Beyond Death: The Gates of Consciousness
Author: Grof, Stanislav
Date: 1980-02-18T08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Spirituality; Art; Psychedelic Library; Science; Psychology; Philosophy; com0; com1proceess; import_covers_marked
Description: Explore a truly astonishing range of interests, philosophies, religions, and cultures -from alchemy to angels, Buddhism to Hinduism, myth to magic. The distinguished authors bring a wealth of knowledge, visionary thinking, and accessible writing to each intriguing subject in these lavishly illustrated, large-format paperback books.
Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Stanislav and Christina Grof
beyond death

The gates of consciousness
with 158 illustrations, 17 in colour

Thames and Hudson

Dedicated with love to

Than and Sarah

General Editor: Jill Puree

© 1980 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London

Any copy of this book issued by the publisher as a paperback is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated, without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Filmset in Great Britain by Keyspools Ltd, Golborne, Lancashire Printed and bound in The Netherlands.

Contents

The gates of consciousness

Ancient wisdom and modern science 5

Experiences of clinical death and neardeath 8

Images of the Beyond 13

The posthumous journey of the soul 16

Ritual encounters with death 20

Death and rebirth in schizophrenia and psychedelic states Epilogue 31

Plates 33

Themes 65

The cycles of death and rebirth 66

Entering the Beyond 70

The journey 72

Creatures of darkness 74

The ordeal of hell 76

The universal judgment 78

Duality: the extremes of heaven and hell 82

Emerging 86

Soulbirds 88

Encounter with Beings of Light 90

Paradise 93

Heaven and transcendence 94

Bibliography and acknowledgments 96

The gates of consciousness

Ancient wisdom and modern science

The central theme of the medieval literature on the art of dying was expressed succinctly in the Latin phrase, Mors certa, hora incerta: the most certain thing in life is that we will die; the least certain is the time when it will happen. And the medieval philosopher would add that because of this utter uncertainty about the timing of death, we should be prepared for it at all times.

The recognition of the utmost importance of dying as an integral aspect of life is characteristic of all ancient and non-Western cultures, where the theme of death has had a deep influence on religion, ritual life, mythology, art and philosophy. Awareness of the significance of death was similarly a part of Western civilization until the time of the Industrial Revolution. One of the tolls that Westerners have had to pay for rapid technological progress is profound alienation from the fundamental biological aspects of existence.

This process has found its most drastic expression in relation to the basic triad of life - birth, sex and death. The psychological revolution initiated by Sigmund Freud has to a great extent lifted the repression imposed on human sexuality. In the last decade, we have been witnessing a comparable development in the areas of death and birth. This process has been manifest not only in rapid development of insights into the significance of the experience of birth and death, but also in revolutionary changes in the medical practices concerning childbirth and in the treatment of the dying.

It is not accidental that the lifting of the taboos related to birth and death has been accompanied by rediscovery of spirituality that had also been one of the victims of the rapid progress of materialistic science. As modern knowledge of these areas advances, it is becoming increasingly clear that birth, sex, death and spirituality are intimately interwoven, and have powerful representations in the human unconscious. Since this insight represents an essential part of many ancient cosmologies, religions and philosophies, the new discoveries are rapidly bridging the gap between ancient wisdom and modern science. In the recent process of convergence of modern physics, consciousness research and mysticism,* many ancient systems of knowledge previously regarded as obsolete curiosities are found ♦The
interested
reader
will
find
a
to be of extraordinary relevance for our everyday life. This is certainly true of detailed
discussion
of
the
convergence
of
the

Oriental
mystical
ancient knowledge concerning death and dying, such as eschatological systems
and
quantum-relativistic
mythologies, shamanic practices, the 'books of the dead' and death-rebirth physics in Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (see Bibliography).

mysteries.

5

In order to appreciate the nature and scope of the present revolution concerning death and dying, it is necessary to realize the degree of dehumanization and alienation that technological development has brought to the West.

The belief in an afterlife is part of our religious tradition, but for the sophisticated Westerner, religion has lost much of its original significance and vitality. Non-Western cultures have retained the original power of cosmologies, religious systems and philosophies in which death is not seen as the absolute and irrevocable end of existence, and consciousness or life in some form continues beyond the point of biological demise. Their concepts of the afterlife cover an extremely wide range, from sequences of highly abstract states of consciousness to images of an otherworld resembling earthly existence; but in all these beliefs, death is regarded as transition or transfiguration and not as the final annihilation of the individual.

Eschatological mythologies not only give detailed descriptions of the afterlife states of mind or abodes of the deceased, such as heaven, paradise or hell, but offer precise cartographies to guide the dying through the sequential changes of consciousness that occur during the critical period of transition.

Such belief systems certainly have the power to alleviate the fear of death, and in their extreme forms may even reverse the values assigned to living and dying. For the Hindu, unenlightened life appears to be a state of separation, imprisonment and delusion, whereas death is reunion, spiritual liberation and awakening. Death represents an opportunity for the individual self (jiva) to break away from worldly illusion (maya) and experience its divine nature (Atman-Brahman). In systems in which reincarnation plays an important role, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Tibetan Tantrism, dying can be seen as more important than living.

Knowledge of, and the right attitude towards, the experiences associated with dying can have a critical influence on the future incarnation. For the Buddhist, suffering is intrinsic to biological existence, and the ultimate spiritual goal is to extinguish the fire of life and leave the wheel of death and rebirth, the chain of repeated incarnations.

Dying is sometimes seen as a step up in the spiritual or cosmological hierarchy, a promotion into the world of revered ancestors, powerful spirits or demigods, or as a transition from the complicated earthly life fraught with suffering and problems to a blissful existence in the solar region or the realms of gods. More frequently the concept of afterlife involves dichotomies and polarities; there are hells and purgatories as well as celestial realms and paradisiacal states. The posthumous journey of the soul is understood as a complex and difficult one. It is therefore essential to be well prepared when death comes. At the very least, it is necessary to acquire a knowledge of the cartography and laws of the afterlife existence.

Many traditions include the belief that one can do more to prepare for death than just acquire intellectual knowledge of the process of dying.

Mind-altering technologies have been developed using psychedelic substances or powerful non-drug methods that make possible real experiential training for dying. In this context, compelling psychological encounters with death, so profound and shattering as to be indistinguishable from actual biological annihilation, are followed by the sense of spiritual rebirth. This is the core-experience of shamanic initiation, rites of passage and mystery religions. Symbolic death of this kind not only gives a deep realization of the impermanence of biological existence, but facilitates spiritual opening, and provides insight into the transcendent nature of human consciousness.

Literary documents known as the 'books of the dead' offer precise and detailed guidance for the dying. The most famous of these 'books' are the Egyptian Pert em hru and the Tibetan Bardo Thödol, but similar texts exist in the Hindu, Moslem and Mesoamerican traditions. The European counterpart of these books is a vast body of medieval literature known as Ars Moriendi or The Art of Dying. Since the states of mind associated with dying can be experienced during life, these texts can also be used as manuals for meditation or initiation.

The individual dying in an ancient or pre-industrial culture is thus equipped with a religious or philosophical system that transcends death, and is likely to have had considerable experiential training in altered states of consciousness, including symbolic confrontations with death. The approach of death is faced in the nourishing context of the extended family, clan, or tribe, and with its support - sometimes even with specific and expert guidance through the successive stages of dying.

The situation of an average Westerner facing death is in sharp contrast to the above in every respect. The teachings of religion about the afterlife have been misinterpreted as historical and geographical references, and in this form discredited by materialistic science. Religion has become to a large extent externalized, and has lost connection with its original experiential sources. The educated Westerner tends to consider belief in consciousness after death and in the posthumous journey of the soul as manifestations of the primitive fears and magical thinking of people who have been denied the privilege of scientific knowledge. In the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview, consciousness is the product of the brain and, as such, ceases at the time of physical death. Although there are disagreements about whether death should be defined as cessation of heart-beat or extinction of electrical brain activity, the idea of consciousness after death is incompatible with materialistic science.

In the context of our pragmatic philosophy emphasizing success and achievement, aging and dying are not seen as integral parts of the life-process, but as defeat and a painful reminder of the limits of our ability to control nature. The terminally ill and dying are seen in our culture as losers, and tend to see themselves as such.

Contemporary medicine has been indulging in technological wizardry and over-specialized body mechanics, and has lost the holistic point of view characteristic of healing. Its approach to the dying is dominated by a determined effort to conquer death and delay its advent at all cost. In this struggle for mechanical prolongation of life, very little attention is paid to the quality of the patient's remaining days, or to his psychological, philosophical and spiritual needs. There is a tendency to remove the elderly and dying from the family and everyday life and place them in nursing 7
homes and hospitals, where meaningful human contact is replaced by sophisticated gadgetry - oxygen tents, infusion bottles and tubes, electric pacemakers, and monitors of vital functions.

Not only do contemporary religion, philosophy, social structure and medical science have little to offer to ease the mental suffering of the dying, but until quite recently even psychologists and psychiatrists participated in the massive denial and repression surrounding death. The confrontation with death - the ultimate biological, emotional, psychological, philosophical and spiritual crisis - was probably the only area of life where expert psychological help was not available. Mental health professionals studied a variety of relatively insignificant problems with pedantic attention to detail, systematically avoiding investigation of the experiential world of the dying.

Although the present situation is still far from ideal, during the last decade there have been dramatic changes in the awareness and attitudes of those concerned with the dying. This progress was largely initiated by the work of the Swiss-born American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her pioneering book On Death and Dying. In addition to her world-wide efforts to alleviate the emotional suffering of the dying, Dr Kübler-Ross created positive interest in the experiences associated with death. Another important avenue of thanatological research has developed independently, in psychedelic therapy with cancer patients. It has been shown* that LSD
experiences of death and rebirth and mystical states of consciousness can change patients' concepts of death and life and alleviate their fears of dying.

Psychedelic therapy has proved to be more than an important tool in the control of mental and physical pain, it has contributed greatly to our understanding of the experience of death. The findings of these modern studies of death and dying have in general confirmed to a great extent the claims of eschatological systems of non-Western cultures, and have generated in the West a new respect for ancient and Oriental religions and philosophies. It has become increasingly clear that these systems of belief *

For
detailed
discussion
of
these
reflect profound understanding of the human mind and of unusual states of experiments,
see

Stanislav

Grof
and
consciousness, embodying knowledge that deals with the most universal Joan Halifax, The Human Encounter with Death (see Bibliography).

aspect of human existence, and thus is highly relevant for all of us.

Experiences of clinical death and neardeath When in the past Western science dismissed the concept of consciousness after death as a fabrication based on wishful thinking and superstition, this judgment was not based on the careful study of the area in question that is otherwise characteristic of the scientific approach. Indeed, the exact opposite was true; until recently the subject of death and dying was systematically neglected and avoided by medicine and psychiatry. The possibility of consciousness after death was rejected not because it contradicted clinical observations, but a priori because the concept was incompatible with existing scientific theories. However the paradigms in science should not be confused with reality or truth; at best they represent working models that organize existing observations. When they cannot 8
account for and accommodate scientific data of major significance, they have to be replaced by more adequate conceptual frameworks.

The first serious study of neardeath experiences was conducted, not by a twentieth-century psychologist or psychiatrist, but by a prominent nineteenth-century Swiss geologist, Albert Heim. After a near-fatal fall in the Alps during which he had a mystical experience, Heim became interested in the subjective experiences associated with life-threatening situations and with dying. Over a period of several decades he collected observations and accounts from numerous survivors of serious accidents: soldiers wounded in battles, masons and roofers who had fallen from heights, workers who survived disasters in mountain projects and railway accidents, and fishermen who had nearly drowned. However, the most important part of Heim's study was based on the accounts of Alpine climbers who had survived near-fatal falls.

Heim first presented his findings in a paper read to a meeting of the Swiss Alpine Club in 1892. His conclusion was that subjective experiences of neardeath were strikingly similar in ninety-five per cent of his cases regardless of the surrounding circumstances. Mental activity first became enhanced and accelerated. Perception of events and anticipation of the outcome were unusually clear. Time became greatly expanded, and individuals acted with lightning speed and accurate reality-testing. Typically, this phase was followed by a sudden life-review. The culminating experience was one of transcendental peace, with visions of supernatural beauty and the sound of celestial music.

According to Heim, accidents involving sudden confrontation with death are much more 'horrible and cruel' for the observers than for the victims. In many instances, spectators have been deeply shattered and incapacitated by paralyzing horror and have suffered a lasting trauma, while the victim, if not badly physically injured, comes out of the event free of anxiety and pain.

In 1961 Karlis Osis and his co-workers analyzed more than six hundred questionnaires returned by physicians and nurses detailing the experiences of dying patients. Among the ten per cent of patients who were conscious in the hour before death, a large proportion experienced vivid visions. Some of the images were more or less in accordance with traditional religious concepts, and represented heaven, paradise, or the Eternal City; others were secular images of indescribable beauty, such as exquisite landscapes with exotic birds, or idyllic gardens. Less common were horrifying visions of devils and hell, or frightening sensations such as that of being buried alive. Osis pointed out the similarity of these terminal experiences to the images of eschatological mythology, and also to the psychedelic phenomena induced by LSD or mescaline.

In 1971, Russell Noyes, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Iowa, studied a large number of subjective accounts of individuals facing death, including Heim's material on Swiss mountain climbers, descriptions of dying in literature and autobiographical accounts by exceptional individuals such as Carl Gustav Jung. Noyes was able to recognize recurrent patterns in these experiences, and to identify three successive stages. The first stage, which he termed resistance, was characterized by recognition of danger, fear of death, struggle to save one's life, and finally, acceptance of death. Next 9

followed
life-review,
during
which
the
individual
relived
important
memories or experienced a condensed, panoramic replay of his entire life-trajectory. During the final stage, transcendence, the experience was one of mystical, religious, or 'cosmic' states of consciousness.

Noyes' analysis of the death experience is illustrated by the following account of a young woman describing an automobile accident and the inner states that came with it. Her car lost its brakes on a large highway; for several seconds, it skidded uncontrollably on wet pavement, hitting several other cars and finally ending up in the side of a large truck.

During the several seconds that my car was in motion, I had an experience that seemed to span centuries. I rapidly moved from sheer terror and overwhelming fear for my life to a profound knowledge that I would die. Ironically, with that knowledge came the deepest sense of peace and serenity that I have ever encountered. It was as though I had moved from the periphery of my being - the body that contained me - to the very centre of myself, a place that was imperturbable, totally quiet and at rest. The mantra that I had previously been using in meditation sprang A young woman's portrayal ot her into my consciousness and revolved automatically, with an ease I had confrontation with death. The left of the picture shows her life up to
never before known. Time seemed to have disappeared as I watched the point of her accident: sequences from my life passing before me like a movie, quite rapidly, but restricted, bound by time and with amazing detail. When I reached the point of death, it seemed that I space, but colourful in patches. At was facing an opaque curtain of some kind. The momentum of the the centre, she reaches a curtain experience carried me, still completely calm, through the curtain and I of death, and, passing through it, realized that it had not been a point of termination, but rather of experiences unity with everything around her. (Collection the
transition. The only way that I can describe the next sensation is to say authors.) that every part of me, whatever I was at that moment, felt without 10
question a far-reaching and encompassing continuum beyond what I had previously thought of as death. It was as though the force that had moved me toward death and then past it would endlessly continue to carry me, through ever-expanding vistas.

It was at this point that my car hit a truck with a great impact. As it came to rest, I looked around and realized that by some miracle I was still alive. And then, an amazing thing happened. As I sat in the midst of the tangled metal, I felt my individual boundaries begin to melt. I started to merge with everything around me - with the policemen, the wreck, the workers with crowbars trying to liberate me, the ambulance, the flowers on a nearby hedge, and the television cameramen. Somewhere, I could see and feel my injuries, but they did not seem to have anything to do with me; they were merely part of a rapidly expanding network that included much more than my body. The sunlight was unusually bright and golden and the entire world seemed to shimmer with a beautiful radiance. I felt blissful and exuberant, even in the middle of the drama around me, and I remained in that state for several days in the hospital. The accident and the experience that accompanied it totally transformed my worldview and my way of understanding existence. Previously, I had not had much interest in spiritual areas and my concept of life was that it was contained between birth and death. The thought of death had always frightened me. I had believed that 'we walk across life's stage but once', and then -
nothing. Consequently I had been driven by the fear that I would not have a chance to do all that I wanted to accomplish during my life. Now, the world and my place in it feel completely different. I feel that my selfdefinition transcends the notion of a limited physical body existing in a limited time frame. I know myself to be part of a larger, unrestricted, creative network that could be described as divine.

Modern Western interest in the subjective experience of dying has been greatly increased by Raymond A. Moody's book Life After Life, published in 1975. The author, a physician and psychologist, analyzed 150 accounts of neardeath experiences and personally interviewed some fifty people who had survived clinical death. On the basis of his study he was able to isolate certain characteristic elements of the death-experience that occur with great constancy.

A common feature of all the reports was the subject's complaint of the ineffability of these subjective events and the inadequacy of our language to convey their nature. This is a characteristic that death-experiences share with mystical states. Another important element was a convincing sensation of leaving the body. Many people described how, in a comatose state or after physical death, they observed themselves and the scene from above, or from a distance, and heard doctors, nurses and relatives discuss their condition. They were able to witness in detail the various activities carried out by people attending their bodies. Sometimes the accuracy of this perception could be confirmed by subsequent investigation. Out-of-the-body experiences can take a variety of forms. Some people described themselves as amorphous clouds, energy-patterns, or pure consciousness.

Others experienced distinct feelings of having a body, but one that was 11
permeable, invisible and inaudible to those in the phenomenal world.

Sometimes there was fear, confusion, and a desire to return to the physical body. In other instances people experienced ecstatic feelings of timelessness, weightlessness, serenity and tranquillity. Many people reported hearing peculiar sounds; some of these were distinctly unpleasant noises, others were soothing, such as majestic or transcendental music.

There were many descriptions of passing through a dark enclosed place, referred to as a tunnel, cave, funnel, cylinder, valley, trough or sewer. Many people reported encounters with other beings, such as dead relatives or friends, 'guardian spirits' or spirit guides. Particularly common were visions of a 'Being of Light' who appeared as a source of unearthly radiance, yet who showed personal qualities such as love, warmth, compassion and a sense of humour. Communication with this being occurred without words, through an unimpeded transfer of thought. The encounter with the Being of Light was often accompanied by an experience of life-review, and divine judgment or self-judgment.

Moody attempted to reconstruct on the basis of his findings a typical experience of the afterdeath state. Although it is a composite model of this state, based on a large number of accounts rather than an actual individual experience, it is of great interest for our discussion.

A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.

After a while he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a 'body', but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before - a being of light - appears before him. This being asks him a question, nonverbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point he finds himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back to the earth, that time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love, and peace. Despite his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.

Later he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so. In the first place, he can find no human words adequate to describe these unearthly 12

episodes. He also finds that others scoff, so he stops telling other people.

Still the experience affects his life profoundly, especially his views about death and its relationship to life.

There are striking parallels between Moody's observations and descriptions from eschatological literature, particularly the Bardo states in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Similar if not identical elements occur in psychedelic sessions when the subjects experience deep confrontation with death in the context of the death-rebirth process. As we shall see in a later section, there are also correspondences with spontaneously occurring states experienced by some schizophrenic patients.

Images of the Beyond

Comparative studies of concepts of the afterlife have revealed far-reaching similarities among different ethnic and religious groups, even those which had no demonstrable contact before the formation of their eschatological beliefs. The recurrence of certain themes is quite remarkable, particularly for the two polar images of life after death - the abode of the righteous, heaven or paradise, and the place for the wicked, or hell.

The basic experiential characteristics of heaven and hell are always the same - endless joy and bliss for heaven and tortures without end for hell -
even though their forms range from concrete representations, resembling terrestrial existence in all important respects, to highly abstract metaphysical formulations. It is not always clear whether those images that are sufficiently concrete for pictorial representation were believed to be literal and accurate descriptions of the afterlife experiences, or metaphors for states of mind that cannot be captured directly by any artistic means.

Modern consciousness-research offers interesting new insight into this problem. In psychedelic sessions, in spontaneous visionary states, and in the S i s y p h u s c o n d e m n e d e t e r n a l l y t o r o l l a r o c k u p h i l l , a s p u n i s h m e n t f o r b i n d i n g T h a n a t o s , i . e . , f o r t r i c k i n g d e a t h . O n t h e l e f t H e r a h o l d s e a r s o f c o r n , o n t h e r i g h t i s s e a t e d H a d e s , l o r d o f t h e u n d e r w o r l d ( A f t e r a C r e e k v a s e , S t a a t l i c h e A n t i k e h s a m m l u n g e n , M u n i c h . )

13

practice of experiential psychotherapy, one encounters ecstatic and hellish experiences of an entirely abstract nature as well as concrete and specific images of heavens and hells. It is fascinating to find that occasionally the eschatological symbolism appears to be from a cultural framework entirely unknown to the subject, or totally alien to his background; this observation supports Carl Gustav Jung's concept of the collective and racial unconscious.

Accounts by people who have survived clinical death or near-fatal accidents similarly cover a wide range, varying from descriptions of abstract states to detailed pictorial visions. In describing his early findings, Raymond Moody emphasized the lack of mythological elements such as 'the cartoonist's heaven of pearly gates, golden streets, and winged, harp-playing angels, or a hell of flames and demons with pitchforks'. However, in a recent sequel to his first book, he has reported that he is now finding an The Greek Ixion suffers endless increasing number of individuals who during their encounters with death tortures, bound to a revolving wheel - his punishment by Zeus
experience concrete and detailed archetypal images of celestial landscapes, for attempting the chastity of Hera.

with cities of light, radiant palatial mansions, exotic gardens and (Ixion, after a Creek vase. Berlin magnificent rivers. On the negative side, he described experiences of astral Museum.) realms with perplexed spirits, confused discarnate entities who had not been able to detach themselves fully from the physical world. The problem of figurative versus abstract concepts of the afterlife thus seems to be less a matter of opinion or interpretation, than a reflection of different types or modes of direct experience of the Beyond.

Whether experienced as concrete or abstract, heaven and hell constitute distinct polarities and are in a sense negative images or complementary aspects of each other. In artistic representations of these two abodes of the dead, their antithetical nature is expressed both in the general atmosphere and in every specific detail. Celestial realms are characterized by spaciousness, a sense of freedom and abundance of light. Infernal regions are claustrophobic, nightmarish, oppressive and dark. The same polarity exists in landscape, architecture, typical inhabitants and the experiences of the deceased consigned to these places.

The scenery of the heavens and paradises is typically flooded with brilliant white or golden light, and is full of luminescent clouds or rainbows.

Nature is represented by the best it has to offer: fertile soil, fields of ripening grain, beautiful oases or parks, luscious gardens or flourishing meadows. The trees are laden with gorgeous blossoms and bear succulent fruits. The roads are paved with gold, diamond, rubies, emeralds and other precious stones.

The paradisiacal landscapes are irrigated by fountains of youth, streams with water of life, clear lakes and rivers of milk, honey and fragrant oil. The celestial architecture is translucent and abounds in palaces glimmering with gold and precious stones. Halls are illumined by sparkling crystal chandeliers and decorated with dancing fountains. The atmosphere is fragrant, permeated with sweet perfumes and exquisite scent of burning incense. In contrast, the infernal scenery is represented as black, barren and desolate. Its fires emit blinding and smothering smoke. The landscapes of hell are dominated by volcanic craters, yawning chasms, jagged cliffs, dark valleys and fuming pits. The paradisiacal trees of life and rich orchards have as their counterparts the infernal spike-trees that are covered with thorns, 14

daggers and swords, and bear poisonous fruit in the shape of demon-heads.

Instead of the clear streams and fountains of youth of the garden of love, hell offers dark and dangerous rivers, lakes of fire, stinking pools and treacherous, putrid swamps. The dismal counterparts of the palaces of heaven are sinister and gloomy subterranean mansions surrounded by impassable walls, with inhospitable cold corridors and air contaminated by unimaginable stench. Fiery workshops with high smoke-stacks and glowing furnaces spread sulphuric fumes over the infernal cities.

The same polarity extends to the inhabitants of heaven and hell. The divine beings manifest exquisite beauty; they are ethereal, translucent, radiant and surrounded by auras, haloes or fields of light. In relation to others, they are benevolent, healing, nourishing and protective. The devils or demons are dark and heavy, with bestial characteristics and terrifying appearance. Cruel and malevolent, they represent unbridled instinctual forces. This contrast is most obvious in the case of the supreme rulers of the Beyond, and is best illustrated by the Christian imagery of the triple-headed Satan parodying the Holy Trinity.

Images of the paradises and heavens abound in peacocks, parrots and other exotic birds with brilliant plumage, beautiful butterflies and gentle animals. The infernal menagerie includes eagles, vultures, screech-owls and other vicious predator-birds, bloodthirsty jaguars, hounds, wolves, vampire bats, giant reptiles, poisonous vipers and composite monsters devouring human souls.

In the experience of the souls, the joy, bliss and serenity of the Christ rescuing the soul from the paradisiacal states have as counterparts the bestial tortures of hell and an Devil. (From ms., Speculum entire spectrum of emotional agonies. Instead of sweet, harmonious music Humanae Salvationis, German, 15th century. John Rylands
and songs of praise to the supreme deity, hell resounds with a cacophony University Library, Manchester.) of screams, gnashing of teeth, inhuman wailings and pleas for mercy. In contrast to the fragrance of exquisite perfumes and divine incense, the infernos are permeated by the caustic odour of sulphur and the stench of burning rubbish, rotting corpses, dung and offal. The blessed in the celestial realms feast on ambrosia, nectar, Soma and luscious fruits, or are nourished directly by emanations of divine energy. The souls condemned to hell are tormented by hunger and insatiable thirst, and subjected to painful forced ingestion of excrement, or even bits of their own flesh.

In the light of recent observations from consciousness-research, modern science has had to correct its view of heaven and hell. It is now understood that these are experiential states available under certain circumstances to all human beings. As Aldous Huxley pointed out in Heaven and Hell, the bliss of the celestial realms and the horrors of hell are rather frequent experiences for psychedelic subjects. These states are also experienced spontaneously during the spiritual emergencies that we call 'acute psychotic episodes'. And we have learned that experiences of heaven and hell are of quite regular occurrence when one is facing biological death.

The latter fact suggests that we should reevaluate our attitude toward eschatological mythology. Instead of representing bizarre and ultimately useless pieces of knowledge, the data about the hells and heavens can prove to be invaluable cartographies of strange experiential worlds which each of us will have to enter at some point in the future.

15

The posthumous journey of the soul The images of the abodes of the blessed and the damned represent only one important aspect of the Beyond. In most cultures there is also the concept of the posthumous journey of the soul. The deceased are not transported directly to their final destinations; first they have to undergo a series of unusual adventures, ordeals, and trials. Sometimes these adventures involve travelling through dangerous landscapes not dissimilar to earthly deserts, high mountains, jungles or swamps. The soul may have to encounter and combat various strange beings and fantastic creatures. At other times, the scenery of the Beyond bears very little similarity to anything known on earth. The stages of the posthumous journey may also be represented as sequences of unusual, more or less abstract states of mind instead of concrete places and encounters. A particularly common theme of the afterlife adventures of the soul is that of Divine Judgment. This occurs in various forms not only in the Judaic, Christian, Moslem, Egyptian and Zoroastrian traditions, but also in the Oriental countries such as India, China, Japan and Tibet, and even in the Mesoamerican religions.

If some descriptions of the soul's journey appear simple and naive, others offer complex and sophisticated maps of unusual states of consciousness. In Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, the journey is integrated into elaborate cosmological and ontological schemes involving cycles of rebirth, series of individual reincarnations, and the law of karma - the debit and credit balance which is carried over to successive lifetimes.

Two cultures in the history of humanity have shown particularly strong interest in death and dying: the ancient Egyptians and the Tibetans. The priests of these two cultures shared a deep belief in the continuation of consciousness after physical death. They developed elaborate rituals to ease the transition of the deceased to the Beyond, and designed complex cartographies as guides for the journey of the soul. The written forms of these teachings are known in the West as the Egyptian and Tibetan 'Books of the Dead'. These are documents of such relevance that they deserve discussion in this context.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead refers to a collection of prayers, incantations, magic spells and mythological stories related to death and afterlife. These funerary texts were known in Egypt as Pert em hru, which is usually translated as 'Manifestation in Light' or 'Coming Forth in the Day.'

The material of the texts is heterogeneous, and reflects the historical conflict between two powerful religious traditions - the priests of the sun god Amen-Ra and the followers of Osiris. On one hand, the texts put great emphasis on the role of the sun god and his divine retinue. Knowledge of the sacred formulae they offer was expected to provide magical means for the deceased to join the crew of the solar barge and enjoy for eternity blessed life in the presence of the sun god, accompanying him during his journey.

On the other hand, the texts reflect the tradition of the ancient mortuary god Osiris, who according to legend was killed by his brother, Set, and resurrected by his two sisters, Isis and Nephthys. After having been brought back to life he became the ruler of the otherworld. In this tradition, the dead were ritually identified with Osiris and could be raised to life again.

The sun god, Amen-Ra, was involved in a complicated series of adventures during his diurnal-nocturnal journey. During the day he crossed the sky in the solar barge; the region through which he passed during the hours of night was the otherworld, or Tuat.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the earth was flat and that the whole of the habitable world - that is, Egypt - was surrounded by a chain of lofty and impassable mountains. The sun rose in the morning from an opening in the eastern part of this mountain range, and in the evening disappeared into another hole in the west. Outside this chain of mountains was the region of the Tuat; it ran parallel with the mountains and was on the plane either of the land or of the sky above it. Beyond the Tuat was another chain of mountains, so that the otherworld was situated in a valley. It was thus separated from Egypt as well as from the luminaries - the sun, moon and stars - that lighted the skies. It was a region of eternal gloom and darkness, and a place of fear and horror.

The Tuat was divided into twelve regions, one for each hour of the night.

Each region had a gate protected by three guardian deities, and presented specific dangers for the members of the solar crew. They had to pass through places of blazing fire where heat and vapours destroyed nostrils and mouths. Terrifying beings and fantastic creatures threatened them on their way and had to be overcome. The arch-enemy of the sun god was the giant serpent, Aapep, incarnation of Osiris' brother, Set, who made repeated attempts to devour the solar disc.

A district of the Tuat called Sekhet Aaru, or Fields of Reed, was the kingdom of Osiris. To be admitted to this realm, the dead had to undergo the judgment in the Hall of the Two Truths, or Hall of Maat. In the scale-pans of the Great Balance the heart of the deceased was weighed against a feather symbolizing the Goddess of Justice, Maat. The scale was attended by the jackal-headed god, Anubis, while the ibis-headed scribe of the gods, Thoth, recorded the verdict. The composite monster Amemet, Devourer of Souls, combining crocodile, lion and hippopotamus, stood ready to swallow those who failed to pass the judgment.

Traversing the dark valley of the otherworld was perilous for both humans and gods. The only certain safe passage through the Tuat was that of the sun god, since his triumph and rebirth were manifest every morning with the sun's rising in the east. For the followers of the sun god, the goal in the afterlife was to join the solar crew and accompany the sun god during his journey for all eternity. For the followers of Osiris, the sun barge was to carry them to Sekhet Aaru, the kingdom of the god-king Osiris, where they would disembark and attempt to pass the judgment, so that they could stay forever in Osiris' kingdom.

Like the ancient Egyptian culture, the Tibetan was entirely oriented towards the spiritual, and, until quite recently, preserved a wealth of knowledge about the deeper questions of inner life and meaning. For any culture which is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death-the only certainty that life holds for us - must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life.

In the Tibetan tradition, dying, no less than living, is to be performed in complete awareness. For the enlightened, the time, place and circum17
stances of death are no longer fortuitous. Dying is undertaken consciously.

The spirit is transferred, and the body is transformed into the elements, so that no traces of it remain. This phenomenal feat, known as the 'Great Transfer7, is exceedingly rare; more common, but still extremely rare (although documented as recently as the 1950s in China), is what is known as the 'Rainbow Body'. Here, seven days after death, only the nails and hair -
i.e. the impurities - of the dead person remain. If liberation is not achieved during life, then the opportunities to attain it need to be recognized shortly after death, and for this purpose, the Book of the Dead is studied.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thödol, is of more recent origin than its Egyptian counterpart. Although it was clearly based on a much older secret oral tradition, it was first put into its written form in the eighth century AD by Padma Sambhava who introduced Buddhism to Tibet. The Bardo Thödol is a guide through the 'Bardos' or intermediate states between death and rebirth. The information it provides is quite specific, even as to the duration of the stay in various realms, or states of consciousness. Its purpose is to allow the deceased to recognize as opportunities for liberation the states with which he has already become acquainted during his practice.

This recognition is likened to that which a son has for his mother. After death, the understanding achieved through instruction and practice during life, known as the 'Son Wisdom', recognizes the 'Mother Wisdom' of light and true clarity.

The first part of the Bardo Thödol, called Chikhai Bardo , describes the experience of dissolution at the moment of death, when the departed have a blinding vision of the Primary Clear Light of Pure Reality. At this instant they may attain liberation if they can recognize the light and are not deterred by its overwhelming intensity. Those whose lack of preparation causes them to lose this opportunity will have another chance later on, when the Secondary Clear Light dawns upon them. If they do not succeed this time either, they will undergo a complicated sequence of experiences during the following Bardos, when their consciousness becomes progressively estranged from the liberating truth, as they approach another rebirth.

In the Chonyid Bardo, or the 'Bardo of the Experiencing of Reality', the departed are confronted with a succession of deities: the Peaceful Deities enveloped in brilliant-coloured lights, the Wrathful Deities, the Doorkeeping Deities, the Knowledge-Holding Deities, and the Yoginis of the Four Cardinal Points. Simultaneously with the powerful vision of these deities, the departed perceive dull lights of various colours, indicating the individual lokas, or realms into which they can be born: the realm of the gods ( devaloka), the realm of the titans ( asuraloka), the realm of the humans ( manakaloka), the realm of brute subhuman creatures ( tiryakaloka), the realm of the hungry ghosts ( pretaloka), and the realm of hell ( narakaloka).

Attraction to these lights will thwart spiritual liberation and facilitate rebirth.

If the departed miss the opportunities for liberation offered in the first two Bardos, they will enter the Sidpa Bardo, or the 'Bardo of Seeking Rebirth'. At this stage they experience their Bardo bodies, which are not composed of gross matter, but are endowed with the power of unimpeded motion and the ability to pass through solid objects. The karmic record of the deceased - the sum of moral debits or credits - determines whether they will
experience happiness or misery in this Bardo. Those who have accumulated much bad karma will be tortured by confrontations with beasts of prey or the raging forces of nature. Those whose karmic merits are paramount will experience delightful pleasures, while those with neutral karma will find at this stage only a colourless stupidity and indifference.

An important element of this Bardo is the judgment in which Dharma Raja, King and Judge of the Dead, examines the past deeds of the deceased with the mirror of karma. This mirror reveals all good and evil deeds, which are weighed against each other in the form of white and black pebbles. From the court, six karmic pathways lead to the various realms to which the dead are assigned according to their merits or demerits. During the Sidpa Bardo it is essential for the departed to realize that all these beings and events are the projections of their own minds, and are essentially void. If this opportunity is missed, rebirth will inevitably follow. All that the Bardo Thödol can offer at this point is techniques of closing the doors of undesirable wombs and help in choosing the least unfavourable rebirth.

Although the Egyptian and the Tibetan Books of the Dead are certainly the best known examples of their kind, they are by no means unique. Similar literature exists in other traditions; the Moslem, Hindu, Chinese and Japanese Buddhist and Mesoamerican eschatological texts can be cited as examples. It is generally less well known that the ancient Books of the Dead have their counterpart in our own cultural tradition. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the works usually globally referred to as Ars Moriendi or The Art of Dying were widespread in many European countries, particularly in Austria, Germany, France and Italy. The literature of this kind falls into two categories: the first consisting of books focusing on the experience of dying and on the art of guiding the dying on their last journey; the second, of texts that deal with the relevance of death for life.

Texts in the first category are a rich repository of knowledge about important experiential aspects of dying. This can be illustrated by the phenomenon described as attacks of Satan, interpreted by Church authorities as attempts by evil forces to divert souls from their way to Heaven by powerful interventions at the most strategic and crucial time.

Most of the manuals discuss five major attacks of the Devil: serious doubts regarding faith; desperation and agonizing qualms of conscience; impatience and irritability due to suffering; conceit, vanity and pride; greed, avarice and other worldly concerns and attachments. These attempts of the Devil are counteracted by divine influences that give the dying a foretaste of Heaven, a sense of being subjected to supreme judgment, a feeling of obtaining higher help, and a promise of redemption. Modern consciousness-research has demonstrated that many of these experiences actually do occur when people are facing death symbolically in psychedelic sessions, or suffering severe biological crises. There is no doubt that the descriptions of dying in the Ars Moriendi literature and other similar manuals should be taken seriously; they represent surprisingly accurate experiential maps, rather than arbitrary imaginary constructs.

The texts related to the process of biological death also offer concrete instructions for the dying and their helpers, to guide them during the last hours. Most medieval death-manuals agree that it is essential to create the 19
right disposition and right attitude in the dying. It is absolutely mandatory not to instil false hopes of recovery. All possible support should be given to the dying to help them face death and accept it. Courageous confrontation of death is seen as crucial; avoidance and reluctance to surrender are considered two of the major dangers the dying person faces. Some of the manuals explicitly state that it is less objectionable and harmful for the helpers to evoke fears in the dying that later prove unfounded than for them to allow the individual to use denial and die unprepared.

The second category of texts in the Ars Moriendi literature emphasizes the importance of awareness and understanding of death for right living; its powerful imagery stresses the impermanence of existence, the omnipresence of death, and the meaninglessness of all wordly pursuits. In the recent past, this preoccupation with impermanence, expressed in contemplation of death and contempt of the world, was seen by Western scientists as a symptom of social pathology. Yet according to the observations from LSD research and experiential psychotherapies, deep confrontation with the most frightening and repulsive aspects of human existence can result in a spiritual opening, and a qualitatively different way of being in the world.

The dual orientation of the Ars Moriendi—towards death and life-seems to be characteristic of all 'books of the dead'. The message they communicate teaches us not only about death, but about an alternative approach to life mediated by the experience of death. This issue is of such fundamental significance that we will discuss it in more detail.

Ritual encounters with death

The opportunity to experience death without actually dying, visit the realm of the dead and return, or communicate with the world of spirits, has been offered in many different frameworks since the dawn of human history. The most ancient example of this kind of experience is to be found in the phenomenon of shamanism. The core of the initiation trials of the Siberian and Ural-Altaic shamans is a profound encounter with death in the form of ritual annihilation and rebirth. Many shamans have reported that during their 'initiatory illness' they lay in their tents or in some solitary place in a condition near to death for between three and seven days. During this time they experienced a journey into the underworld where they were attacked by demons and ancestral spirits, and exposed to a variety of extreme tortures. Although there is considerable variation in the details of these ordeals among individual shamans and also among different tribes, all share the general atmosphere of horror, torture and inhuman suffering. The ordeals involve dismemberment, disposal of body fluids, scraping of the flesh from the bones and tearing of the eyes from the sockets. After the novice shaman has been reduced to a skeleton, the pieces of the body are shared among the spirits of different diseases. Then the aspirant receives new flesh arid blood, and experiences a magical flight or ascent to the heavenly regions on a rainbow, a birch-tree or a pole. During this process of

According to medieval belief, at
the time of death the diabolic
forces make their last desperate
attempt to divert the soul from its
way to Heaven. The ‘assaults of

Satan' illustrated are the temptation
through vanity, the temptation
through avarice, and the
temptation through impatience.

(Ars Moriendi, c. 1465, British

Library London.)

death and rebirth, supernatural knowledge or power is received from semidivine beings with human or animal forms. Initiatory death is always followed by resurrection, and resolution of the shaman's crisis. Shamans are equally at home in 'objective reality' and the various regions of the supernatural world. They become healers, seers and priests, and accompany the souls of the dead during their journey to the otherworld.

Many mythologies are concerned with the theme of death and rebirth.

Heroes descend into the underworld and after enduring extreme ordeals and overcoming obstacles, return to earth endowed with supernatural powers. Gods, demigods, or heroes die or are killed and are brought back to life in a new role, rejuvenated and immortal. In a less obvious symbolic form, the same theme is sometimes expressed by the image of a hero devoured and regurgitated by a terrifying monster.

In many places of the world and in different historical periods, Persephone with her husband mythological figures and stories of this kind became the central focus of Pluto in the underworld where she was condemned to pass a
sacred mysteries in which neophytes experienced ritual death and rebirth.

third of each year. (Persephone

The Babylonian-Assyrian rites of Tammuz and Ishtar, originating probably and Pluto, Irom a Creek cup, 5th before 4000 BC, provide one of the earliest examples of the allegory of the century BC. British Museum, dying god. It is the story of the mother goddess, Ishtar, who descends into London.)

the underworld in search of the sacred elixir that will revive her dead son and husband, Tammuz. In the ancient Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris, the mythological model for ritual transformation was the murder and dismemberment of Osiris by his brother Set, and his magical resurrection by his sisters, Isis and Nephthys. Mysteries of this kind were particularly abundant in ancient Greece and the neighbouring countries. The famous Eleusinian mysteries in Attica were based on an esoteric interpretation of the myth about the fertility goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, kidnapped by the chthonic god Pluto. This myth, usually seen as a symbolic allegory of seasonal cycles and growth of vegetation, became for initiates a metaphor for spiritual transformation. The Orphic cult, Dionysian rites, and the mysteries of Attis and Adonis, though based on different mythological stories, all had the same core - the theme of death and rebirth. Similar rituals were practised among the Norsemen, in the Mithraic religion, in the Hermetic tradition, in India and Tibet, among various African tribes, in Pre-Columbian societies, and in many other cultures of the world.

Discussion of the confrontation with death in a ritual context would be incomplete without mention of rites of passage, in which the initiates are not a chosen few, but entire social groups or even cultures. Rites of passage are powerful transformative rituals, usually enacted at the time of biological transitions such as birth, circumcision, puberty, marriage, second maturity and death. Van Gennep, who first defined and described these rites, noticed that they have three characteristic phases. In the first phase, which he called separation, the initiates are removed from their social matrix and kept in isolation for weeks or even months. During this time, they are learning through songs, dances, tales and myths about the strange experiential territory they are about to enter. In the second phase, transition, powerful mind-altering techniques are used to provide a transforming experience.

These methods include combinations of sleep-deprivation, fasting, pain, 22

The stages of initiation into the
mutilation, group pressure, social isolation, emotional and physical stress, Orphic mysteries, and (left) details and in some instances the use of psychedelic substances. The initiates of the Mother Goddess at the experience extremes of anguish, chaos, confusion and liminality, and centre. (From a golden bowl emerge from the process of annihilation with a sense of rejuvenation and found in Rumania, 3rd or 4th century
rebirth. The third stage, incorporation, involves the reintegration of the

AD. Drawing after

Alexander Odobesco, from Karl
transformed individual into the community in a new role. The depth and W. Hierseman, Le Tresor de intensity of the death-rebirth experience provides a dramatic framework for Petrossa, vol. it, Leipzig 1889-96.) the termination of the old social role and the assumption of the new one.

However, repeated encounters with annihilation followed by a sense of redefinition have another important function: they prepare the individual for eventual biological death by establishing a deep, almost cellular awareness that periods of destruction are those of transition rather than termination.

Death and rebirth in schizophrenia and psychedelic states As we mentioned earlier, psychology and psychiatry have usually treated the concepts of consciousness after death and the posthumous journey of the soul as products of primitive magical thinking, or reaction-formation against the fear of death and impermanence. Until recently, it was rarely Ancient Eleusis near Athens was the centre of Demeter's cult and
seriously considered that the descriptions of the adventures of the soul after the home of the Eleusinian death could reflect experiential reality. Similarly, the accounts of shamanic mysteries. Persephone places a journeys, temple mysteries and rites of passage were viewed in terms of crown on the head of Triptolemus primitive superstition, group suggestion or collective psychopathology. The while her mother Demeter offers descriptions of heaven, hell and the posthumous adventures of the soul were him an ear of grain, symbol of the misunderstood-frequently not only by critics of religion, but by clergy and mysteries. (Detail, marble relief from Eleusis, 5th century sc.

theologians themselves - as historical and geographical references rather National Museum, Athens.) than cartographies of unusual states of consciousness. As such, they were 23
not taken seriously because they appeared to be incompatible with the scientific worldview.

However, recent developments in modern consciousness-research have brought some unexpected observations, suggesting that Western science might have been somewhat premature in its judgments of ancient and non Western systems of thought and spiritual practices.

It has been known for a long time that some schizophrenic patients suffering from acute episodes or chronic psychotic states describe profound experiences of a religious or mystical nature, closely resembling the descriptions found in eschatological literature. Such experiences include a vivid and convincing sense of encounters with demons, inhuman tortures in hell, scenes of Divine Judgment or, conversely, meetings with saints, angels, spirit guides and other celestial beings - even union with God. In some instances, the experiences transcend the traditional Christian framework, and involve phenomena similar to those described in the Oriental literature, such as memories of past incarnations, and the Bardo states of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Another type of schizophrenic experience which is especially relevant for an understanding of death and dying is that of death-rebirth. Many patients suffering from acute psychotic episodes report dramatic experiences of death and rebirth, or even of the destruction and recreation of the entire world. In the rare instances when such experiences are completed and well integrated, the patients frequently reach a better level of mental functioning and social adjustment than they had before. This process bears a deep similarity to the ritual transformation described in temple mysteries or the rites of passage of preliterate societies.

As a result of clinical work with schizophrenics, psychiatrists have realized that the eschatological descriptions found in the religious scriptures represent experiential realities rather than reflecting anxious denial of death and wishful fantasy. This has inspired a trend among Western scientists to move religious beliefs from the category of primitive superstition to the area of psychopathology.

Important new evidence became available during the fifties and sixties, when experimental psychiatry achieved epoch-making discoveries in the area of psychedelic research. This development was triggered by the discovery in April 1943, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, of the psychoactive properties of diethylamide of lysergic acid or LSD-25. When this new, powerful, psychedelic substance became available for researchers throughout the world, it was possible to explore systematically and on a larger scale a phenomenon that historians and anthropologists had known for a long time: that certain drugs can produce in otherwise normal individuals deep mystical and religious states, including shattering eschatological visions.

The fact that psychedelics, with their amplifying and catalyzing effect on the human mind, induce experiences of this kind in randomly selected experimental subjects, clearly suggests that matrices for such experiences exist in the unconscious as a normal constituent of the human personality.

Although scientific interest in psychedelic substances is relatively recent, their ritual use can be traced back to the dawn of human history. From time immemorial, plants containing powerful mind-altering substances have been used for the diagnosing and healing of diseases, enhancement of paranormal abilities, and for magical or ritual purposes. Plants buried with a shaman discovered during the excavations of the New Stone Age settlement of Catal Hüyük in Turkey were identified by pollen analysis as psychedelic. Reports of hallucinogenic drug-use in Chinese medicine span a period of more than 3,500 years. The legendary divine potion of Vedic literature, Soma, was used by the Indoiranian tribes several millennia ago. Various preparations from hemp, Cannabis indica and sativa, have been known in Asia and Africa for many centuries under different names, and have been used in folk-medicine and religious ceremonies as well as for recreation and pleasure. In the Middle Ages, potions and ointments containing psychoactive plants were widely used in the Witches' Sabbath and Black Mass rituals. The most famous ingredients of witches' brews were the deadly nightshade or Atropa Belladonna; thorn-apple or Datura Stramonium; mandrake or Mandragora officinarum; and henbane or Hyoscyamus niger. The use of psychedelic substances has a long history in Central America among the Aztecs, Mayans and Olmecs. The most famous of these plants are the Mexican cactus. Lophophora Williamsii (peyote), the sacred mushroom Psilocybe mexicana (teonanacatl), and several varieties of Ipomoea, the source of morning glory seeds (ololiuqui). Among African tribes, preparations from the eboga plant, Tabernanthe iboga, are used as a sacrament. South American Indians of the Amazon region prepare a powerful psychedelic potion, ayahuasca or yage, whose major ingredient is the jungle liana Banisteriopsis Caapi. Ritual ingestion of the fly-agaric mushroom Amanita muscaria is important in shamanic practices among certain Siberian tribes such as the Koryaks, Samoyeds and Chukchees.

As Aldous Huxley pointed out in his essay Heaven and Hell, many subjects experience in psychedelic sessions states of ecstatic rapture and extreme horrors that are indistinguishable from those described in the scriptures of the great religions of the world. The possibility of triggering such religious and mystical experiences under laboratory conditions and subjecting them to direct study offered hope of fascinating insights into the psychology and psychopathology of religion.

The most interesting aspect of psychedelic substances, from this point of view, is the fact that they can induce, without any specific programming and guidance, profound death-rebirth experiences, and facilitate spiritual opening. The human unconscious, activated chemically, actually tends to enact spontaneously a powerful confrontation with death that can result in transcendence.

After LSD subjects have moved beyond the more superficial levels of the psychedelic experience, the sensory barrier and biographically determined content, the sessions focus on the problems of the impermanence of existence, physical pain, emotional agony, aging and decrepitude, and ultimately, dying and death. Sessions of this kind are characterized by preoccupation with death, with visions of people dying, epidemics, scenes of war and devastation, cemeteries and funerals. The most important element of this process, however, is an extremely realistic sense of the ultimate biological crisis, fully comparable with actual dying. It is not 25
uncommon for the subject to lose the insight that the psychedelic session is a symbolic experience, and to develop a delusional conviction that biological death is imminent.

This shattering encounter with the extremes of human existence has two important consequences. The first is a profound existential crisis that forces the individual to question seriously the meaning of human life, and to reevaluate his own system of basic values. Worldly ambitions, competitive drives, and the craving for power, fame and possessions tend to fade away when viewed against the background of the mandatory ending of each human drama in physical annihilation. The second important consequence is the opening of spiritual areas of the unconscious that are intrinsic parts of the structure of human personality, and are independent of the individual's racial, cultural and religious background. They thus belong to the realm of the collective unconscious (in Carl Gustav Jung's terminology), and can be referred to as archetypal.

Confrontation with death is just one aspect of the psychedelic experience. A second important aspect is the struggle to be reborn, conceptualized by many subjects as the reliving of their birth trauma. In the death-rebirth process, dying, being born and giving birth are intimately interwoven. Sequences of extreme emotional and physical suffering are followed by experiences of liberation, birth or rebirth, with visions of brilliant white or golden light.

The amalgam of dying, being born and giving birth results in a sense of destruction of the old personality-structure and the birth of a new self. This process bears a striking similarity to the events described through the ages in shamanic initiation, rites of passage, temple mysteries, and in the ecstatic religions of many ancient and preliterate cultures.

The rich and complex phenomena of the psychedelic death-rebirth process appear in several patterns that the subjects often relate to the stages of biological birth. In psychedelic therapy, all these patterns must be experienced repeatedly and in different sequences before the process is completed.

The first type of psychedelic experience on this level may be termed cosmic engulfment. Subjects often relate this phase to the onset of biological delivery, when the original equilibrium of the intrauterine existence is disturbed, first by chemical signals and later by contractions of the uterus. The experience of cosmic engulfment begins with an overwhelming feeling of anxiety and an awareness of vital threat. The source of danger cannot be clearly identified, and the individual tends to interpret the immediate environment or the whole world in paranoid terms.

An intensification of anxiety usually leads to the experience of being sucked into a gigantic whirlpool. A frequent symbolic variant of this phase of engulfment is being swallowed by a terrifying monster — a dragon, whale, tarantula, octopus or crocodile - or of descending into the underworld and encountering its threatening creatures. There is a clear parallel with eschatological visions of the gaping jaws of the gods of death, mouths of Hell, or the descent of heroes into the underworld. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the theme of the Fall of Rebel Angels belong to this experiential matrix.

Odin at the entrance to the
otherworld. (Drawing by Fuseli,

19th century. British Museum,

London.)

The second constellation, the experience of no exit, is related by subjects to the first clinical stage of birth when uterine contractions encroach on the foetus but the cervix is still closed. The world appears dark and menacing; the subject apprehends the situation as a claustrophobic nightmare and suffers acute mental and physical tortures. In this context, it is impossible to foresee that the agony can ever end. Human existence appears devoid of meaning, utterly absurd or even monstrous. The chief characteristic that differentiates this pattern from the one following is the unique emphasis on the role of the victim, and the fact that the situation is inescapable and eternal. There is no hope, and there appears to be no way out, either in space or in time. Many psychedelic subjects have indicated independently that this experience appears to be the psychological prototype for the religious concept of hell.

The third pattern on this level is that of the death-rebirth struggle. Many of its aspects can be understood if we relate it to the second stage of delivery in which uterine contractions continue but the cervix stands open. It is the time of gradual propulsion through the birth canal, involving mechanical crushing pressures, struggle for survival, and often a high degree of suffocation. In the terminal phases of delivery, the foetus experiences immediate contact with a variety of biological materials, such as blood, mucus, foetal liquid, urine and even faeces. From the experiential point of view, this pattern is rather complex and has several important facets: the atmosphere of a titanic struggle, sadomasochistic sequences, various deviant forms of intense sexual arousal, scatological involvement and the element of purifying fire (pyrocatharsis).

LSD subjects experience in this phase powerful currents of energy streaming through their bodies, and accumulations of enormous tension alternating with explosive discharges. This is typically associated with images of raging elements of nature, apocalyptic war-scenes and displays of 27

aggressive technology. An enormous amount of energy is being discharged and consumed in vivid destructive and self-destructive experiences. At times, sexual arousal can reach an unnaturally high degree and be expressed in visions of orgies, various perverted activities or rhythmic sensual dances. The scatological facet of the death-rebirth struggle involves an intimate encounter with repulsive biological material. Subjects can experience themselves as wallowing in excrement, drowning in cesspools, crawling in rotting offal or tasting blood. There often follows an experience of passing through purifying fire in preparation for spiritual rebirth.

This experiential phase is distinguished from the 'no exit' constellation by the subject's sense that he is not helpless and the situation is not hopeless; suffering has a definite purpose. The accompanying emotions are a mixture of agony and ecstasy. The images that occur in this context represent battles between the forces of good and evil: the drama of Divine Judgment, scenes of the temptation of saints, of Purgatory or martyr-death. The strange mixture of religiosity, death, anxiety, sex, aggression, and scatology typical for this matrix explains the frequent occurrence of images related to blasphemic rituals of the Valpurgi's Night and satanic orgies, or conversely, to the bestiality of the Inquisition.

The pattern of death and rebirth is related to the third clinical stage of delivery. The propulsion through the birth canal is completed, and is followed by explosive relief and relaxation. After the umbilical cord is cut, physical separation from the mother is accomplished and the child starts its new existence as an anatomically independent individual.

The 'death and rebirth' phase represents the termination and resolution of the 'death-rebirth struggle'. Suffering and agony culminate in an experience of total annihilation on all levels - physical, emotional, intellectual, moral and transcendental. This is usually referred to as the 'ego death'; it seems to involve instantaneous destruction of all the individual's previous reference-points. Such annihilation is often followed by visions of Painting from a psychedelic session depicting the experience
ol spiritual rebirth. The subject is
naked, lacing and embracing the
sun. (Collection Dr Milan

Hausner.)

28

Throughout human history,
individuals confronting death - in
reality or in a symbolic, ritual form

- have reported experiences ol
passing through a dark tunnel and
emerging into light of supernatural
radiance and beauty. (The Promise
of Super Oxygen. Cover of the
journal Prevention, luly 1973.) blinding white or golden light and a sense of liberating decompression and expansion. The universe is perceived as indescribably beautiful and radiant; subjects feel themselves cleansed and purged, and speak of redemption, salvation, moksha, or samadhi. Numerous images of emerging into light from darkness, glorious opening of heavens, revelation of the divine, slaying of dragons, harrowing of Hell, beating of demons, chaining of the devil, and the final victory of the pure religious impulse, express this state of consciousness. In the corresponding shamanic process, annihilation and dismemberment are followed by ascent to the heavenly realms in a new body. In death-rebirth mythologies, the correspondence is with the revival or resurrection of the sacrificed god.

If the patterns of psychedelic experience so far described may be likened to stages of the birth process, the mystical experience of cosmic unity seems to be related to the primal oneness of foetus and mother. When 29
no noxious stimuli interfere, conditions for the foetus are close to ideal, involving total protection and security and continuous satisfaction of all needs. The basic characteristics of this experience are transcendence of the subject-object dichotomy, feelings of sacredness, moving beyond the boundaries of time and space, ineffable bliss, and insights of cosmic relevance. The archetypal visions accompanying the experience of cosmic unity are of heavens, celestial cities, paradisiacal gardens, and radiant divine beings. This state is also typically associated with images of aquatic and oceanic scenes or of galactic vistas. As in the previous examples, these images come from the collective unconscious and are independent of the racial, cultural and educational background of the subject.

Another important category of psychedelic experiences can best be categorized as transpersonal. These experiences involve conscious identification with persons, animals or other entities that in the usual state of consciousness would clearly be considered outside the framework of the individual. Some experiences belonging to this category can be interpreted as regression in historical time and exploration of one's own biological or spiritual past. It is not infrequent in psychedelic states to experience quite concrete and realistic episodes that take the form of foetal or embryonal memories. Many subjects have reported vivid sequences experienced on the level of cellular consciousness that seemed to reflect their existence in the form of the sperm or ovum at the moment of conception. Sometimes the regression appears to go even further, and the individual has a convinced feeling of reliving memories from the lives of ancestors, or even of drawing on the racial and collective unconscious. On occasion, LSD
subjects have reported experiences in which they identified with various animals on the evolutionary ladder, or had distinct feelings of reliving memories of their existence in a previous incarnation.

Other transpersonal phenomena involve transcendence of spatial rather than temporal barriers. The experience of the consciousness of another person or group of persons, of the population of an entire country, or even of all mankind, are examples. One can also transcend the limits of the specifically human experience and tune in to what appears to be the consciousness of animals, plants or even inanimate objects. At the extreme, it is possible to experience consciousness of all creation, of the whole planet or of the entire material universe. Another phenomenon related to the transcendence of usual spatial limitation is consciousness of certain parts of the body, such as various organs and tissues, or even individual cells.

An important category of transpersonal experiences, involving transcendence of time and space, includes ESP phenomena such as out-of-the-body experience, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance and clair-audience, space and time travel.

In a large group of transpersonal experiences, the extension of consciousness seems to go beyond the phenomenal world and beyond the space-time continuum as we normally perceive it. Quite common are experiences of encounters with spirits of dead persons or suprahuman spiritual entities. LSD subjects also report numerous visions of archetypal forms, deities and demons - even complex mythological sequences.

Intuitive understanding of universal symbols, or the arousal of the inner
cosmic energy (Kundalini) and the activation of the centres of the psychic body (chakras), are additional examples in this category. At the extreme, the individual consciousness seems to encompass the totality of existence and identify with the Universal Mind. The ultimate experience appears to be that of the mysterious primordial emptiness and nothingness that contains all of existence in a germinal form, the Void.

Epilogue

During the rapid development of materialistic science, the old beliefs and concepts of exoteric religion were condemned as naive and absurd. It is only now that we can see again that these mythologies and concepts of Cod, heaven and hell do not refer to physical entities, events in time or geographical locations, but to psychic realities experienced during altered states of consciousness. These realities are an intrinsic part of the human personality that cannot be repressed and denied without serious damage to the quality of human life. For the full expression of human nature, they must be recognized, acknowledged and explored, and in this exploration, the traditional depictions of the afterlife can be our guides.

There now exists extensive clinical evidence to support the claims of religion and mythology that biological death is the beginning of an adventure in consciousness. The 'maps' of the initial stages of this adventure contained in eschatological mythology have proved to be remarkably accurate (though whether the descriptions of the later stages of the afterlife are equally accurate must still remain an open question). However, this perennial wisdom concerning death has another immediate and verifiable dimension - its relevance for life.

Confrontation with death in a ritual context, or precipitated by emotional or spiritual crises, can both eliminate the fear of death and lead to transformation - that is, to a more enlightened and personally satisfying way of living. The spiritual crises of schizophrenia, when they include elements of the death-rebirth process, can, if approached with understanding, become unique moments of growth and restructuring. Similarly, the experiences of death and rebirth induced by psychedelics can sometimes radically alter the patient's attitude to death and dying, alleviate pain and distress, and result in spiritual opening.

The Tibetan tradition emphasizes the vital importance of a lifetime spent in learning and training to distinguish the clear light of truth from the illusory states of unenlightened existence, so that in the confusion immediately following death, this discrimination can still be made. For the Tibetan and many other traditions, the 'way' is to live one's life in the constant awareness of death, and the goal, to die consciously. Such an understanding of the relation of life and death can only throw into sharp relief the negative attitude towards the adventure of death that has recently held the West so firmly in its grip.

31

Bird of immortality, the peacock appears in many traditions as a
symbol of Paradise, rebirth and the
incorruptibility of the soul. During
the first ten centuries of Christianity the peacock was a popular symbol
for Christ. In the East, it represents rebirth in the imagery of Hinduism,

Buddhism and Islam. (Illumination
by Florentius for the Moralia in Job, Spain, 945.)

The radiance, benevolence and
beauty of the beings of Paradise
convey the inner tranquillity and
bliss that are to be obtained when
the right relationship of life and

death is understood. In the Buddhist
beings to achieve enlightenment.

symbol of spiritual rebirth, enlivens

Tusita Paradise, Bodhisattva

Enveloped in brilliant light, he wears

Paradise with her graceful presence.

Maitreya awaits the time when he
a crown with peacock-feather

(Bodhisattva Maitreya, tanka, Tibet.

will come to the world as a Buddha,
designs. An Apsara, celestial riymph,

Apsara, detail of wall-painting from
the 'All-benign', to help all sentient
holding a sapu-blossom and a lotus,

Sigiriya, Ceylon, 5th century ad.)

The experience of 'paradise' is often

Moslem paradise garden where
games, sing songs and chase
one of exquisite, abundant, prodark-eyed houris playfully exchange butterflies. Souls remain for four tected nature. The flowering trees of
bouquets. In the Aztec paradise,
years in Tlalocan, the most earthly
these Paradise scenes are an image

Tlalocan, the rain god Tlaloc awaits
of the three Aztec paradises, before
for the blossoming self, the harthose who have died water-related being reborn in another lifetime.

monious and fruitful centre of the
deaths. The god sits at the base of a

(Mohammad's Night Journey, from
being.

magnificent tree with health-giving
an illuminated ms., M i r â j N â m e h , Mohammad on his miraculous
rain pouring from his hands. On

East Turkey, 15th century. Tlalocan

Night Journey, riding the mythical
either side, priests make offerings
fresco from Tepantitla, Mexico,
mare Burâq, is guided by the
and plant seeds in the fertile earth.

4-8th century.)

Archangel Gabriel through the

Below, the souls in Tlalocan play

The dying and those experiencing
illumined by the glory of God.

the homecoming souls in sacred
symbolic death in psychedelic

In alchemy, the Heavenly City is
napkins.

sessions frequently speak of visions
referred to as the Great Stone.

The remote paradise of the Hindu
of resplendent palaces and shining

The biblical vision of the New
god Shiva on Mount Kailasa in Tibet
celestial cities. Paradise as the

Jerusalem incorporates all the

(right) is lively with celestial beings

Heavenly City represents nature
important elements of the alchemiand sages celebrating his sacred ordered and transformed, the
cal process called rubedo: the
marriage to the goddess Parvati. In
precious stone, a citadel only to be
sparkling stone, the heavenly

Tantric tradition, ritual intercourse is
entered with a key - the key of
marriage, the conquest of death, the
a vehicle for transcendence,
knowledge. In Christian tradition the
water of life and its fountain, the
mirroring the cosmic union of the
most famous description of the
tree of life and its fruits, and the god
male and female principles.

Heavenly City or New Jerusalem
of the end and the beginning.

(St Peter unlocks the Gates of
occurs in the Revelation of St John,

Above, a combined paradise garden

Paradise, wall-painting from Rila
where it is described as having
and Celestial City is unlocked by St

Monastery, Bulgaria, 19th century.

twelve gates guarded by angels and

Peter, while inside the walls,

Shiva and Parvati enthroned, Rajput
shining like a precious stone,

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob harbour
painting, India, late 18th century.)

The lustre of gold and precious

Buddhist Pure Land or Jodo sect, are
a golden cloud, he bows before the
stones is an approximation in the
rich with gold and gems. Entry into

Throne of Allah in an ecstasy
material world for the ineffable light this paradise, regarded as a
approaching annihilation. The
perceived in mystical experience. In
stepping-stone on the path towards

Almighty communicates to him
his essay 'Why are Precious Stones
enlightenment and Nirvana, is
ninety-nine thousand ineffable

Precious?', Aldous Huxley suggests
achieved by faith in and surrender
words of the Law and commandthat the excessive value assigned to to Amitabha, the Lord of Boundless ments. (The Pure Land, Taima
gold and gems reflects a craving for

Light.

Mandara, Japan, 18th century.

transcendence.

The Night Journey of Mohammad

Mohammad's Night Journey, from

The palaces of Sukhavati, the
culminates with his reaching the
an illuminated ms., M i r a j N a m e h , Western Paradise of the Mahayana
seventh heaven. Here, enveloped in

East Turkey, 15th century.)

Water, as an element that readily
down to drink from the river with
assumes and changes form but
the god Geb in the form of a
ultimately transcends all form, is an
crocodile, suggesting transcendence
apt symbol for consciousness and
of the distinction between animals,
its transitions. In the heavenly
humans and gods in the world
realms, water purifies and nourishes
beyond.

in clear streams and fountains. In

An Aztec otherworld landscape
the underworld landscapes, it
shows the dead floating face-down
carries the souls of the dead in
in a swirling river arising from the
turbulent rivers or entraps them in
base of a tree of life. A soulbird
foul swamps.

stands at one side of the river, a sun

The Egyptian Happy Fields are
temple at the other. (Papyrus of
nourished by the Celestial Nile.

Here-Uberkhet, Egypt, 21st Dynasty.

Here-Uberkhet, a singer of the sun

Late Aztec drawing, Mexico.)

god, Amen-Ra, is shown kneeling

In ecstatic mystical states, such as
sometimes immediately precede
death, it is not unusual to hear
music of supernatural beauty;
in worship, harmonious sound
mediates the worshipper's approach
to the Divine.

The vision of St Hildegarde
god Krishna, incarnation of Vishnu,
beings, who from their airborne
encircles God with nine choirs of
dances with his beloved Radha in
ships shower the dancers with
angels representing hierarchies of
the centre of the adoring circle of
flowers. (Miniature from the Breviary
spiritual beings whose harmony
gopis or cow-girls, each of whom
of St Hildegarde, German, 12th
reveals His glory. God appears as a
believes she has Krishna as her
century. The Dance of Radha and
disc of brilliant light at the centre:

partner. The cosmic rhythm of their

Krishna, Jaipur, India, c. 1750.)

divinity without form. The Hindu
dance attracts other heavenly

Evidence of funeral ceramics

In the Chinese and Japanese

Such terrifying beings represent the
suggests that the Maya had a
traditions, the regions of the
instinctual forces of the human
detailed knowledge concerning the
underworld were governed by a
personality. In Buddhist teachings,
experiences associated with dying
number of Kings of Hell; the four
these beings must be recognized by
comparable to that revealed by the
infernal rulers represented here
the deceased as subjective, as they

Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the
correspond to the four Diamond
are encountered during the

Dead. A Mayan ruler of the under Kings of Heaven.

transition period or 'Bardo state'

world, wearing a Moan-bird on his

Encounters with powerful beings
between death and reincarnation.

headdress, is attended by five

- gods, rulers and judges - des (Drawing after a Mayan funeral
women with head-deformations.

cribed and depicted in countless
vase, Southern Campeche or

These were the Chihuateteo,
visions of the otherworld, have their

Northern Peten, Late Classical
women who died in childbirth and
counterparts in the experiences of

Period, 600-900, from Coe, The
as goddesses lay in wait for children
the dying and those undergoing

Maya Scribe and His World, 1973; at crossroads to devour them.

symbolic encounters with death.

Four Kings of Hell, Chinese, Anon.)

Numerous accounts by individuals
monster who eats the hearts of the
who have died and then been
unjust. The ibis-headed Thoth
resuscitated describe vivid and
records the verdict. On the right,
terrifying scenes of judgment. It is as

Hunefer has passed the judgment
if, at the end of the life-trajectory,
and is led by Horus to be presented
the soul reviews and evaluates its
to Osiris, lord of the underworld.

own evolution. Often this process is

A comparable Christian scene
represented as a dramatic 'weighing
shows St Michael before Heaven's
of souls'.

Gate bargaining with the Devil for a

In a sequence from the Egyptian
soul. On the scales the good deeds

Book of the Dead, the deceased,
of the Christian elect are weighed

Hunefer, is brought by Anubis to
against the evil, while the Devil and
the Hall of Judgment and
his helpers try to tip the balance. An
approaches the Great Balance. His
angel raises the judged soul into the
heart is to be weighed against the
hands of St Peter. (Papyrus of
feather of truth of the goddess

Hunefer, Egypt, c. 1350 BC. Altar Maat. Below the scale waits
frontal, San Miguel, Suriguerola,

Amemet, the Devourer of Souls, a

Spain, 13th century.)

4

Transitions between levels of
open the locks of the gate with the
consciousness are often rep Twelfth Key.of the royal art; that is,
resented as the-crossing of a barrier,
he must have-attained the
such as a door or gate protected by
appropriate levefl of esoteric
guardians or by magic. The key to
knowledge.

the gate may be a magical formula,

In a scene from the Egyptian Book or knowledge of a secret doctrine. In
of the Dead, the traveller before the essence, the key is self-knowledge.

gate is Anhai, priestess and musician

The gate of Gehenna, the first of the
of the sun god Amen-Ra. The gates
nine Moslem hells, is approached by
are guarded by gods, half human

Mohammad on his Night Journey.

and half animal in form.

Before the flame-barrier stand the

(Mohammad's Night Journey, from

Archangel Gabriel and Malik, Prince
an illuminated ms., Miraj Nameh,
of Darkness.

East Turkey, 15th century. The

The alchemist who has followed

Philosopher's Rose Garden,
the hermetic river to its source (left)

emgr<aMiqg;from Michael Maier,
approaches the entrance to the

Atalanta Fugiens, 1617. Papyrus of Philosopher's Rose Garden. He must

Anhai, Egypt, 20-21 st Dynasty.)

Another barrier to be passed by the
the side of the boat that carries
soul on the afterlife journey is the

Dante and Virgil in safety through
river of death, where safe crossing
the infernal landscape. In the
depends on an inner equilibrium. A
background burns the hellish city of
narrow Bridge of Judgment (above)

Dis, and Charon, the ferryman of
separates the good souls from the
the dead, makes his rounds. (The
wicked. The souls who succeed in

Soul crosses over the Narrow Bridge,
crossing the bridge are directed to
fresco in the Church of Santa Maria,

Heaven by an angel, while sinners

Loretto Aprutino, Italy, 13th
plunge into the river and are carried
century. Illustration to Dante's
away to the underworld. From the

Divine Comedy. Anon., 15th
swamp of the River Styx (right) the
century.)

damned cry out for aid, or clutch

The skeletal parts of the body that
outlast the flesh are a powerful
reminder of death and symbol of
the life beyond.

In the Tibetan tantric tradition,
death in its dancing form is represented by Citipati: an aspect of Yama, Lord of Death, joined in the yabyam position of sexual union
with his female counterpart.

An applique of the Cuna Indians
of Panama shows a group of
skeletons engaged in a lively dance.

Though they are symbols of death,
they are not terrifying; their basic
friendliness is indicated by the little
hearts inside their rib cages. So
familiarized, the dance of death can
be assimilated to the dance of life.

Shamans develop through their
symbolic experience of death during
initiation the ability to exist in two
worlds and travel freely between
them. An Eskimo shaman is shown
at sunset-time, half red with sunlight
and half blue with the shadows of
the night. Tradition has it that the
shadow aspect can take on independent life and merge with the twilight. At this point, the shaman's body will appear transparent.

(Citipati, fresco in the Monastery of

Dungkar, Tibet. Applique design or
m o l a of the Cuna Indians, San Bias Island, Panama. S h a m a n , drawing by William Noah, 1970.)

Images of the infernal punishments
biblical monster Leviathan. His

Infernal King of this judgment,
are strikingly similar even when they
helpers fan the flames and torture
reaches his verdict after consulting
spring from very different cultural
the condemned souls. In a Buddhist
two severed heads, one, red,
contexts. It appears that human
hell-scene, the damned are being
revealing the evil deeds, the other,
sins, passions and worldly attachtortured by demons in flaming pits.

white, the good. (Hell, from the
ments are projected in forms that

The judgment at the top of the

Limbourg brothers' Les Très Riches
are universal. In a Christian image of

Buddhist hell-scene is the fifth in a

Heures du Due de Berry, France, Hell, the devil spews up the damned
series, and takes place at the end of

15th century. Japanese Hell scroll,
on his burning breath, like the
the fifth week in hell. Emma, the

11th-12th century.)

Transition between different
and soul-guides. An Eskimo shaman
experiential realms and aspects of
is shown carrying his spirit helpers
reality is commonly equated with
within him - animals and birds
flight, transcending the physical
who will provide him with food and
body and the bounds of space and
protection. In the American Indian
time. The ability to fly between
otherworld, The Happy Hunting
worlds freely and at will is one of the

Grounds, the dead warriors are
most important powers acquired by
shown in flight on magnificent
shamans during initiation. Birds and
horses. The eagle hovering
animals act as mediators, helpers
overhead acts as messenger

between the Land of the Sunset and
the celestial realms. Freya, Nordic
goddess of love and of summer, flies
riding a wild cat and holding a
drinking horn. (Shaman in Flight, drawing by Jessi Oonark, 1971. The

Sky People, contemporary Sioux
painting. Freya, medieval painting in
the dome of Schleswig Cathedral,

Germany.)

The path to purification and
can then return to the right-hand
vaginas of former partners - a
transcendence is through painful
path, where it must appease a dog
concrete image of transcendence of
ordeals and renunciation. A Huichol
and a crow, prove it has not eaten
sexuality. In return the souls receive

Indian map of the Beyond (above)

the meat of a sacred animal, and
the fruits of immortality. After a
shows a divided path: those with
finally, meet a caterpillar, symbol of feast of figs, maize, beer and peyote,
pure hearts take the right-hand
first sexual experience. Then the soul all the souls join to dance around
path, those with impure hearts
can complete the journey to rejoin
the sun god, Tatevari, 'Our Great
go to the left. The ordeals of the left
its ancestors.

Grandfather Fire'.

path include impaling on a huge

Another Huichol map (right)

A painting by a woman who has
thorn, beatings from people illicitly
shows souls arriving at a wild fig-tree
passed through an experience of an
enjoyed in life, purification by fire,
and divesting themselves of the
hellish nature during an LSD session
crushing by rocks and drinking of
burden of their sexual attachments

(right, below; see also Themes, p. 77) foul, worm-infested water. The soul
in the shape of the penises and
expresses her sense of the spiritual

rebirth that succeeded it. The
maternal vagina, which had earlier
been perceived as a crushing,
murderous instrument, is transformed into a peacock aureole, surrounded by purifying fire and
golden light. At the centre of
the aureole she is borne up by
nurturing hands. (Contemporary

Huichol yarn-paintings or nierikas
by Elijio Carrillo, Central Mexico.

LSD painting, collection the
authors.)

Purged and purified, the soul
and alone. Dante (above) has passed
rose, rejoicing in the presence of
approaches union with the Divine.

through the nine circles of Hell, the Cod. (The Ascent into the

Light, love and joy have become the
mountain of Purgatory and the

Empyrean, by Hieronymus Bosch,
only realities. In the painting by
spheres of Heaven; in the company
c. 1450-1516. Vision of the Empyrean,

Hieronymus Bosch (left), the soul
of his beloved Beatrice, he faces the illustration to Dante's V i s i o n o f reaches the end of the long journey glorious vision of the Empyrean.

P a r a d i s e by Gustave Dore, 19th and approaches the Ultimate naked

Here the blessed dwell in a mystical
century.)

—

Gautama Buddha dies, surrounded
existence: birth is suffering, disease
this craving. Lastly, the Noble
by all creation - trees, animals,
is suffering, death is suffering, to be

Eightfold Path shows the way to
disciples, priests and workers - who
conjoined with things one dislikes is
cessation of suffering: right view,
are assembled to mourn his passing.

suffering, to be separated from
right-mindedness, right speech,

He is peacefully leaving the world of things one likes is suffering. The
right action, right livelihood, right
sorrow, never to be born again. By
noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering
effort, right mindfulness and right
his personal example, Buddha has
identifies the cause of suffering as
concentration.

shown mankind the way to spiritual
ignorant craving or trsna: craving for This is the Middle Path of the
liberation and Nirvana.

birth, craving for sensual pleasure,

Buddha which gives supreme

The Buddha's 'Four Noble Truths'

craving for death. The Noble Path of
knowledge and peace, leading to
point the path. According to the
the Cessation of Suffering suggests
enlightenment and Nirvana. (The

Noble Truth of Suffering, emotional
that the pain of living can be

Death of Buddha and his Entry into
and physical pain are intrinsic to
transcended by detachment from

Nirvana, hanging scroll, Japan, 1392.)

A

Themes

The cycle of death and rebirth was
associated in the religion of ancient

Egypt with the journey of the sun god
across the sky during the day and
through the twelve perilous regions of
the otherworld during the night. Nut,
the sky-goddess, arching to form the
vault of the sky, is shown swallowing the
solar barge in the evening and giving
birth to it in the morning. Its passage
through each of the regions of the
otherworld, Tuat, is reflected in the
successive positions of the sun disc
inside the goddess's star-lined body.

Beneath the arching Nut await a gallery
of gods and demigods whom the

Pharaoh is expected to join in death.

(Detail of Nut from the tomb of Ramases

VI, Thebes, Egypt, 20th Dynasty.)

65

The cycles of death and
incarnations instead of the single
each return-point represents a higher
rebirth
individual lifespan reaching from
evolutionary analogue to the one
conception to biological death. More
preceding. The cartographies for
frequently, the newly revealed fabric of
individual and cosmic cycles of death

Individuals who transcend the boundexistence consists of cyclical patterns and rebirth appear in many historical aries of ordinary reality and embark on
that either return into themselves or
and cultural variants.

the spiritual journey, typically exfollow a helical course. Life thus appears perience a dramatic change in their either to originate from its cosmic
concepts of the dimensions of existence.

source, evolve to a culminating point

Psychedelic subjects frequently

Sometimes they continue to see life as
and then dissolve back into the
experience death and rebirth in vivid
linear, though with an expanded vision
primordial undifferentiated unity, or to
sequences comparable to those
of an entire chain of consecutive
proceed along a spiral trajectory, where
encountered in the shamanic tradition,

eschatological mythologies, mystery
pains (5) and crushing pressures (7). She
experiences rebirth, associated with the
religions and rites of passage. The artist
experiences a strange combination of
vision of a peacock (15). The following

Harriette Frances, who participated in
birth and death (8), meditates on the
picture of the oceanic womb suggests
the LSD programme at Menlo Park,
mysterious symbols on a cruciform altar
that the experience of birth opened the

California, documented this process, as

(9) and is offered assistance (10). In a
way to the unitive state of prenatal
it occurred, in a unique series of
sequence strongly resembling shamanic
consciousness (16). She is returning from
drawings. After the initial visions of
initiation, she faces reduction to a
her journey with a sense of rejuvenation
geometrical ornaments (1), the process
skeleton and annihilation (11), followed
and revitalization (17). (LSD lournals ot an gradually deepens (2,3) and the artist
by renewal, ascent and return to life (12).

Artist's Trip, drawings by Harriette faces an engulfing whirlpool drawing her

After what appears to be symbolic

Frances. Courtesy the International
into the world of death (4). In the
crucifixion (13) and reminiscence of

Foundation for Advanced Study, Menlo
underworld she is subjected to piercing
some surgical intervention (14), the artist Park, California.)

Cycles (contd.)

The Wheel of Becoming illustrates in a
synoptic way the teachings of Tibetan

Buddhism regarding the cycles of
rebirth. In the centre of the wheel, held
in the grip of Yama, the Lord of Death,
are three animals representing the

'Three Poisons' or forces that perpetuate
rebirth: the pig symbolizing ignorance,
the rooster desire, and the serpent
aggression. The next circle shows the
black descending path and the white
ascending path. The six sectors
represent the lokas or realms into which one can be reborn. From the top,
clockwise, these are the realms of gods,
titans, hungry ghosts, hell-beings, beasts
and humans. In the hellish realm

Dharma Raja, the Lord of the Law,
judges the dead. On the rim are the
symbols of the Twelve Interdependent

Causes. (Wheel of transmigration, tanka,

Tibet, 19th century. The American

Museum of Natural History, New York.)

The theme of death and rebirth is also
found in Minoan eschatological
mythology. The afterlife is shown here
as a progression through four fields
created by the boughs of a world-tree or

Tree of Life. A pair of lovers is shown

An Australian Aborigine depiction of the

In pre-Buddhist China, beliefs concernduring life, and after death reunited in soul's journey to reunite with the Eternal ing the afterlife were deeply influenced
the Land of the Blessed (top left). A

Dreaming shows drone-pipe players and
by a cosmology involving complemensacred lion attended by two handdancers (bottom left and top right) tary interaction of opposite forces. This maidens is guarding the underworld (top performing for the dying man lying on a is graphically documented on a silken right). The young couple is being
platform (top left). After death, the

'flying garment', an ancient funerary
ushered into the Hall of the Just, where a man's spirit leaves the platform and robe that was also used as a banner to griffin with helpers conducts judgment
begins the long journey to the spirit
be carried in front of the coffin during

(bottom). (Drawing after the Minoan
world. He has to cross over a great
the rite of 'calling home the souls'.

'Signet Ring of Nestor', Pylos, Crete,
snake and kill a fish with a stone for food The picture-area can be divided into
c. 1550-1500 bc. From Joseph Campbell,
during his travels. (Contemporary bark—
three main parts; the lower section

The Masks ol Cod: Occidental
painting by Bunia, Croote Eylandt,
represents the underworld, the middle

Mythology, 1964.)

Arnhem Land, Australia.)

the earthly realms, and the upper

section the heavens. The two fish at the
bottom symbolize the deepest region of
the netherworld, the dark watery abyss
of yin, where the souls go after death.

The two dragons on the sides represent
guides for the two souls of the dead, one
yin and the other yang. The little
animals on the side waving farewell
symbolize the separation of these two
souls. The two tortoises with owls on
their back stand for the winter constellation of the Dark Warrior, and the ugly man between them is the Spirit of the Northern Seas. On the platform
above is a scene with seven men - a rite
of divination performed after death.

In the middle section, another ritual
scene shows the deceased with three
female attendants and two servants
offering her food. This is the traditional
welcoming-home rite conducted for the
dead to assure them of the affection of
the family. Below the canopy of Heaven,
decorated by two feng-huang birds, the

Chinese phoenixes, hovers the Spirit of
the East in the form of a bird with a
human head. Above the canopy is a
gate leading into the palace of the gods,
guarded by two leopards and two star—
gods, arbiters of human destiny. Above
the gate is a bell held by the spirits of
wind, sitting on horse-like creatures.

The left upper part shows the
crescent moon with a hare and toad,
symbols of its waxing and fullness. The
woman on the wings of the dragon is

Heng-o wno became the moon-goddess
after having obtained the pearl of
immortality. On the right side is the sun
disc with a raven; above, the Fu-sang,
the tree that the sun climbs and
descends during its daily orbit. The
juxtaposition of the two celestial bodies
symbolizes the return of the two souls
to the essence of their being: the yang
soul to the sun and the yin soul to the
moon. The birds above are messengers
announcing their arrival and reunion.

The unifying element between them is
the legendary ancestor of the human
race, Fu-hsi. The ring formed by his
serpentine tail symbolizes the reunion of
the two souls; divested of all human
elements, they are now prepared for a
mystical rebirth as ancestor spirits, free
of the limitations of time and space. (Silk robe from the tomb of Hsin-Chui, Ma-wang-tui, China, Han period, c. 193-145
bc. Institute of Archaeology, Peking.)

Entering the Beyond

The transition between the material
world and the realms of the otherworld
can take many different forms. Some
belief-systems describe the move from
one level to another as a sequence of
drastic changes of consciousness. These
involve progressive abandonment of the
seemingly constant and stable organization of experience characteristic of the phenomenal world and an acceptance of less structured and less predictable
modes of consciousness. More
frequently, this transition is represented
in a concrete way, as entering a cleft in
the earth, a hole in the mountains, a

On the Lucan tombs the moment of

It is a common belief among Eskimo and
volcanic crater or a gate. Although in
passing away is frequently depicted as a

Siberian tribes that shamans can leave
many cultures such entrances have
ride on a black horse. The dead are
their bodies while in a trance and travel
been associated with specific locations,
shown as warriors on horseback with
to the worlds beyond. The journey into
these references should be regarded,
sad, absent expressions and limp arms.

the netherworld is experienced as a
not as geographical, but as symbolic

(Lucan tomb painting, Paestum,
descent into the bowels of the earth or
representations of unusual states of

Southern Italy, 4th century B.C.)

the depths of the ocean. A Chukchee
mind. The beginning of the spiritual
shaman dives into the sea to appease
journey is also frequently symbolized by

Shamans, too, use animal helpers for
the wrath of Anky-Kelé, Cod of the
a tunnel, funnel, whirlpool, or gaping
their transitions to the realm of the

Ocean. The deity, who is surrounded by
mouth of a gigantic monster - Leviathan,
dead. Here a Samoyed shaman rides a
seals and whales, has power of life and
dragon, crocodile, whale or tarantula.

bear and plays his ceremonial drum
death over humans, since he controls

Most individuals are taken to the
during such a journey. The bear is the
the supply of animals hunted for food.

otherworld without their choice or even
animal form of Erlik, the god of the

(Chukchee drawing, Northern Siberia,
against their will. Exceptionally, gods,
underworld. (Samoyed drawing, Siberia.

1945. After Lavrov.)

demigods or heroes manage to make

After Prokofieva.)

the journey voluntarily. The Sumerian
goddess Inana, the Greek heroes

Hercules, Orpheus and Odysseus, King

Nimi, the karmic predecessor of Buddha,
and accomplished shamans are
examples.

In some traditions, supernatural
beings assist the souls during their
journeys to the Beyond. These beings
may be represented as devils and
demons, underworld ferrymen, or
guides of the dead such as Odin's

Amazonian Valkyries of Nordic
mythology, or the Creek god Hermes.

This function can also be performed by
animals or mythological creatures who
transport the souls to the otherworld by
carrying, escorting or devouring them.

Here belong the underworld hounds of
the Creeks, Norsemen and Mesoamericans, the eagle of the Scythians or
of the Creek god Zeus, the horses of the

Vikings and Lucans, or Mohammad's
mythical mare, Buraq.

70

A naked young athlete is shown at the for burial. Here they are seen lifting the moment of his death, which is symbolbody of a warrior from the battlefield of ized by a dive into the waters of the sea.

Troy. (Red-figure Greek vase, 5th century This representation suggests that death BC. Louvre, Paris.) is only a transition from this life into the other. (Tomb of the Diver, Paestum,

The journey between the worlds may be

Southern Italy, 480 bc.)

assisted by various magical means -
direct guidance, prayers, incantations or

In Creek mythology, the brothers
magic formulae. An Eskimo girl eases

Thanatos and Hypnos, Death and Sleep,
her father's passage into the otherworld
assisted the transition between the
by 'singing a magic song with magic
earthly plane and the otherworld. These
breath'. With her help he will enter the
two sons of Nyx, Goddess of Night,
body of a wolf and eternally hunt the
appeared to mortals when their allotted
caribou in the Beyond. ( T h e D y i n g M a n time was completed. They cut a lock of
b e c o m e s a W o l f , stonecut/stencil by hair from the deceased as a preparation

Myra Kukiiyaut, 1971. The Winnipeg Art
for Hades and then carried them away

Gallery.)

The beginning of the spiritual journey is
frequently experienced as being
engulfed or swallowed. Thus on a Pre Columbian sarcophagus, Pacal, the
great ruler of the Mayan centre

Palenque, falls at the instant of death
into the jaws of an underworld monster,
just as the sun sinks each day in the
west. This image suggest that, like the
sun, he will ascend again into the
heavens, fulfilling the cosmic cycle. The
cross behind the ruler represents the
sacred ceiba tree with roots in hell,
trunk in life, and branches in the
heavens, where a celestial bird perches.

(Sarcophagus lid, Pyramid of the

Hieroglyphs, Palenque, 683.)

A similar idea is expressed in many
medieval paintings and illuminations
where the entrance to Hell is depicted
as a gaping mouth. (Illumination from
the Winchester Psalter, England,
c. 1250-60. British Library, London.)

71

The journey

Like the entrance into the otherworld,
the journey through its various regions
can be experienced in an abstract
way as an unfolding transformation of
states of consciousness, or as complicated travel through the landscapes of the Beyond. During the many adventures and ordeals of this passage,
the deceased or initiates may rely on
their own resources; the descent of
some heroes and demigods into the
otherworld, or the long walk in the

Helshoes described in the Nordic
tradition are examples of such independent journeys. In many instances, assistance from divine beings and various means of transportation are
available to the traveller. These range
from elaborate and magnificent ships
and chariots to simple and primitive
objects, such as the log that carries the
dead Guarayo Indians over the river of
the underworld. In many cultures the
journey through the Beyond is closely
linked to the movements of heavenly
bodies, particularly the sun, moon, or

Venus, to the diurnal-nocturnal rhythm,
seasonal changes or vegetation cycles.

According to many eschatological
systems, successful passage through the
underworld requires knowledge of its

The ancient Egyptian map of Ro-Setau
form of gates, monsters and evil spirits.

cartography, its specific dangers and the
depicts two winding roads: the Road of After the trials, the soul becomes
way in which its obstacles may be

Water in the upper part of the picture, radiant and pure; it is 'born in eternity'

overcome. Detailed maps developed for
and the Road of Fire below. During its and becomes great and light. Then it is
the purpose make it possible to prepare
journey through Ro-Setau, the soul
allowed to leave Ro-Setau and enters
for the posthumous journey during life.

must overcome many obstacles in the

Anru-tef, the Region of the Happy Ones.

(Drawing after a coffin from El Bersha,

Egypt, Middle Kingdom. Cairo Museum.

From A. de Buck, T h e E g y p t i a n C o f f i n T e x t s , VII, © The Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.) In the Eyptian tradition, initiates and the deceased travel through the otherworld
in the solar barge in the company of the
sun god Amen-Ra. Here the god is
carried to the east by four deities with
serpent and scarab heads. (Papyrus of
the B o o k o l t h e D e a d , Late New Kingdom, Louvre, Paris.)

In Greek mythology, souls were
transported across the putrid and
stinking underground River Styx in the
boat of the infernal ferryman Charon.

(Detail, T h e L a s t j u d g m e n t by Michelangelo, 1541. Sistine Chapel,

Rome.)

On an Etruscan funeral stele, transport
regions is one of the most common
to the otherworld is provided by a
motifs in eschatological mythology. A
chariot drawn by winged horses and
contemporary version of the Cuna
guided by a g e n i u s . (Funeral stele, late Indian funeral boat shows the souls of

4th to 3rd century BC. Museo Civico
people and an animal transported

Archeologico, Bologna.)

through a colourful world in a craft
flying symbolic flags and powered by a

Among the Huichol Indians of Central

Johnson outboard motor. A soulbird in

Mexico experiential journeys into the
the form of a hawk protects the
underworld and contact with supernal
travellers with its outspread wings.

realms are mediated by ritual use of

(Applique design or mo/a of the Cuna
peyote. A contemporary image

Indians, San Bias Island, Panama.)

depicting the visionary journey of a

Huichol shaman shows him leaving his

The idea of the posthumous journey as
body, travelling through intricate spacea cruise is reflected in a Malanggan time tunnels of the Beyond, and ceremony combining commemoration
encountering during his travel spirits of
of the dead with ritual initiation of
the dead and deities. (Contemporary
young men. This rite employs carved
yarn-painting or n i e r i k a by Elijio Carrillo, models of canoes with effigies of

Central Mexico. Collection the authors.)

ancestral spirits wearing totemic
costumes. (Wood carving, northern

The image of a boat or a ship in which

New Ireland, New Guinea. Linden—
the souls travel through the nether

Museum, Stuttgart.)

73

Creatures of darkness

The realms of the underworld are

Vajrayana, where the same deities have
inhabited by hierarchical systems of
their blissful and wrathful aspects. In the infernal beings. Their chthonic rulers
underworld, the infernal rulers and their
usually play an important role in the
hosts of subordinate anthropomorphic
cosmological order, with an authority
deities, animals and composite
extending beyond their realms. Through
creatures torment the entrapped
the network of their subordinates they
souls of the deceased and initiates, or
contribute the dark aspect to the
subject them to complicated ordeals.

phenomenal world, causing disasters,
confusion, misfortune and suffering. The

Although the pantheon of the Meso—
polarity between the forces of darkness
american cultures cannot be fully
and the forces of light is sometimes seen
reconstructed because of incomplete
as an absolute and a p r i o r i dichotomy records, it is clear that the underworld
underlying the cosmos. A typical
portion of it was unusually rich. In
example of this dualistic worldview is
addition to the well-known sources

Zoroastrianism, in which the entire
such as the Aztec Codex B o r g i a and the universe is seen as a titanic battle

Mayan P o p o l V u h , much information between the armies of Ahura Mazda
about Pre-Columbian chthonic mythand Ahriman. Monistic systems see ology has been obtained from the study good and evil as manifestations of the
of funeral ceramics. A detail from a
same transcendent creative principle.

Mayan vase shows the underworld god

The best example of this is the Tibetan

L seated on a jaguar throne. His role as
the ruler of the nether regions is
indicated by the crossed bones and
death-eyes (at upper left), by the strange
peccary-like animal with a death collar,
above him, and by the vertebrae
supporting his throne. (Drawing after
the Vase of the Seven Cods, Guatemala

Highlands or Northern Peten, Late

Classical period, 600-900. From Michael

D. Coe, T h e M a y a S c r i b e a n d H i s W o r l d , 1973.)

Similarly with skeletal shape and
insignia, the Pre-Columbian Mictlan—

Tecuhtli, Lord of the Dead and custodian of the bones of all past human generations, ruled the infernal region Mictlan with his wife Mictlancihuatl.

(Totonac ceramic, Tierra Blanca,

Veracruz, Mexico, 600-900. Museo de

Antropologia de la Univesidad

Veracruzana, Jalapa.)

74

L e f t - h a n d p a g e , b e l o w : Visions of devils, demons and other
ominous beings similar to those known
from eschatological mythology are quite
common in psychedelic sessions. They
occur typically in the context of the
death-rebirth process, when subjects
are confronting difficult aspects of their
biological birth trauma. A Czech .

psychiatric patient who painted her
vision during one of her sessions labelled
it 'It is He', meaning, the Master of Hell.

(LSD painting. Collection the authors.)

Fierce and awesome animals populate
the underworlds. In one of the hells
inspired by the Buddhist sutras, a giant fiery cock sears and mangles those who are guilty of cruelty to animals. (Detail, Japanese Hell scroll, late 12th century.

Hara Collection, Tokyo.)

T h i s p a g e :

Among the deities of the Tibetan B o o k o f t h e D e a d or B a r d o T h ö d o l are terrifying goddesses with animal heads who appear on the third day of the

Bardo, or intermediate state between
death and reincarnation. (Detail, Bardo

Mandala, Tibet. Rijksmuseum,

Amsterdam.)

Surrealistic monsters with human and
animal features express the tearing and devouring tortures of hell. (Detail, T h e L a s t l u d g m e n t by Hieronymus Bosch, c.1450-1516. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.) Poisonous vipers and constrictors have
several characteristics that make them
ideal candidates for chthonic creatures.

They are closely related to the earth
element, represent vital danger, and in
shedding their skins, they enact death
and rebirth. Aapep, the monstrous
serpent-form of Seth, the killer-brother
of Osiris, represented one of the major
threats of the Egyptian otherworld. As
the embodiment of evil and arch-enemy
of Osiris and Horus, he had to be
confronted by the Pharoah, the
deceased and initiates, as he lay coiled
in a pit, surrounded by underworld
goddesses. (Detail, wall-painting from
the tomb of Seti I, Thebes, Egypt, Late

New Kingdom.)

75

The ordeal of hell

The supreme ordeal of the spiritual
journey is an experience of physical and
emotional agony that seems to be
without end. Burning heat and freezing
cold, tearing and crushing, torturing
sounds, disgusting tastes and noxious
smells, combine with feelings of guilt,
anguish, despair and humiliation. It is an
experience of an insane claustrophobic
nightmare.

The soul has to face a strange

Oriental religions consider hells to be
death-eyes and the smoke motif,
paradox: in order to be able to continue
temporary stations in the cycle of death
indicating noxious odour. Behind him is
its journey, it has to accept that it will
and rebirth. In the Mesoamerican
the spotted dog who was to carry the
stay in hell forever. The feeling that the
religions, hells were not places to which
dead soul across the river of death on its
suffering is eternal is an essential
the dead would be consigned for eternal
way to the underworld. The little flying
experiential attribute of hell. The
punishment. They were regarded as
insect with a large cigar is probably the
endlessness of this state does not
necessary points of transition in the
firefly that plays an important part in the consist in an extreme extension of linear
cycle of creation. It was inevitable that

Mayan eschatological epic P o p o l V u h .

time, but in its transcendence. The
in the cosmic process, all created things

(Drawing after a Mayan funeral vase
individual undergoes tortures beyond
should plunge into matter and return to
from Southern Campeche or Northern
any imagining which at that point are
light and their creator.

Peten, Late Classical Period, 600-900.

the only available reality; since the

From Michael D. Coe, The Maya Scribe
sense of the linear flow of time is lost,
and his World, 1973.)

there appears to be no way out. It is

In a ritual of the Mayan underworld, the
only when this situation is fully
infant Jaguar God is about to be

In the uttermost depths of the Inferno,
accepted that one has experienced hell,
decapitated by a young dancing god
the triple-headed Satan towers over his
and the journey can continue.

swinging a knife. A gigantic head of the
victims, devouring simultaneously Judas,

In most interpretations of Christianity,

Cauac monster, a jawless creature

Cassius and Brutus. Around him are
the eternity of the infernal state is seen
associated with rain, serves as a
numerous scenes of ingenious infernal
in terms of a period of time of infinite
sacrificial altar. The skeletal deity is the tortures. (Detail, mosaic in the cupola of
duration. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism,
death god Cizin; his loin-cloth is
the Baptistery of San Giovanni, Florence,
the Tibetan Vajrayana and other
decorated with the head of a bone with

13th century.)

The scene from one of the Buddhist hells

In psychedelic states, the experience of

Mohammad and Gabriel watching
shows a prisoner tortured by a demon;
hell is frequently associated with the
unfortunate sinners who are paying for
the emphasis here is on the element of
death-rebirth process. In this context
their hypocrisy, considered a crime of
strangulation and confinement. (Chinese
the elements of imprisonment, extreme
the most extreme gravity. (Illuminated
painting, Huan period. Mode Collecpressures, excruciating tortures, ms., Miraj Nameh, East Turkey, 15th tion.) darkness and fear of extinction seem to
century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.)

be related to important features of

The Oriental images of infernal states
biological birth. A painting from an LSD

The experience of being devoured or
share many experiential characteristics
session depicts the vagina as a murderexcreted is frequent in the infernal with their European counterparts. The ous instrument. (Collection the authors.)

repertoire, as in psychedelic experience.

detail of an Indonesian hell-scene is a

(Detail, The Garden ol Earthly Delights particularly poignant representation of

The form of suffering inflicted in hell is
by Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1450-1516.

the 'no-exit' aspect of infernal suffering.

not arbitrary; typically, particular

Prado, Madrid.)

(Painting on linen, Bali, late 19th century. ordeals are associated with specific F. Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, behaviour in one's lifetime. A picture

Budapest.)

from the Moslem hell shows

The universal judgment

The most critical and dramatic phase of
the posthumous journey of the soul is
the divine judgment. In the paradisiacal
and celestial realms the elect enjoy
states of pure ecstasy, while in hell the
damned are exposed to extreme
tortures. The deceased and initiates who
undergo judgment are aware of the
nature of their potential destinies; their
present ordeal consists in their
uncertainty of their fate. During the
judgment, the life of the individual is
reviewed in great detail, prolonging the
period of doubt, as good and evil
actions are weighed to give the final
balance. Usually Divine Judgment is
associated with biological dying and
death, but it may also accompany
symbolic death experienced in
psychedelic sessions, the psychotic
episodes of schizophrenic patients, or
initiation rites. For some religions, the

Last Judgment, the final reckoning, takes
place with the destruction of the entire
world, when all the dead are resurrected
and judged together.

The judging principle may appear in
abstract form, as a radiant source of
light, or, more frequently, with human
or animal attributes. Sometimes the
souls are judged by means of ordeals
such as crossing a treacherous bridge or
climbing a ladder stretched between
earth and heaven. Only the righteous
are able to complete the journey; the
sinners lose their balance on the way or
are knocked down by demons.

In the Zoroastrian Judgment of the

Dead, the deceased have to cross

Chinvat Parvatu, or the Bridge of the

Separator. To the wicked the bridge
presents a sharp edge; haunted by
memories of their evil actions, they lose
their balance and fall into the abyss of
hell. The righteous, for whom the same
bridge appears broad and comfortable,
pass over it without difficulty and are
allowed to enter heaven. (Indian ms.,

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.)

In a Buddhist scene of Divine Judgment,
bridges span a pool to connect the
upper section with the lower regions.

Above is the Paradise of the Supreme

Buddha, populated by radiant beings.

Below, seated on his throne, is the

Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, the deity who
intercedes with the Judges of Hell. The six figures who float on scarves beside him symbolize his role as the Lord of the Six Conditions of Rebirth. (Scroll painting, Tun-huang, Central Asia, mid—

9th century. Musee Guimet, Paris.)

This page :

Haitian imagery combines Christian and

African elements. In a scene of Last

Judgment that takes place above

Jacmel, the devils are shown throwing
the damned into the phosphorescent
waters of the Carribean Sea. The images of Catholic saints are merged with the voodoo loa. (The Voodoo Vision, contemporary painting by the Haitian
artist Prefete Duffaut.)

On a ladder stretched between earth
and the Christian Heaven, those who
are burdened by evil actions become
easy prey for devils. (St John of

Climax, St Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, 7th century.)

79

Spirits for the weighing of souls. In the

Judgment (contd.)

boat, accompanied by two monkeys, is

Osiris' evil brother Seth in the form of
the 'Pig Destroyer' or 'Devourer of

Some of the divine judges use instru Millions of Years', who swallows those
ments to determine the balance of good
souls that do not pass the judgment.

and evil actions. The scales of justice

These have to stay in the dark and filthy
appear in Christian and ancient Egyptian
regions of Amenti and will be exposed
iconography and in paintings of the
to severe tortures. (Drawing after a

Buddhist tradition. Other aids of the
sarcophagus in the Louvre, Paris. From
divine judges are more culture-specific,

Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian
such as the karmic mirror of the Tibetan

Resurrection, 1911.)

Dharma Raja, or the two tell-tale heads
of the Japanese infernal judge Emma.

A Cuna Indian applique representing

The Ladder of Salvation is combined
the Last Judgment shows Jesus Christ
here with the scales of justice. (Wall—
illumined by the radiant eye of God. In
painting, Church of St Peter and St Paul,
the centre, the hand of St Michael holds

Chaldon, Surrey, England, 12th century.)

the scales while an angel and a devil vie
for the souls of the dead. Below are

Osiris, god and king of the Egyptian
images of heaven and hell, and on either
otherworld, was sometimes represented
side fly the Cuna soulbirds. (Applique
as the divine judge of the dead. Before
design or m o l a of the Cuna Indians, San his throne stands the Scale of Seven

Bias Island, Panama.)

In a Flemish painting of the Day of

Christian version shows the devil

Judgment, Christ appears seated on a
snatching the soul that has left the dead
rainbow, a universal symbol of rebirth
body. The Archangel Michael is trying to
and resurrection. With his right hand he wrest the soul from the devil while Cod blesses the elect as they climb toward impartially overlooks the fight. (The
the Heavenly Host, and with his left he

Dead Man before God, from the Rohan
condemns sinners to damnation. (The

Book of Hours, France, early 15th

Second Coming, from a Flemish Book of century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.) Hours, 15th century. British Museum, London.)

The Christian theme of 'Abraham's

The struggle for the soul sometimes takes Bosom' is closely related to the Divine a mitigated form as an involved dis Judgment. It suggests that after death
putation between the heavenly forces
but before the Judgment the good souls
and the inhabitants of the underworld.

are raised to Abraham to receive

(Detail, The Miracle ol Ostia by Paolo nourishment and protection. Here

Uccello, 15th century. Palazzio Ducale,

Abraham holds the souls in a napkin.

Urbino, Italy.)

Two angels accompany the blessed on
their journey, while below in the
intertwined circle of Hell is the promise

The uncertain fate of the soul during the of flaming tortures for the damned.

Divine Judgment is frequently rep (Miniature of the Blessed and the
resented as a physical battle between

Damned, Psalter of St Louis, France, 13th
celestial beings and demonic forces. A
century. Bibliotheque de I'Arsenal, Paris.) Left-hand page, below:

According to the Tibetan Book of the

Dead or Bardo Thödol, judgment is experienced during the Sidpa Bardo. The judge of the dead, Dharma Raja, is holding in his right hand the sword of
discrimination, in his left the karma—
revealing mirror. In front of him, the

Genius of Good and the Genius of Evil
put white and black pebbles on the
scale of judgment. The monkey-headed

Shinje supervises the weighing, and a
jury of animal-and human-headed
deities watch the trial. In the foreground, demons are exposing the condemned to various torments. ( The Judgment by Lharippa-Pempa-Tendup—

La, Sikkim, 1919.)

The Chinese tradition has a complex
system of hells, each governed by a
special ruler with his retinue. One of the
ten infernal rulers, Yama, King of the

Seventh Hell, is shown here judging the
dead. Enthroned, dressed like an
emperor, and surrounded by ministers
and court officials, he is receiving
offerings from supplicants. In front of
him, devils with flails and a dog chase
condemned souls into a river. (Chinese
scroll painting, 19th century. Horniman

Museum, London.)

Sound

The experiences of the blessed in the
celestial realms and those of the
damned in the infernal regions seem to
have only one characteristic in
common: they involve a sense of
transcendence of linear time. There is no
access to either past or future, and the
divine bliss or hellish tortures appear to
be the only existing reality. In all other
respects, these two conditions are
diametrically opposite. This polarity
finds its most immediate expression in
the acoustic aspects of these states,
since sound and music seem to •
represent direct manifestations of the
cosmic order. Those individuals who
have had experiences of the celestial
realms tell of the sounds of universal
harmony, music of the spheres,
nourishing sweetness of divine choirs,
and ethereal orchestras resounding with
praise of the creator. Conversely, the
infernal acoustics abound in disharmony and dissonance, creating an atmosphere of chaos, alienation and agony.

Angels dressed in rich garments play
trumpets and pluck their lutes. They fill the Christian heaven with divine music, worshipping and exalting the Heavenly Father. (Detail, The Coronation of the Virgin, by Fra Angelico; 15th century.

Museum of San Marco, Florence.)

In the paradise of Amitabha Buddha,
hosts of celestial musicians play
heavenly music amidst radiant clouds.

They are Bodhisattvas, enlightened
beings who dedicate all the activities of
their present and future lives to others.

(Detail, Japanese painting of the Heian
period, 1033. Phoenix Hall, Kyoto.)

82

Duality: the extremes of heaven and hell In the Hell of Shrieking Sounds,
described in Japanese Buddhist
scriptures, monks who during their lives
tortured animals are trapped in
torments surrounded by intolerable
sounds. (Detail, jigoku Zoshi or Hell scroll, Japan, Kamakura period, c. 1200.

Seattle Art Museum, Washington.)

In a nightmarish vision of hell, musical
instruments become a means of torture,
and a knife protrudes from between a
pair of ears. Diabolical use of sound
seems to add new dimensions of
suffering to both the sinners who are
freezing in cold hell and those who are
being consumed by infernal flames.

(Details, The Carden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1450-1516.

Prado, Madrid.)

83

Duality (contd.)

Trees and layers

The duality of the paradisiacal and
infernal landscapes is well illustrated by
the forms and function of their trees.

The celestial trees are beautifully shaped
and laden with blossoms or exquisite
fruit. Their corrupt counterparts are
covered with thorns, spikes and daggers,
and bear poisonous fruit of disgusting
taste, contributing to the suffering of the damned souls.

Sennefer, who during his lifetime was

According to the Na-khi tradition, in
the keeper of the royal parks of
one of the realms of hell there is a tree

Thutmosis III, is shown in the afterlife
made of swords that is rooted in the
sitting before the Egyptian Tree of
mouth of Makara, a voracious monster.

Heaven, whose fruits were believed to

Two dogs snap at the condemned who
give immortality. (Wall-painting from
are trying to escape by climbing the
the tomb of Sennefer, Thebes, Egypt,
razor-sharp branches. A demonic

18th Dynasty.)

couple and ferocious birds represent
additional dangers. At the upper right a

A wish-fulfilling tree occupies one of the
soul that has completed the ordeal rests
heavenly realms in the mythology of the
on a cloud. (From The Funeral

Na-khi people of Southwest China. Two

Ceremony of the Na-khi, Southwest
levels of gods rest peacefully above the

China, ms. in the Library of Harvard-tree, immersed in prayers. Garuda, the

Yenching Institute, Cambridge, Mass.)

golden king of the birds and devourer of
evil, sits in its branches eating a serpent.

Below right, riding a cow, is King Na—

An infernal spike tree was observed in

Kaw, ruler of all creatures that have
the last of the thirteen sections of hell
blood. On the left is the moon-coloured
visited by King Nimi, who is seen in
horse of foreknowledge who serves as a

Burma as the fourth incarnation of
steed for those who wish to visit the

Buddha Sakyamuni. Several of the
past, the present or the future. From the
damned are forced by demons to climb
wish-fulfilling cow near the trunk of the
this tree with its sharp bark and leaves.

tree comes any drink that one desires,

Those who reach the top are viciously
and below her is the white elephant of
attacked by predator-birds; those who

Indra, king of the gods. (From The
linger in lower parts of the tree are

Funeral Ceremony ol the Na-khi,
pierced by blade-like falling leaves.

Southwest China, ms. in the Library of (Detail, ms. of the Nimi-lataka, Burma, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Cambridge, 1869. Mus6e Guimet, Paris.)

Mass.)

84

The Purushakara, or Cosmic Man Yantra,
a Tantric cosmogram influenced by Jain
mythology, shows the macrocosm
mirrored in the body of a realized
human being. The middle world or
earthly plane ( bhurloka) is represented by concentric rings. The ascending
planes of experience are called lokas
and the descending ones talas. The upper region consists of sixteen heavens
of sixty-three layers. The lower realm
consists of seven earths and forty-nine
layers of the subterranean worlds. (Jaina
diagram, Rajasthan, India, 18th century.

Collection Ajit Mookerjee.)

Below:

A Chinese mythological painting
represents the seven sacred mountains,
each guarded by a beautiful bird or
animal. From the top, these guardians
are a peacock, a tiger, a black horse, a
white ox, a white mythic lion, the wife of
the King of the Birds, Garuda, and a
black cuckoo. On the right of each
mountain stands a deity, and on the left
are a tiger and a bird sitting in the
branches of a tree. (From The Funeral

The polarity of heavens and hells can be
the higher regions of the sky. The strata

Ceremony ol the Na-khi, Southwest
demonstrated most graphically on
of the underworld or the various hells

China, ms. in the Library of Harvard-cosmological diagrams that present
are located beneath the surface of the

Yenching Institute, Cambridge, Mass.)

stratified models of the universe. The
earth, and form a layered pit. The
idea that heaven and hell have a
earthly realms occupy the middle

In Christian eschatology, Hell is
vertical, layered organization occurs in
position between the heavens and hells.

frequently represented as a layered pit.

many different traditions. It can be

In this vision, influenced by Dante's
found in Sumerian mythology,

The layered arrangement of the celestial

Divine Comedy, a mammoth Devil sits Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism,
realms is depicted with naive clarity in
in the middle of Hell squeezing sinners

Jainism and the Mesoamerican religions,
this Indian painting of the seven floors of with his hands and crushing them with to mention a few salient examples. In heaven, which are superimposed upon
his claw-like feet. (Hell, engraving after a the stratified cosmographic models, the
the earthly realm. (Miniature, India, 19th
fresco by Andrea Orcagna in the
heavenly realms are usually related to
century. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.)

Camposanto, Pisa, 15th century.)

Emerging

After a deep confrontation with the evil
forces and the 'dark night of the soul'

comes the glorious turning-point of the
spiritual journey. The soul emerges into
the radiance of the Divine Light and
experiences spiritual rebirth, salvation,
redemption, resurrection, reunion. The
burden of guilt and fear is magically
lifted, evil and aggression suddenly
appear insignificant or ephemeral, and
the nourishing presence of the divine
source becomes the only reality. The
preceding agony, loss of faith and
alienation seem to contribute to the
magnitude of this miraculous event.

This experience of divine epiphany
has been described by saints, prophets
and hermits in all ages. To some it
occurred during intense spiritual

Between his death on the cross on Good

The concept of spiritual liberation in the
practice involving meditation, con Friday and his resurrection on Easter

Tibetan Vajrayana is based on a subtle
centration and austerities. To others it
morning, Christ descended into Hell,
but fundamental philosophical insight.

came as an answer to prayers, or quite
opened its gates and liberated the

Here, the victory over death is symspontaneously as the grace of Cod.

sinners from their eternal torment. The
bolized by the image of Yamantaka,

Similar experiences, of emergence from
agony of the Crucifixion freed mankind
who is the wrathful form of Manjushri
a dark tunnel or funnel into divine light,
from the burden of primal sin. A
and symbolizes wisdom that subdues
have been reported by individuals who
medieval painting shows Christ in front
death. According to the Tibetan Tantric
have survived clinical death. The
of the mouth of Hell bearing fresh
tradition, death is only a transition from
phenomena of biological and spiritual
wounds of his martyrdom and haloed in
a seemingly stable existence to an
rebirth occurring in psychedelic
radiant light. The damned, tortured by
unstable one. If we truly understand
sessions, or the shattering sense of
their separation from God, reverently
that each moment of our life is the
death and transcendence experienced
rejoin the divine element, moving from
death of the past moment and the birth
during acute emotional and spiritual
the darkness of their prison into the light of the next, we attain liberation and
crises - seen in Western culture as
that gives them freedom and immorpower over death. It is thus essentially indications of mental illness - often tality. (The Harrowing of Hell, School of
our own ignorance that keeps us in
show deep similarity to this mystical and

Savoy, 15th century. Musee des Beaux—
bondage. (Yamantaka, Tibet, 17th
religious reunion.

Arts, Chambery.)

century. Collection Philip Goldman.)

numerous experiences of a blasphemous nature, in which the most sacred elements were contaminated by what she called 'obscene biology'. The patient
was able to trace this strange mixture to
the memory of her biological birth, a
complex experience that combines
spirituality with sexuality and brutal
physiology. The picture shows the
resolution of this problem, as she
experienced it at the end of the session.

The figure of 'purified Christ' rises in a
triumphant way above the realm of

'obscene biology'. However, the
patient's hands can be seen reaching
toward the Black Sun, symbolizing the

Divine without form, the transcendent
reality that is even beyond Christ.

(Collection the authors.)

Another drawing from LSD therapy
shows the patient as a frail foetus
surrounded by monstrous predators,

Left-hand page, below:

A similar theme is represented by the
symbolizing the awesome power of the
scene of an angel rescuing the soul from
uterine contractions. At the same time,

For Christianity evil takes a more
the purgatorial fire and the grip of devils.

the foetus represents the emerging
concrete shape. Since the beginning of

According to medieval belief, Purgatory
transcendent self, and the monsters
time the devil has been the arch-enemy
was a place of temporary expiation for
stand for the forces destroying the old
of the divine order and of human souls.

the dead who had not entirely satisfied
ego-structures. (Collection the authors.)

In St Hildegarde's vision the beast

Cod during Judgment. Unlike Hell,
representing the infernal element is

Purgatory allows for hope. After a period

A painting by another psychiatric
knocked down, chained and rendered
of excruciating pain and agony, the soul
patient depicts an experience of death
harmless by the power of Cod. The
is purified and qualifies for divine grace.

and rebirth from one of her LSD sessions.

liberation of the souls of the believers

(Purgatory, detail, from Jean Colombe,

Although of a profoundly spiritual
was made possible by the self-sacrifice

Les Tres Riches Heures du Jean, Due de
nature, this sequence did not involve
of Christ. The pure religious impulse

Berry, France, 15th century. Musee any explicitly religious symbolism. Her
rises victoriously high above the realm

Conde, Chantilly.)

naked body is seen rising in rapture
of corruption. (Miniature from the
from the realm of death - symbolized by

Breviary of St Flildegarde, German, 12th

A comparable vision from psychedelic
a graveyard, black coffins and a burning
century. Hessische Landesbibliothek,
therapy of a psychiatric patient. Earlier
candle - with her arms embracing the

Wiesbaden.)

in the same LSD session, she had
rising sun. (Collection the authors.)

Soulbirds

Universal symbols of the soul, birds

Norsemen, Greeks, Romans and Hindus.

appear as spirit-guides, mediators

Predators such as the eagle, vulture,
and messengers between the two
hawk, kite and thunderbird were closely
worlds. In creation myths, the cosmos
associated with the deities of the
sometimes originates as a giant egg laid

Greeks, Parsees, Egyptians and North
by a creator bird. The peacock is a

American Indians. The legendary
cross-cultural symbol for the starry

Mesoamerican quetzal, the Arabian
heavens and hence resurrection and
phoenix and Egyptian bennu-bird
everlasting life; the swan and the gander
symbolize spiritual rebirth and
play important roles in the mythology of
immortality.

88

Left-hand page:

For the Scythians the eagle symbolized
the sky and the solar principle. Here a
gigantic eagle carries the liberated soul
to paradise. (Scythian gold vessel found
in Hungary, 9th century bc. Kunsthis—
torisches Museum, Vienna.)

The Cuna Indians believe that after
death the soul turns into a bird and is
taken to the sky-world in a funeral boat
decorated with colourful flags. This
applique shows the soul as a blackbird
with rich plumage at the end of its
journey to the heavenly realms. A deity
sits below, holding flowers and welcoming the novice inhabitant of the otherworld. (Applique design or mola of the Cuna Indians, San Bias Island, Panama.)

A giant white cock which Mohammad
saw on his ride through the first heaven
was the angel who was in charge of
counting the hours of the day and night.

In ancient Egypt certain aspects of the
goddess' blessing - the 'water of the

His comb grazed the base of Cod's
soul of the departed were represented
depth' poured down from an ewer. The
throne and his feet rested on the earth.

as a soulbird. In this scene, the soul in
sap of the sacred sycamore fig was the

His crow was an act of faith: There is no
the form of twin birds is seen bowing
heavenly elixir of immortality, conferring

Cod but Allah!' (Illuminated ms., Miraj before the goddess of the sycamore fig.

eternal life on the soul. (Relief, Egypt,

Nameh, East Turkey, 15th century.

Relatives of the deceased offer sacrifices

18th Dynasty. Kestner Museum,

Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.)

on his behalf and receive in turn the

Hanover.)

The bennu-bird, Egyptian version of the
legendary Arabian phoenix, signified the
death-rebirth cycle and immortality. It is
shown here on a boat with the
deceased, Irinefer. The Eye of Horus and
solar disc are additional symbols of
rebirth. (Detail, wall-painting from the
tomb of Irinefer, Thebes, Egypt,

19th-20th Dynasty.)

89

The ancient Egyptian god-king and ruler
of the otherworld, Osiris, personally
welcomes his deceased followers after
they have successfully passed the
judgment in the Hall of Maat. Here

Khai and his wife render homage to

Osiris before entering the Fields of the

Blessed. (Detail, the Book of the Dead, from the tomb of Khai and Merit,

Thebes, Egypt, Late 18th Dynasty.

Egyptian Museum of Turin.)

Encounter with Beings of
source of radiance of supernatural

Light
beauty manifesting personal qualities,
particularly love, compassion and sense

The experience of the Absolute, the
of humour. Often spiritual experiences

Ultimate Reality, transcends all
involve meeting divine beings with quite
categories and eludes description. It is
concrete archetypal features. They can

'without qualities' and is not bounded
have a distinct form, sexual characterisby form, space-time, or polar opposites tics, personality, patterns of behaviour, such as good and evil. Paradox and
and even specific cultural attributes.

ineffability seem to be inherent to all the Thus many psychedelic subjects have
accounts of mystical experiences. The
reported religious experiences of a

Void is the primordial nothingness
concrete and figurative nature that took
pregnant with all existence. The Tao that
the form of encounters with deities of
can be described in words is not the Tao.

different religions. Individuals pursuing

Dharma-Kaya, the Primary Clear Light,
spiritual practices and patients in acute
that according to the Bardo Thodol is psychotic states have described similar
seen at the moment of death, has such
phenomena. Sometimes the visions of

A comparable scene shows a deceased
overwhelming radiance and beauty that
these deities are within the cultural

Etruscan being welcomed to the Beyond
the unprepared turn away from it in
framework of the individual; at other
by a winged genius. (Funerary stele, late terror.

times they seem to emerge from the

5th to early 4th century bc. Museo

Some less extreme transcendental
collective unconscious, as described by

Civico Archeologico, Bologna.)

experiences seem to have certain

Carl Custav Jung. The personages that
elements that allow for a degree of
herald the entrance into the transcen In the Buddhist temple of Borobudur in
visualization and empathetic underdental realms are loving, compassionate Java, a series of reliefs represents the standing. According to Raymond
and beneficent; they radiate superspiritual journey of Sudhana, seeker Moody, many dying people in our natural beauty and have a healing
after the highest wisdom. Pilgrims
culture encounter a 'Being of Light', a
influence on the newcomer.

ascending the graduated stages of the
temple can experience initiation by
imitating Sudhana in his quest for the
ultimate truth. The picture shows

Sudhana, who has reached a high point
of his spiritual journey, kneeling before

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of

Compassion. (Second Gallery,

Borobudur, Java, 18th century.)

According to Eskimo beliefs, the world
of the dead is closely related to the

Aurora borealis. Here a host of spirits
emerges from the dark in the glow of
the Northern Lights. In front are dogs
which can see the spirits before humans
can perceive them. (Spirits, contemporary Eskimo print by Pudlo.) The Australian Aborigines believe that all human spirits travel after death to the mystical island of Bralku. A traditional
bark painting shows a new spirit arriving
at the island; two spoonbills and two
jabirus herald his advent and offer him a
ceremonial welcome. (Contemporary
painting by the Aboriginal artist

Mathama, in the traditional style of the

Arnhem Land.)

Valkyries, maidens of the Nordic god

Odin, appeared to warriors killed on the
battlefield to guide them to Valholl. The

St Peter, who is the traditional Christian
probable interpretation of the scene on
guardian of the Gates of Heaven, is seen
this memorial stone is that it represents
welcoming the souls of the just. (Detail,
a warrior's welcome to the afterlife. It

The Church Triumphant, School of
shows the dead hero as a rider on

Giotto, 14th century. Santa Maria

Sleipnir, the eight-legged steed of Odin,

Novella, Florence.)

being met by a Valkyrie holding a horn
full of mead. Another of Odin's maidens

Apsaras, beautiful celestial nymphs of
is hovering above, swinging a spear. The
the Hindu and Buddhist pantheons,
structure on the left represents Valholl;
entertain the newcomers and add to the
the ship below symbolizes the journey
joy of the heavenly realms with their
to the otherworld. (Gravestone from
songs and dancing. (Relief from Angor

Tjrangride, Gotland, Sweden.)

Wat, Cambodia.)

91

Paradise

The experience of paradise combines
feelings of transcendental happiness
and joy with delight in exquisite natural
beauty of an earthly quality. The term is
derived from the ancient Persian word
pairidaeza, meaning a royal park or garden surrounded by a circular wall.

Although 'paradise' refers to a state of
metaphysical ecstasy, it is usually
associated with a definite geographical
location - a high mountain, large island,
or region at the end of the earth. It is
separated from the rest of the world by
an impassable wall, a barrier of ice,
dense and perpetual fog, or a curtain of
fire. Inside is a garden of incredible
beauty, full of flowers, blossoming trees
and tame animals. The air is permeated
by exotic perfumes, roads are paved
with gold and emeralds, and rivers
contain clear water, honey, oil and
mead. It is a sanctuary of eternal youth,
a place without extremes - an endless
springtime that neither winter nor
summer can reach.

Although individual cultures and

A medieval German miniature portrays

According to the Taoist tradition, the
religions show variations in their
the Garden of Paradise as a fertile island.

Eight Immortals have achieved by
descriptions of paradise, there are far—

God appears as a three-headed figure
means of alchemy and yoga the right to
reaching correspondences between the
holding the naked Adam by the hand.

feast on the fruit of immortality at the

Christians and Moslem versions, the

The sun and moon overhead symbolize

Peach Festival of the Royal Mother Hsi

Elysian Fields of the ancient Creeks, the
the male and female elements in the

Wang Mu. Flere they are seen enjoying

Egyptian Happy Fields, the various
universe. (Illustration to Schwaben-
eternal life in the Western Paradise of
paradises of Hinduism and Buddhism
spiegel, 1423. Osterreichische
the Goddess. (Chinese scroll painting,
and the Mesoamerican religions.

Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.)

19th century. Private Collection.)

92

The Paradise of the 'Precious Guru'

Padmasambhava is a favourite theme in
the mystical tradition of the Nyingmapa
sect. In this depiction the sacred
copper-coloured mountain emerges
from the lake, the realm of the Naga
king, and rises into the Brahma world.

Padmasambhava's celestial palace is
translucent from both outside and
inside. The Great Guru is enthroned in
the centre with two female disciples
handing him a Tantric offering. He is
surrounded by eight gurus who
represent his earlier incarnations. Above
his head are the four-armed

Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of

Compassion, and the Buddha Amitabha.

In the sky around the mountain are
celestial nymphs, two guardian deities
emerging from clouds, and the Buddha

Sarvavid-Vairocana. (Tanka, Tibet, 18th
century. Swiss Tibetan Refugee Centre.)

The Egyptian Fields of Aaru or Happy

Fields represented a way of life
resembling the best that earthly
existence had to offer. Here the
deceased, Anhai, is enjoying a pastoral
bliss. She is worshipping gods, cruising
the waters of the Celestial Nile, making
offerings, tilling the soil and harvesting

Chinese mythology refers to a paradise
grain. (Detail from the papyrus of Anhai,
located on the Happy Isles. Its centre is a Egypt, 20th-21st Dynasty. British
magnificent mansion, the Palace of

Museum, London.)

Immortality, floating on the surface of
the ocean. The three gods of joyful
existence crossing the sea are Shou-lao,
god of long life, Fu-hsing, god of
happiness, and Lu-hsing, god of salaries.

They are followed by Hsi Wang Mu, the

Royal Mother of the Western Paradise,
and her attendant. (From a porcelain
dish, China, 1723-5, Victoria and Albert

Museum, London.)

93

Heaven and

For many religions, the celestial realms
exist with the 'objective reality' of
transcendence
represent the most desirable goal, the
everyday life. Only when the ordinary
destination of the spiritual journey.

perception of the material world is

For others, they are merely temporary
transcended - as in deep meditation,
stations in the eternal cycles of death
psychedelic states, spontaneous
and rebirth, or important but tranmystical experience or physical sitional stages in the evolution toward a emergency - can consciousness
state that transcends any form of
connect with the heavenly regions. For
existence. Flinduism, Jainism, various
those who have had the privilege of
forms of Buddhism, and the Meso—
such experience, the existence of
american religions can be mentioned
heaven, Cod and celestial beings ceases
here as important examples of the
to be a matter of belief and becomes
second concept.

self-evident reality.

The hierarchical levels and orders of
heavens are characterized by pro An example of concrete representation
gressive disappearance of concrete
of the heavenly realms, this depiction
elements and symbols drawn from
inspired by Vedic mythology shows the
ordinary reality. The lower heavens
palace of the god Indra and thirty-two
abound in mansions, cities, objects of
smaller mansions. (From The Funeral
gold, jewels and resplendent garments.

Ceremony of the Na-khi, Southwest

The beauty of the highest realms is of a

China, ms. in the Library of Harvard-completely abstract nature. Of all the

Yenching Institute, Cambridge, Mass.)

aspects of the physical world, the
heavenly bodies, the star-filled sky and

A comparable Christian representation
the infinite interstellar space of the far
shows the Celestial City from a bird's—
regions of the universe appear to be the
eye view. Each of the twelve gates is
only appropriate symbols and metdecorated with a disc made of a aphors for the experience of the highest particular gem. The figure of the lamb
heavens. But even descriptions of this
refers to the words of the Apocalypse
kind, that are so frequent in religious

(21, 22):'... and I saw no temple
scriptures, should not be taken as
therein, for the Lord Cod and the Lamb
references to astronomical bodies,
are the temple thereof. (Early medieval
three-dimensional space and historical

Spanish illumination from the Morgan
time. The celestial realms represent an

Beatus. Pierpont Morgan Library, New
experiential reality that does not co York.)

94

1

Christian theology describes Heaven as

Dante's vision of the luminous, har Shiva Maheshvara, representing the
a metaphysical state in which hiermonious Heaven of the Fixed Stars, essence of all being: the profile on the archies of angels and saints enjoy the
the ninth of the concentric heavenly
left side is male, the profile on the right presence of Cod and contemplate His
realms through which he passes on his
female, while the central face represents
being. A medieval illumination shows
spritual journey. (Engraving by Gustave
the cosmic source that transcends all
the heavely choirs surrounding the Holy

Do re for Dante's Divine Comedy, 1861.) polarities. (Shiva Temple, Elephanta,

Trinity and the Virgin Mary. (The Trinity,

India, early 7th century.)

from the Heures d'Etienne Chevalier by Jean Fouquet, France, 15th century.

Musee Conde, Chantilly.)

Left-hand page :

The Tavatimsa Heaven is the second—
lowest of the six Buddhist heavens of
form and sense-perceptions. In one of
his previous incarnations the Buddha
visited the celestial regions in the form
of King Nimi. Here he preaches in

Tavatimsa Heaven to the divine beings
who join their hands in reverence.

(Wall-painting illustrating the Nimi
lataka, from Wat Yai Intharam,

Chonburi, Thailand, c.1830.)

95

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Acknowledgments

Photographs and other illustration were Centrale Fotodienst der Rijksuniversiteit
made available by the following:

70 bottom r.; Claus and Liselotte

The objects shown in the plates, pp.

Hansmann 92 bottom: Michael Holford

32-64, are in the following collections: TEXT The authors 28; Edwin Smith

80 bottom r.; Mansell-Anderson 91

Barcelona, Museo de Bellas Artes de

22 below
bottom I.; Leonard von Matt 90 centre;

Catalonia 49; Boston, Museum of Fine

PLATES Bavaria Verlag 59 below; Eric

National Monuments Record 80 top;

Arts 39; Cairo, Egyptian Museum 42-43;

Cross 59 above; Johannes Fabricus 50

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Chantilly, Musee Conde 56; Cologne,
below; Ciraudon 56; Sonia Halliday 38;

75 bottom; Ann Parker 73 centre I. and

Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst 64;

Mansell-Alinari 62; F. Maraini 54; MAS
r., 80 centre r., 88 top r.; Axel Poignant

Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II

33, 49; Ann Parker 55 above; Scala

68 bottom r.; Princeton University Press

Museum 45; London, British Museum

52-53; Sanavik Eskimo Cooperative 55

65; Merle Green Robertson 71 bottom I.;

46-47 below, 48, 51; London, Horniman
below, 58; Rodney Todd-White 48, 57;

Sakamoto Photo Research Laboratory

Museum 57; Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional

UNESCO and New York Graphic Society 74 bottom r.; Sanavik Eskimo 33; Mexico City, Museo Nacional de 35.

Cooperative 71 middle r.; Dacre Stubbs

Antropologia 37; Paris, Bibliotheque

THEMES Alinari 72 bottom r., 76 bottom, 68 bottom I.; Jeff Teesdale 85 top r.; Nationale 36, 41, 42, below, 50 above; 81 centre, 82 top; ATA Stockholm 91

UNESCO and New York Graphic Society

Paris, Musee Cuimet40; Rome,
top I.; Peter Clayton 84 top I.; Jean—

82 bottom, 89 bottom; Verlag St Gabriel

Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 53;

Marie Drot 79 top; Robert Ebersole 95

84 top r. and centre r., 85 bottom I., 94

Venice, Palace of the Doges 62;
bottom; Werner Forman 86 bottom I.;
top; Roger Viollet 85 bottom r.; Roger

Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek

Ciraudon 71 centre I., 72 centre r., 86

Wood 79 bottom; Elizabeth T. Wray 94

44; Winnepeg Art Gallery 58.

top, 87 top, 95 top I.; Groningen,
bottom r.

96