A New View of Death

The Traditional View

The Egyptians depicted the soul as a bird with a human face free of the physical body. This traditional view of death is found in both the Egyptian and the Tibetan Books of the Dead, written thousands of years ago.

It is the same view as that presented to the public by the Theosophical Society for over one hundred years. The theosophical and traditional views both see death as an incident in an ever-changing life; there is real­ly no death, only changing states of consciousness.

At death the spiritual nature or soul is withdrawn from the transitory physical body taking with it the thought-feeling aspects of the personality. Consciousness will survive with full memory of the experiences of the life just finished. Consciousness freed from the limitations of the physical body and its senses, after a period of refocusing, moves away from the physical and enters a world of light and bliss where the soul works through all experiences of the life just past until only its essence, which is love and joy, remains.

The New View is a Vindication of the Old

Recent advances in medical technology have made it possible for patients declared clinically dead to be brought back to continue their earthly existence. Some remember what happened - the actor Peter Sellers who had a massive heart attack remembered following his body on the trolley to the operating room and in a disinterested way watching the doctor's resuscitation attempts. He said afterwards he would never again be afraid of dying. Those who have had a near-death experience usually do not mention anguish or pain; to the contrary they recall a strange, unfamiliar feeling of tranquility and peace.

Modern Investigators

Today there are many investigators in the field of near-death experi­ences but Dr Kubler-Ross, Dr Karlis Osis and Dr Kenneth Ring are proba­bly the best known.

Another investigator, Dr Raymond Moody, found the experiences described by thousands of patients to be very consistent and clearly described them in his book Life After Life.