Giving Up the Ghost

In her recently released book, Beyond Knowing, Dr. Janis Amatuzio, a forensic pathologist and coroner in Minneapolis, tells of witnessing a "shimmer of light"in the corner of the room as she tended a dying patient.  She also heard words, "He's watching...and he's fine." 

I have heard of and read a number of similar accounts. In his 1929 book, A Curious Life, George Wehner, a trance medium and clairvoyant from Detroit, Michigan, tells of his many mediumistic experiences and other paranormal observations, including the passing of his mother.  "A misty blue-white form, the counterpart of my mother's, but radiant, like a blue-white diamond's flame, was slowly rising from her body on the bed," he wrote.  "This form lifted at an angle, the feet rising higher than the head, which remained attached to the physical head.  The form now seemed to try to free itself, and after several tugs, the misty head separated from the body's head, and the freed form righted itself in the air exactly as a log rights itself after it has been dropped into deep water.  For a second, I saw several arms and hands materialize in the air and reach downward to welcome the new-born soul.  Then, like a shadow, the spirit-form of my beloved mother glided rapidly upward through a corner of the ceiling."

"Letting go" or "giving up the ghost" is apparently difficult for many people, we are informed by a number of clairvoyants, including Gladys Osborne Leonard, one of the great mediums of the first half of the 20^th Century.

 "A great deal of the apparent difficulty or struggling associated with death is caused by the inability of the etheric to dissociate itself from the physical envelope," explained Leonard in her 1937 book, The Last Crossing.  She devoted a chapter of the book to ways of helping the dying sever the etheric cord, also referred to as the "silver cord."

 According to Leonard, drinking plenty of water strengthens the etheric body and enables it to more easily separate itself from the physical body. On the other hand, food is not necessary.  "Even if they will take it, I am convinced that the dying do not need ‘nourishment,' Leonard continued. "To ‘nourish' the worn-out physical envelope which the soul is trying its best to shake off is only to create and prolong an unnecessary struggle between the two bodies.   In many cases it does not even strengthen the physical, because it can no longer make use of solid food, which only clogs the system, and produces more pain and suffering."

The administration of drugs also hinders an easy transition from the physical to the etheric body, Leonard added, again stressing the need to give the dying person water, even if only a few drops at a time by means of a syringe. "Water is the one thing that the etheric body can make use of when trying to free itself from the physical at the approach of death of the latter."

 Like many other mediums and mystics, Leonard points out that those who lack a spiritual understanding and fear death are more "fixed" in the physical, and thus there is much more of a struggle in the release.  "It is, I think, partly a matter of temperament, and of physical and spiritual understanding," she further explained, "but a consciousness of the existence of the etheric body, and a realization of its powers of dissociation or separate existence would go a long way to producing the phenomenon more easily that is possible under the present conditions in which human beings are only cognizant of one body, i.e., the physical."

 In Letters from Julia, published in 1909, William T. Stead, a respected British journalist  of that era, recorded the following via automatic writing from a woman named Julia, who first explained that she had exchanged experiences with many others on her side of the veil.  "With me the change was perfectly painless," Julia wrote through Stead's hand.  "I wish that it might be so always with all who are appointed to die.  Unfortunately, the moment of transition sometimes seems to be very full of pain and dread.  With some it lasts a comparatively long time; I mean the time of quitting the body.  With some it is momentary.  The envelope opens, the letter is released, and it is over."

Julia likens "death birth" to childbirth, tough for some, relatively simple for others.   "The tranquil soul that prepares and knows need not feel even a tremor of alarm," she explained.  "The preliminaries of decease are often painful; the actual severance, although sometimes accompanied by a sense of wrench, is of small account."

Of her own transition in 1891, Julia recalled not realizing that she had died until she found herself standing next to her corpse. She felt quite naked at first, but then found herself clothed.  "I do not remember putting on garments.  There is just the sense of need, and the need is supplied."

 Keeping the feet warm and a comfortable coolness (not cold or draught) at the head also facilitate, according to Leonard, the withdrawal of the etheric body from the physical. 

In helping her husband leave the physical body, Leonard felt drawn by an unseen force to make upward passes from his feet on past his head with her hands.  These passes consisted of placing her hands, palms downwards, a few inches above his feet, and moving them steadily and rhythmically over the legs and body, and straight over his head.  "At the finish of each pass, I ‘flipped' my fingers in a direction away from his body, as if I was throwing off something from my finger-tips," she went on.  "Afterwards I learned that that these passes were assisting the etheric body to leave the physical body more easily.  It withdraws upwards through the head."

Leonard cautioned against whispered conversations with the nurse in the presence of the dying person, explaining that while the conscious mind may not be cognizant, the unconscious or subjective mind is gradually coming to the surface.  This unconscious mind will find itself recording flashes of awareness as to what is happening to the physical body and it will both puzzle and disturb him.  "At this juncture it is most important that whatever is being done or said, or even thought in the room, should be directed towards the patient to help him."

In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche discusses the Tibetan tradition called phowa (pronounced po-wa), meaning the transference of consciousness.  Phowa can be performed by the dying person or by anyone attending the dying person.  It involves visualization, meditation, and prayer techniques in which the dying person asks or is asked by those attending to surrender his or her soul to God.

 "Sit quietly with the dying person, and offer a candle or light in front of a picture or statue of Buddha or Christ or the Virgin Mary," Rinpoche instructs, after detailing three different practices. "Then do the practice for them.  You can be doing the practice quietly, and the person need not even know about it; on the other hand, if he or she is open to it, as sometimes dying people are, share the practice and explain how to do it.

 According to Rinpoche and Buddhist teaching, there are two things that count at the moment of death:  what we have done during our lives, and what state of mind we are in at the moment.  When the consciousness leaves the body, it goes through a series of states called bardos.

 "The problem, however, is that in the bardos, most people go on grasping at a false sense of self," Rinpoche continues,  "with its ghostly grasping at physical solidity; and this continuation of that illusion, which has been at the root of all suffering in life, exposes them in death to more suffering, especially in the ‘bardo of becoming'."

In The Challenging Light, a 1984 publication, Frances Banks, communicating through the hand of Helen Greaves, states that those making the change from material to ethereal do not recall any pain in the process.  "If they experience terror, it is because they expected it," explained Banks, an Anglican nun in her earthly life.  "The lurid pictures impressed upon the soul-mind by mistaken teachings of hell and torturing agonies become real."

 Banks further wrote that her own transition was very simple.  She seemed to relapse into nothingness until she awoke refreshed. "The death of the human body should hold no terrors," Bank offered, "and when this thought is allowed to be taught and understood by the various practicing religions of the world, a big bogey will have been removed in the onward thinking of the races."