last message of Pope John Paul II is the very same as his
first message , delivered at his inaugural homily as Pope in
1978 ~ " BE NOT AFRAID ".
Up to his last moment of
his life he was a teacher but this was his greatest living
lesson ~ for what he taught in his last precious moments was
BE NOT AFRAID OF DEATH .
The Pope had refused to go
back to the hospital, when his
health began to seriously
deteriorate, and perhaps prolong his life with the latest
artificial life support system ~ all of which were available
to him ~ but, instead, he chose to welcome his death and, in
the process, teach us his greatest lesson.
It reminds me of what the
great Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin wrote on the last
page of his personal journal three days before his death:
" The last enemy that
shall be destroyed is death ."
And it is Teilhard who
writes in THE ACTIVATION OF ENERGY :
" But how much more
comforting and ' electrifying ' for our effort would it not
be if some signal or some sign ( some summons or some echo )
should come to us from beyond death and give us positive
assurance that some center of convergence does really exist
ahead of us."
It would appear that we
have received many signals and numerous signs that this
center of convergence ( in the form of love, unity, peace,
light and joy ) lies beyond death.
The Late Dr Elizabeth
Kubler Ross , the internationally respected expert on the
psychiatric dimensions of dying, claimed that she had proof
that there is life after death on the basis of hundreds of "
near Death " experiences .
Although details of
near-death accounts vary somewhat , Kubler-Ross said that
all her subjects reported certain common experiences . In a
1975 interview in People (11/4/75 )
she explained her claim:
" I have investigated
cases from Australia to California, involving patients from
age 2 to 92 ~ I have hundreds of very clear-cut cases from
all over the world which include both religious and
non-religious people ~ one had been dead 12 and 1/2 hours .
All experienced the same thing.
" They literally shed
their physical bodies, as a butterfly comes out of the
cocoon. They describe a feeling of peace, often beautiful,
indescribable peace, no pain, no anxiety ~ And they were
perfect - completely whole. "
" After the transistion
( following death ) you acheive a higher understanding which
includes a review of your own life. You evaluate all your
actions, words and thoughts ; you are fully aware of the
effect of your deeds and thoughts on others. It is not God
who judges you - you judge yourself. "
It would appear that these
" near-death " experiences are a psychic state of soul
consciousness, which exists not only beyond time and space
but also beneath our deepest fears ( The Unified Field ),
and note how similar these experiences are to the Gallup
reported " mystical " experiences that four out of every ten
Americans have experienced.
That would include myself
who experienced my own mother coming to me from beyond
death, from that same place of light and love, and telling
me that she now knew what I knew and had shared with her
before her death.
Dr Raymond Moody wrote in
his landmark book LIFE AFTER DEATH about the common
experiences of dying and the near-death experience:
" The feeling of
rapidly moving through a long dark tunnel. Glimpsing the
spirits of relatives and friends who have died. A deeply
loving non-judgemental spirit of brilliant light is
experienced . A panoramic play-back of the major events of
their lives is experienced with the general feeling of
beings asked , " What have you done with your life ? "
Dr Moody notes how some of
the people have reacted after surviving this near-death
experience and the instantaneous playback of the events of
their life:
" When I got back ",
said one man, " I had this overwhelming desire to do
something for other people. I was so ashamed of all the
things that I had done, or hadn't done in my life ."
Once again, it would appear
that these people have experienced soul consciousness and,
as such, their deepest connection to the unified Field. They
suddenly become aware, while in that state of soul
consciousness, that they have a function within this loving
plan and whether they have fulfilled it or not.
Another interesting point
to consider is that both Dr Ross and Dr Moody note that the
survivors of these near-death experiences are not afraid of
death anymore.
If birth represents a
passage ~ then why wouldn't death represent another passage
?
As a licensed therapist
with over 10,000 hours of experience dealing with people's
deepest fears and anxieties ~ I can unequivocally state
that the experience of surrendering to one's deep and long
repressed feelings of pain, aloneness and despair is almost
always initially experienced as a dark tunnel of
never-ending pain which leads only to death.
Time after time I have had
people tell me from the depths of that despair that the pain
they are experiencing will never end, that they are going to
die. However, it is only the ego and fear that gradually die
while joy and a true sense of SELF begin to emerge from
hiding.
As such, that long dark
tunnel, that Moody writes of, is a cocoon of ego
consciousness ~ put in place for survival and protection
purposes only ~ a cocoon that is eventually meant to be shed
.
Just as Steven Hawking has
suggested that black holes in space may become white holes
at a point of singularity , where all notions of time and
space break down ~ so I am suggesting that at the end of the
black hole of despair within ourselves, we also reach a
point of singularity, where all notions of time and space
break down and we become one with the Unified field and a
state of soul consciousness.
This point of singularity
deepest within us would also appear to be Karl Pribram's
timeless and spaceless holographic
" implicate domain " ~ and
love is the means, I would add, by which we tune in on the
implicate domain.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross is
correct when she writes , " Death may be viewed as the
curtain between the existence we are conscious of and one
that is hidden from us until we raise the curtain ."
We can raise the curtain
now if we stop being controlled by fear and begin to trust
and express our deepest feelings ~ especially love and our
deepest urge to unite and cooperate with one another.
And yes, that was, in
essence, the last message of Pope John Paul II .
ONLY LOVE HEALS
Allen L Roland
Allen L Roland
is a practicing psychotherapist,
author and lecturer who also shares a daily political
and social commentary on his weblog and website
www.allenroland.com
He also guest hosts a weekly national radio show TRUTHTALK on
Conscious talk radio www.conscioustalk.net
