Although this book was originally published back in 1980, the current edition of Fr. Seraphim Rose’s ‘The Soul After Death‘ seems highly relevant today.

I picked up this book because it presents the response of the Orthodox Church to the phenomena of “out of body experiences”, “near-death experiences”, angels, demons and similar psychic experiences.

For a person who is interacting with the ever-increasing curiosity of Western culture towards such matters, this has proved to be an engaging and enlightening read.

“Sir! Sir! Are ghosts real?”

This was the question which, when repeated in the classroom by children ranging from age 11 to 16 on a weekly basis, got me thinking about how to respond without compromising my own integrity. From here, however, there also pours out a whole plethora of related questions, such as to whether psychic and near-death experiences are real.

In the West, the Christian church has (in my admittedly limited experience) reacted in one of two basic ways: either to ignore and ridicule such phenomena, or to brand them as simply “Satanic deceptions” and warn one off.

To find a book, albeit from the Christian East (in terms of theology), which was taking these questions seriously meant that I was drawn to read it.

What I have found is quite interesting.

Fr. Seraphim Rose

The author was, quite simply, quite the “hard-liner” when it comes to Orthodox theology. An American Orthodox monk, he was committed to, “reawakening modern Western man to forgotten spiritual truths” (back jacket). His strong rejection of his own Protestant upbringing is very evident in sections of his work, and he seems quite dismissive of non-Orthodox theology.

This aside, however, Fr. Seraphim Rose writes in an engaging and interesting style which engages with experiential evidence from authors such as Drs. Kubler-Ross, Moody, Osis and Haroldsson. The book also tackles the writings of Swedenborg, for which I was really intrigued to hear the Orthodox view.

Overall, the book does what it promises: this is a text laying out the rather simple theology of the soul’s journey after death.

Points Of Interest

Here are some of the key points which seem to resonate with things spiritual in the early part of the 21st century in Britain.

People are reporting, perhaps due to medical advances that allow us to resuscitate the dying, experiences of an “otherly” nature. On the whole, modern spirituality tries to present these experiences as (on the whole) positive and confirmation of some kind of after-death existence.

Contemporary materialists try to explain away such experiences as illusions of the mind caused by the near-death of the brain… but most folk in our culture, if not totally convinced, seem to err on the side of open inquiry in response to such stories.

The author explores these experiences in detail and points out that experiences such as these are, for one thing, nothing new. Seeking to characterise these experiences, he goes further and compares them to visions and experiences recorded throughout Christian literature relating to the Saints. In conclusion he finds a difference between the temporary experiences of “out of body” or “near-death” and the more complete death of the human being.

What Fr. Seraphim manages to tease out are clues that seem to validate the Orthodox Christian understanding of the state of the soul after death. In summary, he presents the traditional idea that the soul leaves the body behind, travels through the “aerial realm” (analogous to the “astral plane” of Eastern philosophy), encounters the “aerial spirits” who tempt the soul and subject it to a “particular judgement”, and then finds its resting place in preparation for the “final judgement” and general resurrection.

For those readers who are suddenly feeling lost, the process is something like this:

1. You die and your soul exits the body.
2. Spiritual reality is fully opened to the soul, which experiences the world as if in a body but without the interaction with physical things.
3. Your soul spends 3 days travelling either near the body or to places on Earth that it is attached to.
4. Around 4 days after death, the soul travels through the “aerial realm” and is visited by demons who tempt it.
5. The faithless soul is dragged to a hell-like realm, while the saint is lifted by angels to more heavenly realms.
6. The soul experiences a life beyond earthly life until the general resurrection, in which it is once more reclothed in a body and faces God in judgment.

The rest, as they say, is familiar Christian doctrine.

Your Takeaway

To me, whether or not you wish to accept the Orthodox teaching on these matters, the main point from reading this book is a simple one: many people believe in some kind of existence beyond the death of the body.

This issue is one which perplexes many.

On the one hand, many people in the West deny the reality of God, yet on the other hand confess to spiritual beliefs relating to ghosts, angels, life after death and the old chestnut of “everything having a purpose”.

How is one to reconcile the reality of “soul” with a non-belief in an all-encompassing spiritual being (i.e. God)?

Simple. Outside of the atheist/materialist minority who deny “soul” at all, our culture takes the route of viewing “soul” as an emergent quality of human experience.

Perhaps through evolutionary processes the soul has come into being but has nothing to fear from a creator. Instead, as Fr. Seraphim Rose reports, modern spiritual ideas often teach that after-death is a positive and wonderful experience which leaves us with nothing to fear about death. There is, after all, no Judge and thus nothing to fear… especially if we get to hang out with family, friends and angels in the afterlife.

The challenge from Christianity, at least in the Orthodox tradition, is that this view of life after death is a dangerous deception.

What, then, are we to do? It appears that rather than ignore the question or treat it as irrelevant, it might do us some good to reflect upon what it is we really believe about our “soul” and expect from death.

At the very least, even if you end up rejecting Orthodoxy, you might discover something about your own sense of purpose. Do you have a soul? If so, what are you expecting to do with it after you die?