In his book 2009 book Life Beyond Death Fontana reviewed and synthesized insights to the nature of the afterlife from many sources including communications from mediums, whose contacts with the deceased are known on good authority to be genuine, near-death experiencers, spiritual and metaphysical systems, and religious traditions, particularly Christianity and Buddhism. Fontana (1934 – 2010) was in a unique position to do so as a professor of psychology and president of the Society for Psychical Research who for 40 years investigated the evidence for the survival of death.
Fontana points out that for many modern people the topic of death and the possibility of an afterlife involves considerable anxiety. They try to avoid thinking about such things and instead claim that an interest in the afterlife distracts attention from the here and now. Yet the majority of people around the world do believe in an afterlife. Studying them helps reduce our fear and in the process takes us a step closer to understanding the deepest mystery of all, the mystery of our own being.
All the great spiritual traditions emphasize that the present life cannot be understood unless seen in the context of a future existence. The wise traveler always prepares for a journey to ease the path that lies ahead, and this is hugely more true for travelers to the next.
The place to begin an examination of the afterlife, Fontana says, is with death itself and with what it might be like to die. An important source of information about this comes from accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs). Since Raymond Moody’s 1975 book Life After Life first introduced the public to NDEs there has been a great deal of research into all facets of the phenomena that will be explored elsewhere. Here I’ll only highlight a few major points that Fontana stresses.
The evidence clearly shows that there are a number of events that show up in NDEs that clearly distinguish them from normal experiences. These generally occur as stages in a sequential pattern, although there is not a strict order, and some may not occur at all. Fontana notes the following.
People very near death find their consciousness outside the physical body. This is followed by a sensation of entering a dark tunnel with a bright light in the distance. Upon reaching the light there is awareness of beautiful surroundings, a sense of being deeply loved, and sometimes of meeting spiritual beings or deceased friends and relatives. In some cases there is a life review emphasizing the importance of love and compassion. When this is completed they may be given a choice of staying or returning to the body, or they may be told to return. Their consciousness is drawn back to the body and enters it, although this occurs with reluctance. They are convinced that they have died, and their fear of death disappears or is greatly reduced.
People from different cultures report this same core experience. Osis and Haraldsson (1995) conducted a four-year study in the USA and India involving 877 detailed interviews with terminally ill patients. Among them 120 reported NDEs involving a core experience common to both cultures. Fontana believes that this core experience is one of the most revealing features of NDEs supporting the possibility of surviving death. These researchers pointed out that a number of the contrasting basic religious beliefs present in these cultures, such as external judgement, salvation, and redemption for Christians, and reincarnation and for Hindus, were notably absent. Although religious belief is an important feature of both US and Indian cultures, the phenomena reported by the NDE experiencers did not conform to religious afterlife beliefs.
Fontana notes that we don’t know if some of those during an NDE who are offered the choice of returning from an NDE reject it and thus render death permanent. Of course, return to the body is only possible for a brief time following clinical death. In their last days of life terminally ill people during periods of unconsciousness may drift in and out of their bodies and return only as long as their bodies remain viable.
Research has shown that people with strong religious beliefs face death with greater serenity and acceptance than people without belief. Priests administer last rites to the dying to the dying to facilitate this serenity and acceptance. Eastern religions as well as communications by mediums stress that some knowledge of what to expect immediately after death is very important in helping avoid fear and confusion.
Much of the evidence Fontana draws on to lay out what happens at death and in the afterlife comes from his extensive study of communications from the deceased received by mediums. He refers to the source of these communications as communicators. There are, he points out, a number of similarities between what these communicators report and NDE accounts.
In both there is an awareness by the dying of their consciousness leaving the physical body. This may be a gradual process or a sudden awareness that the consciousness is outside the body. In both sources the exit of consciousness is always described as pain free. Both communicators and NDE experiencers report that consciousness after death is in a body resembling the physical body. Both sometimes report an awareness of the now discarded physical body and of medical staff and mourners at the bedside. Both note deceased relatives or friends who appear to be present. Both sometimes mention entering a tunnel or dark space with a light in the distance toward which they are travelling. Both note an expansion of consciousness and/or feelings of bliss and rarely express regret at leaving their bodies. These similarities indicate that leaving the body is a simple, natural, painless process that makes it possible for consciousness to move on to new experiences. Although there are individual variations between accounts from both sources, they are outweighed by the consistencies, which indicate the existence of a unified core experience.
As noted, both near-death experiencers and communicators mention deceased relatives or friends who appear to be present. These same phenomena are also reported by seriously ill shortly before they die. Typically, they involve seeing what have come to be called deathbed visitors who appear to come to help them make the transition to the afterlife. The dying experience great comfort from these visitors who sometimes may even be seen and recognized by mourners at the deathbed. Much more commonly, if seen at all, they appear in the form of mist or clouds. Sometimes the dying mention visions of a beautiful countryside, often populated with friends and relatives, who seem to be waiting for them. These deathbed visions typically prompt great joy, helping the dying person to pass eagerly out of this life.
There are a few reports of a nude body being seen floating for a time above a dying person that appears to be connected to their physical body by a cord from their forehead. At the moment of death the cord is reported seen to break and the floating body vanishes. Fontana notes that this nude body resembles the non-material astral body that Eastern and some Western esoteric traditions say provides the link between the soul and the physical body and leaves the latter at death.
Why this body is not more frequently seen by those at the bedside of the dying may have to do with the need for psychic ability and a strong emotional bond. Perhaps the initiative may come from the dying, only a few of whom may have the ability to involve those at the bedside in their deathbed experiences. Perhaps drugs that render the dying person unconscious may interfere with this ability.
Fontana notes that experiences of this kind prevent him from dismissing the idea of a non-material astral body that appears to duplicate the physical one, that can exist independently of that body, and may leave it along with the soul at the moment of death.
In the more esoteric Western traditions there is a long belief that the physical body is linked to three non-physical bodies, an energy body, an astral body and a soul body. The energy body sustains the physical body during life and is discarded some three days after death. The astral and the soul body are left to continue the journey into the afterlife. Fontana notes that in some ways this seems compatible with the Christian teaching about the resurrection of the body. For centuries this was understood to be the actual physical body, since Jesus appeared to his disciples after death in his physical form. More generally today the teaching is understood to apply to the soul body, which after death is thought to resemble the physical body until it becomes more spiritually advanced and the astral body is discarded. Many people find it hard to conceive of a non-physical existence since our experiences come to us through our physical senses. However, in our dreams we feel as fully embodied as we do when awake.
Fontana notes that there are many descriptions by different spiritual traditions of the actual boundary between life and death, and it’s informative to look at any similarities with the modern accounts thus far discussed.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol), which catalogues in graphic detail the experiences of the deceased in the immediate afterlife, is well-known. Western medieval Christianity also featured books of the dead, the best known being the Ars Bene Moriendi (the Art of Dying Well), which emphasizes that, when we are approaching death, we should reject all passing things of this world and turn towards prayer and the surrender of the self to God. It was intended to be a powerful reminder that death is inevitable and was designed to be both studied by the living and read to the dying. The Ars Bene Moriendi teaches that prayers to Christ, to the Holy Virgin and to the archangel Michael should be read to the dying, and it describes the various challenges encountered as the consciousness moves from one world to the next. The dying mind that is devout and humble and turned in love and devotion to God will remain in the same state after death and through grace will receive a peaceful and blessed passage in the next world.
But what of a death that occurs suddenly? Fontana speculates that the experience of sudden death can be thought of as resembling that of a small child thrust from a familiar world into the strange and unreal streets of an unknown city. Accounts given through mediums by many of the soldiers killed suddenly in both the World Wars tell of attempts to carry on with normal life, fruitless efforts to communicate with the living, an expectation that one will wake up in the body again, and shock and confusion as the nature of the changes that have occurred gradually sink in.
Tibetan Buddhism teaches that being in a state of fear or of bitterness or anger or distraction by material concerns or attachments to things of this world results in a confused and disturbing entry into the next world regardless of whether the individual has lived a blamelessly moral and spiritual life. If the mind is not tranquil and fully accepting at the moment of death, it is not able to remain fully aware of what is happening and to have some control over the immediate afterlife state. This explains why Buddhism along with the other spiritual traditions emphasize the importance of meditation. The clear tranquil mind developed by meditation is believed to be the ideal state in which to die.
A number of spiritual and esoteric traditions emphasize the existence of unfortunate souls who, for a time at least, seem unwilling or unable to leave the environment of the earth. Such individuals, called earthbound spirits, are thought to remain fixated upon material existence and typically are unaware that they have died. Without assistance from this world or the next they may remain earthbound for long amounts of time, hopeless in a physical world that still seems familiar but with which they discover they are unable to interact. There are a number of reasons for spirits to be earthbound, strong desires or unfinished business being typical. Fontana points out that it seems clear that if we accept the existence of earthbound entities, attempting to make contact with them is not wise.
Earthbound spirits are said to be responsible for poltergeist hauntings, that is hauntings that primarily involve loud noises, dramatic disturbance of objects, and even attempts to scare the living into abandoning their homes. These kinds of hauntings have been recognized for centuries by Roman Catholic and Anglican churches which empower priests to perform exorcism services intended to banish the entities involved. Not all poltergeist hauntings by earthbound spirits, however, have malicious intent. Investigators have found that the spirit involved may be simply lonely and wants to attract attention. Fontana investigated a case of this kind involving the Cardiff poltergeist described elsewhere.
Earthbound spirits are also thought to be involved in cases of possession where they appear to invade the consciousness of a living person and cause significant difficulties for him or her. In some cases this may involve mental illness which can be alleviated by a therapist convincing the invading or attaching entity to move on, a subject addressed more fully elsewhere.
Some of the best evidence for the existence of earthbound spirits, as well as for an afterlife in general, Fontana claims is provided by what’s known as drop in communicators. These are communicators who show up unannounced during sittings with mediums, and who are not known to anyone present. Sometimes they seem to be earthbound spirits who barge in and give deceitful information, but in other cases they are simply lost and may provide truthful details about themselves that at the time are unknown to anyone present. The common skeptical complaint about medium communications being the result of telepathy with the living cannot apply in these situations.
Fontana points out that if the information received through mediums is correct, then earth is surrounded and interpenetrated by an ever-changing multitude of the departed making up as complex a mixture of the confused, the lost, the purposeful, the well-intentioned, and the malicious as is found among the living. These earthbound spirits remain close to earth until they fully recognize that they have died, give up their attachments to the material realm, and accept their need for help. Only then are they able to move on to the next level in their spiritual journey.
What can be said about the majority of us who die peacefully? Reports of NDEs and by communications through mediums say that those who avoid sudden death and are open to the possibility of an afterlife typically are aware they are making a journey, often through darkness or a tunnel, and typically towards a distant bright light.
When the physical body has gone through a long period of suffering, upon leaving that body communicators describe experiencing a loss of consciousness that for some resembles a peaceful healing sleep allowing one’s consciousness to lose troubled memories of physical suffering. Often, they experience a feeling of being loved and cared for either by spirit helpers who are present or by some unseen force connected with the light.
The darkness through which some communicators pass has been described as a state of mind that seems to be determined by one’s own life history and spiritual development and may involve sadness for lost opportunities, regrets and unfulfilled longings, and remorse for the emotional suffering he might have caused. It has been called Hades by some and reveals parallels with descriptions of purgatory seen by various of the Christian traditions as a stage of development. In purgatory a person is given the opportunity to be purged of his or her sins through self-examination, remorse, and suffering, resulting in being made fit to progress to higher planes of reality. If one is prepared to use the opportunity, purgatory is described by communicators as a temporary state that should be welcomed since it is a gift that enables one to be rid of earthly burdens.
Fontana reminds us, however, that the medieval Church viewed purgatory as a decidedly unpleasant place involving visits to the scenes of earthly sins or the repetition of tormenting tasks symbolically connected to them. The sufferings involved were made bearable by the ministrations of angels and by the certainty of eventual admittance to heaven.
Hell, by contrast was understood in medieval Christianity to be a place of eternal torment involving everlasting punishment for mortal sins. However, some communicators say that while hell is in fact an extreme form of purgatory where the wicked experience the sufferings they have caused to others, they can be helped to move out of that place or state by more evolved beings.
At some point in the Hades experience the individual is said to experience a life review, which can even occur – in part at least – just before death as described in some but not all NDEs. Fontana points out that the life review and self-judgement involved is the most consistent and universal stage described in accounts of the afterlife regardless of the culture or era.
The primary lesson of the life review, Fontana tells us, is that each moment of our lives is forever present together with the consequences of every one of our actions. We’re not only influenced by past events, but we’re in part the sum total of those events. Although the body displays the mark of our years, our essential self is outside time, and each life experience is an equally valid part of the whole.
Levels of spiritual development in the afterlife
To understand the progression of our spiritual journey after the death of the body, it’s very important to recognize that many of the esoteric, spiritual, and religious traditions teach that there are levels or stages involved. Although many Christians reject the idea of levels in the afterlife altogether and believe that the scriptures teach that at death believers enter directly into the kingdom of heaven, Jesus clearly tells his disciples that in his father’s house has many mansions. The afterlife should not be thought of as a single domain. Until the 16th century Reformation the idea of level was an important component of Christian thinking. Origen, one of the leading theologians of the Church in the centuries after Christ, taught that the soul’s ascent to God in the afterlife was comprised of a hierarchy of stages.
There seems to general agreement among the spiritual traditions that the afterlife is comprised of seven planes or levels although differentl traditions and communicators give them different names. The first four are said to be planes of form that have certain resemblances to life on earth, while the three upper planes are formless realms of increasingly rarefied consciousness.
Fontana notes that perhaps the best known names for the first four planes of form are: 1.Earth home to earth-bound spirits; 2. the Intermediate State or Hades including purgatory; 3. the Plane of Illusion or Lower Astral; and 4. the Plane of Colour or Upper Astral or Summerland. The three formless planes or planes of pure consciousness consist of 5. the Plane of Pure Flame or Plane of Intellectual Harmony; 6. the Plane of Pure Light or Plane of Cosmic Consciousness; and 7. the Seventh Plane or Contemplation of the Supreme Mind.
Reincarnation
Before discussing these levels it’s important to understand that a number of religious and esoteric traditions teach that upon death we follow a different path; we return to earth in another body. Tibetan Buddhism teaches that it is only in this world that we have a chance to meet the challenges and make the choices between good and evil that enable us to make spiritual progress and ultimately achieve enlightenment.
The bulk of Fontana’s discussion of the afterlife is based on communications from the deceased received through mediums, and they place less emphasis on rebirth leading us to believe that it normally occurs only for individuals in the planes of form who still have strong ties with earth. The further one progresses away from earth the more difficult it becomes to return. Furthermore, increasing spiritual development renders it less likely that one would want or need to return. By the time one reaches the Plane of Color, we are told that reincarnation is a rarity.
Fontana points out that in his own work with mediums he never received information from communicators that insist reincarnation is an inevitable fact of life. His own conclusion on the subject is that the evidence tends to incline towards reincarnation, but only for some people. Much, he says, may depend on the individual’s readiness to learn the lessons of the present life, both while living it and after death, and also on his or her readiness to progress spiritually in the afterlife and loosen the ties to material existence.
The topic of reincarnation and the evidence supporting it is discussed in some detail in another section of the website
The Plane of Illusion
We’ve discussed the first two great planes, that of earth and that of Hades. The Plane of Illusion involves experiences in consciousness that we generate in our own minds. Fontana points out that the human mind would have great difficulty holding onto any sanity if in the afterlife it was abruptly thrust into an existence devoid of any of the familiar landmarks by which it orientates itself in the physical world.
The recently deceased can only make sense of their new experiences if they find themselves in a world that in important respects resembles the one left behind. Like expecting a familiar world to be there each morning when we awaken from sleep, we are told that we can expect a familiar world when we waken after death.
But this world we find ourselves in isn’t entirely created by our mind. If it were, each of us would be lost in a self-contained reality of our own creation, and there could be no shared experience. Communicators, however, insist that there is shared experience, so it seems that will be drawn to communities populated by like-minded people. If we love nature we will find ourselves in dimensions where the minds of others have, unconsciously and consciously, helped create just such a community. Within this environment we can create our own reality, but it will be congruent with and shared by those comprising the larger whole. These communities can vary greatly reflecting differing experiences members who have created them brought with them from earthly life.
Although those who in the Plane of Illusion have come through and left behind the dark areas of strife and negativity of the Hades/purgatory plane, they are not free of their own personality defects. A good deal of development remains, but they have begun identifying, repenting, and learning from their deficiencies. They have begun realizing their potential for moving beyond their selfish concerns dominating material existence.
The capacity to create one’s own reality in the Plane of Illusion, that is manipulate the environment through thought alone, helps understand how communicators can describe such things as wearing clothes, living in houses and indulging in some of the pleasures enjoyed on earth. Of course, this involves us having a physical body.
Christianity tells us that Jesus appeared after his death on no fewer than four occasions and that his resurrected body resembled his physical body in all respects. Apparitions reportedly seen in a facsimile of their physical bodies, even down to wearing the clothes worn by these bodies. Reports of clothes are often raised to dismiss everything seen as a product of the observer’s imagination. Fontana notes, however, that if the afterlife is indeed a world of thought then clothes would seem no more impossible than any other mental artefact. Comments by numerous communicators suggest not only the existence of a body but of bodily senses, and the ability to hold conversations, both verbally and telepathically, with other spirits.
Communicators tell us that after death the astral body appears to have its own intrinsic blueprint and reverts not only to full health but that in the prime of life. Those who die in childhood revert to a time when they would have been in the prime of life. But the recently deceased can choose to appear to the living in the form in which they are best remembered.
Communicators have reported that individual consciousness, particularly at the higher levels of the afterlife, seems not to be isolated from other minds like it is in this world. The bonds of love between people are much closer, deeper, and less selfish on that level. Close relationships that were formed on earth can be renewed and deepened, and new relationships with others of like mind can be formed. Fontana notes that if ultimate reality really is love, as the great spiritual traditions say, we can assume that at each successive level of the afterlife we draw closer and closer together to others until the bond of love is fully realized.
The Plane of Color
Those in the Plane of Illusion move on when they have seen through the illusory nature of their existence and seek higher meaning and purpose to existence. After the Plane of Illusion the spirit progresses to the Plane of Color also referred to as the Upper Astral or as Summerland, or sometimes as the First Heave. It is described as a place of enchanting loveliness, in contrast to the Plane of Illusion which has varied and sometimes quite contrasting landscapes depending on the thoughts and inclinations of the community of souls responsible for the illusions. Because of its beauty and harmony the Plane of Color may be the paradisal environment sometimes glimpsed in NDEs. In some NDE reports there are accounts of a beautiful bright light that doesn’t hurt the eyes and of colors more beautiful than those on earth.
Communicators say that on earth we have only a dim awareness of profound realities that exceed the scope of our understanding, but in the Plane of Color these realities become more accessible. Opportunities arise in response to the soul’s own wishes, enabling it to follow earthly interests and also to develop new ones. This again suggests the quasi-physical mentally created body retains the creative skills and abilities it had during its material existence. Individuals in the Plane of Colors are sometimes said to serve as go-betweens relaying messages from beings on still higher levels who are said to no longer be able to communicate readily with earth.
This is the level whose features are most extensively noted in descriptions of the afterlife, perhaps because of its apparent similarity to a perfect version of our own world. It is a place without sickness and suffering where the power of thought replaces physical effort, a place where peace and love rule; where one can follow chosen interests without the stress of competition in the company of like-minded friends.
The Plane of Color is attained only after lengthy and demanding spiritual development on earth and in the initial levels of the afterlife. Yet, while it seems to represent all the essential qualities of heaven, ultimately it is not permanent. Once all the opportunities for spiritual development begun on earth have been culminated in the Plane of Color the soul is ready to move on to the higher non-illusory levels. We are told that this is eventually true all individuals except for those very rare occasions when some may choose reincarnation on earth.
The formless realms.
We are told that there are three formless realms that mark a major departure from the four lower realms in that they are said to be no be longer illusory. The soul is free to approach successively closer to an ultimate reality in which consciousness is not limited by the need to accommodate to a physical body and to time and space, whether actual or illusory
Communicators tell us that the transition between the Plane of Color and the formless planes is more marked than the transition between each of the planes of form and in fact is sometimes described as a second death because one is now dying to the illusions that held one captive. The illusory or astral body is left behind just as the physical body was left behind in the first death of the physical body.
This second death involve a boundless elevation of consciousness allowing movement closer to the source of this consciousness. The soul is said to settle into a sleep-like state as the illusion of a body gradually fades away. It then awakens in the formless realms which are nearer the infinite potential from which all things arise.
Communicators inform us that once in the formless realms, it becomes increasingly difficult to communicate directly with the lower realms of form which is why higher souls contact those in the Plane of Color who then relay the messages concerned to earth.
The first of the formless realms is the Plane of Pure Flame, the point at which the limited self is transcended and the soul thus realizes freedom from the limitations of space and time, of here and there, of objects and things. It is said to be the plane of perfect intellectual harmony where the wellspring that inspires thought and the intellect exists in its pure life-enhancing essence before it becomes fragmented by individual human consciousness on earth.
In some traditions it is referred to as the Causal Plane because it is said to be the point at which the life force begins its passage from formlessness into the realms of form, thus initiating the creative process that reaches completion on earth before beginning its upward ascent back towards the source .
Whereas flame symbolizes freedom from the restrictions of form, the Plane of Pure Light symbolizes infinity itself. Here the last limits upon human consciousness are said to be removed allowing it to access cosmic consciousness, the consciousness of all life and order throughout creation..
Fontana suggests that the Plane of Pure Light seems to reflect the essence of the Kingdom of Heaven of the scriptures, the ideals of perfection taught by Christ, and to approach close to the Divine source of all life and the essence of universal love, wisdom and harmony. In some traditions of esoteric Christianity it is spoken of as the realm of Christ himself.
Above the Plane of Pure Light is the Seventh Plane, the highest of the seven realms that are said to make up life. For Christian mystics it is the Godhead, the supreme absolute reality from which our concepts of God arise. The realm of pure flame is said to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the realm of pure light, Christ, both of which in essence are one with God the Father, the seventh level, a Trinity that is both immanent (within us) and transcendent (beyond us).
The Seventh Plane seems equated in some ways with the nirvana in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the ineffable, which is said to be beyond all form and formlessness and beyond all conceptualizing.