In another interesting approach to the analysis of cultural influences on ECE, Karl Becker26informs us about the origins of ‘Pure Land’ (Ching T’u School) Buddhism in China. The evolutionary history of Buddhism in China was moulded by a strong, pre-existing respect for the dead and even ancestor worship. This social ethos depended on belief in a soul which hovered around the body until disposed of, thence to haunt the house or go to some other paradisal locus. The fate of souls could be influenced by family prayers offered during the forty-nine days elapsing from death. Mourning rituals by the deceased’s immediate family were widely practised including fasting, praying, making penances and wearing sackcloth. The unitary sense of body and soul in the history of Chinese thought came into conflict with the concept of Buddhistic anatta, that of the illusoriness of material existence. Such concepts were sidelined in Ching T’u. Instead, use was made of little-used sutras which provided some legitimacy for pre-existing views concerning body, soul, death, cosmology and the afterlife. In this emergent system, heaven was portrayed as a bejewelled realm full of beautiful flowers and fountains attainable by all through faith and piety. Continuity of the soul took precedence over the Buddhist idea of continual rebirths in the achievement of nirvana. There also derived a hierarchical notion of heaven and hell, presided over by a type of chief minister, Yen-lo, analogous to and derivative of the Hindu God of Death, Yama(raj). Of the several Bodhisattvas (those about to achieve nirvana
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Becker K, J Near Death Stud 1: 154 171, 1981.
associated with these developments), Amida (first–second centuries) presided over the western Pure Land.
Becker27was at pains to trace the early origins of Ching T’u in China, by inspecting the accounts and experiences of its ‘patriarchs’ during the first five centuries of its development, but mainly from the fourth century onwards. By that time the bodhisattva Amida had come to be revered as a supernatural, deific figure through whom a pathway to salvation could be secured. The first of these Pure Land masters was Tao-an. In AD 385 when he died, it was recorded that ‘a strange priest appeared [to him] and pointed to the north- west where the clouds opened and a beautiful heaven became visible to his dying eyes’.
Tao-an’s pupil, Hai-yuan, encouraged the burgeoning devotion to Amida. He founded the White Lotus Society because it is in the lotus, at the middle of a clear lake, that people are finally reborn into a realm without craving or suffering. Hai-yuan is recorded to have had many visions of the Bodhisattva of Infinite Light, often associated with bouts of fever throughout his later years. A later disciple was Seng-chi, about whose dying moments the follow- ing account is recorded:
He was afflicted by a grave disease, and then he devoutly wanted the Western Cou ntry. . . he asked the monks to gather at night and recite for his sake. During the fifth watch, Chi handed the candle to his fellow students and requested them to go around with it among the monks. Then he lay down for a moment, and in his dream, he saw himself proceed through the void, still holding the candle, and he beheld the Buddha Amitabha who took him up and placed him on the palm of his hand: in this position he went through the whole universe in all directions. Suddenly he awoke and told everything about his dream to those who nursed him, who were grieved at this sign of approaching death and yet consoled at his vision. When he examined his own body, there were no longer any signs of disease and suffering whatsoever.
The following night, he suddenly sought for his sandals and stood up, his eyes looking into the void with anticipation, as if he was seeing something. A moment later he lay down again, with a joyful expression on his face. Then he said to those who stood at the side of the bed: ‘I must go’, and when he had turned over on his right side, his life breath and his words became simultaneously extinguished.
Another similar experience later befell a fifty-year-old northern Chinese Taoist, T’an-luan:
On one occasion he recovered from a serious illness when he suddenly saw a golden gate open before him. With this experience, he decided to search for an elixir that would bring about everlasting life. . . On his way back to the north he met the
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Buddhist monk Bodhiruci, who told him that in Buddhism there was a formula for attaining everlasting life that was superior to that of the Taoist. Upon being asked to reveal the formula, Bodhiruci taught him the texts of the Pure Land school, whereup on T’an luan became so convinced that he discarded the Taoist texts which he had obtained, and concentrated on the attainment of the western (Amida) Paradise. This conversion took place about 530 (AD) and for the remainder of his life he devoted all his time to the propagation of the Pure Land tenets.
Here Becker notes that a northern Chinese Taoist, having been told of the Amida school, travelled to south China to seek out this new means of attaining eternal life and, secondly, in doing so renounced his indigenous Chinese Taoism for an imported Buddhism now adopted and developed by the Ching T’u school. Bodhiruci must have perceived the parallel between T’an-luan’s visionary experience and the concept of the heavenly realm which underpinned Amidaist piety. Conversely, that same parallel obviously con- vinced T’an-luan to give up fifty years of one practice in favour of the one that had made sense of his vision as its earthly manifestation, as witnessed in the discipline of Amidaism. The monumental effect of that vision on the future lifestyle of a fifty-year-old man, steeped in another tradition until that moment of conversion, should not be underestimated.
There is a thread of identity traceable in these historic accounts. Each individual was subject to some kind of illness, fever or bodily frailty resulting in an experience akin to NDE while they still lived. Subsequently there was renewed earthly vigour in the physical body. Following that, there occurred a conversion experience involving a considerable change in philosophy or be- liefs. The change in outlook represented a major, radical change after almost a lifetime’s study of the indigenous Tao or Yogi disciplines to that of the (im- ported) Amida school. Such conversions were accompanied by a fervour to set up new monasteries, expand the community of faithful monks and preach widely to the common folk. These events are highly cultural, the visions being of the deified and revered Buddha Amida: he is therefore a ‘Christlike’ figure who, as an extremely holy man on earth (Bodhisattva), preached and did good works before returning to heaven in his final rebirth as a Buddha.
These accounts provide important parallels to those historic western nar- ratives concerned with other-world, spiritual journeys. It is evident that the latter (eastern) narratives were hostage to prevailing cultural paradigms extant at their time of writing. They resonate particularly with Drycthelm’s visions of the heavenly city, and of the excruciating torments of hell depicted, and his unity of purpose in shaping the remainder of his life. That, as we have seen, involved a subsequent term of extreme piety and personal hardship thus to ensure certainty of attaining those delights of which his visionary journey had revealed such tantalizing insights.
2 . 3 . T H E A RG U M E N T S O FA R
2.3.a. Some Pertinent Critical Observations
I have considered in this chapter whether the written corpus of ECE phe- nomenology is credible, can always be trusted as representative of the experi- ences alleged to have befallen its subjects, and is not merely a stylized, or even imaginary acount of some previous dream-like state that may have taken place. Despite some notable exceptions, one must conclude that the experi- ences reported are, in general, regarded as real by those undergoing them. Nevertheless, one should beware: I have drawn attention to certain authors and experients whose accounts have not always been entirely consistent with the facts. Furthermore, there is always the risk that events recalled by subjects, because of the ever-present fallibility of memory, will be modified to render the story intelligible and presentable to a probably sceptical audience. In addition, we must always be alert to the influence of the media in condition- ing reports and even bringing predetermined biases to the narratives offered. This is the problem of trying to get a handle on first-person subjective experiences: I shall be offering novel ways of breaking that impasse in a later chapter.
Given that we can accept the reported phenomenology of ECE, the need arises to offer explanatory hypotheses, from third-party perspectives, why it occurs. For all the authors introduced in Chapter 1, there is a common belief that OBE and NDE are, or could be, manifestations of life outwith the physical confines of body or brain. In their view the attainment of that transitory life is envisioned as an escape of soul or of mind or free conscious- ness into the other-worldly realm. That soul or mind is able to make a journey and have a glimpse of that realm, is a natural consequence of such a position. But we must note important caveats to that published viewpoint.
First, contra Moody and Ring in particular, there is no canonical sequence definitive of the evolving phenomenology which any one subject could expect to undergo. Several verbatim examples have been quoted which contradict that kind of idealized construct. Second, if there were a canonical sequence, then those fewer subjects who have experienced several ECE should undergo the same sequence. Furthermore, their experiences should be identical. That, however, is not the case,28thus casting doubt not only on Moody’s synthesis, but also on the supposition that these individuals are actually travelling and returning to some specific other-worldly ‘place’. Third, we must note the
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consequence, as the ECE evolves, of the concurrence of this-worldly sense manifestations such as pain in the case of Howard Storm above, or the inflammatory hotness of an Indian developing an abscess, with the experi- ences of the afterworld. That duality of conscious awareness occurs with other known internal brain-states, such as lucid dreaming, during the ‘twilight zone’ when subjects are coming round from a general anaesthetic, or with loss of consciousness following a fainting attack, and during heautoscopic29 excursions between the person’s body and a hallucinated phantom of it.
Fourth, we must accept that during OBE, the reported viewing of the subject’s body and of events occurring within that immediate vicinity are not true records of those supposed events. That is, they lack the veridicality which we would expect of an average eyewitness account as a reasonably true reflection of the recent historic events being reported. Several examples given above firmly refute that hypothesis, such as the lady knocked down by the black car, and Pam Reynolds’ account of the use of the bone saw and her doctors’ approaches in establishing cardio-respiratory bypass. Clearly, during an OBE, subjects are not using their visual apparatus in a normal physiologi- cal manner. Neither do congenitally blind subjects suddenly acquire the facility for ‘transcendental’ sight, only to lose it again on recovering from their ECE.
Compared with OBE, NDE purportedly take experients into a spiritual realm beyond body and brain, thus offering them a privileged view of heaven, or even of God or Jesus. I have discounted Moody’s romanticized account of ECE phenomenology. Also, we should note how, in published narratives, the perception of [L]ight and [P]ersons has attained a unique metaphysic with the use of capitalized terms, implying a relationship to ‘real’ people to whom some importance, or even religious reverence, is due. While the majority of NDE embody some sense of peace, joy and even ecstasy, others, less frequent- ly, are frightening, unpleasant and disturbing. Explanations must embrace both affective extremes. On the one hand, there could be a neurophysiological explanation, on grounds of metabolic perturbations, electrical or neurochem- ical, or reductions in regional cerebral blood flow. Alternatively it could be insisted that a truly supernatural realm, analogous to heaven and hell of conventional western monotheism, exists and was glimpsed—and even visit-
29 During a heautoscopic event (Damas Mora J et al, Br J Med Psychol 53: 75 83, 1980),
subjects’ consciousness oscillates between their bodies and a perceived, extra corporeal phan tom of themselves. The experience may be accompanied by a sense of motion, and even affect towards the double. Internal heautoscopy involves hallucinating body organs in extra personal space (Brugger P and Regard M, Cogn Neuropsychiatr 2: 19 38, 1997). One woman, undergoing cardiac surgery, ‘saw’ her heart bumping away beside her with ribbons coming out of it (Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 193): the nature of the hallucinatory ribbons, in this case, is far from clear.
ed. Given the latter supposition, an explanation as to why those few subjects after experiencing ‘hell’ were instantaneously transported to the peaceful environs of a ‘heaven’, and during a few seconds of real time, would be required. Could such rapid reversals be consistent with Christian notions about death, resurrection and eternity?
The underpinning fact about these events is that, for the majority including those subjects whose narratives are recorded by the authors chosen for this study, their experiences have been the consequence of a severe, life-threaten- ing clinical emergency during which cerebral function had been profoundly interfered with. It is my view that much of the recorded phenomenology undergone occurs not while the brain is at its weakest state (despite consistent authorial claims that this is the case), but as it is recovering function and returning to full conscious-awareness. We should note that all these subjects recover and, more importantly, that they remember their experiences: if they had not, then there would be no story to tell and ECE phenomenology would be an undiscovered realm of neuro(patho)physiology.