‘Max, you are home now, with our loved ones’

Last Friday, I was about to leave for Cagayan de Oro to attend the UNESCO Focus Group Discussion (FGD) on Lifelong Learning for Min-danao. On my way to the airport I got a call from one of Max’s best friends, Arthur Lopez. He was not his usual self. He seemed to be tongue-tied for a while but I prodded him to tell me if his message concerns Max. He simply said, "I am sorry to tell you that Max just passed away in Tokyo." I felt numb and in a split second I realized that what we were expecting of his weakening health has taken place. Arthur asked me, "What will you do?" I quickly came back to reality and started to rearrange my plans for the day.

I went straight to the UNESCO office at the DFA building, Roxas Boulevard to give instructions to my assistants to go ahead with the FGD in Cagayan De Oro. There were two Japanese visitors in the office at that time from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPSCO). Our dear friend, Archie Co, who brought Max to the Narita Red Cross Hospital, called me up and made me speak to Dr. Teratani, the doctor who attended to Max. I could not understand the Japanese doctor so Mr. Shimizu of TEPSCO acted as my interpreter.

The doctor said that he had already been resuscitating Max for an hour and there was no sign of life. He needed my official permission to stop reviving Max for it will only needlessly damage his brains. I told him to let go. I knew this was the only recourse to take.

Meantime, Tess Santos, Max’s secretary, made the necessary arrangements to fly with me to Tokyo that afternoon. We got our tickets and visas and in two hours time flew off to Japan. Thanks to DFA Secretary Bert Romulo and Japanese Ambassador Ryuichiro Yamazaki who expedited our needs.

Goodnight, My Sweet Prince!

We arrived in Japan at six in the evening. As soon as we stepped out of the plane, four solemn looking Filipino diplomats led by Charge d’Affaires Ms. Gina Jamoralin, Consul Eric Tamayo, Consul Felipe Cariño III, Labor Attache Benito Bengzon Jr. and interpreter Mai Okada of the Philippine Embassy met me.

We went straight to the Narita Red Cross Hospital in a special room with an elegant Shinto altar fully lighted beside him. Max’s body was wrapped in a yukata robe. His clothes and shoes were properly bundled up under his death bed with his personal belongings including our wedding ring. I was moved to tears looking at his handsome lifeless face. I stroked his head and kissed his cold, cold face.

I thought to myself why wasn’t I there when he needed me most. Why wasn’t I there to hold him and hug him as he gave his last breath. I said, "Dear, I am here now, I will take you home, I love you, I love you." I said a short prayer in my mind, "I am sure you are in the best of hands now. You are home! You are home! The Good Shepherd has taken you home to rest in peace. I am happy that you are now with your papa Benito and mama Pelang, your brother Manny and sister Augie, ‘Brod’ Ninoy and the rest of the gang. I can see them rejoicing as they welcome you."

The traditional way of looking at death

When you have lost by death one whom you loved dearly – one who is all the world to you – the world suddenly seemed empty and life no longer worth living. You feel that joy has left you forever… that existence can be for you nothing but hopeless sadness… nothing but one aching and longing for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still". You are thinking chiefly of yourself and your intolerable loss, but there is also another sorrow.

Your grief is aggravated by your uncertainty as to the present condition of your beloved. You feel that he has gone – you know not where. You hope earnestly that all is well with him, but when you look upward all is void. When you cry, there is no answer. Thus, despair and doubt overwhelm you, and make a cloud that hides from you the sun, which never sets.

Your feeling is most natural and that is understandable.

Our sorrow is founded on the ignorance of Nature’s law

Theosophy is the study of spiritual facts. ("Theo" means God, "sophy" means wisdom.) They are profound truths of the unseen spiritual world revealed to "sensitives" who may be clairvoyant, visionaries or mystical. Among famous theosophists are Annie Besant, Geoffrey Hodson, and C.W. Leadbeater.

There are three major facts according to Theosophical Teachings:

1. Your loss is only an apparent fact – apparent from your point of view. Another viewpoint is that your suffering is the result of a great delusion – of ignorance of Nature’s law.

2. You do not need to be uneasy or uncertain with regard to the condition of your loved one, for the life after death is no longer a mystery. The world beyond the grave exists under the same natural laws as our world, and has been explored as well as examined with scientific accuracy. Dr. Raymond A. Moody Jr. has two bestsellers which are most consoling to those who are bereaved: Life After Life is a classic bestseller that offers astonishing proof of a life after physical death; while Reflections on Life After Life includes important discoveries in the ongoing investigation of survival of life after bodily death.

3. You must not mourn, for your mourning does harm to your loved one. If you can open your mind to the truth, you will mourn no more.

The physical and the spiritual body

Man possesses an immortal something called a SOUL, which is supposed to survive the death of the body. Man has a soul and a body. The body is not the man, it is only the clothing of the man.

What you call death is the laying aside of a worn-out garment, and it is no more the end of the man than it is the end of you when you remove your overcoat. Therefore, you have not lost your friend, you have only lost sight of the clothes, in which you were accustomed to see him. The clothes is gone, but the man who wore it is not. Surely, it is the man that you love, and not the garment.

Before you can understand your loved ones’ condition, you must first understand your own. Try to grasp the fact that you are an immortal being, immortal because you are divine in essence – because you are a spark from God’s own fire that you lived for ages before you put on this vestment, which you call a body. You will live for ages after it has crumbled into dust. "God made man to be an image of His own eternity." (Genesis 1:27)

Yet, you must not think of him as a mere bodiless breath. As St. Paul said long ago: "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." People misunderstand that remark, because they think of these bodies as successive and do not realize that we possess both of them even now. You have both a "natural" or physical body, which you can see, and another inner body, which you cannot see that St. Paul called the "spiritual".

Sleeping is a pleasant exercise of dying

Every night when you go to sleep, you slip off your "overcoat" for a while, and roam about the world in your spiritual body – invisible as far as this dense world is concerned, but clearly visible to those friends who have died and are in their spiritual bodies. Each body sees only that which is on its own level. Your physical body sees only other physical bodies, your spiritual body sees only other spiritual bodies.

When you resume your "overcoat" and wake up to this lower world – it occasionally happens that you have some recollection of what you have seen. You call this a vivid dream. As we sleep and dream, a silver cord is attached to our spirit body, which moves about in the dream world. Sleep, then, may be described as a kind of temporary death. The difference is that you do not withdraw entirely from your "overcoat" so that you are able to resume it.

When one dies the silver cord is severed as the spiritual body is released. Death is not the end of life, the dead have not left us. It is only a step from one stage of life to another. It is only the laying aside of his "overcoat", but man still finds himself clad in his undergarment. When you take off your overcoat in the hall, you do not suddenly vanish to some distant mountaintop, you are just standing just where you were before, though you may wear a different garment. In the same manner, when a man puts off his physical body or when he dies, he remains exactly where he was before but as a spirit. And so the spirit of a man who suddenly dies in a car accident hovers over his dead body, but no one sees him.

This phenomenon is vividly portrayed in the film "Ghost", which stars Patrick Swayzee and Demi Moore, a couple so in love that when the husband dies the longing for each other is expressed by the theme song, "Unchained Melody" - "O my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch… A long, lonely night. Time goes by so slowly and time can do so much. Are you still mine? I need your love (2 times). God speed your love to me.

It is true that Demi Moore can no longer see Patrick Swayzee. The reason for this is not that he has gone away, but because he is now wearing his spiritual body, which is no longer visible to his beloved who is still alive in her physical body.

Do dead men see us?

Do the dead see us? What the dead man can see of us is only our spiritual body, which he has no difficulty in recognizing. When we are asleep, to the dead man we are awake, but when we are awake, it seems to the dead man that we fall asleep. Although he still sees us, we are no longer paying attention to him or able to communicate with him. When a living friend falls asleep, we are aware of his presence, but for the moment we cannot communicate with him. Similar is the condition of the living man (while he is awake) in the eyes of the dead.

Because we cannot usually remember what we have seen during sleep, we are under the delusion that we have lost our dead. But, they are never under the delusion that they have lost us. They can see us all the time. To them the only difference is that we are with them during the night and away from them during the day, whereas when they were on earth with us, exactly the reverse was the case.

There is no hell

As an old scripture puts it, "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seem to die, and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace."

Therefore, we must put aside antiquated theories. The dead man does not leap suddenly into an impossible heaven nor does he fall into a still more impossible hell. There is indeed no hell in the old wicked sense except as man makes for himself. He does not suddenly become a great saint or angel nor is he suddenly endowed with all the wisdom of the ages. He is just the same man the day after his death as he was the day before it, with the same emotions, the same disposition, and the same intellectual development. The only difference is that he has lost his physical body.

If his enjoyments in this world were low and coarse, he will find himself unable in that world to gratify his desires. A drunkard will suffer from unquenchable thirst, having no longer a body through which it can be assuaged. The glutton will miss the pleasures of the table. The miser will no longer find gold for his gathering. The man who has yielded himself during his earthly life to unworthy passions will find them still gnawing at his vitals.

Meantime, the artistic and intellectuals are supremely happy in that new life. Yet even happier still are those whose keenest interest has been in their fellowmen – those whose greatest delight have been to help, to succor, or to teach. Although, there is no longer any poverty, no longer any hunger or thirst in that world, there are still those who are in sorrow who can be comforted, those who are in ignorance and who can be taught.

Dead men must be freed from earth’s long mourning

Are the dead disturbed by anxiety of those he has left behind? Sometimes that does happen, and anxiety delays their progress. So, we should avoid this. The dead man should be utterly free from all thoughts of the life which he has left so that he may devote himself entirely to the new existence that he has entered. It is advisable to especially take care of the children whom a dead man leaves behind, for in that way one not only benefits the children, but also relieves the departed parent from anxiety and helps him on his upward path.

All suffering comes from ignorance. Dispel the ignorance and the suffering is gone. That is why a child who dies is the happiest because he is not anxious about death.

A Christian view of death

"We picture death as coming to destroy; Let us rather see it as Jesus Christ coming to save. We think of death as an ending; rather, think of it as new life beginning. We think of death as losing; rather think of it as winning, as final victory. We think of death as parting; rather think of it as a meeting… of loved ones. We think of death as going away; rather think of it as surviving… home at last! Death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting out the lamp – because the DAY, the Eternal Day has dawned. So, Lord: Help us to see death for what it really is…"

(Reference: To Those Who Mourn by C. W. Leadbeater)

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