite horrifying. A great deal depends on the life the person had led before his precipitate encounter with death, from which he is bade to return to earthly life in order to finish work left behind. This work is in essence the perfection of his personality insofar as it may be achieved in the years of mortal life still granted to him.
Of course, a near-death experience is not exactly the same as the fate of the surviving aspects of the personality when death finally does occur. In a near-death experience the body is still in fact alive since the condition is reversible, whereas death, once it is established, is irreversible and final. Nevertheless, it is apparent that when a person hovers at an extremity of life, at the very point of transition to death, his spiritual state is what is claiming his complete attention. His moral balance-sheet is being surveyed, and its deficit may be of alarming magnitude. As we have noted previously, the prayer of a brave man making his spiritual journey to reality is that his unconscious may be made fully conscious, according to what he can bear. When we die this appears to happen whether or not we want it. Jesus tells us to use our worldly wealth to win friends for ourselves, so that when money is a thing of the past, we may be received into an eternal home. He also remarks that the worldly are more astute than the other-worldly in dealing with their own kind (Luke 16:8-9). This incidentally stresses the value of the things of this world in preparing us for the life beyond mortal death, when substance is consummated in spirit and our attitudes towards the sacredness of matter are now the measure of our spiritual stature in a realm where material objects cease to exist, but are now represented by a universal caring relationship. All mortal life is, in other words, a sacrament; every relationship is sacred, not only our human responsibilities but also our attitude to nature and inanimate objects. All have their place in God's creation and anything that is ill-treated will bring its moment of retribution on the one who abused it. There is clearly a scale of values involved here; Jesus reminds us that we are worth more than the birds of the air, but nevertheless they also are pan of God's providence, for He feeds them too (Matt. 6:26).
In near-death experiences that have followed suicide attempts, the person who has been rescued from premature death has been 'told' incontestably in the deepest level of his being that he had been breaking the rule of the game of life, and that there was indeed a purpose in continuing to live out his full span in this world. Our problems are indeed never removed by evading the fundamental issue of our own inadequacies; their solution requires the patient working-out of our difficulties in the light of honesty, faith and hard work. If we are foolish enough to believe that death brings to an end all our problems and cancels the just retribution in store for those who have acted wrongfully to their fellows, we shall soon be disabused of this misconception. The immediate state after death is as it is now except that we can no longer conceal our true disposition behind the beguiling mask of a dense physical body. Nor can we anchor our identity to our wealth, social position or intellectual eminence; all these belong to those whom we have left behind in this world. We have to go forward as naked as we were at the time of our birth with one great difference: we have now accompanying us a spiritual body composed of the thoughts, attitudes and desires brought with us from our span of life in this world. The finer our life has been, the more radiant is that spiritual body, and the more rapidly do we find ourselves greeted with affection by those whom once we knew in the flesh and who have preceded us in the life beyond death. They have come to welcome us to the place prepared for us by their solicitude, made possible by our own good actions, in the greater life beyond death. Jesus told His disciples, 'There are many dwelling-places in my Father's house; if it were not so I should have told you; for I am going there on purpose to prepare a place for you' (John 14:2). He goes on to promise that He will come again and receive them to Himself, so that where He is they may be also. This is the judgment: who will be there to receive us when we die? If our lives have been spent profitably in fostering love, we shall be received in love, and Christ will be available to us. If we have lived in spiritual squalor, abusing all those around us and separating ourselves from the springs of love in selfishness and gluttony, we shall be alone in darkness. This was the essential punishment that the man of wealth had to endure in the terrifying Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke: 16:19-31).
It does not need the added embellishment of fire to make it a hellish experience; the isolation is punishment enough. And furthermore, there is a gulf between those who are in isolation and those in heavenly fellowship. It cannot be traversed simply by good intentions. Only a complete reappraisal of the misspent life can effect a release, as is seen in the far happier Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). I feel myself that these two teachings should be taken together, otherwise the punitive aspect of divine judgment would thwart the love which is God's intimate nature. Justice is always tempered by mercy provided the evildoer confesses his sins and offers his renewed will as a surety for his future life of repentance and reparation. Love without justice interferes with the development of the human personality to spiritual proficiency, whereas justice without love would lead to the damnation of most of the human race. Fortunately in Christ we have One who has aligned Himself unequivocally with sinners, so that as soon as we confess our sins in His name, which is love, we are freed of an intolerable burden and can start to lead a new life in grace. That life will be hard, but its end is the redemption of all creatures from the law of death to the glory of eternal life in the company of the risen Christ.
With all this in the background, the one who is dying must be treated with great love. If he is a believer in God, the great metaphysical questions can be broached according to his physical and mental ability to participate in the discussion and his willingness to consider these matters at all. Some are eager to thrash out fundamental problems, while others are too ill or too apathetic to care very much about anything other than their immediate comfort. They should then be left in peace, while prayer goes on in the background of the counsellor's thoughts. This prayer is not so much for recovery as that the light of God's countenance may illuminate their darkness and shed its radiance on their perceptions during their final brief span on earth. Some dying people are acutely aware of the sinful, selfish life they used to lead; the kindness and tenderness shown to them by mere acquaintances may shame them into acknowledging the shallowness of their own previous emotional responses and the superficiality of their assessment of other people. 'Men judge by appearances but the Lord judges by the heart' (I Sam. 16:7). As the soul becomes more dominant in the failing body, so the moral sense becomes more acute in preparation by the greater judgment after death.
The counsellor can act as a very effective confessor provided he has a feeling for the ultimate questions of existence. The confessor does not judge; God alone can do this. His work is merely to give absolution and assure the penitent of God's forgiveness and unfailing love. When one speaks of God's love, one does not do it with the deliberation of a theologian. One pours it out to the person in need with that spontaneity that Jesus showed when He healed the sick, even in the austerity of the Temple on the Sabbath. To be able to pour out the love that is a presage of eternity on someone who is about to make the great transition that we call death is one of the counsellor's greatest joys. Death is then indeed swallowed up and victory won in the power of love, which alone can heal sin and bring the person into proper relationship with God and his fellow creatures. To be sure, it is a priest's function to give formal absolution, but in the world of everyday life we may confess our sins to one another, and pray for one another. The end is healing, as we read at the conclusion of St James' letter (5:16). So much counselling work is in fact informal confession with the added dimension of understanding, so that the cause of the trouble can be healed as well as its effect. When a person has come to the end of his mortal life, the cause necessarily recedes into the background but the effects must be faced and redeemed by the power of love.
The same is true of the important work of bereavement counselling, now a discipline in its own right. Bereavement is a little death - an old way of life has gone and a stark period of loneliness confronts the one left behind. Loneliness with its usual corollary of living alone brings to the surface of consciousness the various repressed emotions of anger, resentment, guilt and especially fear. This fear is that of a gradually descending isolation, so that one may become as forgotten an entity as is, in one's darkest moments of desolation, the loved one on the other side of life. This is, in fact, another example of the crisis in identity that we have already considered. Just as the person made redundant lashes out in bitterness at his employers who have summarily discarded him on a scrap-heap of futility and waste, so the bereaved one rails at God, or fate, or his own bad luck - however he sees it in his own metaphysical scheme - while at the same time he regresses to the common childhood state of infuriated impotence from which few of us mature completely. When we cannot effect a change in our miserable condition, we make it our business to upset as many other people as possible so that they may be aware of our trouble and somehow come to our aid.
The mourning ritual is a most important psychological release reaction, and it should not be curbed. It is usually exacerbated during anniversaries and other private dates of significance. Only when the pent-up emotion is released and spent can a new life of apparent emptiness be faced. Then at last the Holy Spirit can enter into the space left behind by the loved one and all the emotions his death released. Hope springs in the shriven soul, and a new life can begin. The counsellor's work is to receive the impact of this emotional release, to bear its pain, and to be the instrument of hope whereby the Holy Spirit can bring a broader dimension of caring into the life of the bereaved one.
But there is also a communion between the living and the dead. The deceased person not infrequently makes his presence felt, sometimes by a sudden shaft of intense intellectual awareness, sometimes by a vision, an odour or even a voice. The most convincing and inspiring assurance that the beloved is still in spiritual communion with his loved one is a sudden consciousness of the love of God that lightens the darkness of bereavement and brings the sufferer to an inexpressible awareness that the deceased one is there but in a new form. He is surrounded by a radiance of an infinitely finer quality than anything he showed previously, even if he was a deeply spiritual person.
It is this experience of spiritual exaltation that tells us that all is well and that communion is now available on a truly spiritual level. The counsellor would be well advised to treat all such experiences with deep reverence, emphasising their factual message that the departed one is nearer his beloved than ever he was while still in the flesh. But experiences of this type are a gift from God; they are not to be sought - let alone cultivated. And their end is to bring the bereaved partner fully down to earth again, so that the last part of his own life may be especially productive in works of charity and service. Just as the risen Christ showed Himself most splendidly in the form of a stranger who walked and talked to His disciples on the road to Emmaus, so the spirit of the loved one comes to challenge his bereaved partner in the form of anyone who comes for succour and counsel. The work of the counsellor is to make this transition from devotion to a particular person, now deceased, to concern for many people constantly in proximity to the bereaved one, effective and complete. Before this happens, the psyche has to be laid bare and the nuances of psychic communion with the unseen experienced and analysed with intellectual astuteness as well as deep reverence.
If the hour that gives us mortal life is also preparing us for the time of death, then the experience of death in its many forms leads us to prepare more earnestly and devoutly for the life that does not end. This is the life of eternity in which we are one with God and united in each other.