What is your calling?

Psychologist James Hillman explains that the idea of having a calling “comes from Plato, his Myth of Er at the end of his most well known work, The Republic.

“The soul of each of us is given a unique daimon before we are born, and it has selected an image or pattern that we are to live on earth. [In ancient Greece, daimons “were considered divine powers, fates, guardian spirits, or angels, who gave guidance and protection.”*] This soul-companion, the daimon, guides us here; in the process of arrival, however, we forget all that took place and believe we come empty into this world. The daimon remembers what is in your image and belongs to your pattern, and therefore your daimon is the carrier of your destiny.

“As explained by the greatest of later Platonists, Plotinus (205-270 CE), we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belong to its necessity. This suggests that the circumstances, including my body and my parents whom I may curse, are my soul’s own choice—and I do not understand this because I have forgotten.

“A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim. The daimon does not go away.

“For centuries we have searched for the right term for this ‘call.’ The Romans named it your genius; the Greeks, your daimon; and the Christians your guardian angel. The concept of this individualized soul-image has a long, complicated history; its appearance in cultures is diverse and widespread and the names for it are legion. Only our contemporary psychology and psychiatry omit it from their textbooks.

“These many words and names do not tell us what ‘it’ is, but they do confirm that it is. They also point to its mysteriousness. We cannot know what exactly we are referring to because its nature remains shadowy, revealing itself mainly in hints, intuitions, whispers, and the sudden urges and oddities that disturb your life and that we continue to call symptoms.

“Despite psychology’s reluctance to let individual fate into its field, psychology does admit that we each have our own makeup, that each of us is definitely, even defiantly, a unique individual. But when it comes to accounting for the spark of uniqueness and the call that keeps us to it, psychology too is stumped.

“Its analytical methods break down the puzzle of the individual into factors and traits of personality, into types, complexes and temperaments, attempting to track the secret of individuality to substrata of brain matter and selfish genes. More strict schools of psychology kick the question right out of the lab, packing it off to parapsychology for the study of paranormal ‘callings,’ or to research stations in the distant colonies of magic, religion, and madness. At its most bold, and most barren, psychology accounts for the uniqueness of each by a hypothesis of random statistical chance.

“The acorn theory proposes and I will bring evidence for the claim that you and I and every single person is born with a defining image. Individuality resides in a formal cause—to use old philosophical language going back to Aristotle. We each embody our own idea, in the language of Plato and Plotinus. And this form, this idea, this image does not tolerate too much straying. The theory also attributes to this innate image an angelic or daimonic intention, as if it were a spark of consciousness; and, moreover, holds that it has our interest at heart because it chose us for its reasons.”

“That the daimon has your interest at heart may be the part of the theory particularly hard to accept. That the heart has its reasons, yes; that there is an unconscious with its own intentions; that fate plays a hand in how things turn out—all this is acceptable, even conventional.

“But why is it so difficult to imagine that I am cared about, that something takes an interest in what I do, that I am perhaps protected, maybe even kept alive not altogether by my own will and doing? Why do I prefer insurance to the invisible guarantees of existence? For it sure is easy to die. A split second of inattention and the best-laid plans of a strong ego spill out on the sidewalk. Something saves me every day from falling down the stair, tripping at the curb, being blindsided. How is it possible to race down the highway, tape deck singing, thoughts far away, and stay alive? What is this ‘immune system’ that watches over my days, my food sprinkled with viruses, toxins, bacteria? Even my eyebrows crawl with mites, like little birds on a rhino’s back. We name what preserves us instinct, self-preservation, sixth sense, subliminal awareness (each of which, too, is invisible yet present). Once upon a time what took such good care of me was a guardian spirit, and I damn well knew to pay it appropriate attention.

James Hillman, The Soul’s Code.

*Susan Athanasakou, “Greeker Than the Greeks, http://greekerthanthegreeks.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/lost-in-translation-word-of-day-demon.html.

Each of us is called and born with a character

Psychologist James Hillman, former director of the C. G. Jung Institute and author of The Soul’s Code (1997), never wrote about near-death experiences. But he described the soul-image as a bridge between the invisible world of the unconscious and our visible conscious world. His writings challenge us to “imagine”—to look for our calling in the myths and stories of our culture—and then to fulfill this image in our lives.

Hillman also gave me a new understanding of parenting (and grandparenting) and is great reading for those of us getting old: “Aging is no accident. It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul. We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years; the older we become, the more our true natures emerge. Thus the final years have a very important purpose: the fulfillment and confirmation of one’s character.”* Hillman helped me imagine who I might yet be.]

The Soul’s Code begins: “There is more in a human life than our theories of it allow. Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this ‘Something’ as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.

“Because the ‘traumatic’ view of early years so controls psychological theory of personality and its development, the focus of our rememberings and the language of our personal story-telling have already been infiltrated by the toxins of these theories. Our lives may be determined less by our childhood than by the way we have learned to imagine our childhoods.

“At the outset we need to make clear that today’s main paradigm for understanding a human life, the interplay of genetics and environment, omits something essential—the particularity you feel to be you. By accepting the idea that I am the effect of a subtle buffeting between hereditary and societal forces, I reduce myself to a result. We are victims of academic, scientistic and even therapeutic psychology, whose paradigms do not sufficiently account for or engage with, and therefore ignore, the sense of calling, that essential mystery at the heart of each human life.

“In a nutshell, then, this book is about calling, about fate, about character, about innate image. Together they make up the ‘acorn theory,’ which holds that each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived.

“Your person is not a process or a development. You are that essential image that develops, if it does. As Picasso said, ‘I don’t develop; I am.’ You are born with a character; it is given; a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth. Each person enters the world called.”

 

James Hillman, The Soul’s Code.

*James Hillman’s Quotes & Sayings, https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/2605-james-hillman.

Results from Dr. Pim van Lommel's NDE research

All of Dr. Pim van Lommel’s research is based on cases involving patients under the care of physicians treating them when they had a cardiac arrest. He conducted a prospective study by interviewing all cardiac arrest survivors to see if they had memories during their cardiac arrest: 282 of his 344 patients did not have memories, but 62 patients did.[1] These cases provide evidence that persons may experience an enhanced consciousness, when according to accepted medical criteria their brains were unable to support any consciousness at all.

Were there differences between these two groups of survivors that might explain some of these NDEs? Van Lommel reports: “To our big surprise, we identified no significant differences in the duration of the cardiac arrest, no differences in the duration of the period of unconscious-ness, and no differences in whether or not seriously ill patients who remained in a coma for days or weeks after a complicated resuscitation needed intubation for artificial respiration.

“Neither did we find differences among the 30 patients who had a cardiac arrest during electrophysiological stimulation (EPS) in the catheterization laboratory and whose heart rhythms were always reestablished through defibrillation (electric shock) within fifteen to thirty seconds. So we failed to identify any differences between patients with a very long or a very brief cardiac arrest. The degree or severity of the oxygen deficiency in the brain (anoxia) appeared to be irrelevant.”

Also, “The administered medication played no role. Most patients suffering a myocardial infarction receive morphine-style painkillers, while people who are put on a ventilator following a complicated resuscitation are given extremely high doses of sedatives.

“A psychological cause, such as the infrequently reported fear of death, did not affect the occurrence of a NDE, although it did affect the depth of the experience. Whether or not patients had heard or read anything about NDEs in the past made no difference either. Any kind of religious belief, or its absence in nonbelievers and atheists, was irrelevant, and the same was true for the standard of education reached.”[2]

In the van Lommel study, factors that do increase the frequency of an NDE are “an age below 60 and a first myocardial infarction, in which case the patients were also younger than the mean age of 63. If patients required several resuscitations during their hospital stay, they were more likely to report an NDE. Remarkably, all patients who had experienced an NDE in the past reported them significantly more often in our study.”

“A complicated resuscitation can result in a long coma, and patients who have been unconscious on a ventilator for days or weeks are more likely to suffer short-term memory defects caused by permanent brain damage. The longer the coma, the greater the risk of these cognitive problems, which also occur after sever concussion or a stroke and which may wipe hours, days, and sometimes even weeks from a patient’s memory. These patients reported NDEs significantly less often, which suggests that a good memory is a prerequisite for remembering an NDE.”[3]

Van Lommel says his research colleagues were: “particularly surprised to find that medical factors failed to explain the occurrence of an NDE. All the patients in our study had been clinically dead, and only a small percentage reported an enhanced consciousness with lucid thoughts, emotions, memories, and sometimes perceptions from a position outside and above their lifeless body during resuscitation.

“If this enhanced consciousness had a physiological cause, such as oxygen deficiency in the brain (anoxia), all patients in our study should have reported an NDE. They had all been unconscious because of their cardiac arrest, which resulted in a loss of blood pressure and the cessation of breathing and all body and brain stem reflexes.

“The severity of the clinical picture, such as a lengthy coma after a complicated resuscitation, also failed to explain why patients did or did not report an NDE, except in the case of lingering memory defects.

“The psychological explanation is improbable because most patients experienced no fear of death preceding their cardiac arrest; its onset was so sudden that they failed to notice it. In most cases they were left without any memories of their resuscitation.”[4]

Van Lommel’s research included interviews with NDE survivors after two years, and these verified: “a significant decrease in fear of death among people with an NDE and a significant increase in belief in an afterlife. There were further significant differences between people with and without an NDE with respect to a number of social and religious factors such as showing emotions, accepting others, a more loving attitude to life, and more love and compassion for oneself and others. “

Other differences pertained to a greater involvement in family, a greater interest in spirituality and the meaning of life, and greater appreciation of ordinary things, coupled with less interest in money, possessions, and social norms (‘keeping up appearances’).”

Interviews with survivors eight years later revealed “the NDE had become an experience that provided a fresh insight into everything that matters in life: compassion, unconditional love, and acceptance of oneself (including acceptance of one’s negative qualities), others, and nature. Fear of death was usually gone.”[5]

In response to critics who argue that NDEs are vivid dreams, Van Lommel agrees that there are similarities. “Consciousness is so greatly enhanced during a dream that time and distance become irrelevant. Like NDEs, some dreams also feature visions of the future.” In addition, “people can meet deceased persons in lucid dreams, just as in NDEs.”

Yet, van Lommel reminds us, unlike NDEs: “Dreams usually occur during the REM phase of sleep, during which the brain displays a great deal of activity.” Also, “People with an NDE say that during their near-death episode they experienced a vivid reality, which was fundamentally different from anything they ever experienced in dreams.”[6]

A 2013 presentation by van Lommel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avyUsPgIuQ0&t=102s

 

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[1] Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, 144.

[2] Ibid., 146-147.

[3] Ibid., 147-148.

[4] Ibid., 148-149.

[5] Ibid., 150-151.

[6] Ibid., 132-133.

Scientific debate over near-death experiences

As a flat EEG doesn’t prove all brain activity has ceased, NDE critics argue there is no reason to reject the long-held scientific assumption that conscious activity is always the result of neural activity.

Dr. Pim van Lommel responds by referring to the knowledge verified by brain research. “The issue is not whether there is some immeasurable activity somewhere but whether there is any sign of those specific forms of brain activity that, according to current neuroscience, are considered essential to experiencing consciousness. And there is no sign whatsoever of those specific forms of brain activity in the EEGs of cardiac arrest patients.”

NDE research supports the conclusion that: “the current materialistic view of the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers and psychologists is too restricted for an under-standing of this phenomenon. There are now good reasons to assume our consciousness does not always coincide with the functioning of our brain: enhanced conscious can be experienced separate from the body.”[1]

One NDE survivor writes: An overwhelming feeling of love came over me, not the earthly feeling I was quite familiar with, but something I can’t describe. Above me I saw a bright light, and on my way there I heard beautiful music and I saw colors I’d never seen before. As well as the feelings I just described, I had the impression that this was a different dimension altogether. And if anything was missing it was our earthly conception of time!

Other NDE survivors, like my father, met deceased loved ones. Another survivor says: During my NDE following a cardiac arrest, I saw my dead grandmother and a man who looked at me lovingly but whom I didn’t know. Over ten years later my mother confided on her deathbed that I’d been born from an extramarital affair; my biological father was a Jewish man who’d been deported and killed in World War II. My mother showed me a photograph. The unfamiliar man I’d seen more than ten years earlier during my NDE turned out to be my biological father.[2]

In more than one NDE report, a blind person ‘sees.’ A seventy-year-old woman suffering a cardiac arrest, who had been blind since age eighteen, was able during her out-of-body experience to watch the doctors and nurses resuscitating her body. Psychiatrist Raymond Moody reports: “Not only could she describe what the instruments used looked like, but she could even describe their colors. The most amazing thing about this to me,” Moody says, “was that most of these instruments weren’t even thought of over fifty years ago when she could last see.”[3]

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[1] Pim van Lommel, “Pathophysiological Aspects of Near-Death Experiences,” in Mahendra Perera, Karuppiah Jagadheesan and Anthony Peake, editors, Making Sense of Near-Death Experiences, 90, italics added.

[2] Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, 27-29, 32-33.

[3] Raymond A. Moody, The Light Beyond, 134-135.

Carl G. Jung's near-death experience

In a hospital for surgery in Switzerland in 1944, the psychiatrist Carl G. Jung had a cardiac arrest and recalls this “near-death experience” [which occurred before Raymond Moody used this phrase to identify this experience while dying].

It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver.

Far away to the left lay a broad expanse—the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the sliver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back—as if in the upper left of a map—I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth.

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view—approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had every seen. Then Jung recalls: A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space. I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block.

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me—an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.

The experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.

Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a ‘fait accompli,’ without any reference back to what had been. There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.

After he had recovered from his cardiac arrest, Jung wrote: I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible. It was not a product of imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real.

We shy away from the word ‘eternal,’ but I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought into a concrete whole. Nothing was distributed over time; nothing could be measured by temporal concepts. The experience might best be defined as a state of feeling, but one that cannot be produced by imagination.

How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow? There would be things that would not yet have begun, other things that would be indubitably present, and others again which would already be finished and yet all this would be one. One is interwoven into an indescribably whole and yet observes it with complete objectivity.

“Carl G. Jung’s Near-Death Experience,” http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/carl-jung.html. An excerpt in van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life, 22-23. See Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 289-90.

A near-death experience after her newborn died

“E. M. was having a normal pregnancy when her contractions began at nine months and her husband brought her to the hospital. In the delivery room, however, her contractions stop. She becomes aware that people are rushing around and talking to one another with urgent voices. Also, her husband has fainted and had to be carried out of the room.

She writes: Suddenly I realize that I’m looking down at a woman lying on a bed with her legs in supports. I see the nurses and doctors panicking. I see a lot of blood on the bed and on the floor, I see large hands pressing down hard on the woman’s belly, and then I see the woman giving birth to a child. The child is immediately taken to another room. The nurses look dejected. Everybody is waiting.

My head is knocked back hard when the pillow is suddenly pulled away. Once again, I witness a great commotion. Swift as an arrow, I fly through a dark tunnel. I’m engulfed by an overwhelming feeling of peace and bliss. I feel intensely satisfied, happy, calm, and peaceful. I hear wonderful music. I see beautiful colors and gorgeous flowers in all colors of the rainbow in a large meadow.

At the far end is a beautiful, clear, warm light. This is where I must go. I see a figure in a light garment. This figure is waiting for me and reaches out her hand. It feels like a warm and loving welcome. Hand in hand, we move toward the beautiful and warm light. Then she lets go of my hand and turns around.

I feel something pulling me back. I notice a nurse slapping me hard on my cheeks and calling my name. After some time I realize where I am and I know that my child isn’t well. Our daughter is no longer alive. This return hurts so much! I long to go back—indeed, where to?

When I returned from this beautiful world, my reception here in this world was cold, frosty, and above all loveless. The nurse with whom I tried to share my amazing experience dismissed it by saying that I would soon receive medication to help me sleep and then it would all be over. All over? I didn’t want that. I didn’t want it to be over at all. I wanted to go back. The gynecologist told me that I was still young and that I could have plenty more children; I should move on and look forward to the future.

I stopped telling my story. It was difficult enough to find words for my experience because how could words express what I had experienced? But what else could I do? Who could I talk to? What was the matter with me? Had I gone crazy? The only person I could tell my story to, over and over again, was my husband. He listened and asked questions even though he didn’t understand what had happened to me, and whether I was the only person with such an experience.

Dr. Pim van Lommel writes: "For more than twenty years E. M. repressed her feelings about this near-death experience, until depression led her to a psychologist who not only listened to her story, but also believed it." E. M. explains: Now I realize my fear of death has disappeared completely, in marked contrast with the years prior. This is why I have difficulties with the concept of time. These days I constantly lose track of time, whereas before I lived by the clock.

Material things aren’t important to me. The only thing that matters to me is unconditional love. And this is what I’ve always had with my husband. Yet recently I read in a study that unconditional love between human beings is an illusion. And they refuse to believe me! This is why I feel like an outsider sometimes. This is why I’m always, especially during vacations, on the lookout for landscapes, for colors and flowers.

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010), 2-5. For another video recollection of an NDE, see “Present! – Beverly Brodsky and the NDE” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8zEzAEtQ3A.

A comatose patient's surprising memory

Dr. Pim van Lommel personally verified another NDE account in a coronary care unit, which was recorded by the nurse caring for the patient.

“During the night shift the ambulance crew brings in a forty-four-year-old cyanotic [purplish-blue skin discoloration], comatose man. About an hour earlier he had been found in a public park by passers-by, who had initiated heart massage. After admission to the coronary care unit, he receives artificial respiration with a balloon and a mask as well as heart massage defibrillation.

“When I want to change the respiration method, when I want to intubate the patient, the patient turns out to have dentures in his mouth. Before intubating him, I remove the upper set of dentures and put it on the crash cart. Meanwhile we continue extensive resuscitation. After approximately ninety minutes, the patient has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he’s still ventilated and intubated, and he remains comatose.

“In this state he is transferred to the intensive care unit for further treatment. After more than a week in coma the patient returns to the coronary care unit, and I see him when I distribute the medication.

“As soon as he sees me he says,” Oh, yes, but you, you know where my dentures are.

“I’m flabbergasted. Then he tells me,” Yes, you were there when they brought me into the hospital, and you took the dentures out of my mouth and put them on that cart; it had all these bottles on it, and there was a sliding drawer underneath, and you put my teeth there.

“I was all the more amazed because I remembered this happening when the man was in a deep coma and undergoing resuscitation.

“After further questioning, it turned out that the patient had seen himself lying in bed and that he had watched from above how nursing staff and doctors had been busy resuscitating him. He was also able to give an accurate and detailed description of the small room where he had been resuscitated and of the appearance of those present. While watching this scene, he had been terrified that we were going to stop resuscitating and that he would die.

“And it’s true that we had been extremely negative about the patient’s prognosis due to his poor condition when admitted. The patient tells me that he had been making desperate but unsuccessful attempts at letting us know he was still alive and that we should continue resuscitating. He’s deeply impressed by his experience and says he’s no longer afraid of death.”

 

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperOne, 2010), 20-21. See Pim van Lommel et al., “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands,” Lancet 358 (2001): 2039-45.