THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
"The Light At the End of the Tunnel"
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
(Preached May 18, 1997, at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu.)What happens after you die?
The Zen Master was once asked this question by a very intense young American student. The Zen Master looked puzzled for a moment, cocked his head to one side, screwed up his face and said, "You begin to stink."
The Zen Master's answer emphasizes an easily forgotten, very important point: there is precious little information on the subject available to us. The experience from the dead person's point of view is not available to the rest of us; and our experience is very different from that of the deceased.
It is not my intention to make light of death and dying this morning. Every one of you here is going to experience it for yourself at some point in the not that distant future. Some of you know that very well. Some of you even accept it. But, for each of us, it is in one sense an unthinkable thought. To imagine the imaginer non-existent is a virtually impossible mental exercise.
There is a Zen koan that is related to this. The Zen Master asks, "Show me your face before you were born." For, the nearest experience we have to the experience of non-existence is the experience of our own earliest memory. There was a time when we were not, and then we were. For us, the whole universe came into existence, complete with its alleged history intact, in that moment. When we die, will it just as completely cease to be ?
And you will die ! Even in our culture, where death and dying is kept a secret from all but a few shamanic initiates, somewhere in the recesses of our forgetery we know that we will die. Each of you here has experienced death: a squashed bug, an animal so recently wild, a pet, or a human loved one. Ever since life discovered sexual reproduction, abandoning the infinite dividing of cells like amoeba, death has been an intimate part of life.
The body, we know, dies. Ceases to be, and--as the Zen Master says--begins to stink. But, unable to imagine the non-existence of the imaginer, and aware of the mysterious relationship of constantly changing consciousness to equally, but differently, constantly changing body; we have invented a diversity of conceptual models to explain that experience and that mystery to ourselves.
Invented ? Yes, invented. For, remember, our only experience is the same as the Zen Master's: You begin to stink, and the face before you were born.
The standard western cultural version is St. Peter at the Golden Gates. Most people assume that this is the Biblical Christian one. That standard version has it that, when you die, you immediately appear before St. Peter. He either ushers you into Heaven or you start to lose altitude and end up in Hell. Surprise! And it all depends upon what your score is at the time you die.
What goes to heaven or hell ? Your immortal soul. It has a sort of shadow or a spiritual body, a form without substance.
The Biblical version is actually a little different than that. In fact, there are THREE of them in the New Testament.
One version has it that everybody remains dead until the Resurrection. Then, those who "died in Christ" are resurrected in a new body. There is ego or self-awareness continuity, and those all go to be with Jesus and to be with God. Those OTHERS are not resurrected. They just stay dead. A kind of punishment by withholding the reward.
Later in the New Testament--after Christians begin to be badly persecuted--it was apparently decided that this did not contain enough justice and everlasting punishment for those OTHERS. Another place was invented, and emphasized.
Both of these versions are frankly responsive to something that did NOT happen. The original version--the version that Jesus taught in his own teachings--is very different from that. The event that DIDN'T happen and that caused the evolution of other Christian understandings of what happens after death--that special event that DIDN'T occur was the Second Coming of Jesus.
Jesus clearly believed and expected that his suffering and crucifixion would inaugurate the end of the world--a whole new ball game. The word he used for it, translated as "Heaven" or "the Kingdom of Heaven," was , "The Life of the New Age." It was the Kingdom of God come in all its fullness. The same Kingdom of God He spoke of us as "in your midst." In your midst now as a seed, and soon to burst forth in all its fullness. He actually said that some people then alive would never taste death.
When that didn't happen, and the last person who had been then alive died off, there was a major crisis within Christianity. Those ideas having to do with what happens after death culminated in the concept of two realms: one, a testing ground to determine where you would go in the next, and the other, a set of alternative places to go; i.e., heaven and hell.
Afterlife, and the questions and issues of afterlife, began as a way of dealing with the human sense of justice. Clearly, those EVIL people don't get punished in this life, nor the good people rewarded. If justice exists, an afterlife is demanded.
There is another point of view that I find, sometimes to my surprise, existing rather widely among us. That is the concept of reincarnation, the transmigration of souls. It is another way of dealing with the same problem of OUR need for a sense of justice. It's a little less punitive. The punishment is that you have to keep DOING it until you get it RIGHT.
The reincarnationists see this life as a testing time. Interestingly enough, seen generally as negative, a place with more evil than good. You are thereby motivated to work NOT to have to come back. If you happen to LIKE this life, then you presumably would avoid the work and arrange--as I have--to be just sinful enough to GET to come back.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was the first to publish some of the interesting anecdotal research that has been done on the experience of "near death," The so-called near death experience happens when someone has, either on the operating table or in some emergency or accident, come at least right up to the edges of what is referred to as "clinical death." They have then, for all practical purposes, died; and have come back to tell us what it was like. That material is especially interesting in that it contains none of the judgmental, justice-oriented focus.
Why?
I think it is because it comes out of the intimate experience of dying. It is not about death. It is about dying. Theories and doctrines about afterlife are theories and doctrines of the LIVING, designed to deal with the problems of the living. When you are dying and that has your undivided attention, you are not worrying about those people who seem to have had all the fun and gotten away with it.
It IS interesting to notice that the concern with justice ASSUMES that sin and evil are more fun than virtue and goodness.
The Kubler-Ross Near Death visions emphasize an Accepting One, a person or persons awaiting you. There is frequently a bright light out of which they come. A frequent theme is CHOOSING to return. But, there is no Heaven. No Hell. No judgment. No reward or punishment. But, SOMEONE is there.
Because the issue of dying is not justice, but LONELINESS.
Many children are terrified of death. One of the things that comes out of talking with them about that terror of death is that having seen the coffin, seen it occupied, and then buried, they are terrified. Not of ceasing to exist, but of being THAT ALONE.
What does one make of the Near Death Visions?
One of the things we know about the human mind is that given pieces of data input, your mind will go to considerable lengths to try to make sense of that data.
One version of the understanding of dreams is that dreams are the consequence of relatively random flashes and firings of synapses in sections of your brain that are relaxing and sloughing off the focused concern with the cares of the day. A dream is your mind's attempt to take those random firings and force them into making some kind of sense. They, of course, always make YOUR kind of sense, and so still reveal some things about the way you see and sense life. But we know that our minds are made like that. They are made as if one of their primary interests was CREATING meaning out of the sensory input that life gives us.
Is the vision of company, of SOMEONE there, a vision created by the mind in its last act of self defense, to compensate for the terror of that final loneliness?
Or is that vision the mind's dream-myth version of the relief at finding that the feared loneliness is not what it was feared to be?
Or, is it a vision of actual after death reality?
But what is clear is that there is a great difference between death and dying. Death has to do with being found right; with justice. Dying has to do with being FOUND; with loneliness.
There is one other aspect of the near death experience that merits comment. The near death researchers are doctor types. They have no knowledge of the rich heritage of meditation and mystical experience, including the drug-induced mystical experience. A common feature of all of these is the tunnel, the bright light, and the experience of the death of the ego. The imagery is similar to the point of being identical. And, in all of these, there is no judgement, no heaven or hell, and there is often a "spirit guide."
The crucial question in these experiences, so similar to the Kubler-Ross near death experiences, is: Who are you ?
I want to suggest that there is a crucial question about death and dying that determines what answers are satisfying to you, what answers are persuasive to you, what answers are believed, however tentatively. The crucial question is WHO AND WHAT AM I?
Those with a clear personal sense of who and what they are--not a belief, not a piece of someone else's ideology, but a living, experienced faith--are usually uninterested in death, their own, at least. And they are NOT afraid of dying.
I suspect that is one reason why the work using psychedelic drugs with terminal cancer patients has been so successful. One of the things that typically happens with a drug experience when it's done in a supportive environment with care and concern and some intelligence, (rather than done as a recreational blowing of one's mind) is that one indeed experiences death, the death of the ego, the death of that little voice talking to yourself on the inside of your head. And the discovery that it's not you.
The work with LSD with terminal cancer patients, using those experiences to deal with the terror and anxiety at suffering and death, has been very exciting.
One other thing about the Kubler-Ross materials. That research does suggest that death takes a while. It is not something that happens Like That ! It is quite possible that the old Jewish tradition of not leaving the dead alone may have some valid, humane justification.
But WHO AND WHAT AM I?
There is first of all the biocomputer image. I am a body. My self-consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon of a series of standing waves of synapse firings, part chemical, part electrical, but ultimately a consequence of the multi-layered complexity of the brain. And, incidentally, the evidence here is pretty good. It is not conclusive; but I'm not sure how one would prove this anyway.
If I am that and that only, then when that standing wave dies away, I am no more. When there is no more sensory input to process, when this particular organized pattern of molecules loses its coherence; I cease to exist as surely as the program is erased when the cord is pulled on a computer. Unless God or Somebody has a tape of that program stored somehow, somewhere, waiting to re-program a new piece of hardware, I have had it. lF, that is, I am merely the body's software, its program.
There is also that Platonic image, that notion that there is a realm of perfect, ideal knowledge and existence. In this view, I am a soul. A point of view. A locus of pure consciousness only APPARENTLY tied to this particular configuration of tender flesh. There is a realm accessible to me more real than this space-time mass-energy continuum. That more real realm is accessible to me when I find the key to it. Whether I find it, or the length of time I have to wait to get there, is determined by what I do here.
Note that both of these and their variations assume that I am that talking-to-myself voice on the inside of my head, that ego, that self, that persona, that witness, mortal or immortal, that homunculus, that little man running the machine inside my head. They both take ALONENESS for ultimate.
But there is a third view. It is wholly blasphemous, dismissed as mystical delusion, both irreligious and unscientific. But it has its reporters too, like the Kubler-Ross Near Death reporters. It takes the experience of community, of communion, as more ultimate than the experience of loneliness. It is ruthless in its lack of sympathy for our clinging ego, yet affirms the meaning and significance of ego, of individuality, as powerfully as either of the others do. This view says that the boundaries of "I" are not the program and the hardware.
I have taken, but am not only this point of view. I am not contained by skin nor protoplasm. I AM this whole process. The WHOLE process. From the probability waves of quantum chromodynamics at the minutest level of the space-time mass-energy continuum to the whole wheeling scatter of galaxies. I am not merely star stuff. I am everything star stuff is doing. And, right now, one of the incredibly important things I'm doing is being Mike Young. Later I'll do something else. I never get bored. Death and dying is merely a way of keeping my attention on what I'm up to in any particular incarnation.
But the question "What happens after death?" is ultimately a question of "Who am I?" Your answer to the questions of death and dying are hidden in your answer to that question.
But it is interesting. As I played with all of the various possibilities, and tried to find a "So what difference does it make?" answer to it somewhere; the questions of death, continually, ultimately come down to questions of life.
If you are convinced that you are merely the program, the chance consequence of the complexity eggs are capable of, then a strictly utilitarian attitude is called for. Individuality is unique, precious, and fleeting. Treat one another and the life support system with all the wisdom and gentleness you can muster. Make the most of it and the best of it. you shall not pass this way again.
If you are convinced that you are an immortal soul in a place of testing to determine where you're going next, then a strictly utilitarian attitude is called for. You'd better use THIS chance to do it the best way you can find. Individuality is unique, precious, and fleeting. Treat one another and the life support system with all the wisdom and gentleness you can muster. Make the most of it and the best of it. SOMEONE is watching.
And if you think you're IT, one of the infinite but infinitely special incarnations of the Most High, then a strictly utilitarian attitude is called for. This particular adventure of individuation is unique, precious, and fleeting. Treat one another and the life support system with all the wisdom and gentleness you can muster. After all, THEY TOO ARE YOU. Make the most of it and the best of it. Play the WHOLE adventure.
Those who in fear of death treat one another with ugliness do not yet know who they are.
What happens after death?
You find out which theory was correct.
But by then it's too late to do anything about it. So a strictly utilitarian attitude is called for. This life is unique, precious, and fleeting. Treat one another and the life support system with all the wisdom and gentleness you can muster. Make the most of it and the best of it. By the time you find out for sure WHO YOU ARE, you'll be on to something else anyway.
Let death be only that which keeps your attention on WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW .
As Edna St. Vincent Millay said, "I know that I must die. And this I will do for death, I will die. But no more. I am not in his employment."
Why Must I Die ?
Why must I die ?
My own death !
Not someone else's.
That is grief, loss, abandonment.
The leave taking of the other
Without having asked permission to go;
Without having finished the thousand things
Which forever must be left uncompleted,
And which cannot finally be finished
Without that unique other.
No. My own death !
My leave taking.
Never to know how the drama ends.
Myself abandoned by all the players.
The ultimate abandonment.
Did my children grow strong and wise
Into a joyous love affair with life ?
Did the cause I gave my strength to
Thrive and flower ?
Did the apricot tree bear fruit next year ?
Did we learn to use our handle on the infinite
And the infinitesimal to destroy only,
Or also to create ?
And then there are the "if onlys".
If only I had not died . . .
I would have finally gotten the garden done.
My book written.
Time to fly the plane with my son.
My self-centered shyness overcome.
My black belt in Aikido.
And on, and on.
And finally I begin to know why I must die,
And why I must know that I must die.
For, though I will miss so many endings,
Without my certain ending
There would be no beginnings.
--Mike Young