In order to provide materials for the forming of the right questions, we are serializing the section from First questions on the Life of the Spirit, in a series of posts. The plan is given in outline below.
THE QUESTIONS RAISED:
After Death, What? Questions centering around the immortality of the soul, extra-sensory perception, psychic phenomena, healing, miracles:
Does the human being survive the death of the physical body? What are the facts and what are the frauds of supernormal faculties, powers, and occurrences? Do miracles happen today?*
* Each of these questions is typical of other similar questions reviewed.
“This wretched INN, where we scarce stay to bait,
We call our DWELLING-PLACE:
We call one STEP A RACE:
But angels in their full enlightened state,
Angels, who LIVE, and know what 'tis to BE,
Who all the nonsense of our language see,
Who speak THINGS, and our WORDS,their ill-drawn
PICTURES, scorn,
When we, by a foolish figure, say,
BEHOLD AN OLD MAN DEAD! then they
Speak properly, and cry, BEHOLD A MAN-CHILD BORN!”
COWLEY.
............................................................................................
I was dead, and right content. I lay in my coffin, with my hands folded in peace. The knight, and the lady I loved, wept over me.
Her tears fell on my face.
“Ah!” said the knight, “I rushed amongst them like a madman. I hewed them down like brushwood. Their swords battered on me like hail, but hurt me not. I cut a lane through to my friend. He was dead. But he had throttled the monster, and I had to cut the handful out of its throat, before I could disengage and carry off his body. They dared not molest me as I brought him back.”
...................................................
“He has died well,” said the lady.
George MacDonald, Phantastes,
CHAPTER 1 The Evidence of Immortality
The Evidence of History
The Evidence of Psychic Phenomena and Extra-sensory Perception
The Evidence of Religion: Spiritual Tradition and Mystical Insight
CHAPTER 2 The Search for Assurance
Do I Really Believe the Religious Answers?
Should I Experiment with Psychic Phenomena?
Is Mystical Insight Possible to Me?
PAUSE Catch our breath, Take a moment
Give me time for repentance and the renewal of my mind. Deliver me from the condemnation of my conscience. Finally, be at my side when my lowly soul is separated from my wretched body, and ease the burden of that unbearable distress. Grant relief to that indescribable pain, and console me during that inconsolably difficult passage. Deliver me from the dark forms of the demons; raise me far above the vengeful account keepers, the aerial custom houses, and the rulers of darkness. Tear up the records of my many sins. Reconcile me to God. Make me worthy to stand at the right hand of His blessing in the hour of the fearsome judgement. Deliver me from the eternal and unendurable torments, and make me an inheritor of His wonderous and incorruptible good things.
— St Gregory Palamas, Excerpt from a prayer prayed daily before the icon of Theotokos.
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