The more time I spend as a hospice volunteer, the more I learn to understand how the soul of a human being has a completely separate life from the body. The body seems to have a life on its own, a life separate from the human psyche. It becomes more and more clear to me that it is not just the body which characterize who we are but the strange essence of our soul which lives in us the short time we walk upon this earth. I have sat and watched how dying people quietly slips away. Sometimes it takes a long time and they look as if they are in a middle place between dream and reality, between this reality and the next. As the body starts go down, stops working there is a strange presence emerging from the soul and the mind of the dying.
The gazing eyes and the color of their skin may reveal that they are on their last journey, but there is still important stuff going on in their minds. A woman I sat with for several month while she was in comatose, clearly had a very active dream life. I sat and watched her face and eyes and knew that there was stories and pictures going through her head as she lay there unable to communicate any of it. If you have ever had a dog or a cat you know what I mean about watching them having big dreams. Unconsciously the dog is chasing rabbits in their sleep and the whole body twitches. So too it is with human beings. We may not be chasing rabbits, but the body language is the same. Small jolts of energy goes through the body when we dream and the eyes flickers in the sleep.
In a way, a dying person goes in two directions as Marie Louise Von Franz writes about in her book : On Dreams and Death. (Shambala publications 1986) She mention several examples from patients who has been clinically dead and then brought back to life. In other words, the body died but the spirit was other places. The theme among such patients seems to repeat itself and it is the notion that the human psyche leaves the body to continue life somewhere else. The dream is from a patient who told about her dying experience.
I floated right up into this pure crystal clear light, and illuminating white light. It was beautiful and so bright, so radiant….It’s not any kind of light you can describe on earth. I didn’t actually see a person in this light, and yet it has a special identity. It definitely does. It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love.
My experience as a hospice volunteer has left me with a clear understanding that the dying patient is on an inward journey which is completely unrelated to the functions of the body which is slowly preparing to shut down and then to decompose. As the body shuts down however, the mind, or call it “Soul” continues in an interesting almost diametrical opposite direction. In Scandinavia we have an old tradition of opening a window as soon as the body is declared dead. It is also the custom to immediately light candles to honor the sacred moment. By opening the window, the spirit can fly out and be free. It is of course somewhat childish and naive, but on the other hand it is an important symbolic statement which underlines the understanding that the soul of the deceased now goes somewhere else. If you are a religious person it is comforting to know that the soul is now moving toward “The light of God”. If you are an atheist, at least you may agree that the essence which made up the personality of that person is no longer here, and that the body now is going back to the earth to join in the recycling of all matter. The point of my view is that in the moment of death we “Split” and Psyche and Matter goes each their way and in different directions. The body goes back to the earth and the spirit into a place which to us essentially is the great unknown.
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