Humankind’S Fear of Death: How It Has Come About and How It Can Be Overcome

By Michael Higgins

The book developed from my gradual realization that spirituality was a normal characteristic in the human race, but that in recent millennia it had regressed in the everyday awareness of most people, especially those belonging to what they regarded as a cultural society. Only so-called primitive peoples retained a spiritual outlook. My book describes how this has come about, especially the negative influence of organized religions on individual spirituality, and the resulting deterioration in most human societies. Finally I suggest how mankind can become again spiritual during their Earth lives.

Michael Higgins

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481799737

Michael Higgins

Michael Higgins is the author of Grow the Best Asparagus, and is an expert gardener.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Primitive Humanity

Chapter 2

The Afterlife And The Christian Religion

Chapter 3

Other Religions, Reincarnations, And Seers

Chapter 4

Ghosts

Chapter 5

Earthbound Spirits

Chapter 6

Poltergeists

Chapter 7

Spiritualism

Chapter 8

Ndes

Chapter 9

Itc   

Chapter 10

The Nature Of The Afterlife

Chapter 11

Modern Humanity’s Misery

Chapter 12

Overcoming The Fear Of Death

Bibliography

‘If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love, but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.’

Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The purpose of this book is to show how the situation described in the quotation from Dostoevsky has been brought about for the great majority of humankind, particularly in the last two millennia, and how the loss of belief in immortality is the main cause of people’s fear of death.

To my late wife, Ann;

my late wife, Ailwen;

my son, Sean;

my daughter-in-law, Becky;

and my granddaughter, Caitlin.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

M y grateful thanks to all friends and acquaintances who have told me of personal experiences of a spiritual nature. I am also grateful to those who have assisted me in contacting others whose similar experiences they have heard about.

FOREWORD

C urious incidents that followed the death of his first wife, including what e calls a ‘preview of the immortal realm which is the future for all of us’, prompted Michael Higgins to take a good look at the evidence for, and belief in, the afterlife. It is, he says, ‘appalling that the great majority of mankind in this day and age have virtually no conception of real life, i.e. immortal spirituality’, with the result that death has come to be seen as something to be feared rather than a simple transition from one state of being to the next.

With the clarity and authority one expects from a good science teacher, the author takes us through a wide variety of subjects, from comparative religion, ghosts, poltergeists, reincarnation, mediumship and spiritualism to near-death experiences, electronic voice phenomena, dowsing and psychometry. He has in fact produced a well written and informative guide book to the afterlife.

When we decide to go on holiday in a new country, we usually read something about it first, and so arrive with some knowledge of what to expect to find when we get there. This book should provide some comfort both to the bereaved and to those who may be feeling that the time for their transition is drawing near.

Guy Lyon Playfair*

*Guy Lyon Playfair has been a leading and very active member of the British SPR: Society for Psychological Research for many years. He has also done much research elsewhere, particularly in South America.

PREFACE

M y first wife, Ann, died of cancer at the age of forty-six. A week after the funeral, her aunt, who had been a great help in the last stages of Ann’s illness, returned to her home, leaving me on my own for the first time since Ann’s death. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the only company I had was our beagle, Digger; I was also to find many years later that dogs can be a great comfort in bereavement.

Nevertheless I was feeling somewhat miserable when the front doorbell rang. Digger, who seemed more excited than usual by the sound of the bell, barked and jumped off the sofa. As I was walking to the door, only a few seconds away, I noticed the ring was not the usual ding-dong but a short succession of a few dings only. I opened the door and found no one there. I went out into the quiet village road, but it was quite deserted. The doorbell had never sounded on its own before, and I was convinced its ringing was brought about by Ann, an assurance to me that all was well with her. She would have known that I, being a scientist by training and occupation, wouldn’t have been convinced by just a feeling of her presence but would need something more definite as evidence. I was greatly uplifted by this simple occurrence, even more so when it was repeated a few weeks later, with the same abnormal ring, which never occurred again. These were the first occasions I had experienced, at first hand, contact with the afterlife and were of great significance to me.

About the time of the second ringing, another incident occurred, which also involved electricity. I believe it was another case of Ann helping me. On this day I had made an appointment with a solicitor in the county town at 9.30 a.m. This meant getting up at about 7.30. In the event I had retired rather later than intended and was only awakened in the morning by the shining of a light. It was the bedside lamp on Ann’s side of the bed, which hadn’t been lit since her death. To light it required activating the wall switch as well as the switch on the lamp. I looked at the clock. It was 7.30! As with the doorbell, Ann was giving me a hand, no doubt with a smile on her face.

In these first few weeks after Ann’s death, there were one or two more incidents of a helping hand, which I’m sure were brought about by her, but I will confine this introduction to the last one, which was a life-changing experience. I woke one morning thinking I had had a wonderful dream, unlike any of my dreams previously or since, but as I learned more about states of consciousness, etc, later in life, I realised I had probably had an out-of-body experience, an OBE. My spirit body or astral body had moved into the spiritual dimension and met Ann. The surroundings were a medley of beautiful colours—nothing garish, but beyond anything I had ever experienced in the earthly dimension. I can remember nothing of our conversation, but that didn’t seem to matter. I’m not sure we used words at all; it was a meeting of minds, meaning there could be no pretence, nothing said for effect, only total honesty. This resulted in an atmosphere between us of utter relaxation, beyond anything possible in the material world. For me it was a revelation of what we will all be blessed with eventually, a deep happiness in which there is no worry, no suffering, and no fear. In this place, the only concern is for loved ones left on Earth. No dream could have given such a degree of blissful contentment. In some wonderful way I am sure Ann gave me this preview of the immortal realm, which is the future for all of us. As a result of this experience I no longer fear death, but like Frederic Myers, one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research, I look forward to it. As he himself often put it, before his death in 1901, he was ‘looking forwards to the holidays’.

INTRODUCTION

A truly spiritual person is one who is aware at all times that, in this life on Earth, he or she not only possesses a physical body but also has an incorporeal essence, a spiritual nature that is totally non-material, that survives physical death and exists prior to physical birth. This essence is the fundamental reality of life and is the vital and eternal nature of every human being. Though some may claim to believe this is so, sadly, few in the modern world truly believe it. Any claim made to be spiritual by the vast majority of humankind is no more than a shallow, passing hope, far removed from the certainty of true spirituality. The use of the word loss in the preface indicates that, at some time in the past, humankind was spiritual in nature. That indeed is one of the truths this book is intended to demonstrate: that spirituality was once a universal feature of humanity.

How, why, and when spirituality was lost is explained, along with the profound catastrophe that this has been, especially for the nearly universal attitude towards death.

Finally it is shown how spirituality may and must be regained, if we are to overcome that worst and most unnecessary of fears, the fear of death.

CHAPTER 1

PRIMITIVE HUMANITY

A ll of us now on Earth are descended from primitive ancestors. The number of generations between you and your primitive forebears may be many or surprisingly few, depending on your race. Besides this, in a few remote areas of the world—in the upper reaches of the Amazon and some of its tributaries, a few places in west and north Africa, and in northeast and southeast Asia—there still exist a handful of primitive tribes, though their numbers are inevitably decreasing because of pressure from encroaching civilisation. The term primitive is often thought to be derogatory, but if we consider how real primitive peoples live, we may discover in fact a profound positivity in primitive life, compared to what we find in the ‘civilised’ world.

These primitive people were and are like us, members of the species Homo sapiens. There have been other related human species in the past, but all have almost certainly become extinct.

The first need of any animal species, including humans, is to eat. Early Homo sapiens solved this requirement by being hunter-gatherers; i.e., they hunted and killed animals and gathered various plant parts for their food. The next thing needed by all land animals is some kind of shelter, a protection from weather and often from potentially dangerous, predatory animals. Caves can be an ideal shelter. As long as the local environment is rich enough in animal and plant food, caves can provide permanent quarters, but in many places, possibly most, primitive peoples were and are nomadic. Obvious examples are the inhabitants of desert areas, but there were many others, including most of the natives of the North American plains, the so-called Red Indians. Their tents were carried from one camping ground to the next, this regular movement ensuring that the environment was never over-exploited. In other areas of the world, for example, tropical forests and along some rivers, some primitives would make tree houses, at least in the early millennia of Homo sapiens’ existence.

Food and shelter were then of main practical importance to primitive people, but there was more to their lives than the material essentials. For instance, in some of the natural caves, especially in continental Europe, there are fascinating paintings on the walls, mainly of animals. Clearly primitive people’s interest in animals went beyond their value as food. Superb examples of cave paintings are found, for example, at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. These caves are thought to date from between 15,000 and 12,000 BC, a time towards the end of the coldest part of the most recent ice age. Europe was still much colder than it is today, with permanent ice and snow covering the northern parts of the continent, and glaciers in all the mountainous areas much larger than they are today. Caves would be the warmest places to live, and no doubt the length of time spent in such caves was one reason for their being decorated this way.

The culture of these primitive peoples probably went beyond painting. Though they have left us with no other direct information about themselves and their lives beyond the paintings, we can safely deduce much more about them from study of primitive peoples living today. There are two distinct groups of these: those who still live in tribes in a few remote areas of the world listed above; and, much more readily contacted and studied, those who live surrounded by all the pressures, distractions and temptations of Western cultures, but who have steadfastly persisted in their age-old beliefs, customs, and abilities. In particular such individuals are found among the aborigines of Australia, and the native Indians of North America.

In accounts written by European explorers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, southern Africa, Australia, and elsewhere are described by phrases such as ‘the savage races’ and ‘inferior races’, whilst their discoverers are ‘superior races’ who bring to the ‘ignorant’ natives the ‘blessings of civilisation’. An account of the contacts between the native aborigines and the white invaders of Australia, over the years since Captain Cook’s landing at Botany Bay in 1770, will give some idea of the accuracy or otherwise of these descriptive phrases, as regards the natives and foreign settlers of that country.

Cook, of course, knew nothing about the Australian aborigines when they were first seen by white explorers. It must also be said that the majority of non-native Australians since that time have made little attempt to understand the nature, beliefs, abilities, or history of these indigenous people, or anything else about them. Instead, their country has been largely taken over by non-native descendants of their invaders. Fortunately there have been and are some exceptions to this lack of interest and sympathy in the first nation or native Australians. A few men and women have studied the aborigines at first hand and have built up an impressive catalogue of aboriginal beliefs, knowledge, and social attitudes, etc, that are gradually becoming more widely accepted and understood by the non-native population. As a result, the latter are developing an appreciation and in a few cases even an admiration for their native fellow Australians.

It is thought that the aborigines colonised the island continent of Australia sometime between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago. They are believed to have originated in India, as a race called Dravidians, who reached Australia overland via southeast Asia. At this time, the most recent ice age still prevailed, so the oceans were shallower than today, and the present-day Torres Straits between New Guinea and Cape York, the northern point of the Australian continent, would then have been crossed by a land bridge, making migration into mainland Australia easy. The aborigines eventually spread over the whole continent, except for the island of Tasmania which, when the first Europeans discovered it, was inhabited by a quite different, Negroid race, who failed to survive the onslaught of the ‘superior races’ and whose origin is unknown.

When Europeans began to colonise Australia, the aboriginal population was thought to be between 400,000 and 500,000, divided into some five hundred tribes. What then is the truth about the beliefs and nature of Australian aborigines? Their most important characteristic is a profound spirituality. This is based on what is called the Dreaming or Dreamtime. In their lives they believe—or rather, they know—that they are surrounded by not just material objects but also spiritual beings: one another, other living things, even nonliving objects such as rocks, pools, the sky, etc, as well as the spirit bodies of their ancestors. All these are reality to the aborigine, as is a certainty of an afterlife, a belief shared by all primitive peoples.

Of greatest importance is the land itself. When the Europeans first arrived in Australia, they saw, but almost certainly didn’t appreciate, a pristine landscape, one where the human presence was only apparent when people were visible in it. The aborigines were and, in the most remote areas, still are nomadic hunters and gatherers. They change the landscape no more than do any of the other living things that occur in it. Unlike the white settlers and their descendants, the aborigines have no wish to use the landscape for growing crops or keeping domestic animals. Aborigines regard themselves, as the North American Indians did before the Europeans appeared, as part of the environment, not its master. But both races are more than conservationists. To them the spiritual nature of the landscape is even more important than its physical features. The environment, every tree, rock, and pool in the Australian landscape, is part of the Dreaming, an essential feature of the aborigines’ life,