
Building Bridges
Given that he wrote so splendidly about so many matters of life and death, I have often wondered what C.S Lewis would have made of Near-Death Experiences. A while back, as I was re-reading his book Prayer: Letters to Malcolm, I found myself pondering it yet again. I’ve always had a soft spot for that book, and although it never gets anything like the same attention as his more ‘revered’ works such as Mere Christianity and The Problem Of Pain it is full of the most wonderful insights into a whole range of things: not just prayer. And whilst it is unclear if Lewis knew anything about what we would today call ‘Near-Death Experiences’ (NDEs), as I re-read Prayer: Letters to Malcolm I began to wonder if it might be possible to build a bridge between what he wrote there about mystical experiences – which he clearly had keen awareness of – and what we now know as NDEs.
The first stone in such a bridge might be Lewis’s careful and qualified recognition in chapter twelve of his book that some mystical experiences share a number of common features. Two which he particularly highlights are those of emptying and departure. Hence, he writes, ‘what is common to all mysticisms is the temporary shattering of our ordinary spatial and temporal consciousness and of our discursive intellect.’[1] In other words, for Lewis, during their experiences mystics leave behind their usual ways of experiencing and being: a ‘leaving behind’ that is necessary if room is to be made for the transformed state of being that follows. Viewing this ‘leaving behind’ firstly in terms of emptying, Lewis uses an unusual analogy, writing that ‘If wine-glasses were conscious, I suppose that being emptied would be the same experience for each, even if some were to remain empty and some to be filled with wine and some broken.’[2] Following this with a very this-worldly analogy – that of embarking on a sea voyage – he turns to the motif of departure, writing: ‘All who leave the land and put to sea will ‘find the same things’ – the land sinking below the horizon, the gulls dropping behind, the salty breeze. Tourists, merchants, sailors, pirates, missionaries – it’s all one.’[3] Thus, as with emptyings, departures may easily be seen to share certain things in common, but Lewis adds: ‘[T]his identical experience vouches for nothing about the utility or unlawfulness or final event of their voyages…’ [Emphases mine].[4]
This final set of assertions is interesting. On the one hand, for Lewis, the reality of mystical experience implies nothing regarding the usefulness or rightness of mystical practice itself. Neither does it say anything about the sanctity of the mystic. For those things, something else is required. But it is the final point that is most important for our exercise in bridge-building – is, in fact, central to it – with its strong suggestion that emptyings, and especially departures, must not be confused with destinations. Hence, and again addressing mysticism, he writes: ‘I do not at all regard mystical experience as an illusion. I think it shows that there is a way to go, before death, out of what may be called ‘this world’ – out of the stage set. Out of this; but into what?’[5] It is the into what that is key. Departures may indeed share things in common, Lewis is saying, but this tells us nothing about what awaits at the end of each respective mystical journey once ‘this world’ has been left behind.
It is especially here that the relevance of Lewis’s insights into mysticism for the understanding of Near-Death Experiences is most closely seen. For surely, like the mystic, the Near-Death Experiencer has in some sense(s) embarked on a process of departing as well. Hence, just as the mystic ‘traveller’ is engaged in a journey which entails the leaving behind of any ‘normal’ sense of ‘spatial and temporal consciousness’, so, too, the Near-Death ‘traveller.’ How could it be otherwise? In a situation where the body’s various systems and sub-systems have begun to shut down we could hardly expect the continuation of ‘ordinary’ states of consciousness: a fact which Near-Death Experiencers’ testimonies vividly show, as we will shortly see.
Crowning the Voyage
In fact, we can go further. Because we might even see such a ‘shutting down’ process as in some sense akin to emptying, and whilst this in itself might provide a fruitful avenue for future NDE research it is the leaving behind process that is also of relevance. As already noted, Lewis reminds us that all departures bear ‘family resemblances.’ Why, then, would we expect the departures described by persons having Near-Death Experiences to be any different? And, in fact, the ‘departures’ described in Near-Death Experiencers’ testimonies do indeed bear striking family resemblances, with recurrent descriptions of bliss, tunnels, lights, out-of-body experiences and so on, of which the following is representative:
‘Fifteen years ago when I was fifty-nine I had a heart attack. An iron band around my chest was getting tighter and tighter. The doctor came, and when he left to ring for an ambulance he warned me not to move on any account. Then everything became warm and bright and light and beautiful. The iron band was gone and I was travelling along a tunnel. It was light, light, light. I didn’t move my feet, I just ‘floated’ I suppose. But it was calm and peaceful and just lovely. Gradually there was a brilliant light at the end – really brilliant – and I knew I was going right into the glowing heart of that light, but then I saw a group of people between me and the light. I knew them; my brother, who had died a few years before, was gesticulating delightedly as I approached. Their faces were so happy and welcoming. Then somehow my mother became detached from the group. She shook her head and waved her hand (rather like a windscreen wiper) and I stopped, and I heard the doctor say, ‘She’s coming round,’ and I was in my bed and the doctor and my husband were there.’[6]
All in the Brain?
But surely, objects the sceptic, these kinds of experiences – mystical, near-death, or otherwise – are just ‘tricks’ of the brain? For Lewis, this is to miss the point; certainly as regards mysticism. Hence, he writes: ‘I shouldn’t be at all disturbed if it could be shown that a diabolical mysticism, or drugs, produced experiences indistinguishable (by introspection) from those of the great Christian mystics. Departures are all alike; it is the landfall that crowns the voyage.‘ [Emphasis mine][7]
And herein lies the crux of the whole matter for our present purposes. Whatever the processes which may be occurring in a dying brain, these tell us nothing about where the Near-Death Experiencer actually goes. That is hidden: up ahead, around the corner, over the brow of the hill, out of sight. And please note: in saying this I in no sense intend to denigrate the experiences of those such as the subject quoted above who have embarked on their voyages only to (temporarily) return. Far from it: according to the very many accounts we have from Near-Death Experiencers, the emptying involved in this particular setting-out is wonderful; the departure both blissful and thrilling. Should God, in His grace, have afforded His creatures such experiences as they leave His world, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. But up ahead lies something infinitely greater still. A landfall that none has seen. A crowning of the voyage unfathomably wonderful.
I would like to think that had Lewis directly addressed what we now know as ‘Near-Death Experiences’, he might have said something like I have suggested here. His meditations on mysticism in Prayer: Letters To Malcolm hint, at least, of this. But for now, and thanks to Lewis, we may – at least tentatively – draw the following conclusion in our quest for an NDE ‘theology of death’: people often speak of Near-Death Experiencers’ testimonies as descriptions of arrivals at other worlds, heaven, and so on. But it may be better to view their testimonies as descriptions of departures. This may even help explain why so many of their descriptions are so similar. We also recall Lewis’s assertion that having mystical experiences says nothing about the sanctity of the mystic or the utility and lawfulness (or otherwise) of the mystical voyage. That these insights may be carried over to the realm of Near-Death Experiencing I leave for others to decide: perhaps with a view to building bridges of their own, should they decide to. Much remains to be done, despite the fact that the term ‘Near-Death Experience’ will be fifty years old next year.
Faith and Destinations
For now, we have said enough about departures. What, then, of destinations? This is crucial as regards NDEs because what excites many people about Near-Death Experiences is the possibility they appear to offer of proving life after death. When I was fifteen, faithless, heir to no discernible religious or spiritual tradition, it’s what excited me when I read Ramond Moody’s ground-breaking Life After Life for the first time. Here it was! Hope! For something up ahead. For something beyond this life. And in an increasingly faithless age, it is easy to see that appeal as only increasing as time goes by. Hence the enduring popularity of Near-Death Experiences.
But what of faith? Of the Christian faith in particular? What do we, as Christians, really hope for? What kind of life after death does faith promise us?
To answer this cluster of questions it will be useful to begin by comparing and contrasting three testimonies. To start with, two from Life After Life; the book that originally gave us the term ‘Near-Death Experience.’ The first is as follows:
‘The doctors and nurses were pounding on my body to try to get IVs started and to get me back, and I kept trying to tell them, “Leave me alone. All I want is to be left alone. Quit pounding on me.” But they didn’t hear me. So I tried to move their hands to keep them from beating on my body, but nothing would happen. I couldn’t get anywhere. It was like – I don’t really know what happened, but I couldn’t move their hands. It looked like I was touching their hands and I tried to move them – yet when I would give it the stroke, their hands were still there. I don’t know whether my hand was going through it, around it, or what. I didn’t feel any pressure against their hands when I was trying to move them.’[8]
And now the second:
‘People were walking up from all directions to get to the wreck. I could see them, and I was in the middle of a very narrow walkway. Anyway, as they came by they wouldn’t seem to notice me. They would just keep walking with their eyes straight ahead. As they came real close, I would try to turn around to get out of their way but they would just walk through me.’[9]
One possible conclusion that might be drawn from these extracts is that the condition of these people was for a while after death something akin to that of ghosts. Recall [emphases all mine]:
‘..they didn’t hear me.’
‘I tried to move their hands to keep them from beating on my body, but nothing would happen.’
‘I didn’t feel any pressure against their hands when I was trying to move them.’
‘…as they came by they wouldn’t seem to notice me.’
‘…I would try to turn around to get out of their way but they would just walk through me.’
Now we may usefully compare a third and final testimony-extract: from Luke’s gospel, chapter 24, verses 36 – 43. Another account, in fact, of a person who died but still, somehow, lived:
‘While [the disciples] were still talking…. [the risen] Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” When he had said this he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.”’
The contrast with the previous extracts is clear: as, I hope, is the point. Perhaps it is to Jesus – the risen Jesus – that we should look as our ultimate destination and condition. Departures are all alike, said Lewis. Perhaps our arrivals after death are too. Not as disembodied, wraith-like ghosts but as solid and substantial newly-embodied and transformed physical beings. Capable of being seen and touched. Capable of eating fish. But in a new world, ‘the life of the age to come’ as some traditions have it, and unlike Jesus in his temporary – special because demonstrative -‘return’ to this one.
Faith and Hope
This is, after all, the ultimate Christian hope as found in the New Testament. Not simply for the ‘escape’ of the soul, but for the resurrection of the body. Paul talks of Jesus as the ‘firstfruits.’ He was the first, Paul seems to be implying; and his resurrection guarantees that ours will surely follow. Resurrection, that is, not ‘escape.’ As theologian Oscar Cullmann once wrote: there is no need for Easter if we are all immortal.[10] C.S Lewis actually went as far, in The Great Divorce, as saying that the next world will be more physical than this one, not less: a place in which human beings are ‘so much solider than things in our country that men [are] ghosts by comparison.’[11]
At a stretch, it might be the case that some way could even be found to combine both things. Perhaps in these NDE testimonies we are viewing something like the foothills of resurrection. A peep into what comes next, perhaps, rather than a view of the true, towering, overwhelmingly physical peaks that await.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. And perhaps, at the end of the day, it all comes down to where a person’s faith really lies. In the testimonies collected by Moody and others or in a God of grace Who keeps faith with the dead. In my heart of hearts, I know where my faith lies. And where my faith is, my hope is too.
[1] C.S Lewis, Prayer: Letters to Malcolm (Glasgow: Collins, 1963) 67.
[2] Lewis, op cit.
[3] ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick, The Truth in the Light (London: Headline, 1995) 59.
[7] Lewis, op cit 68.
[8] Raymond Moody, Life After Life (Atlanta: Mockingbird, 1975) 44.
[9] Moody, op cit 45.
[10] Oscar Cullmann: Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? https://www.religion-online.org/book/immortality-of-the-soul-or-resurrection-of-the-dead/ The whole book is well worth exploring and is rightly regarded as a classic.
[11] C.S Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946) 21.
This article first appeared in Fellowship Review, No. 259, Summer 2024, pp. 4 – 11