On Death, Dying and the Way of the Shaman

One of the things that obsesses me is death and dying. Even as a child, while I was very aware of the liminal realm, it wasn't the thought of a spirit world as much as the process of dying that gripped my imagination.

In the West, we know so much about keeping the body alive with our various medicines and surgical advances, but how many of our physicians can truly partner those of their patients who are beyond their pills and scalpels?

Indeed, how many Western doctors - other than the rare few who are born with an intuition and sensitivity that mainstream medical schools seem unable to teach - can actually offer practical aid and ministering to the dying?

For the most part, in the developed world, this realm of life (and yes, dying is a part of life) is still the quaint domain of priests who, incredibly, in our overly-sceptical (and spiritually ravenous) age, still have their (ever-diminishing) niche in officiating over those human milestones that modern society has not fully managed to wrest from the numinous.

But even our priests in Western monotheist traditions, with their dualistic view of the Good-versus-Evil universe, can only offer so much comfort.

It is to the East that one must turn if one is particularly 'called' to investigate practices that embrace the dying process and offer guidance to the soon-to-be-disembodied soul.

Imagine if we were taught such vital knowledge (and I know the scientifically-inclined among you will cringe at my use of 'knowledge' in this context) at school. How much more precious would our lives be?

Naturally, materialists will argue that holding death to be the 'Great End' itself bestows on life a preciousness and reverence. In other words, the thought that we only get one shot is precisely what helps us live richly and fully.

To them, I say: have you taken a look lately at the world we live in?

The fact is, we are petrified, paralysed and rendered impotent in the materialist West by the notion of death. And yes, while there are stories of grateful cancer survivors who live richly post-treatment, as if 'every day were their last', there are overwhelmingly more stories of people's lives that are ruined or lived out-of-control in the desperate attempt to stave off the physical end by acquiring more, experiencing more, attaining more - simply because, this life is all you get folks. And when it's over, it's over.

According to American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, our deepest-rooted mara (loosely translated to "familiar ways in which we try to avoid what is happening") is Yama Mara or "fear of death".

And our collective neurosis in the West, it seems to me, bears staggering testimony to this primal terror. Why else would the hysterical allure of apocalypse return and return to our developed world narrative every decade or so? Why would the 2012 prophecies of planetary doom and species-death wield such power in the face of climate catastrophe?

If we were taught a way of our sacred connection to life and how we continue - not merely in a spiritual, transcendent sense, but also in the plants and animals and seasons around us - how much fear we could dispel. What a dawning of a new understanding there might be. And what a peace and love and fellowship with life could be ours.

Lately, I have been more and more drawn to the energy work of the Mesoamerican shamans, particularly as I am reading the fascinating Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas by Antonio Villoldo (the Amazon link is here).
On journeying to "the roots of the Inka civilisation", Villoldo's website notes that:

"What I [Villoldo] discovered was a set of sacred technologies that transform the body, heal the soul, and can change the way we live and the way we die. They explain that we are surrounded by a Luminous Energy Field (LEF) whose source is located in infinity. The LEF was a matrix that maintains the health and vibrancy of the physical body.

"Today, I have come to understand that the experience of infinity can heal and transform us, and that it can free us from the temporal chains that keep us fettered to illness, old age, and disease. Over the course of two decades with the shamans in the jungles and high mountains of the Andes, I would discover that I am more than flesh and bone, that I am fashioned of Spirit and light. This understanding reverberated through every cell in my body. I am convinced that is has changed the way I heal, the way I age, and the way I will die. The experience of infinity is at the core of the Illumination Process, the essential healing practice we teach in the Healing the Light Body School."

Also at the same site, which describes in much detail the training offered by Villoldo's shaman training curriculum, there is the following about the dying process:

"Life ends with the last breath, just as it begins with the first.

"As the physical body returns to the Earth, the soul prepares for its great journey home. When the brain shuts down, the electromagnetic field created by the central nervous system dissolves, and the Luminous Energy Field disengages from its former home. As this happens, the Luminous Energy Field grows into a translucent, egg-shaped torus that contains the other seven chakras, which continue to shimmer like points of light for the first few hours after death. If all proceeds smoothly, this luminous orb, which is the essence or soul of the individual, then travels through the axis of the luminous body, to become one with Spirit again. This occurs very quickly once the Luminous Energy Field is free from the body. The torus of the Luminous Energy Field squeezes through the portal created by its central axis, like a doughnut squeezing through its own whole.

"When a dying person retains his awareness after death, he enters the light easily. My mentor compared this light to the dawn breaking on a cloudless morning, a state of primordial purity – immense and vast, defying description. The blackness of death, caused by the collapse of the senses, recedes and is dispelled by the light of Spirit.

"My mentor prepared all of his life for this journey. Shortly before he died, he explained to me how the steps of the journey were different for him as a shaman that for someone who was unprepared to meet his death. He fully expected to attain the freedom that is possible at the instant of death, during the dawning of the light of Spirit. At that moment, he explained, you perceive the dawn as if from the top of the world itself. You are taller than the highest mountains. Not only is the breaking dawn occurring outside you, but you simultaneously feel the sun rising in your belly and all of Creation stirring within you. You recognize that you are one with the dawning light. You surrender to the luminosity around you, are enfolded by it, and become one with it. During this stage you encounter luminous beings, medicine people who assist you in surrendering to the light. Inka legends say that we are all star travelers, and at this point in the dying process we can re-embark on our great journey through the Milky Way."

If you would like to read further about the process of dying, the full post can be found here.

Another great book on this topic, is The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Tibetan lama Sogyal Rinpoche. It's a little weightier and dense than Villoldo's book - and is more like a guide for Westerners of the principles laid out in the Tibetan Buddhist classic The Tibetan Book of the Dead - but still written with immense wisdom, compassion and humour.