'What's it all about, Alfie?'

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Manny Carvajal, 66, is a marketing consultant for a cable TV channel and an outdoor media company. He enjoys reading Hemingway and Somerset Maugham. He developed his love of books and writing in high school at UST; he began to loathe politicians in college at Jose Rizal University. Early in his career in broadcast media, advertising and brand management, he learned the world wasn’t perfect.

It’s funny. When you’re young you feel like you’ll live forever. Nothing and nobody can touch you. Pretty much like Superman, you’re invincible! Then all of a sudden you’re in your mid-sixties and your sense of mortality becomes sharper than a barber’s razor.

Aware of the average Filipino male’s life span, you know it’s coming. Death. If not in three months, in three years, but it’s coming. There’s no running away from it. And there’s no use sugar-coating it either. No euphemisms. Death not only stares you in the face, it reaches out for you!

It strikes you not so much with the reality that things will end but the force it bears that pushes you to look into yourself and take stock of your life. Not unlike Burt Bacharach’s hit of the Sixties, you’re confronted with what some may regard as the final question: “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

And so you dig deep into the recesses of your heart and mind searching for some clues, some sort of understanding. Not one to engage a priest or some religious person in a serious spiritual talk, I turned to same-age friends and books — inspiring, spirit-lifting books like The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Chicken Soup for the Soul and other titles of the same vein.

Then, like a bolt of lightning, it hit me! It was a best-selling paperback that created quite a stir in the mid-Seventies. Sifting through a myriad of knick-knacks, mementoes of the past and old copies of favorite magazines in my dusty, cob-webbed top cabinet, there it was…looking like a sepia photograph of an unfamiliar aunt in a provincial home.

Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody Jr.. From Dr. Moody’s research into what happens when one, by all clinical criteria, is pronounced dead, the book provides some insights into personal feelings, impressions and senses of people who were “dead” and revived after a few minutes.

Talking openly, reading and delving into a subject like death is, in our culture, almost forbidden. Perhaps it’s seen as some sort of superstition brought down from generations…as if talking about the Grim Reaper creates some sort of a personal attachment to him, which invites him to lurk by your side. Or perhaps, it’s simply such a morbid subject that one just doesn’t talk about.

It dawned on me that for almost the same reason I never read the book. It must have also been because the idea of dying then was furthest from my mind. Sure, it’s real. Sure, it happens. But I was just as sure then, it only happens to other people.

What happens when we die? Do we actually lose all consciousness? All sense of attachment to the living? Is that really all there is to it? You stop breathing and that’s it? Lights out!? Kaput? Goodbye?

Life After Life researches what lies beyond death. The author’s resource people had been there and back — people who, after a tragic accident, a stroke or a serious affliction, were actually pronounced clinically and physiologically dead but somehow, after a few minutes, came back to life.

Dr. Moody was prudent and guarded enough to state that his findings are not what you might call conclusive or backed up by empirical data. He didn’t write the book to prove there is life after death. Rather, he documents these hundred or so individuals’ amazing narratives and similarities of death experiences, to goad other people who underwent the same experience to come out into the open and help look deeper into the almost inarguable possibility that there is life after death and that it’s not as frightful as it’s been generally portrayed.

The book reports that while chronologically, reported impressions varied, certain elements were common as these clinically-dead-for-a-while people reached their point of dying: One hears himself pronounced dead by the attending doctor and while the medical team hovers over him, he feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. He then finds himself outside of his physical body and sees it from some distance away like he was a spectator watching a stage play. After a few moments, he gets his bearings and adapts to his strange condition. He senses he still has a body but one of a different nature versus the one he left behind. Then things start to happen. Other “people” come to meet and help him. He sees dead relatives and friends and a loving, warm spirit, something he has never encountered before — a being of light — emerges.

He is asked a question, a question that seems to be without an audible voice but communicated silently to his mind, he receives it, more than he hears it. The meaning is clear enough — to make him assess his life. He is helped along with a sudden rush of a panoramic view of his entire life before him, a sort of an instantaneous playback of the highlights, the peaks and valleys of his life. After some time he finds himself facing what seems to be a border or a barrier, apparently representing the line between life as we know it and the next life. He senses he must go back to his earthly life and that the time for his death has not yet come. He resists for he does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love and peace. Despite this, he somehow is reunited with his earthly body and lives.

Expressed in their own words, several of these people described their impressions thus: “All pain vanished.” “There was a feeling of utter peace and quiet, no fear at all.” “After I came back I cried off and on for about a week because I had to live in this world after seeing that one.” “I heard a voice telling me what I had to do — go back — and I felt no fear.”

Some people, Christians obviously, drew upon certain biblical learnings. One described the dark enclosure he went through as the Holy Book’s “Valley of the shadow of death.” Two persons made reference to what Jesus said in the Bible, “I am the light of the world.” Perhaps on that basis, they identified the light they met as Jesus Christ. One said, “I didn’t ever see a person in this light, but to me, the light was Christ-consciousness, a oneness with all things. A perfect love. I think that Jesus meant it literally when he said He was the light of the world.”

What to me was striking about these near-death narratives was that while some talked of bits of unpleasantness as in loud ringing or buzzing, no one even gave a hint of some horror or terrifying experience or any indication of what we generally regard as Hell.

I, as a Catholic, despite what our parish priests say, refuse to believe in something called Hell. I firmly believe only a mad, unforgiving, vengeful god would create something as horrifying and vile as Hell. And to think of the possibility that one could be condemned to such a horrendous place is mind-boggling! Eternal damnation! Think for a second what that means. Eternal. It means endless. It means forever. It means a non-stop — not for a second, not for a minute — continuous pain. It means you can’t even look forward to a reprieve or a temporary suspension of the sentence even on good behavior. Not even if you had enough clout to have GMA issue an executive clemency! You can’t say “It’s okay, after 800 years, the suffering will stop. Hallelujah!” I refuse to believe there is Hell!

And so I hang on to this book by Dr. Robert Moody. Rightly, it seems to affirm a hopeful next life bereft of evil and bad things. From it I find some solace and consolation with the possibility that dying may just be a beginning of something wonderful — wonderful not by our human definition of what wonderful is but by The Big Guy’s own definition!