I don't believe in an afterlife but I do think I've seen heaven and hell.
We hear much talk about near-death xperiences, with many reporting a glimpse of heaven (We hear less often that some people see hell). At least when it comes to survivors of cardiac arrest, there's a scientific explanation for these experiences. In a study by Zalika Klemenc-Ketis and colleagues (which I first learned about in a PT post by Douglas Fields) gender, age, religious belief, and education made no difference in which patients emerged from cardiac arrest reporting an out-of- body experience. The common thread: a rise in carbon dioxide levels in their blood above 5.7 kPa. If doctors managed blood carbon dioxide levels better, it appears the experience could go away.
Would that be desirable? What do you think?
Every religion forces us to think about death. In a Christian church, people pray to an image of a man on a cross. In a Jewish service, we say Kaddish and stand with the mourners in the room. Once, when death was part of everyday life, those practices helped to console us. But now, for much of our lives, they are reminders of death, which it has become possible to forget. Women now rarely die in childbirth and we don't slaughter our own farm animals. We in the United States rarely see plagues take entire families in a night. The ordinary experience of death if you're reasonably well off might be to "put down" a pet, say goodbye to a grandparent in a hopsital room, and hear about a classmate who died in a drug or traffic accident. Then the cancer victims come. You lose a parent and it's sad. The deaths are spread out and strange.
But it's not clear that with less death in our daily lives we are happier or--a different question--more likely to experience joy. The ancient Greek Stoics taught that contemplating your own death and the death of your loved ones was a source of joy. It sounds weird to me, too, but it's also happenned to me. Joy came to me in the face of death on three occasions.
I have no reason to think my carbon dioxide levels were off: I think I "woke up," in the spiritual sense, though I didn't come to believe in God.
The most recent experience was when I stumbled on some pebbles while on a hike, fell down a hill and landed with a large boulder rolled over my head. I saw the boulder coming and I also saw the horrified looks on the faces of the people who stood above me on the path at the top of the hill. I thought, "So now it's happening. I'm going to die." I was suffused with joy and expectation.
Perhaps I felt loved because the faces showed such horror, but they were not people I knew well. I know I thought something good would come next. It came: The boulder's sharp edge landed on my throat, scraping it. I survived.
Does this make me suicidal? Does it mean that deep down I believe in an after-life? I'd say No to both. And none of that explains why I was so happy the rest of the week. I had no desire to die. I was thrilled that I had survived. My life had become newly valuable to me.
The second time was when I learned that my mother had a nearly always fatal cancer. After hours at the hospital, where my father and mother had just been walked through the news by nervous doctors, we left happily. It was a pleasant evening. My mother had always loved the small white Christmas lights strung on the bare trees in New York City, and I remember her smile when I pointed them out. We went to Carnegie Deli and shared two huge pastrami sandwiches. We made jokes and laughed.
It was perhaps the happiest time of my life. I can only compare it to moments when I felt in love--expansive, included in the web of life, grateful and expectant of good to come.
One of my most joyous afternoons came on the day I guessed my longtime lover would soon die. He had been depressed for years and unable to leave the house for the last year. He had told me he wouldn't let me in if I tried to visit him, but that day I went anyway--it took about an hour on the subway--and he didn't answer the phone when the doorman called. I left a note.
I then went midtown and spent $300 on a pair of bright green suede sandals, though I'm usually frugal. (When I told this story to a friend, she said, "Arche?""Of course!"). It was a beautiful early summer day and I felt suffused with joy. That night I finally got him on the phone and he said, weakly, "You came out here?""Yes. Why didn't you let me in?""I was sleeping.""You're going to die if you go on like this," I said. "I know.""You can't do that.""I'm sorry. Goodbye," he said, and hung up. I called his psychiatrist immediately but it didn't help. By the end of the week, he was dead.
I suppose my happiness and shopping spree could have been sparked by relief. He had been sick a long time. However, I did not feel relieved as days went by and he was still dead. I became terrified that I would die and that the people I loved would die if they were out of my sight. It was hellish. There is no better word. I felt in between life and death and wanted to die, though I feared death. It is clear I lost my balance, which I'll have to call my "spiritual balance."
My best understanding now is that on the day I visited him I felt the preciousness of life. I also probably believed that he would make it. I think I believed my mother would make it too, although she hadn't a chance.
Those illusions helped. More importantly, for stretches of time I didn't take the people I loved, or life, for granted. If you live more joyously believing in an after-life, listen to no one who says you are wrong. But I don't think it's necessary for skeptics to convert. Meditation is also one way to see heaven, without falling down a hill.
I believe I've seen heaven and hell without any medical emergency and that I'm the better for it.