Objective Analyses into ECE Subjectivity
4.2. a Semantics—Anthropomorphic and Geomorphic Reference in ECE Narrative
The semantic properties of recalled ECE narratives, like dreams,17 may be characterized by particular words: illogicality, incongruity, bizarreness and banality. Here are some initial exemplary vignettes:
‘then I became aware that Jesus, or perhaps an angel, was standing by the bed. He led me gently through the window and across the hospital lawn, which had been trans formed into a heavenly scene’.
16 Parnia S, Waller D, Yeates R, Fenwick P, Resuscitation 48: 149 156, 2001; Parnia S and
Fenwick P, Resuscitation 52: 5 11, 2002.
17
It requires little expertise in literary criticism to detect the incongruity and illogicality offered by this fragment18—of an individual being taken with the help of Jesus or of an angel through a glass window, likely to be double-glazed in a hospital ward, followed by a descent onto a hospital lawn now suddenly turned into a makeshift heaven. That, I suggest, is pure dream-world fantasy. Or another, involving this extraordinarily silly conversation (my emphases added):
a voice said, ‘Gill, you know who I am’, and I thought, ‘. . . this is God and He knows me by name’. Then the voice chuckled and said, ‘. . . there is someone here you do know’. It was her grandfather who died two years peviously. On this occasion, God seems not to have noticed that Gill recognized Him as well as her grandfather whom He then introduces to her. Despite the error, God seemed to be very amused with himself when introducing the older man.
This rather silly bizarre conversation continues:
‘Grandfather,’ I said, ‘I’m not staying here. Hamish [her husband] can’t cope, and I’ve left a pile of shirts to be ironed and he doesn’t know how to do them.19
In another account20from Papua, New Guinea, similar elements of bizarreness, illogicality and incongruity are clearly evident. A man enters one of the typical stilted dwelling-houses characterizing Melanesian society. On opening the front door, he is immediately confronted by a vast engineering plant where steel is being forged into the manufacture of motor cars and ships, although there is no water or dockyard in the geographical vicinity. Subsequently, he leaves the house by follow- ing a beam of light, and looking back, finds that the house has now been replaced by a forest and a path. He takes the pathway homewards and re-enters his body. That sequence is extremely bizarre and sequentially illogical—just as in dream-states.
Even more incredible is the meeting of an experient with his father:
dressed just like he used to be in grey trousers and a cardigan. He hadn’t changed a bit. We chatted quite naturally and he joked. . .21
Really? One wants to ask the author in providing this illustrative portrayal of the afterlife, whether of a ‘secular’ or ‘religiously conditioned’ provenance, why it is so uninteresting, but also, so resolutely anthropomorphic. There is nothing at all original here: only a picture boringly identical to life on earth, and an emphasis on the apparent humdrum celestial existence of its elderly citizenry.
18
Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 79.
19 Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 80 and 100 101. 20 Counts 1983, 120.
21
Grey 1985, 79.
Next, given all the varied accounts and narratives we should be impressed, too, by their banality and non-uniformity. Eternity, in its realized narrative recall, becomes a ‘place’ individualized by as many experients who are willing to testify, and, overlain by overwhelming anthropomorphic and geo-centred imagery. Here is another excerpt22 which collectively is illustrative of the thrust of my claim:
I found myself in front of a nice [prefabricated dwelling] . . . the front door was open and I could see my mother inside. I went up to the door and said: ‘I’ve brought you a present, Mum’. It was some lovely blue silk, enough to make a dress. She took the material and put it on the table and then got out a pair of scissors. I said: ‘Mum, what are you doing? You know you don’t know how to do dress making’. She said: ‘It’s alright, they’ve been teaching me since I got here’. . . ‘Can I come in?’ . . . It looked so nice and welcoming, but my mother said: ‘No, you can’t, it’s not your time to stay’. I said: ‘Please Mum, it’s so lovely here, I don’t want to go back’. But she was very firm and would not allow me to cross the threshold.
If a truly spiritual realm had been sampled, we might have expected that something radically new, unexpected, original—even revelatory, perhaps!— might have been opened up to us, invoking insights coincident with its supposed reality and other-worldly provenance. Despite all that has been confessed and widely published, no data have been provided capable of further expanding our current, darkly illumined perceptions of the afterlife. Neither does the eternity so depicted correspond to any construal based on the scriptural and eschatological formulations of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, despite the fact that within so many of these sylvan depictions figures allegedly purported to be, or actually to represent God, Jesus or, in terms of Indian (Hinduistic) experiences, Chaptagu- tra and his accomplices. The utter banality of the afterlife so described needs to be fully realized, and emphasized.
In support of the transcendental significance of ECE, it is invariably argued that the uniformity of reportings obtained from so many subjects provides firm evidence for their veridicality in portraying a ‘spiritual’ or ‘other-worldly supernatural’ domain to which these subjects were privy. If that assertion were true, then given the many hundreds of anecdotes pub- lished, we ought surely now to be able to construct an extraordinarily accurate description of the contours of heaven, the heavenly life, together with convincing images of what God or Jesus really look like. However, a closer, critical reading of the accounts offered reveals considerable variance between them: there is scant certainty that an identical place, or even the Godhead, have ever been exclusively sampled by any ECE subject. For
22
example, consider the following excerpts taken at random from prominent writers on this theme:
Of heaven:
a field of beautiful corn;
a garden filled with beautiful flowers: animals, pictures. . . colours of pink, yellow, blue etc;23
when you get to the other side there’s a river just like in the Bible just like a glass;24 I was in a most beautiful landscape, the flowers, the trees, the colours. . . I heard the most wonderful music and there was an organ playing as well: The surroundings were or appeared to be marble, in structure pillars. There seemed to be something in front of me that looked like a crypt:. . . but I can only describe it as heaven . . . of intense light, of intense activity, like a bustling city. . . nothing like floating on clouds or harps25
Of heavenly (otherworldly) persons:
Just as clear and plain the Lord came and stood and held his hands out for me. Well, he stood there and looked down at me and it was all bright then. . . He was tall with hands out and he had all white on, like he had a white robe on. . . It [the face] was more beautiful than anything you’ve ever seen. His face was beautiful, really and truly beautiful. His skin was almost like it was glowing and it was flawless, absolutely flawless;26
when I suddenly found myself in this gentle glowing light. . . below the three beings above me. . . dressed alike in high necked silver coloured tunics . . . with silver tur bans on their heads. And from a jewel in the centre of each forehead or turban three ‘laser’ beams emitted, meeting in the centre;
at end [of tunnel]. . . three old Chinese men [with] long white beards [wearing] white robes;27
I saw Jesus Christ. I was aware of him by the print of the nails in his hands and his feet and I remember I was very amused.28
It is evident that these excerpts most obviously resemble the contours of the happenings, memories, conceptualizations and ups-and-downs that pertain to everyday life on earth. A pervading sense of weirdness and bizarreness firmly engenders these accounts which typify dream-states and daytime reveries. In their cultural modalities—historic or contemporary, western
23
Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 75 77.
24
Moody 1977, 17 18.
25
Grey 1985, 50 51.
26 Sabom 1982, 49.
27 Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 81 82. 28
Grey 1985, 52.
or eastern, Christianized or not—the narrative panoramas evoked are firmly geomorphically and anthropomorphically this-worldly. We not only have reference to flowers, grass, trees, country lanes, lakes, breezes, but also committees, clerks, books, administrative errors in personal identification, trials by magnet, and commands sometimes given by God, Jesus or even parents or grandparents, ordering newly arrived experients to get back to earth, and so refusing outright their continued residency as spiritual citizens.
The overall impression given by these accounts of the so-called other- worldly realm, thinking specifically of western accounts, is entirely remi- niscent of impressions gained collectively through each experient’s person- al life from stained-glass windows and other forms of ecclesial iconography, the typical Sunday school illustrations of Jesus, films and media, the worlds of fine art and literature, other sources of more mediocre artwork, and, of course, the imagination. Indeed, the stories ‘brought back’ seem to be an amalgam of all varied metaphorical attempts by living people to express the inexpressible. Interestingly, since God is so rarely illustrated in facial or personal terms, we should take note that very few portrayals of him are offered in these narratives. On the other hand, it is noticeable how frequently grandparents figure in these accounts, and play a role—presumably reflecting the strong psycho-social bonds that exist between the aged and young in many extended families. That children very rarely appear in these reports seems not to have occasioned any dismay from our key writers: these two anomalies are therefore all the more remarkable.