I was a hospice worker. So, when somebody would come in to see me and would say, “Hey, I want to share something with you that happened when my father was dying. He was very close to the end of his life, and was coming in and out of consciousness, sleeping a great deal. A few times he woke up, and he was energetic, vital, and carrying on a conversation with his deceased brother. And I was just listening to the conversation. And it was like they were in the room together. It was like it was going on right in front of me, except that I really wasn’t a part of the conversation, at all. It was like they were in their own dimension, and it was difficult even to talk to my father.” – William Peters
Johanna Lunn
It is my pleasure to have William Peters here with me today. William is a licensed psychotherapist at the Family Therapy Institute in Santa Barbara, California, specializing in end-of-life counseling. He has served as a Zen hospice volunteer and is the founder of the Shared Crossing Project, whose mission is to raise awareness of the profound and healing experiences that can be available to the dying and their loved ones at the end of life. He wrote a brilliant book, At Heaven’s Door, What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach About Dying Well and Living Better. It’s the culmination of nearly 20 years of research into end-of-life experiences and stories from his private practice as a psychotherapist and bereavement counselor. It is truly a page-turner, full of personal accounts of people who’ve had shared crossings. That’s a special experience at the end of life that suggests loving connection and communication with loved ones beyond this human realm. William has developed a series of experientially based leading-edge programs that focus on preparing for a conscious, connected, and loving end-of-life experience. These programs invite participants to explore the topic of life after death in a safe environment. Welcome to the When You Die Podcast. I’m so glad that we have this opportunity to talk today.
William Peters
Thanks, Johanna. It’s good to be here. I really appreciate the work you’re doing in the world. So, it’s an honor to be on your podcast.
JL
What are these end-of-life experiences that were turning up in your practice?
WP
I should say I was a hospice worker. So, when somebody would come in to see me and would say, “Hey, I want to share something with you that happened when my father was dying. He was very close to the end of his life, and was coming in and out of consciousness, sleeping a great deal. A few times he woke up, and he was energetic, vital, and carrying on a conversation with his deceased brother. And I was just listening to the conversation. And it was like they were in the room together. It was like it was going on right in front of me, except that I really wasn’t a part of the conversation at all. It was like they were in their own dimension, and it was difficult even to talk to my father.” I also remember, directly from my practice, one individual sharing an experience he had. He said, “I tried to interrupt my father, but I couldn’t even get his attention. He was so absorbed in this conversation. In this other dimension. He couldn’t even hear me. And when he came back, I said to him, ‘Hey, it looked like you were talking to your brother,’ who he was very close to. And he looked at me, he said, ‘Well, you know, what’s it to you?'” It was kind of like he had a bit of a boundary around it, which is not uncommon. You’ll see some kind of edginess around this. And in some cases, you’ll hear that the person, the guy who’s had this, what we call pre-death visitation or vision, will not even remember they had it. So, it’s an area that is increasingly well-known now and studied quite well. But that is a very common experience. I think for the literature on that, Dr. Christopher Kerr is a leading researcher in that area, end-of-life dreams, he calls them, dreams. And in the field, as well, they’ve been recognized as pre-death dreams. I make the distinction between dreams and visions or visitations. And I think it’s an important distinction. We tend to call anything that happens while we are asleep, a dream. But visions or visitations are different. There’s a discernment process that I take my clients through that separates a dream from a vision or visitation. Dreams can be fragmented, can be a bit incoherent, can have people from childhood mixed in with people from your current life. There are all sorts of symbolism, as well, in dreams, that is not at all apparent in visions or visitations. Visions and visitations are quite real, more real than real. The person appears healthy and vital, and with a sense of intention that is not the least bit fragmented. It’s more coherent and cohesive than most of our common interactions that we have in our human realm right now.
JL
These visitations, too, are quite comforting to the person who’s dying. So, someone is having agitation and a lot of fear towards end of life, even if they’re sleeping a lot, that can be going on. These visitations can help if they will turn their mind toward death and let go. Which is amazing, right? And, yet, even though these are well-recorded, we haven’t been validating them in the health care arena. And within families we’ve not really been talking about them, because it seems like it’s exceptional as opposed to very common.
WP
Johanna, you said it beautifully. Because as a psychotherapist trying to support people through death and dying, you just labeled exactly the therapeutic imperative around this. They provide comfort to the dying, because we do see after a pre-death vision of visitation that the dying calm down. The anxiety they may have, or any dis-ease, settles out and we can note this. Now some of the more advanced inpatient hospice centers are identifying this, charting for this, and noticing this. So, this is now being recognized. And like I say, not in most hospices, but in some of the more progressive ones they see the value in charting and asking about any dreams or visions recently. So, yes, you’re right on it. And comfort for the caregivers and loved ones, if we allow that for them. And if we work with them. Those of us who are knowledgeable and skilled in this can say, “Hey, looks like your father is in conversation with his brother. What I heard him say was that the brother was telling him to get his affairs in order. That they were waiting for him, and everything was going to be fine.” I would say we see this in literature, this is what we see. And this is a real gift, not just to your father, but to you as well, to know that your father is going to be received and welcomed home or into the next dimension by loving family members who have pre-deceased him. That’s just one experience, Johanna. This is like many that we study. I think the most powerful, if you will, and most compelling is the shared death experience. That is the primary research that I conduct with my team of researchers at the Shared Crossing Research Initiative. We cover all these end-of-life experiences, but the shared death experience is the one that I’ve really focused us on, because it had not appeared in the literature. This past December 2021, we published the first peer reviewed, academic, medical science article in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. So, it’s quite an accomplishment for us, one that I’m very proud of, because it takes a lot to get the recognition of Medical Sciences. They historically have looked at these as hallucinations and delusions. And in this case, they received it with a sense of appreciation. In fact, they were saying that we know these experiences happen, we just have never seen robust literature to support them.
JL
I just want to have a chance here to plug your book, too, because while the journal article is such an important milestone to be recognized within the medical community, you also came out with a book. It’s called At Heaven’s Door, What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach About Dying Well and Living Better. That’s something that all of us can read. It’s chock full of stories. And I tell you, it’s a page turner that I whipped through, because I just loved it. And I’ll probably go back and refer to it many times. So, people who are interested as we talk, go check out the book too, because I feel like the time is right to be learning about this. And maybe there’s a relationship with the medical community recognizing the need to look at these experiences. The science of consciousness has taken leaps and bounds. So, there’s a richer depth to the academic study of some of these things. This is an exciting time that bodes well for the human experience, the of end of life.
WP
I agree. The receptivity to At Heaven’s Door has been really positive. And perhaps most interesting, is that there have not been any notable leaders in of end-of-life care that have said anything other than, yes, we know these happen. We were anticipating a bit of pushback, like the responses that I’ve mentioned already, “These are hallucinations. How can you be validating these experiences? There’s medication involved with all these.” And the fact of the matter is there has been no perceptible pushback, which is great. And this, as so many end-of-life workers have told me, is something that they now bring, not just to share with their patients and the families they’re working with, but also to provide to their colleagues and to the medical directors. To say, now that there’s a public book on this, we’re going to get more people asking to have this experience, to have it be honored and welcomed. And people want more information about it. They also talked about developing protocols as healthcare providers for this. So, this is a real big step forward.
JL
So, what is the shared death experience?
WP
So, the shared death experience occurs when somebody is dying, and a loved one, a caregiver, and sometimes their health care provider, or sometimes just a bystander, will report that they shared in the transition of the dying from their human existence into the afterlife. And so, they witness this transition. And the key motif that is observed is journey. It’s a movement from the human life into the next dimension, which is typically referred to as the afterlife. And the afterlife is benevolent. In other words, in almost every one of our now over 225 deeply analyzed cases it’s all positive phenomena that they see. It’s remarkably similar to the near-death experience phenomenon. So, we’re talking about seeing deceased loved ones, and they’re serving as a welcoming party, greeting the dying moving into this afterlife space. Elevated spirit beings who typically serve as guides or helpers. I’ve identified a role that I call the “conductor.” There seems to be an elevated spirit being that is either visible, or sometimes not so visible, almost wispy, maybe even invisible, but their presence is felt as a force. This force seems to be guiding, managing the transition, with great intent and urgency, and there seems to be a great deal of effort. Almost, I daresay, precision. It’s managing the transition of a consciousness from the human body into the afterlife. Those are some of the dominant features we see. Also light, often a luminous light, cascading light, there’s a sense of ascension, moving upward. There are tunnels, there are boundaries. And the experiencer realizes that the dying goes on, and it heads upwards into the light. But they realize that they can’t go any further, they get a sign or even a direct communication, acknowledging that this is as far as they can go. There are also past life reviews that are very meaningful, very healing for the shared death experience, because they get to see aspects of the dying life that often provide information about key aspects of the personality. Or transmitted cases, the traumas that the dying experience and help bring the dying closure. Also, closeness.
JL
The loved one who is sharing in this death experience, why are there any characteristics about the relationship between the loved one and the dying person that enables them to have this experience or that is necessary for the person who’s living to have that experience? As in, “Why me?”
WP
This is a great question. And this is the holy grail of the research into the shared death experience, why some people have them, and why others do not. We don’t even know the prevalence of this in our culture. The phenomena have just really been released since my book came out. There was a previous book by Dr. Raymond Moody in 2010. He did a great introduction, but it didn’t have research, and it didn’t get into the mainstream the way Heaven’s Door seems to be doing right now. So, just to be candid, we don’t really know why some people have them, and others don’t. We do see a strong correlation to strength of bond, strength of relationship, depth of relationship, and connection. That seems to be a substrate. But there are those who have a deep connection as caregiver-loved ones and don’t have the experience. So, for those of your listeners who may be saying, “Wow I was really close to my partner when he, she, they died, but I didn’t have it.” To be clear, the vast majority of people do not have it. And yet, as you’re listening to this, and I’m talking to your viewers, some may realize that, “Oh my gosh, I had this experience. But I didn’t really notice it when I had, it because I didn’t know that it was possible.” And now that we’re bringing this out into the world, the most common email that we get at the Shared Crossing Project is, “I just listened to this,” or “I just heard about your book. And I had this. I had no idea that it was a thing, a shared death experience.” Or an SDE. Let’s go a little bit further into why some people have it. We do see that there’s a correlation between mindfulness practices and those who have the experience. And by that, I mean people that either have a meditation practice, a prayer practice, even a martial art or yoga practice, even those who tell us that every day I walk in nature, and every day I do something that seems to be a more reflective, contemplative activity. And I draw this correlation. I think it has to do with one’s ability to observe their experience, and that’s what meditation and mindfulness is about. It’s about your ability to strengthen that observing aspect of yourself, that can look at your experience with some distance and not get drawn in and distracted and pushed and pulled a great deal by life’s more entertaining facets. And the reason I say this is because it’s likely that these experiences are happening. But you need the mindfulness to realize, wait a minute, this is an experience that’s happening, because I know, my baseline experience, I know the variability within it. This is different. This is worthy of my attention. So, that’s where the mindfulness comes in. It could be any people that have reflective peripheral practices and, say, a yoga practice. To take a yoga practice as an example, you’re listening to your body, you’re observing your body. This is great practice to essentially develop your observing self, the witness, the observer. There are different terms for it in different traditions, both psychological and spiritual. And so that capacity, we see in about 67% of our cases. That’s important. For that 67%, which is roughly two thirds, we’re doing another round of research to ascertain whether that capacity existed at the time of their experience, and/or whether it was developed as a result of their experience. So, that’s what we know about who has this. Also, it really helps when the experiencer is open and receptive to death and dying. In other words, if you are clinging to life, the life of your loved one, it’s likely that you’ve got high anxiety, that your receptive capacity is going to be impaired because you’re under stress. You’re going to be more reactive. You won’t have the spaciousness to recognize what’s going on. There are people that I’ve worked with directly and that we’ve trained. We have a whole program set up to train people to have the shared-death experience. It’s called the Pathway Program, and we do it in person, and now we do it online. When I focus on this for the dying, I’m clear. If I can work with the dying and their primary caregivers or loved ones, we do a good deal of psycho-emotional, spiritual work. We do life reviews, we work on regrets, we clear up any unfinished business, we work into forgiveness, and we get to a place that doesn’t always happen in the intensive weekend that we do. Typically, those seeds are laid, and people start seeing the value of this work fast. A lot of people who do the Pathway see the value of the work even generally in all their relationships, this dealing with unfinished business. So, we work through that and get to a place where the dying and the loved ones can look at each other and say, “Thank you for the life we’ve had.” Where they’ve expressed a sense of gratitude and appreciation, a real open heartedness that facilitates a clear channel between the dying and the loved one. I should also say, most of the people that take the Pathway Program do not have anyone dying imminently. They take it because they want to be prepared well in advance. And I think that’s the best way to do it. Here in Santa Barbara, it’s very popular, because that’s where I’m from. And it’s because people see the benefits of doing it, as well. The advance training really gives everyone a great deal of peace. We talk about how you can choreograph your death and dying, given the capacity that you’ll have. No one really knows, at least most people don’t know, how they’re going to die. We do teach people how to practice their response to what can come up, what may come up, what may be their circumstances.
JL
Let’s also talk about addressing things like fear. So, you’ve already mentioned the regret in the life review, things which are so important at end of life. And, yes, the idea that you’re doing this before your imminent death. Part of what we tell people is that you want your advance directives in place. You want to get your finances and things, and wills, and all of that in order. This is another one of those things to really look at ahead of time, so that you already begin to recognize the advantage of reflecting on your life and moving into it in that way. That’s a beautiful piece that, quite frankly, isn’t talked about very much when we talk about preparation. Of course, ultimately, it’s a great kindness, not just to yourself, but to your loved ones, if you have your house in order. And you’re open to these conversations that are very healing, especially at end of life, when you have an opportunity. Because the potency of making amends and saying, I love you forgive me, all of that becomes super heightened. So, it’s the idea that you can extend that ahead of the 12th hour.
WP
Yes, it sounds kind of bizarre that in our modern age, we prepare for so much. We make financial plans, we make wills, and estates. And that’s beautiful in the sense that it’s responsible, and helps your loved ones know that you have everything financially set up, hopefully, as well as you can, to live out the last golden years of your life. Knowing that you have the means, hopefully, to not be a burden to others. Because a lot of people don’t want to be a burden to their family members. But they don’t do the psycho-emotional parts. The Pathway work is about addressing these pieces. As you’ve identified, whatever fear one has about death, whatever regrets you have in your own life, in your relationships, all of that is addressed. And we see that that provides for a smooth and more graceful end-of-life experience.
JL
That’s great. And it answers my big question, which is, what does it mean to engage in death in a conscious way? That is, in the broader advanced way, and then this deeper work? While someone’s dying? How to be grounded and available? This is amazing. I think that it could be scary for some people to say, “You mean I’m going to travel with my husband to the afterlife? What if I never come back?”
WP
That’s exactly what we hear, both this excitement, “You mean, I can go with my husband into the afterlife and likely see our departed loved ones there to greet him?” And the response to that is, “Yes.” In 51% of our cases, the shared death experiencer reports seeing the dying. And in about 20% or more, they report seeing deceased relatives. And in other cases, about 13%, they’ll see elevated spirit beings. So, there’s all this excitement about that possibility. And there is still the fear of the unknown. The uncertainty of, “What does that mean for me?” Like you said, “Will I come back, or will I get stuck there?” All of that. And yet, what we know is that the shared death experience happens with pretty good frequency. We don’t know of anyone who hasn’t come back. We don’t know of any cases where someone dies and a caregiver, a loved one, just dies for no identifiable reason. So, we know it’s not happening. Basically, it’s the sharing of experiences. I say experience, and it’s a beautiful one. It’s one that I think is very important in that the therapeutic value is incredible. We know that the experiencers report that in 90% of the cases, that they know, and that’s their terminology, that their departing loved one is alive and well. And that’s it’s a benevolent afterlife. And they also report that they feel they’re going to be reunited with this departed loved one again. They have no doubt about it. They also have a reduction in, or an alleviation of, their anxiety and fear around death. Their grief processes are enhanced in the sense that they’re always going to be heartbroken over the loss of a loved one and will feel that sadness. Sorrow is historically a classical psychoanalysis. We used to call this melancholia, this deep heaviness of heart, and a kind of depression. But it’s natural, it’s something we go through. For the experiencers, this melancholy, sorrow, and sadness is held in a larger context, that this is a natural part of life. You will get through this, and you will see your loved one again, and you will have new relationships. So, these are the benefits of the shared death experiences that allow you to go more deeply into your relationship, not just with the dying, but with death itself, and with your own understanding of what death and dying mean. These are experiences that enrich life, generally. That’s probably the number one reason why I’m an advocate for this. It’s the people I’ve worked with, myself included, and others who have these experiences are so grateful for the opportunity to have seen life and death from this profound and true vantage point. They say true because it’s a more ultimate reality, it’s a deeper reality than our human existence. I know this is something, Johanna, that we’ve talked about previously. I think we should talk about the notion of continuing.
JL
That’s exactly where I wanted to go as well, because I think that this idea of continuing bonds changes the way we think about grief. And I’m curious to hear you talk about that.
WP
This is a therapeutic modality. The idea of continuing bonds began in the early 90s. And it has been a slow movement, but consistent and growing in acceptance. It is now widely recognized as a very helpful, beneficial therapeutic model. It got headwinds, initially, because the predominant…
JL
…let’s tell people what it is.
WP
Okay. Continuing bonds is a therapeutic model. When someone dies our goal, essentially, is to help the client continue their relationship with the dying in a way that makes sense for them. In other words, this is a recrafting of the relationship with the dying that is infused with any type of communication they think they may be receiving from the dying. Whether they had a shared death experience or a post-death visitation, or a series of synchronicities that happen. We hear these all the time. And I have to tell you, as a researcher, when I started seeing these synchronicities, I thought, “I am not going into synchronicities.” Like, you’re going to start telling me that lights flashing and numbers appearing on your clock radio or oven or car dashboard that are significant to you, are anything other than wishful thinking. I mean, I was quite reticent, as a researcher, to go into this. And yet, we see these very profound synchronicities, that for instance numbers, birthdates, anniversaries, key dates are reflected and projected on electrical displays all the time for people at a very high rate.
JL
So, just to be clear, these things have meaning to the person who is seeing them, because they feel like it awakens that sense of presence of the loved one. Sort of like, “Oh, George, we always played those lotto numbers.” It is like you’re saying birth dates and anniversaries. These are symbolic, but not just that, there’s a felt experience that comes with it. Is that right?
WP
Yeah. I think along with this is a felt sense of their presence. The terms we hear are, “I saw the numbers,” or, “I heard the music come on and it was our favorite song, and I hadn’t heard the song in 30 years. Or we’re preparing for a major family event. We’re all together. Then all of a sudden, our deceased father’s favorite song comes on. And then people feel this sense of that energy or truth bombs or whatever you want to call it that moves through your body, that energizes you and reminds you this is something. That this is not just coincidence. There are more profound ones. I want to be clear. The ones that I work with directly, sound something like this: A client who I may not have met before, in this case, I’ll share one from just recently, William, says, “I need to see you. I was told that I should talk to you about this experience I had.” Or, this woman comes into my office and says, “Well, you know, my husband died about three weeks ago, and I was getting ready for bed. And I had brushed my teeth and was approaching my bed. I saw him, he was standing right at the foot of my bed, clear as day, very comfortable. He was younger than when he died. He was radiant. And he communicated to me that he is alive and well. And that he thanks me, for my care of him during his final days. He died of a rather painful cancer.” I say to her, “It’s a beautiful experience, that’s known as post-death visitation.” And she says, “Yes, but did I make that up?” That is the question. That is the question that people ask as the resistance point. And the fact of the matter is, we know in the research, that about 50% of people, 45% at a minimum (that’s from a variety of studies), will have, what we call in the literature, after-death communication. This after-death communication takes various forms. But this one is a visitation or vision. And we see that the people we’re working with when they have a shared-death experience, about 75% of them will have another shared-crossing experience: that is, synchronicity, a post-death visitation, direct post-death communication. All of these are meaningful, shared crossings. That means communication across the veil that they interpret as a meaningful communication. And they want to respond. So, they often ask, “Well, how do I respond?” Now we’re in a relationship, and this is the continuing bond. Now we’re talking about how we work with our clients to craft this new relationship. It may be you say, “Thank you.” It may be that you ask for more, and it may be that you say, “I’d rather not have you visit, it freaks me out.” You get all the choices. There’s nothing about continuing-bonds therapy that prescribes a particular relationship. What we do is help them discern the experience, support the shared crossings, and help them find the best way that they wish to respond and engage. And in most cases, they do wish to engage more, and then this relationship takes on a rather beautiful and spiritual tone to it, such as, at family reunions they welcome in the departed. This may sound bizarre to us in our modern age, but in every indigenous culture that I have ever been, they welcome the ancestors and the elders. They welcome them, they even serve a plate of food to them. This may be a stretch for us moderns. But it’s not when we look at the history of humanity.
JL
So, let me just throw something else out there. What about that idea for the skeptic, for the people that are having a hard time with the idea of a ghost visiting them on holidays? What is the experience? What if it doesn’t matter? If it’s scientifically so, what matters is that they’ve had an encouraging experience of their loved one. Why not just leave it at that?
WP
I am all for that. But those are not the people that would come and see me. What I’m presenting is for those listeners who are wondering, doubting, skeptical, resistant. I want to assert that the literature is very clear that these experiences happen, and they happen in healthy minds, and that there is an opportunity for you to explore, if you so choose. We also see a correlate between people requesting or asking for more communication with the departed loved ones, and a higher response rate. Now, let’s be clear about this. This doesn’t happen for everybody, right? We don’t know why. I was just at a conference helping parents heal. It’s a beautiful organization that helps parents who have lost children. And they say their children have transitioned. That they haven’t lost them at all. For this organization they work with continuing bonds. That is, how do you as a parent whose child has transitioned, work with that? How do you maintain a relationship with them? The amount of communication that these parents have is spellbinding. It is like the relationship continues, that the person is still a part of their life. And it’s beautiful, and it works for them. And the communication is, in some cases, almost on demand. You know, it’s almost like they can hear the child’s voice in their head. I think there are always going to be cases of imagination and fantasy getting involved with some of this. That is more on the edges, on the fringe of this. I think, by and large, most of this, what I experienced at this conference, and from others who report this, these are healthy, sound people, rational-minded, and they’re looking for an authentic relationship. They’re not looking to make anything up that’s not real. I share the parents’ healing community, because it’s such a supportive community. They support ongoing communication and continuing bonds.
JL
It does sound so helpful. I think all losses of a loved one can be difficult. But I also know from my own experience, that without ever knowing about continuing bonds, it’s never been the end. In the case of my mother there’s never been an end. There’s been, all these decades later, a relationship. Although it’s not a relationship of a 19-year-old and a parent. It’s evolved in its own way. And I think that’s very human. In a way, perhaps we were creating expectations for ourselves that we’ve got to get over. You’ve got to move on. That was not a very healthy or human perspective, like, I’ve got to get on top of it. That stiff upper lip, grin and bear it approach seems cruel.
WP
I agree. You’re referring to the classical therapeutic model of letting go and moving on. I agree. I think that model does a great deal of harm to people who want to have a continued relationship. And it doesn’t mean that you need to have these more extraordinary experiences. It means that you want to continue a relationship with them. And you get to craft that based on where you think they are, where you’re feeling they are, where you’re sensing they are, and how they would counsel and guide you or support you as you move through the various stages of your life. I think this notion of letting go and moving on is not the ideal model.
JL
But I’d like to be clear, too, that you’re talking about a very healthy model, not an obsessive model. It’s not a crutch. Because I think some people could really hear it that way.
WP
There is no doubt that when you lose a loved one, especially in a sudden traumatic loss, that you’re going to want more communication. You’re going to want contact. And when I work with people like that, I honor that desire. I work very, I hope, gently and skillfully with that desire. But to go into the real grief, this is where the real grief work is existentially stepping into that painful reality; that you want so desperately to have contact, touch, to feel, to know where your loved one is, are they okay? What happened? You want more contact, and in many cases, you don’t get that. The good therapeutic work is to honor all those desires, all the despair, the sorrow, the anger, the rage, the negotiating, the woulda, coulda, shoulda loves, the if onlys. All that is part of a healthy grief process. But at the end, you want to at least increase the times when the bereaved can be an ally. It can be hard at times. But there are also times when you just realize that it’s a hard, hard loss, not what I want. But I don’t need to be reacting out of that and asking and requesting, pleading, for things that may not be possible. So, that’s the balance. Grief can be very difficult and prolonged and protracted, especially when the loss is sudden, and unexpected. And even when losses aren’t sudden and unexpected, there can still be that desire for intense fixation with communication that addresses that question: where are you? How are you? Will I see you again? So, like I said, I think increasingly there’s something about our culture that’s evolving, that’s allowing for more communication of different kinds which are meaningful.
JL
I think that your work is so exciting in a way, too, because you are having glimpses of a world we don’t think we have access to, and then sharing it. Especially your work around the conductor, which is fascinating. And it dovetails with a lot of indigenous lore, or even The Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Egyptian Book of the Dead; some of these older, huge bodies of work around death and dying. It’s as if we’re creating a new contemporary version, with the marriage of science and experience, which is fascinating and exciting.
WP
What you’re referring to a bit there, Johanna, is the psycho pomps. That’s this being that is in charge of, essentially, carrying or guiding or facilitating the movement of a soul spirit consciousness from a human body into the next dimensions, the afterlife. And it’s in its various stages. The Tibetan Book of the Dead refers to the bardo states. And they exist also in Greek mythology. That is, the different dimensions in the underworld. You’re so correct in mentioning that. We, as moderns, if we want to call ourselves that, are rediscovering what has already existed in different times in our human history. It’s a beautiful reclaiming, and like you said, we’re going to do it, at least the way I’m doing it. And some of my contemporaries are doing it in the way that we do it. We’re working with the phenomena, and we’re applying science. And yet, you know, it’s a mystery. I mean, we really have to say, for as much as we can know, empirically, the truest aspect of these profound end-of-life experiences is that they’re just awe-inspiring. They bring us to our knees about, wow, what’s really going on here. We get to see some of the phenomena or experience the phenomena. Yet, those phenomena provide energetic ripples through the depths of our being into the recesses of our consciousness in the hidden aspects of ourselves. And they reverberate a message that sounds something like there is a lot going on here, much more than you could ever comprehend. And it’s profoundly moving and spiritual and sacred and divine. It brings up the deepest feelings within us of love. And yeah, just awe.
JL
And isn’t that exactly what the times we live in now need to reclaim?
WP
Yes.
JL
I just love what you’re doing, William. I really do. I think it is such important work that is really needed for our time.
WP
Well, thank you. I feel that I’m blessed to be able to do it. I will also say it’s an enormous challenge at times, because of the resistance, especially in our health care system. That’s not to say there aren’t beautiful, wonderful health care workers throughout. There are. But the mainstream creates quite a headwind. It would be a different world for all of us if we could honor death as a natural part of life. That is something that we bring our families and our communities together to say, “Oh, I just heard that.” Such as, “Your wife has advanced cancer, and I’m so sorry, how can we help? What can we do?” If we, as a community, could have a sense of knowing how to be there. Not that that announcement or realization of a terminal diagnosis and impending death creates a type of diaspora. I can’t tell you how many people say, “I just found out so and so has cancer, what do I say? What do I do?” Well, why don’t you go express to that person what are your feelings for them? And I think they’ll be perfectly fine, so long as you don’t ask them to take care of you.”
JL
Yes, that’s an important part.
WP
Yes, that’s the important part. Say, “I’m so sorry to hear this. I would like to support you in whatever way you need or want. And it can be today, it can be tomorrow, it can be the middle of the night, but I want you to know that you are on my mind. You, your wife, your family, you have now moved up in my sense of value, meaning, and importance. I want you to know that your difficult challenge is an invitation to me to say to you, ‘I care'”. And then you leave it at that. Everyone will need to do their own song and dance around it, because death brings out some of the most bizarre behavior. But we can do that. I’m not saying you can do that with everybody. I’m saying suppose you have a really good friend, you’re a part of their life. You can say that to them. But I think you know this, Johanna. There are people that when we go into this stage of end of life, a lot of people drop off as our friends. They just can’t deal with it, for whatever reason. Then all of a sudden, there are these new people that come in that might have been acquaintances and might have not even been known to you. But they come in. And there are people who are specialized in this in a certain way. I come into most people’s lives in my community, if they choose to get some of my counseling, support, or guidance. I might have never known them before. But by and large, my goal is not to be that specialist. My goal is to empower others, to give them the tools, so that we can have a functioning community. So that all of us can participate in this great mystery, albeit painful, but it is the greatest mystery we know as human beings. Where do we go after this life?
JL
I believe that we can build a community like that in one town and village and city after another. I think that it’s always baby steps. But I think the world is hungry for it. And so, I think we should probably wrap up here. I’m so grateful for the work you’re doing. Thank you. And thank you for taking the time to talk to me.
WP
Oh, my pleasure to be here with you and in your community. Thank you, Johanna.
JL
You’re very welcome.
