CHAPTER EIGHT:
FORMATION OF PONTIFICAL SELFHOOD
REVERSAL OF THE WORLD ORDER

The early Christian community believed that the crucifixion of Jesus had been a turning point in history. Early Christians understood Jesus' death as an active defeat of the demonic force of death that had governed the world, the stars, and the planets. By destroying the … of death, the order of the world had been overturned. This conviction was attested in the collapse of the dichotomy of Sheol and the Temple in the drama of the crucifixion. Consequently, after the crucifixion of Jesus, death was no longer feared as alien and demonic but was greeted joyously. Similarly, sudden death had been interpreted as a result of evil intentions; but since the shock of the crucifixion had become a revelation of divine love, sudden death was no longer dreaded either. Early Christians affirmed these convictions through baptism, in which they identified with the death of the Christ (Rom. 6: 10-11).

The reversal of the world order was confirmed by a new burial practice. In the pre-Christian world the dead were buried outside the city, usually alongside a road. Luke 7: 12 illustrates this custom, stating that "a man who had died was being carried out" for burial. In contrast, with the arrival of the Christian era the dead would be buried within the city, in connective and unmarked graves, and frequently in Church yards (Aries 1981, 24-36). Since the crucifixion had conquered the terror of death, the dead were no longer feared; and so burial within city walls made the dead familiar and no longer threatening. Exceptions were granted for those who became excommunicated, prisoners, and social

Page 190

outcasts. Nevertheless, the Christian community embraced the living and the dead as members of one family. This change of burial custom did not take place quickly but evolved gradually until finished about the year 500 C.E.. A breakthrough occurred in the fourth century, when Roman persecutions ceased and Christianity became legally established, thus making public funerals possible. Christian funerals celebrated death with Psalms of thanksgiving and joy (Pss. 23, 32, 115, 116).

The principal hea…of the new view of death were the martyrs. In particular, the martyrdom of Stephen reenacted the crucifixion of Jesus as murder of the righteous One (Acts 7:52).

After his arrest, Stephen delivered a speech retelling the history of the patriarchs in Genesis and proclaiming that the "God of glory appeared to our ancestor Abraham" as well as Moses and others (Acts 7). Stephen therefore identified the prophets as both ancestors and hea… of the Christian revelation. By incorporating the prophets within the historical community, they became familiar figures in the dynamic tradition.

Meanwhile, the Johannine and Pauline theologies informed the martyrdom of Ignatius of Antioch (Meinhold 1980, 154). Ignatius was Pauline in making his own suffering and death an imitation of Christ, and he was Johannine in renouncing the world. Martyrdom is the occasion to separate from finite existence and to participate in the exalted Christ. The martyr acquires a true being by participating in the exalted Christ in joy. Ignatius' martyrdom changed the meaning of the eucharist from a reconnection of the body and blood of Jesus to the "medicine of immortality" (pharmakon athanasias). In light of the Greek phrase immortality is understood as "deathlessness" rather than as survival of the soul (to the Ephesians 20:2).

Ignatius describes death in terms of shock suffering:
Indulge me in what is most expedient for me. I know now I am beginning to be a disciple. Let no One visible or invisible be jealous that I might obtain Jesus Christ. Fire and crucifixion, struggles with wild beasts, mutilation, torture, scattering of bones, mangling of limbs, grinding of the entire body, evil torture of the Devil, let them come upon me, provided that I attain Jesus Christ. (to the Romans 5:3, my trans.)

This statement, so rich in paroxysmal imagery, portrays dying as an ecstatic seizure, in which Ignatius surrenders himself in order to conquer

Page 191

evil. Restitution is achieved in his suffering, and death is disclosed as a passage to a new, transfigured being. The combination of joy and willingness to die exemplifies the biblical ideal of radiance as normative.

II. CRlTIQUE OF DREAM AND VISION

Bearing a new vision of death, early Christians developed their tradition by means of dreams and visions, as in the times of the patriarchs and the prophets. For example, Peter was travelling, and he became hungry. Suddenly, he fell into a trance and beheld the heavens opening: .. .and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four­footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, "Get up Peter; kill and eat." But Peter said, "By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean." The voice said to him again, a second time, "What God has made clean, you must not call profane" (Acts 10: 10­15).

The text indicates that the vision appeared three times, which would support the argument, in chapter five that a three fold manifestation of a dream is a resolution of conflict. Three men arrive, and the Holy Spirit commands Peter to go with them, preaching to all regardless of religious affiliation. The vision reconciles Jewish-Christian conflicts over food laws and divisions over sacred and profane customs.

Similarly, Paul receives a vision of the night: "There stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying. 'Come over to Macedonia and help us'" (Acts 16:9). Paul responded to the call, crossed over to Macedonia, and consequently took Christianity to Europe. Sometime later, when threatened with opposition in Corinth, Paul had another vision in which God said: "'Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent, for I am with you '" (Acts 18:9-10a)

Ironically, by the second century early Christians became suspicious of dreams, and they rejected them as sources of religious knowledge. Suspicion of the dream would become a permanent trend, lasting well into the Middle Ages (Le Goff 1984, 177). At the same time, early Christians began to consider visions more critically, rather than taking

Page 192

them automatically. They raised questions, so as to ascertain the validity of visions. Are they authentic? Are they true? Do they come from God? Ernst Benz explains that the critique of dreams and visions had two motivations (1968, 23). One was that dreams belonged to the mystery religions, divination, oracles, and particularly, the Asclepiads cult of faith healing. The other was that the struggling Christian community, in order to distinguish itself from those Greco-Roman movements, had to reject the dream and become more critical of the vision. Hence, the Christian critique of dream and vision was the beginning of Western psychology.

Exploring these two reasons further would reveal more clearly the profound implications of the Christian critique for the psychology of death. First, Christianity rejected dreams as sources of revelation, because they were associated with divination. The term divination derives from the Latin verb divinari, which means "to predict." Predicting is related to the notion of the divine (divinus) in the sense that a god possesses one in ecstasy, enabling one to grasp hidden truths. The act of speaking in the ecstatic state is called prophecy. Generally, divination refers to what, following Frederic Myers, is called clairvoyance and telepathy, retrocognition and precognition.

According to Cicero, divination comprised two types, depending on the method (De Divinatione 1:11; 2:26). One was artificial, and it was conducted with entrails, prodigies, lightning, augury, astrology, and lots. The other was natural, and is obtained from dreams and ecstatic states. With respect to natural divination and prophecy, Cicero reported the belief of the Stoic Posidonius concerning the mind during unconscious states. The fresh new translation by Georg Luck is cited (1985, 274): When, in sleep, the mind is separated from the companionship of the body and is not in touch with it, it remembers the past, sees the present, foresees the future. The body of the sleeper lies as if he were dead, but his mind is alert and active. This is true to a much higher degree after death, when the mind has left the body altogether; therefore, when death approaches, the mind is much more divine. For those who are seriously, critically ill see the approach of death; therefore, they have visions of the dead.. ..(Cicero, De Div. 1 :63)

Page 193

This position of Posidonius presupposed, among Stoic philosophers, the image of Socrates facing a death sentence: "Now I wish to make a prophecy to you, my fellow citizens who have sentenced me to death, for I have now reached the point where human beings are particularly art to deliver prophecies--shortly before they die" (Apology 39Cl, Luck trans.). Some Greek philosophers, notably Aristotle, believed that the soul could achieve comparable prophetic powers in epilepsy (Temkin 1971, 157). As described in charter one, the same connection between facing a death sentence, enhanced psychic ability, and epilepsy was made by Dostoevsky.

In contrast to the image of Socrates, as preserved by Stoicism, Christianity regarded the image of the dying Jesus as normative. The earliest Gospel tradition did not emphasize Jesus' prophetic powers but, rather, it rejoiced in God, despite his apparent abandonment, through Psalm 22 (Mk. 15:34).

However, a much more controversial use of dreams, from the perspective of Christianity, occurred in the faith healing cult of Asclepius. Asclepius was a revered figure in Greek mythology. His father was the god Apollo, and his mother the human Coronis. He became a renown healer, who even had the reputation of preventing death and restoring the dead to life. Asclepius travelled from city to city, walking with a staff and accompanied by a dog. In the fourth century B.C.E. a sanctuary of Asclepius was built at Epidaurus, where the sacred serpent became associated with the healer. Devotees went to the shrine, made sacrifices, slept in a dormitory, and sooner or later beheld Asclepius in a dream. He would flare up, as light out of darkness, and prescribe a cure to the dreamer. The dream was an epiphany of the supernatural; and upon awakening one would rejoice in the power of the rising sun.

In the classical age of the city-state the Asclepius cult remained private; but during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Asclepius evolved as a major deity, whose cult centered in Pergamon. In the second century of the Christian era Asclepius was called the" god of Pergamon" and celebrated as a savior figure, with whom the people could establish a personal relationship. The rise of Asclepius was due to his link with the Caesars and to his popularity in the Roman army. The Roman orator Aelius Aristides proclaimed the power of Asclepius to be great, good, and universal, the outer and guide of all things. In his speaking to

Page 194

Asclepius (355.4) Aristides dec1ares that healing occurs in the words (Lalia) of the god (Habicht 1969, 13).

The Asclepius cult deviated from the rational, naturalistic approach to medicine established by Hippocrates in the fifth century RC.E.. The Hippocratic text Regimen states that dreams are useful in diagnosing disease (IV). However, in his commentary Robert Joly points out that Hippocrates does not support divination, because the dream is a symptom of the present state of the body and not a means of prediction (1967, xxii).

The claims of the Asclepius cult came into direct conflict with Christianity, wherein the God of Abraham is the ruler of all things and Jesus is recognized as "Savior of the World" (Jhn. 4:42). In the second century a struggle broke out in Pergamon between the followers of Jesus and Asclepius. Many Christians had been martyred in Pergamon. Evidence of this conflict comes from the Revelation, where the angel gives a message to the church of Pergamon: "I know where you are living, where Satan's throne is" (Rev. 2: 13a). The throne of Satan is the Asclepius shrine at Pergamon. This is proven by the image of the god, sitting on a throne with a serpent, on coins excavated by archeologists (Rengstorf 1953, 28). As early as the reign of Emperor Domitian, the image of Asclepius began to appear on the coins of the city. Domitian ruled between 81-96 C.E., when Revelation was written. The serpent of Asclepius was also a coat of arms for Pergamon and its identification with Satan meant that the cult was the dragon of the apocalypse: "The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world-he was thrown down to the earth.... " (Rev. 12:9)

The Christian struggle against Asclepius was also against Rome, the sponsor of the god's cult. Rome acquired the Asclepius cult as early as 293 B.C.E. in order to secure healings during the plague. From the Founding of the City Livy reports that a group brought the sacred serpent from Epidaurus and sailed on a boat up the Tiber River to the island, where a temple to Asclepius was built (X. XLVV. 7). The Tiber island is shaped like a boat, and in contemporary Rome the Church of San Bartolomeo stands on the original site of the Asclepius shrine. The walls of the church still show traces of the serpent and the staff emblems.

Locating the Asclepius cult on the Tiber River island had profound implications for cultural and religious history. During the archaic period of Rome, Pontifex Maximus built the first bridge (Pons Sublicius) over

Page 195

the Tiber River and near the island. Pontifex Maximus was the supreme priest-engineer of Rome who could blind the bridge because he knew how to appease the river deity, namely, by making sacrifices. The Roman emperors look over the title of Pontifex Maximus as deified figures, and they held it until 379 C.E.. Thereafter, the title belonged to the popes as the exclusive bridge between heaven and earth. However, with the papacy the term Pontifex meant one who makes a pathway into unknown regions and defends against danger (Bleeker 1963, 184).

When construction of the Vatican was completed in the sixteenth century, the site chosen overlooked the Pons Sublicius. This meant that the pontificate would forever conquer the Devil. For in the classical age the archaic river deity was associated with the Devil (Knight 1953, 851). The Book of Revelation had not only identified Asclepius as Satan but had also linked him to the river (12: 15). Thus, the conquest of Satan facilitated salvation, by providing a bridge to heaven through the Roman Catholic papacy.

III. VISION AND THE BRIDGE

Since the Roman Catholic pontificate understood itself in terms of the bridge symbol, it is my contention that Szondi's theory of the pontifical ego represents the normative conception of selfhood in classical Western civilization. The rise of the papacy coincided with the Christian critique of dream and vision; so the concept of pontifical selfhood also represents the origin of Western psychology.

My contention opposes the view of Carl Jung, who rejected the Christian conception of selfhood as normative on the assumption that Medieval Christianity was too primitive. He meant that classical Christianity lacked a realistic appreciation of evil, because it defined evil as the absence of good. In contrast, Jung believed that evil is a radical force that can no longer be conceived as the absence of good; for good and evil are relativized (1961, 329). Both good and evil need to be integrated psychically in order to achieve self-realization. Theologically, such an integration requires the incorporation of the Devil into the Godhead, along with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thus turning the Trinity into a quaternity. Since quaternity represents the logical structure of the mandala, Jung interpreted the cross as a mandala. The cross fils the mandala-quaternity structure, because it has four

Page 196

points. Recovering the cross as an authentic mandala in Christianity would compensate for the one-sided Trinitarian theology that split evil off from the ultimate ground of the psyche. Jung's interpretation is questionable theologically and historically. First his identification of the cross with the mandala fits only a limited time and place but cannot refer to classical Christianity. An identification of the cross with the mandala did appear in Central Asia in the eighth century C.E., when Nestorian Christians of the Eastern Church travelled eastward along the "Silk roads" and interacted with Buddhist communities and Shamanism. In Nestorian theology the cross represents the risen, transfigured Christ who has conquered death and fulfilled all mystery. The Nestorians made a sharp contrast between the exalted Christ and the suffering, dying Jesus, hanging on the cross, as proclaimed in the Western Church.

In a Nestorian inscription at Sianfu (781 C.E.), the cross is portrayed as a cosmic sign that reenacts the creation of the world: God "sets the cross to determine the four directions of heaven" (Klimkeit 1980, 67).

Similarly, in a Chinese inscription of the thirteenth century the cross is "a symbol of the four quarters, above and below." These inscriptions prove the cross to be a mandala in the sense that it coordinates the four fold dimension of the universe in a spatial-mythical system. Cross and universe share a microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship, respectively. However, the inscriptions do not provide evidence of the cross as an integration of good and evil, as Jung's position requires.

Second, Jung fails to grasp the fundamental truth of biblical and classical Christianity, which is transmitted in the Western tradition of the "wooden cross" as opposed to the "light cross" of the Nestorians. Normative Christianity claims the expiation of evil in the crucifixion of Jesus. This means that the demonic dread of death has been defeated and the order of the world overturned. Jung does not discuss the concept of restitution or atonement; for evil cannot be conquered, since it is relative to the good. Good and evil comprise a logically equivalent polarity.

One of Jung's targets is St. Augustine, who explains that Christianity seeks freedom through love and liberation from sin, death, and evil (City of God V: 18). Augustine faithfully represents the intent of the atonement doctrine in the theology of the Western Church. Admittedly, Augustine defines evil as the absence of the good, bur this definition presupposes the insight that humankind acts in a defective manner because of freedom. God is Being-itself, unchangeable and eternal, who

Page 197

encompasses evil as nonbeing. While Jung does not fully appreciate the Christian conception of atonement, his concern that radical evil be acknowledged is certainly consistent with experience and will be developed later in Martin Luther's theology.

In contrast to Jung's position Szondi's theory of the pontifical ego represents the normative conception of selfhood in classical Christianity. To support my contention, in the remainder of this section, I sketch four components of pontifical selfhood and briefly summarize them as folIows: (1) psychic expansion from the bodily ego to a transpersonal level of being ("p"); (2) complementary range of practical decision­making, realistic adaptation, and sense of possession ("k"); (3) principle of restitution or liberation; and (4) experience of projective-participation, integration, and transcendence.

(1) In the classical era the meaning of vision changed from that of a dream equivalent, as in the Bible, to that of the otherworld journey (Dinzelbacher 1978, 120, 124-125). Hence, a vision was the release of the soul from the body and movement to another place or time, whether over or under the earth. Visions come in states of ecstasy, either when sleeping or awake; and ordinary waking consciousness recedes into the background. The recipient falls asleep or into a trance and seems  to be dead. He begins a heavenly journey, escorted by an angel or saint. He travels to a destination and, upon arriving, the visionary beholds paradise or the heavenly Jerusalem, purgatory with fire and water, or hell. The journey crosses a concrete landscape with pleasant, enjoyable places. The guide explains the meaning of the locations. Images of the other world, such as fields, rivers, or bridges, stand out in the foreground as means of crossing over to the beyond, which is a sacred space. The encounter with the beyond is so intense that it alters the visionaries' life. As stated in chapter four, the vision has a mandate or calling, which provides the change.

The vision befalls one as a shock event; the visionary is passive and startled. The visionary tends to be male, either priest, monk, or layman. The vision is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime event. Recipients of the vision emerge from trance, after which they are regarded as normal. Visions are not psychopathological.

This model of vision as otherworld journey persisted, virtually unchanged, from the sixth to the thirteenth century in the European Middle Ages. It occurred mainly in Nordic-Germanic, Anglo-Saxon,

Page 198

and French cultures. Visions were written in Latin manuscripts and transmitted within their respective intellectual traditions. Their prototypes were the Myth of Er and the Dream of Scipio in Greco­Roman tradition, and the heavenly journeys of Fourth Ezra and First Enoch in the Hebrew.

(2) During the era of the vision literature, a transition from synthetic to analytic speech look place in Western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean areas. Classical

Greek and Latin had synthetic forms in accord with the rational and harmonious quality of civilized antiquity. Classical synthesis reduces events to momentary actions without extension in time or relation. Toward the end of the Roman Empire, the synthesis of language began to disintegrate. For example, in Greek the infinitive disappeared, so that the future had to be expressed by the phrase "in order that" (hina) and a dependent clause. This trend had already begun in John of the New Testament. The loss of the infinitive in Greek paralleled the absence of the infinitive in Semitic languages. This indicates that the Middle East was a self-contained cultural unit from the break up of Rome, throughout Byzantine civilization, and up to modern times. The infinitive is still lacking in Modern Greek.

At the same time, in Latin the future was conceived with the auxiliary verb "to have," and it would be represented by an act of will, by domination or possession (Borkenau 1981, 150). The use of auxiliary verbs indicates a will to control the physical world, both spatially and temporally. By the sixth century C.E. auxiliaries had replaced the simple future. In aparalIel development the personal pronoun "I" entered Latin from Old Norse. The personal pronoun moved from Scandinavia to England and finally to France. The sense of "I" joined that of "having" in order to express control of the future and of the environment.

The changes in Latin corresponded to the migrations of Saxons, Irish, and Vikings. Their cultural legacies included mythic visions of the world, cross-over symbols (e.g. the bridge), and otherworld journeys. Prehistoric art in these areas featured the Celtic cross, wheel, and boat symbols, particularly in tombs, as described in chapter three. The implication of these facts is that Northwestern European cultures created the ego, after envisioning an otherworld journey beyond the self. Thus, the controlling power of the self and the participatory power, Szondi's "k" and "p" principles, respectively, came together as a result of these migrations .

Page 199

(3) The era of migrations, folIowing the decline of Rome, also brought serious social upheavals. Middle Europe lacked central authority because the seat of the empire had been transferred from Rome to Constantinople in 330 C.E.. The political division between Constantinople and Rome corresponded to the respective changes in Greek and Latin. Without a central political authority Europe was besieged by blood fetid; personal and tribal vengeance replaced Roman law. In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church emerged as the only system of authority, and it enforced discipline by means of public confession and penance. The system of public penance carried on the practice of the New Testament (I Cor. 5:3-5) and of early Christianity

(Didache). During the fourth and fifth centuries, monks in Ireland and Wales began to write guidelines for moral discipline in terms of private and secret confession and penance. Known as the Celtic Penitentials, these texts were used by monks to absolve sin, and they could be repeated. Implied in the new penitentiai system was a sense of individual privacy, a factor facilitating the spread of the personal pronoun "I." Gradually, the Celtic Penitentials were taken to Europe by Irish missionaries. Since the continent was ravaged by violence and social unrest, the penitentials became useful means of expiation. At first, the continental church tried  to suppress the new private penitentials and retain the older public system of penance. However, by 656 C.E. the Celtic practices were recognized and by 1075 fully established in the church.

Throughout the Middle Ages both the public and private confessionals co-existed.

The public system comprised two forms. One was solemn, umepeatable, and conducted by the Bishop. The other involved the penitential pilgrimage as expiation for such crimes as homicide and incest (VogeI1964, 117-128). Normally, a murderer went into exile for ten years, wearing chains or walking nude. The penitential pilgrimage presupposed the exile of Cain (Gen. 4:12-14) as punishment for murder, and it functioned as an earthly counterpart to the heavenly journey. Walking penitential pilgrimages created the need for more bridges. By the eleventh century bridge-building became just as prominent as church-building. Peter Dinzelbacher and Harold Kleinschmidt have shown thai in Medieval folk traditions bridge-building was an extension of penance (1984, 255-257). To give money for the building or maintenance of a bridge was the same as giving alms or performing

Page 200

charitable works. Between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, the bridge became a symbol of the penitential journey arter death. Just as we must cross bridges in this world, so must we do the same in the next. Crossing the heavenly bridge was a test of one's deeds in life. In the high Middle Ages the notion that donations to a bridge remitted punishment in the next world complied with the principle of restitution.

(4) The motif of crossing the bridge informed the Medieval vision literature, and the classical image of the bridge came from Gregory the Great, who was Pope between 540-604. About 593 Gregory wrote his DiaIogues, which portray the bridge in book four. The DiaIogues contain miracle stories of the Italian fathers, narrated in terms of the biblical "holy men," which are intended to provide inspiration for the struggling church long arter the age of martyrdom (Petersen 1984, 24, 27, 130). Although there were political and linguistic divisions, Gregory drew upon. a common theological tradition, largely shaped by the spirituality of the Eastern Church. Central to the Eastern tradition was the living man of God, whose radiance represented. the beauty of holiness.

Gregory begins the DiaIogues by admitting his depression over the world situation specifically invasions, epidemics, and schisms; and he expresses his mood with a cross-over image:

I am tossed about on the waves of a heavy sea, and my soul is like a helpless ship buffeted by raging winds. When I recall my former way of life, it is as though I were once more looking back toward land and sighing as I beheld the shore. It only gladdens me the more to find that, while flung about by the mighty waves that carry me along, I can hardly catch sight any longer of the harbor I have left (1:1, Zimmerman, trans.).

For Gregory the world is an abyss, in which humankind life as an exile. In the Fall Adam lost the inner light, through which the joy of heaven is known. Only in the ecstasy of a spiritual vision, purified by faith, might the world be envisaged in a ray of light. The mind has its own image-making capacity, whose power is enhanced by dramatic death experiences, that is, by miracles.

As evidence of the mind's visionary power, Gregory recalls how Benedict saw the soul of Germanus being carried out of his body in the fire of the night (1:35). Germanus died forty miles away from where

Page 201

Benedict was living. Benedict "beheld a flood of light shining down from above more brilliant than the sun;" and "the whole world was gathered up before his eyes in what appeared to be a single ray of light". Gregory emphasizes that Benedict's vision took place at midnight, a deep, dark, uncanny time. Thus, he reenacts the biblical tradition of the night vision, following Psalm 119:62 (Steidle 1971, 301).

The miracle was a cosmic vision, which in modern times, after Frederic Myers, would be called clairvoyance. Commenting on the miracle, Gregory explains:

All creation is bound to appear small to a soul that sees the Creator. Once it beholds a little of His light, it finds all creatures small indeed. The light of holy contemplation enlarges and expands the mind in God until it stands above the world. In fact, the soul that sees Him fises even above itself, and as it is drawn upward in His light all its inner powers unfold. Then, when it looks down from above, it sees how small everything is that was beyond its grasp before.

Gregory's key observation that the mind "enlarges and expands" conforms to the gift of prophecy, as described above by Greek philosophers. Whereas, philosophy made the doorned Socrates the agent of prophecy, Gregory makes the living holy man the bearer of this gift. Gregory also learned of the discernment of the spirit and the gift of prophecy from the Eastern Church (Petersen 1984, 167). The holy man is capable of discerning the divine light, which compresses the world into a point. Many of the miracles described by Gregory correspond to those reported in twentieth century clinical literature. For example, in the hour of death, the saints suffer neither fear nor agony, white they hear the sounds of celestial singing. Sometimes fragrant odors spread in the milieu of the dying (IV: 15). When two monks were killed during the Lumbard invasion, their disembodied souls sang Psalms in search of expiation and terrified their killers. Gregory even states that the dying soul can predict the future. As Gerontius was dying, he named other monks who would also die (IV:27). The image of the bridge appears in the context of a near-death experience of a Roman soldier:

202

He saw a river whose dark waters were covered by a mist of vapors that gave off an unbearable stench. Over the river was a bridge. It led to pleasant meadows beyond, covered by green grass and dotted with richly scented flowers. These meadows seemed to be the gathering places for people dressed in white robes. The fragrant odors pervading the region were a delight for all who lived there. Everyone had his own dwelling, which gleamed with brilliant light.     One house of magnificent proportions was still under construction and the bricks used were made of gold (IV:37).

Gregory emphasizes that the images of the vision are not literal but symbolic. Bridge and river symbolize the narrow way to eternal life, as told in the Bible (Matt. 7:14). The abyss symbolizes carnal desire, which is punishable by sulphur and fire (Gen. 19:24). At the end of the world a c1eansing fire produces different kinds of burning, according to one's moral and spiritual character.

Finally, Gregory dec1ares that visions of the night reveal the spiritual world in contrast to the transitoriness of life. The world resembles a dark night, which merges with the light of the next world, in the same way that darkness recedes at dawn.Visions of the night are distinguished from dreams, which are associated with divination and which have six kinds of causes: full or empty stornach, illusion, thought and illusion, revelation, or thought and revelation (IV:50). Since the sources of dreams are so diverse, they should be analyzed critically. Thus, Gregory carries on the Christian trend of de-emphasizing dreams, while at the same time he elevates the night vision to the level of apocalyptic spirituality. Through his apocalyptic vision Gregory establishes the bases of pontifical selfllood: projective-participation by crossing the bridge; integration by spanning this world and the next; and transcendence by reaching the other world.

IV. RESTITUTION AND THE BRIDGE

In the concept of pontifical selfllood the exaltation of the participatory self is made possible by the experience of atonement or liberation. In the vision literature, generally, the bridge symbol directly correlates with the function of restitution. To illustrate this function a few examples of additional visions of the bridge are considered, using

Page 203

material in the c1assic study of Howard Patch (1980). The first example is the Vision of Sunniulf, written in 575 and reported by Gregory of Tours. It emphasizes the narrowness of the bridge and the drowning of sinners, motifs underdeveloped in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great:

Sunniulf was led to a certain fiery river at the shore of which people were gathering like bees at a beehive, and some were submerged to the waist, some to the armpits, and some to the chin. Over the river was a bridge so narrow that there was scarcely room for One foot on it. On the other side was a large white house. Sunniulf asks the meaning of all this and is told that those religious who are careless of the discipline of their flock fall from the bridge and those who are strict pass over it safely to the house (98).

In the eighth century vision of Wenlock, he sees a pitchy river boiling and flaming, over which was placed a timber for a bridge. Over this the holy and glorious souls strove to pass.

Some went securely, others slipped and fell into the tartarean stream. Some were wholly submerged in the flood, others to the knees, some to the middle of the body, and some to the ankles. All eventually came out of the fire rendered bright and c1ean to ascend the other shore. Beyond the river were walls shilling with splendor great in length and height-the heavenly Jerusalem. Evil spirits were plunged into the fiery pits (101).

Finally, in the twelfth century legend of Saint Patrick's Purgatory, Owen enters a cave after fifteen days of fasting and prayer. He proceeds through various planes, until arriving at the top of a mountain, where he sees a fiery pit, and a broad fiery river filled with demons, over which is a slippery bridge so narrow that one could not stand on it and so high it makes one dizzy to look downwards. Owen, however, calls on the Holy Name, and the bridge becomes broader as he passes over it. At length he reaches Paradise, which is surrounded by a high wall, One gate of which is adorned with the precious stones and metals. (115).

Page 204

Citing these three texts illustrates the fact that, in addition to Gregory's vision, the symbolism of the bridge in the Middle Ages conformed to that of the Chinvat Bridge in Zoroastrianism and its Persian sources. The bridge becomes wide for the righteous and narrow for the unrighteous. Psychologically, the wide bridge symbolizes the making of restitution in one's life and the achieving of transcendent participation in the next world. The narrow bridge symbolizes the failure of restitution and participation. Death is symbolized as a journey, and water represents one of the obstacles along the way. This symbol reenacts the ancient belief that rivers are universal means of organizing territorial boundaries (Zalesky 1987, 62). The image of the river of fire means that restitution may be achieved at the boundaries of existence and in the depths of life.

V. DISINTEGRATION OF THE BRIDGE

The foregoing sketch of the Medieval bridge reveals that the psychological principles of restitution and participation were active in the symbol. To cross the bridge is to unify the psychic opposites of life and death, light and darkness, good and evil and, thereby, to become liberated and whole. These two principles were necessary in light of historical conditions. Between the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages, widespread killing took place in Europe.

Viking invaders overran the continent, and, in the absence of the Roman army, kings and territorial princes fought in self-defense. There was a general feeling that the Viking invasions were God's punishment for the sins of the nobility (Rosenwein 971, 149). In the same period sporadic outbreaks of the plague also occurred. The high mortality rates from invasions and epidemic undermined the early Christian claim of the conquest of death. In this era, known as the "Dark Ages," the Christian reversal of the world order had become undone, releasing latent forces of aggression and killing. These could be denied because the killing was to protect the Church.

Ironically, formation of pontifical selfhood, begun by Gregory the

Great and sustained by other visions, created a movement toward a greater synthesis of psychic antitheses, which gave rise to the high civilization of the Middle Ages. The shift from the "Dark Ages" to the Middle Ages occasioned a change from a denial of death to an

Page 205

acceptance of death. The acceptance released a new vitality within Medieval society (Borkenau 1981, 78-82). The movement toward a Medieval synthesis began about the eleventh century, primarily in the reforms of the Cluny monastery. Monasteries had been established by the lay nobility to atone for the pervasive guilt over the killing of invaders during the "Dark Ages." The monks at Cluny offered intercession for the nobility, who feared the apparent end of the world, judgment, and damnation. The liturgy at Cluny included prayer vigils, masses for the dead, and, in particular, seven connects sung for the dead at matins. In 1083 the monk Ulrich described the seven conects as follows:
the first [conect] is for brothers who died recently...the second is for the anniversary [of the death] of those named at charter; the third is for all our dead familiars (ifamiliaribus); the fourth for dead brothers; the fifth for all buried in our cemetery; the sixth for our sisters and other female familiars; the seventh for all departed faithful (Cited in Rosenwein 1971, 140).

The conects comprised Psalm 50 as weIl as four additional Psalms called familiares (Pss. 31,69,85, 141), which pray for deliverance from enemies, persecution, evil and for restoration of divine favor. The conects named the dead as individuals and as members of a household for the first time in the Christian era. When the dead were buried inside the city, they were not identified as individuals. Conceiving of the dead in personal terms, e.g. as familiars, employed the Latin term for family or household (ifamiliaris), and it represented an original insight into the familial unconscious (Das familiäre Unbewusste), as discovered by Szondi in contemporary psychiatry.

Monastic reform encouraged the contemplation of death in two distinct forms. One was the contempt of the world, due to its poverty, powerlessness, and pervasive sinfulness. The other was a direct contemplation of death as directed by the well-known Latin phrase, Memento Mori, which meant: "Remember, you will die." These dual practices were originally created as meditative techniques for young priests, who were concerned with the hour of death and with living a proper life in preparation for dying. "The uncertainty about the hour of death was a stimulus to constant wakefulness and fear for mortal sins, which alone might separate us from the vision of God" (Rudolf 1957),

Page 206

11). Preparation for death entailed maintaining the faith, the right will, withstanding temptations of sin and evil, and taking the sacraments of the Church. Contemplating death aimed to arouse a moral consciousness, so as to transfer one's ego onto a higher level of spiritual being. These moral and psychological tasks were facilitated by a cohesive, stratified society, grounded in the natural law and the righteousness of God. The God of justice governs the lawful universe according to the principles of proportionate punishment and mercy for exceptional cases. The task of the person is to live in hope of reward or dread of punishment in death. One would be rewarded with heaven, purged by purgatory, or punished in hell. The righteous God will administer reward or punishment on the day of judgment.

The methods of meditation were developed in the Art of Dying.

Texts were circulated in the middle Ages, prescribing guidelines on how to die. The Medieval Art of Dying was an attempt to conceptualize stages of dying in the following order: (1) to pray; (2) seek forgiveness; (3) weep and repent; (4) commend one's soul to God; and (5) give up one's spirit willingly (Helgeland 1984-1985, 155). Normally, dying involved a long, slow process, preceded by premonitions; and witnessed as a public act. If possible, the dying person would face the east, having the arms crossed on the chest. In that position one would receive the sacraments of the Church.

Beginning in the twelfth century, Medieval society underwent a long ­term trend of destabilization and disintegration. Some of the causes were poor harvests, economic recession, malnutrition, and chronic overpopulation. These trends were accelerated, further, by the great Bubonic Plague, which swept over Europe between 1348-1350 and destroyed about one quarter of the population. The plague created a vast obsession with death that focused mainly on the body and the processes of decomposition and decay. By 1376 in France the term "macabre" appeared, and it designated the images of the skull, bones, and dried out, emaciated skeletons (Boase 1972, 104).

In the late fourteenth century, the corpse  was displayed in an advanced state of decay on transi tombs, the practice lasting until 1600. The term "transi" came from the Latin verb transire, meaning "to cross" (ire) "over" (trans). On these tombs the corpse was viewed publicly in its emaciated state, which evoked the feeling of the agony of dying. After burial, a visible effigy of the corpse, sculpted in its skeletal and

Page 207

agonal traits, was made and also displayed publicly. On the German transi tombs, in particular, the emaciated corpse was adorned with frogs and worms, or toads and snakes. Typically, frogs were placed on the eyes, mouth, and genitals, and worms encircled the arms and legs.

As a substitute for the bridge, the transi tombs reduced the cross­over motif of dying to anxiety, humiliation, and agony. However, these tombs were restricted to the wealthy, powerful nobility, and royalty, hereby lowered to the level of food for worms and frogs. The intent of the open and public funeral display was to subdue pride, to show that death humiliated the formerly wealthy and powerful, and to undercut worldly glory by the great equalizer of death (Cohen 1973, 12-21). Since frogs and worms were most consistently placed on German tombs, this raises the possibility of a unique interpretation of death. In Revelation 16: 13 frogs are "foul spirits" or evil creatures that come "from the mouth of the dragon." In Sirach 10:11 worms mean repentance and frogs sin. These biblical motifs suggest a struggle against evil in death, and they anticipate the same motif in the theology of Martin Luther.

The transi tomb projected imagery of decomposition and decay at the same time that society was disintegrating and displaying primal layers of matter. This trend was represented by the Dance of Death, in which various members of society danced in the roles of naked, rotting, and sexless skeletons. Since participants represented different social classes and they danced as one, the Dance of Death foreshadowed the end of the Medieval hierarchy and the rise of modern notions of equality. As the great equalizer, death waited within one's body to break out and dance.

Underlying these macabre images and practices was a profound psychological disposition. The dying had a passionate attachment to life, a love of things, which turned into a sorrow over their loss (Aries 1980, 130). To reinforce these material bonds, the devil would bring money with which to tempt the dying. Having to leave all things behind meant that one had failed and, therefore, had become identified with the skeleton as one's ego-ideal. One's skeletal self-image appeared before the onset of sickness and death. Out of this situation comes a philosophy of the object and a psychology of connecting. Because death cuts the living off from connecting things, the need for acquisition remains unsatisfied. Clinging vainly to material things is a form of depression, and in an extreme degree, threatens contact-disintegration, manifesting a sense of being stuck and the illusion of security (Szondi 1980, 256).

Page 208

These depressive symptoms were the consequences of the disintegration of the bridge symbol.

VI. LUTHER'S RECOVERY OF JOY

Just as the early Middle Ages began with monastic reforms, so in the same way did they end. The order of Augustinian Hermits, founded in 1256, sought reforms in the Roman Catholic Church by restoring strict asceticism, thereby undermining the wealthy and powerful hierarchy and promoting equality among the bishops and priests. Of these monks, Martin Luther was more concerned with the purity of doctrine rather than social change.

Luther decided to enter the monastery on July 2, 1505, when caught in a torrential thunderstorm and thrown to the ground by a bolt of lightning. Shocked by the threat of sudden death, he vowed to become a monk by calling out to St. Ann, patron saint of coal miners. He had descended from a lineage of coal miners through his father Hans and he shared their terror of sudden death by a collapse of the miles.

Within the monastery Luther was taught that one could exist before God by striving for perfection through asceticism, but increasingly he was tormented by anxiety and a sense of unworthiness. He feared rejection by a merciless God. His feeling of unworthiness came, partly from his personal struggle for certainty of faith, and partly from the terror of the age. Fear of an impending end of the world was heightened by Muslim conquests in the Middle East and by recurrent afflictions of the plague. Luther trembled before these onslaughts, believing that they were masks for the devil but fearing that they were signs of the wrath of God. Luther felt the overwhelming specter of Satan, whom he knew as a radical demonic force that erupts when one seeks the mercy of God.

Confronting the wrath of God exemplifies the fundamental, non­rational dimension of Luther' s theology. Luther felt so unworthy before the wrath of God that he wanted to flee. Consequently, he would never fully synthesize the wrath and the love of God in his theology (Miller 1970, 287). Both the wrath and the love interact in an unresolved, dialectical tension; for they reflect the hiddenness of God, the inexhaustible dimension of the "absent God." The traditional dogmatic conception of divine omnipotence was obscured by mystery for Luther, because he believed that attempting to understand it brought neither comprehension nor solace.

Page 209

In the course of his biblical studies, Luther challenged the Medieval doctrine of the justice of God. With his personal sense of unworthiness, he thought he would not receive righteousness on the day of judgment. His spiritual breakthrough occurred however, when he discovered that, though he be unworthy, Christ is righteous. As stated in Romans 1: 17, the righteousness of God has already been disclosed in the crucified Christ. It need only be taken in faith, which means, essentially, trust. Trust in the free gift of grace is the sole content of the gospel.

Despite his crucial discovery, Luther's struggles did not cease. As interpreted by Heiko Oberman, the devil is enraged by the proclamation  of the gospel, and he tries to suppress it (1992, 155). For Luther the furious rage of Satan haunts the world and affects the faithful through seizures of temptation. Temptation is a shock of fear that one has been forsaken by God. The shock awakens doubt and drives one to despair.

The dilemma is that one strives to save oneself; but this attempt becomes a compulsion that never succeeds in grasping the grace of God. Subjectivity is the obstacle, and the devil is its master. Receiving the grace of God brings a momentary release from fear, guilt, and unworthiness, and it is experienced as a joyful exchange. In his description of grace Luther captures the biblical meaning of joy, as explained in chapter seven. Grace makes a radiant being, because the will, which is powerless to save itself, is overturned and taken into the mercy of God. With a radiant and loving will, fear and hatred are temporarily conquered. From this view of the grace of God,

Luther developed his theology of death. In Lectures on Romans (LW 25, 310) he says that there are two kinds of death (Rom. 6:3). One is temporal, and the other is spiritual. Temporal death is the natural separation of body and soul and seems to be like rest or sleep. Eternal death is a two fold spiritual event. On the one hand, a good spiritual death is a separation of the body from sin and a joining of it with the living God. Death, originally introduced by the devil, is removed through Christ. On the other hand, the bad kind of spiritual death is that of the damned, in which sin and the sinner live eternally. In either case, spiritual death happens only once (Rom. 6:10).

Luther was concerned only with spiritual and not with natural death (Meinhold 1980, 158). Specifically, a good spiritual death absolves the body of its fallenness and creates a new, eternal life under perfect and absolute conditions. As the early Christians knew, it inflicted the death

Page 210

of death. One will never return to life but will remain a cadaver to the world. Since everyone cannot die to the world, baptism is available for the mortification of the flesh. In baptism one dies with Christ and lives toward a good spiritual death. Because death is essentially a spiritual crisis, how one dies reveals the nature of one's faith. When expounding Romans 6:4, Luther delineates three types of dying. The first consists of the person, who refuses to die and who curses Christ in action and feeling. The second endures dying with great difficulty, groaning, suffering, and finally surrendering in patience. Third, Luther recognizes those who, like Jesus himself, die in joy. Jesus' abject cry of abandonment on the cross was a heroic act of courage and rejoicing.

Luther expanded these insights in "A Sermon on Preparing to Die, 1519" (L W, 42). He says that death is the beginning of a straight and narrow path, which one should walk in joy. Just as the anguish of labor facilitates the birth of a baby, so does sorrow give way to death in joy. Facing death, one may take the sacraments in freedom and joy; for they provide the virtues of strength and power. Sin, death, and hell have no virtue. Despite the promise of new life, impending death still raises the specter of the devil. Satan forces humankind to contemplate the horrible images of death and to fear them. The devil cultivates attachments to life, the body, and things, which arouse the wrath of God. The hope of the dying is to meditate on the crucified Christ, whose image alone signifies the revealed love of God. Luther has only signs in his theology and no symbols (Miller 1970, 281). Symbols point beyond themselves, but since the ultimate nature of God is hidden in mystery, symbols provide no meaning. Instead, events are signs that signify, in a clear, unequivocal manner, acts of either God or the devil. In the crucifixion of Jesus the sign of God's love discloses a three fold intentionality: life against death, grace against sin, and heaven against damnation. Reading this sign means that one need not be terrified by death but may give thanks to God in joy.

In a state of radiant being one is elected. Radiant being grounds the affirmation of single predestination, namely, that one has been led into the state of grace by the love and mercy of God. Since the Bible makes the virtue of joy normative, dreams and visions of the night are not needed;l (Rab. 2:3-4). In his "Table Talk," Luther says that (some word got lost. ed).......

Page 211

Gregory, being in the nighttime deceived by a vision, taught something of purgatory, whereas God openly commanded that we should search out and inquire nothing of spirits, but that of Moses and the prophets. Therefore we must not admit Gregory's opinion on this point; the day of the Lord will show and declare the same, when it will be revealed by fire (Kerr 1943, 243).

Luther refers, of course, to the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, but his opinion has been properly disputed on historical and theological grounds. The Dialogues are pastorally oriented, and they give no clear evidence of the soul undergoing punishment, as the doctrine of purgatory maintains (Gatch 1969, 113). The purgatory doctrine appeared between 1175-1180, long after Gregory, and only became popular by the end of the thirteenth century (Le Goff 1984, 157, 180,289). Purgatory was an extension of the sacrament of penance. One would confess one's venial sides before dying and then do penance for them during a specific period of time after death.

Luther appealed to the eschatological fire as the agent of judgment at the end of the world, and he regarded radiant being in the face of death as an anticipation of the cleansing fire. Consequently, he rejected purgatory, dreams, and visions as means of revelation. In Lectures on Genesis Luther admits that he has made a pact with God not to receive either dreams or visions (LW. 6, 329). He neither trusts nor seeks dreams and visions, because they can be distorted by the devil. Rather he is content with the biblical text which teaches all things necessary for salvation.

Nevertheless, Luther acknowledges that the Bible speaks of dreams and visions from the age of the fathers to that of the prophets. He notes that the Bible approves of dreams and visions (Numb. 12:6-8; Joel 2:28) and yet disapproves of them (Deut. 13:3; Bccles. 5:7). In order to distinguish between these two perspectives Luther recommends the analogy of faith. Only dreams and visions sent by God are fulfilled in the faith, and fulfillment is determined by two signs: (1) God himself originates them; and (2) he alone provides interpretation and execution. Otherwise, dreams and visions come from the devil, and these are ambiguous and illusory.

The devil can even prophesy through dreams and visions, because he knows some invisible causes and sees ahead to events about 20 or 30 years from now. Consequently, dream interpretation must belong to God, who alone knows all invisible causes. Luther rejects divination, as practiced in Greco-Roman antiquity; for it presumes an independent order of fate outside the will of God. Instead of positing a chain of causes, God allows events to be contingencies that encourage faith, hope, and love.

With his rejection of dreams and visions, it follows that Luther would have no use for the bridge symbol. The symbolism of the bridge presupposes a union of psychic antitheses, which is not possible in Luther's theology. However, he comes close to a bridge equivalent in his exposition of Jacob's ladder in Genesis 28: 12-14 (LW. 5). God is on top of the ladder and speaking. On the ladder angels are ascending and descending as spirits and as fire. The ladder signifies the Incarnation, the union of God the Father and God the Son. Only in the crucified Christ do opposites converge, but the unity takes place in the mystery and brutality of Jesus' death. Through the weakness of the dying Jesus, God descends to be like a human being. This offends Satan who waits to ascend and be like God. The devil hates Jacob's ladder.

While Luther withholds a theological reason for dreams and visions, he admits that they may disclose some personal condition. For example, on May 29, 1530 he learned of his father's death and retreated into solitude, grieving deeply, and reading the Psalms. He was so close to his father that two nights earlier he had dreamt that he had lost a large tooth, so large that his amazement would not cease. On the Sunday after  his father was dead. At the time a dream of this kind was popularly believed to be an omen of the imminent death of a relative (Oberman 1992, 311).

Just three years earlier, at the beginning of 1527, Luther suffered a seizure of tightness in the throat, a rush of blood to the heart, feeling of cardiac oppression, and painful buzzing in the ears. Combining these symptoms with his well-known fear and trembling, rage and melancholy, Luther appears to be a paroxysmal personality, one subject to the attack syndrome. On July 6, 1527, he suffered a violent circulatory disturbance, followed by depression. He recovered from this illness and lived until 1546.

Page 213

In February of that year Luther traveled from his home in Wittenberg to Eisleben in order to negotiate a dispute between two parties. While there, he had a premonition of his death and said: "When I get home to Wittenberg again, I will lie down in my coffin and give the worms a fat doctor to feast on" (Cited in Oberman 1992, 5). Luther's remark reflected his knowledge of the Medieval death culture, but in his theology he reversed the meaning of the Memento Mori. For Luther the task is not to meditate on death in the midst of life; rather it is to contemplate life in joy.

CONCLUSION: A THEOLOGY OF DEATH

I. THE ABSENT GOD

Examination of Luther's theology has exposed Jung's critique of Medieval Christianity to be premature. As a Medieval man, Luther had a vision of radical evil in his conception of the Devil as the furious enemy of the Gospel. Although Jung would ground good and evil, life and death in the unconscious,

Luther consigned their origins to the unrevealed dimension of God. Out of the absent God came judgment and wrath, which are resolved by the revelation of love and mercy through the death of Jesus. The crucifixion conquered death as the instrument of the Devil.

Luther's doctrine of the absent God envisages an ultimate and irrational mystery in the place of a rational and harmonious universe grounded in the divine mind. His notion of the absent God is also fruitful for a constructive theology of death, as condensed into three governing concepts:

1) Events of human existence, including death, are contingencies that prepare humankind for God's love and forgiveness. Events are not necessitated by a rational harmonious causality informed by a universal natural law. As contingencies, events betray a spontaneous, seemingly chance-like character and mystery. Luther's rejection of a rational causality collies out of his critique of divination, wherein the Devil foresees future occurrences.  Since events are not strictly determined, death strikes as an unexpected threat, a shock. The fear of sudden death haunted Luther  all

Page 216

of his life, and, consequently, he could not make it an object of contemplation. Such a fear implies that death intrudes upon human experience and reverses what is. The contingency of death means that injustice is a primary fact and that it requires justification.

(2) Luther's reversal of Medieval death culture excludes any idea of the stages of dying from a theology of death. Death is neither a natural process nor an object of control. Death is a shock event that readies a natural set of defenses and instinctual drives. Images of dying are useful only in so far as they promote a resolution of suffering. Therefore, so­ called stages of dying belong to theodicy.

(3) Revelation of divine grace resolves unjust suffering, and it occurs in a state of joy. Joy comes from surrendering to the will to God. The capacity for surrender is in itself a gift of grace, freely bestowed in the stark cruelty of death. With joy one does not conquer death but participates in the divine love. Such participation creates a radiant being, who bears a total willingness to die. As in the  Bible, joy is a function of the will.

Although these three principles be acknowledged, one aspect of Luther's theology needs to be reconstructed. Luther had no theory of symbolism. Instead events are signs, signifying either actions of God or the Devil. The only image Luther admitted was that of the crucified Christ, as the sign of God's love amid death. The omission of symbolism corresponds to his neglect of dreams and visions and his preference for the Scripture as the sole source of religious knowledge. However, Luther conceded that dreams and visions play a pivotal role in biblical history.

This admission raises a fundamental dilemma. Dreams and visions are not instruments of revelation, but they belong to the Bible. Hence, dreams and visions cannot be excluded entirely from theology. Clinical experience shows that dreams and visions come to the dying and the bereaved; and this fact restricts them to a psychology of terminal illness and grief work. Our study has demonstrated that dreams and visions facilitate the acceptance of death and the completion of grief work.

Luther's rejection of symbolism followed from his critique of Gregory the Great, and this logically includes Gregory's use of the bridge symbol. In his Genesis commentary Luther interprets Jacob's ladder as a bridge equivalent and as a sign of the Incarnation. For Luther only the crucifixion of Jesus "bridges" life and death, good and

Page 217

evil, strength and weakness. Thus, Luther's theology of death severely narrows the bridge motif but does not eliminate it altogether.

These dilemmas may be resolved by reinstating symbolism into a theology of death. Symbolism is basic to depth psychology and to the history of religions. A symbol combines two principles or dimensions into one and establishes participation between the self and metaphysical reality. A symbol originates from the unconscious and functions as a bridge, spanning image and meaning, foreground and a hidden, transcendent reality (Reimbold 1972, 77). Its validity depends upon whether the bearer sustains a genuine participation with reality. Should participation be lost, then the symbol would disintegrate.

The bridge is a symbol that has become, after Gregory the Great, the normative conception of selfhood in Western civilization. Since the time of Luther, however, the bridge symbol has been viewed in relation to the Roman Catholic papacy. Luther challenged the abuse of Roman power and, thereby, called into question the papal claim to be the exclusive bridge between the divine and the human. While Luther's critique has been essentially accepted, even by Roman Catholicism, it should not obscure the epochal role of the Popes as psychological bridge-builders in the ancient world.

Nevertheless, it is appropriate to wrest the bridge symbol from a specific ecclesiastical structure and to view it in the context of the world religions. Szondi has achieved a fundamental insight into the bridge as a symbol of the participatory self. His vision of the distant shore, as a motif of transcendent reality, coheres with the same conclusion in the work of Frederic Myers. Myers conceived of the distant shore as a symbol of the ecstasy of the supraliminal consciousness. It is the same ecstasy as that of the dreams and visions of death.

The bridge symbol exists in the major world religions, either in a Creation Narrative or eschatology. As a manifestation of the "cross­over" archetype, the bridge is an appropriate symbol for the end of the world. To cross over the bridge to the distant shore means, psychologically, to unify psychic antitheses and to actualize a participatory selfhood. However, as Medieval Christianity demonstrates, the bridge can collapse and give way to depression and despair. So while archaic and enduring, the bridge symbol does not stand as a permanent principle in the evolving universe. It is vulnerable to the primeval shock of death and to the transitoriness of life, as is every symbol. Symbols too come into being and pass away.

Page 218

II. PRIMORDIAL FREEDOM AND THE FIRE

Going beyond Luther with a theory of symbolism requires a further reconsideration of historical influences. In the seventeenth century the Lutheran mystic, Jacob Boehme, wrestled with the issue of freedom and produced two fundamental contributions to a theology of death. First, he conceived of the absent God as a metaphysical realm in and beyond the physical universe.     The absent God became the absolute and primordial realm and was expressed by the German term Urgrund. Boehme has made the Urgrund a famous idea that has exerted considerable influence upon modern German thought. In his definitive study of Boehme Alexandre Koyre has shown convincingly that Ungrund means the total absence of determination, cause, foundation, and reason and that it is properly translated as "absolute" (1968, 280-281). ( Ungrund, the unground, the unknowable transcendent, the antithesis of the ground of ordinary reality, the groundlessness without beginning or end, the hidden Mystery in all things; ed,)

The second contribution, acknowledged by Koyre, was Boehme's replacing the symbolism of light with that of fire (284, 361-364). Fire symbolizes the primal rhythm of life, and it provides an analogy for the nature of God. Fire remains one, while its internal elements fuse with one another into flaming, radiant energy. Light is not primary but derives from fire. Fire also symbolizes spirit, which is a force and an energy source of nature. To illustrate Koyre quotes from Boehme's Psychologica Vera (I, 62):

Then if there were no fire, there would be no light and also no spirit; and if there were no spirit, so the fire would be extinguished, smothered; and were there darkness and were there one without the other, then nothing; thus both belong together and each participates in the other (fn. 2, 284).

Since fire needs fuel to burn, the fuel is the desire to emerge from the nothingness and to create something. The desire is an incomprehensible will as weIl as spirit.     In Boehme's writing the adjective "incomprehensible" (ungrundige) is related to the "absolute" (Ungrund). Thus, the absolute is an incomprehensible will to create.

Through the symbol of the fire Boehme envisaged the primordial nature of God to be freedom. Freedom is the impulse to become something, to create. He writes in Six Theosophic Points that

Page 219

. . . the essence of the Deity is everywhere in the deep of the unground [Ungrund],.. .as a wheel or eye, first principle stays in magical quality, and its centre is fire, which cannot subsist without substance; therefore its hunger and desire is after substance (1958, 11-12).

Curiously, Boehme describes the absolute, as though it were a dynamic force rather than a realm without determination. Despite Boehme's considerable vagueness in terminology, he laid down a fundamental insight that has been clarified by Nicolas Berdyaev, "that before being and deeper than being lies the Ungrund, the bottomless abyss, irrationaI mystery, primordial freedom, which is not derivable from being" (1952, 105). Berdyaev correctly states Boehme's intuition of the primacy of freedom as nonbeing over against being. This overturns the ontology of St. Augustine, according to whom God is Being-itself and nonbeing is derived from being.

Even though Berdyaev interprets Boehme correctly, he too confuses terms. Berdyaev's phrase "bottomless abyss" is not an exact rendering of the Ungrund but is more consistent with the German Abgrund. The conception of the divine abyss actuaIly reenacts the thought of Johannes Tauler, in whose brief writings the idea of the divine "abyss of love" (Der Abgrund der Liebe) appears (1961, 71). Tauler was a late Medieval mystic, whose mystical vision of God helped Luther make his Reformation breakthrough (Miller 1970, 261-262). Thus, for Luther and Boehme from the "bottomless abyss" of the absent God the fire of divine love flares up in the darkness of death.

Berdyaev goes on to say that being is "congealed freedom;" it is a "fire which has been smothered and has cooled; but freedom at its fountain head is fiery. This cooling of the fire, this coagulation of freedom is in fact objectification" (111). Berdyaev's interpretation of the fire symbol has far-reaching implications for cosmology and psychiatry as they bear upon a theology of death.

First, it anticipates the idea of the supernova in astronomy. A supernova is the terminal phase of a giant star. When a star begins to die, it contracts into itself because its depleted fuel cannot resist the force of gravity. The star then explodes, blasting energy and matter that turn into the elements of the universe, into calcium, iron, oxygen, and so forth. The fiery heat of the supernova is so great that light radiates in the universe  through long wave-lengths. The vibrating, radiant light 

Page 220

from a dying star may be seen telescopically thousands of light-years away.

Frederic Myers considered the death of a star as an exact analogy for the veridical afterimage of death. The new concept of the supernova updates Myers' analogy. Further, the analogy of the supernova illumines a fundamental characteristic of shock death, as confirmed by death-bed visions and NDEs, namely, acceleration of thought. Thus, in the human terminal phase thought accelerates to a peak of luminous intensity, where it implodes in death and ecstasy, releasing the explosive afterimage. Just as a dying star contracts, so does the person. The human being contracts to the point of total stillness, where space, time, and physical being cease.

Second, Boehme's fire symbolism anticipates aspects of psychiatry, as represented particularly by Szondi. In this book on therapy Szondi takes up the issue of the Ungrund and defines it correctly as the realm of absolute indifference, which lacks all antitheses (1963, 34). The Ungrund cannot be posited directly, he says; it can only be affirmed indirectly by negation. Szondi also contends that the notion of the Ungrund conforms to the theory of the unconscious; for out of the unconscious arises a "drive of all impulses and representations to emerge into consciousness, to transcend" (35). The capacity to emerge from the unconscious belongs to the psyche, which is the fundamental drive toward freedom, specifically, the drive toward social and metaphysical participation. However, Szondi confuses terms as weIl; for in discussing the Ungrund, he shifts to Urgrund, which Koyre defines as the "absolute as ground and as first cause of things" (1968, 281). The notion of Urgrund implies an active power in the sense of a dynamic unconscious, a primal force, as posited particularly by Freud.

Despite the semantic confusion, a  basic coherence exists. Szondi's description of psyche as a drive toward freedom coincides with öur definition of mind as act, in charter six. Acts of mind constitute a process, in which consciousness and unconsciousness function as phases. Mental acts cannot be located precisely in physical entities or spatio­temporal forms. In the face of death they accelerate to a peak of luminous intensity, which is also the drive of the psyche for freedom and participatory being.

Clinically, acceleration of thought occurs in paroxysmal-epileptiform phenomena. Epilepsy conceals an unconscious depth, which even eludes neurology. The depth dimension of epilepsy is expressed through the

Page 221

seizure, both as a defense against the impact of death and as a search for meaning and value, atonement and wholeness. Atonement and wholeness are sought through symbolism, specifically, through motifs of ascent and descent, height and depth, vortex and wave, also through the elements of air, earth, water, and fire. Of the elemental symbols, fire has priority, because its leaping, flaring nature expresses the volcanic convulsions of epilepsy and the refinement of the aura, as Dostoevsky knew.

Thus, in conclusion, the symbolism of fire, as exemplified in the supernova and epileptic seizure, converges with a theology of death. In the darkness of death the psyche accelerates in a "fiery" epileptiform process to a peak of luminous intensity, defending against death in shock suffering and driving to an exalted state of freedom. The upsurge of the psyche reenacts the Creation, when in the beginning the Creative fire flared up from the dark primeval abyss of God, swept across the waters of chaos, and brought forth light (Gen. 1 :2-3). The psychic drive for freedom in death also anticipates the eschatological fire, which Luther foresaw as a sign of judgment and redemption of the end of the world. The eschatological fire burns with the radiance of the crucifixion afterimage.

III. DEATH AS CONTINGENCY

In this and the next two sections the governing guidelines of a theology of death are explored through three personal situations. First, Luther's haunting sense of the contingency of death and the absent God culminated in the theology and experience of Paul Tillich. Tillich's biographer reports that he struggled against death his entire life (Pauck 1976, 1-2). For Tillich death would never be a noble friend or personal fulfillment but, rather, the stranger. Death is the realm of total, incomprehensible darkness.

Tillich's life-long dread of death was shaped by two traumas. One was the death of his mother, when he was 17 years old. He represses the fact of her death and projected his love for her on

"to the sea and to the sun" (15). Thereafter, Tillich cultivated an attraction to the dark, tragic side of nature, especially symbolized by the heavy waves of the ocean crashing against a rocky shore at twilight.

The other trauma was his service as an army chaplain in World War I. Tillich understood the war to be the destruction of an entire world

Page 222

order, the collapse of civilization into chaos.:
Once, during heavy combat, he wrote to a friend:

I have constantly the most immediate and very strong feeling that I am no longer alive. Therefore I don't take life seriously, to find someone, to become joyful, to recognize God, all these things are things of life. But life is not dependable ground. It isn't only that I might die any day, but rather that everyone dies, really dies, you too... .(51)

The shock of total death exposed the dark nothingness, the Ungrund of the absent God. In the trenches Tillich realized that a rational conception of a personal theism no longer made sense. The love of God could not be reconciled with "the sound of exploding shelIs, of weeping at open graves, of the sighs of the sick, of the moaning of the dying" (49). When in a French forest, however, Tillich read Friedrich  Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and became inspired by the author's ecstatic affirmation of life.

The biographer does not state Nietzsche's exact impact on Tillich, but a cIue appears in his sermon on "The Depth of Existence," which is based on two biblical texts (Tillich 1948, 52-53). From Psalm 130: 1 he takes the Hebrew image of Sheol and redefines it as depth; and with I Corinthians 2: 10 he makes depth a spiritual dimension. Depth is "infinite and inexhaustible," and it is God. Toward the end of the sermon Tillich says that the war into depth leads to joy:

.. .joy is deeper than suffering. It is ultimate. Let me express this in the words of a man who, in passionate striving for the depth, was caught by destructive forces and did not know the word to conquer them. Friedrich Nietzsche writes: "The world is deep, and deeper than the day could read. Deep is its woe. Joy deeper still than grief can be. Woe says: Hence, go! But joys want all eternity, want deep, profound eternity" (63).

This passage is a quotation of Zarathustra's "Midnight Song," after which Tillich states: "The moment in which we reach the last depth of our lives is the moment in which we can experience the joy that has eternity within."

Page 223

In subsequent sermons Tillich explored the meaning of joy as basic to a theology of death. Joy is neither pleasure nor happiness; for joy can be attained in their opposites, in pain and unhappiness (Tillich 1955, 145, 149). The search for pleasure evades pain but cannot produce joy. Rather, joy correlates with sorrow, which expresses death, grief, and the transitoriness of life. Only joy has the ability to embrace sorrow and, consequently, to experience the eternal.

This theme appeared in Tillich's Easter sermon of 1964, which I heard him deliver at a university chapel in Massachusetts. With only 18 months to live, Tillich decIared that in the crucifixion of Jesus "death is taken into life, the pain of having to come to [an] end is taken into the joy of being here and now" (1964, 8). In joy the end changes; it comes here and now, not after death:

If death is accepted by us already, we do not need to wait for it, be it near or far, be it with fear or with contempt. We know what it is because we have accepted it in all its darkness and tragedy. We know that it is the confirmation that we are creatures and that our end belongs to us. We know that life cannot be prolonged, neither in this nor in some imagined future existence.

Then in a dramatic and poignant moment, he concluded his sermon with a prayer: "Give me strength to take my death into my life! Amen."

Tillich's own end came in October, 1965, when he suffered a heart attack and began to die. His dying process was witnessed by his wife Hannah (H. Tillich 1973, 220-225).

Speaking to her from his hospital bed, he said: "I live mostly in dreams now. Everything is slipping away under my feet...in these hours of the emptiness of time." He saw a river of depleted, empty time, going on and on, in night and horror, while being "delivered to the vast ocean of impenetrable depth." His doctors interpreted these images as projections of his own anxiety, but Tillich insisted that they were real.

On the first evening of his hospitalization, he had this dream:

I awoke and found myself in a situation which was very uncanny. One of my thoughts was, I have died. I see a man who is very interesting and who has in a certain war very sympathetic features. He says to me, "You know what

Page 224

happened?" Then "You know what happened to Hannah?" I asked, "Did she die?" He answers, "Yes. Somebody perished on a trip." My first thought, "Is it Rene?" [Tillich's son] "Yes"....

The other man in the dream is Tillich' s own background self that expresses an unconscious aggression of his death onto family members. The dream reveals his ambivalence about death, which the earlier images had portrayed as a dark, bottomless abyss of nothingness.

On the next day, Tillich remembered friends who had died during the previous decade and in World War I. These reconnections were a déja vu or life review: "One sees the enormous problems of the bodies and how refined the body is when it is taken as an organism [in the hospital], and how brutal it is when it is all cut into pieces [by cannons]."

Hannah encouraged her husband to let all these images float away. "Go after the clear light," she said, "the clear light will guide you, not any self-centered immortality." She urged him to "realize the voidness." He then began to lose "all differentiation between himself and others.... No longer was there any distinction between friend or foe. There was no otherness." He confessed his earlier behavior, as it had effected their marriage, and received forgiveness from Hannah. Finally, realizing his total wholeness and awareness, she grasped his hand, then suddenly, he let go; "his body pranced as if in ecstasy...he fell back, his mouth was open."

Tillich's death had occurred through ecstatic phases of dreaming, reconnection, and the intellectual aura of emptiness. This paroxysmal­ epileptiform death expressed mainly the elemental symbols of water and the refined light of fire. Psychoanalytically, his slipping into the inexhaustible ocean depth was a return to his mother.

IV. DEATH AS INJUSTICE

Peter Noll was a Swiss law professor and judge, who developed a malignant tumor on his kidney, partially covering the urethra. His physicians told him that surgery could be performed successfully but that it would leave him impotent. Noll feared that if he were to undergo surgery, he would also lose his independence. Without shock, anger, or despair, Noll considered the tumor to be a case of bad luck. However,

Page 225

since he had been divorced, he realized that his cancer was a direct result of the separation.

Noll rejected surgery; for he believed the will to live must prevail against the indignity of medical dependence. After making this decision, he decided to keep a diary, while even knowing that his writing would not change anything. The diary narrates ideas, feelings, and events in his life from December 28, 1981 to September 30, 1982. He died on October 9, 1982, and his diary was published later under the title In the Face of Death (Noll 1990). At the time of his death Noll was 56 years old.

He admits in surprise that he feels freer, more aware, and more intense, as he writes with knowledge of the brevity of life. Ironically, he thinks that books written by terminal cancer patients express helplessness and embarrassment. Cancer books mirror an affluent society, where complaints against death are narcissistic and filled with self-pity (213).

He was the son of a Swiss Reformed pastor and 'well-versed in theology. Having chosen to confront death directly, he identified with Jesus, as one who died individually and for all those who died unjustly:

Jesus did accept his own death willingly as full reality and fought it through to the end. His vision of the kingdom of God and paradise in no way diminishes death's terror. Thus, nowhere in the Bible are dying and death trivialized. Jesus wanted at first that the cup pass from him; at the end he thought that God had forsaken him.

.. .He wanted to accept dying and death in all its seriousness, without a glance to the "compensations" of paradise. The idea that the soul leaps out of the body and escapes into beautiful fields of eternity was absolutely foreign to him (29-30).

That Jesus sought no compensation could be taken as a criticism of Jungian psychology, according to which the unconscious projects a mythic afterlife to offset the brutality of death. Noll declares that even with the compensation of immortality, his tumor and his death remain. Guided only by the image of the crucified Christ, he becomes more calm and patient. He even has no dreams or visions.

From the beginning of his illness, Noll planned his funeral, feeling both sorrow and joy but no despair. He confided that the reality of death

Page 226

should be cultivated as a way to understand freedom. One's own freedom and conscience reveal God's freedom (149). Just as death relativizes life, so does the divine freedom relativize human events. Events become contingencies.

In April, 1982 Noll travelled to Egypt, where he acquired a viral infection and became seriously ill. Red drops of blood flowed in his urine. He had shortness of breath, cold sweating, nausea, and dizziness. Returning home to Zürich, he knew that he had been close to death. He realized then that "death assumes a higher quality when it is more conscious. The only question is whether in dying this activity of consciousness is still possible, and for how long" (155).

Interwoven throughout the diary are incisive analyses of the problems of justice, power, and law. Even though human consciousness resists change, he argues, society should organize itself to achieve meaningful transformation. Yet organizations yield to dominance hierarchies, whose intolerance is a driving force of evil. Hence, the human task is to make law right and just, since social order is a function of law and not of power. The problem of power arises because of the fundamental condition of injustice inherent in the human condition.

As Noll laments injustice, he confesses the unfairness of dying (187). Suddenly, it becomes apparent to the reader that Noll believes his own death is unfair, and that this unfairness reveals the basic injustice of existence. Thus, his argument that law is a critique of power implies that law is also a critique of death. Further, the preservation of injustice in the structures of social organizations parallels the abnormal growth of the cancer tumor. Hence, the political task of reversing injustice complements the need to find a justification for the unfairness of death. To his charge his anger against injustice Noll reads the prophet Isaiah,

"whose blazing sword of fire is what it takes to hold his own against the powers of his day" (135). He admires Isaiah for keeping conscience and freedom in the name of God, but he concedes that the prophets are all gone. Instead the clergy preach sterile dichotornies of sin and grace, which only personalize world events and overlook the fact that the totality of events with all its participants has gone wrong and must be replaced by something new. Hence, with a certain inner logic, prophecy turns to apocalyptic. For Jesus, the end of the world was imminent (167). 

Page 227

Prophecy turns to apocalyptic when "the objective and uncontrollable conditions, the immanent logic of the systems, are even stronger than a majority of well-intentioned people" (168). Not even the rage of the prophet could halt the inexorable fate of events, Noll laments. His vision of the inexorable fate of events parallels the uncontrollable advance of his own cancer. When cancer dominates the body, simple dichotornies of pain and pleasure, loss and happiness collapse, and one lives with masked pain, masked grief, and masked despair.

Perhaps only through pain.. .do we become aware that life is mostly toil, interrupted no", and then by little cages of meaning. Thus pain would have a metaphysical meaning, by revealing that this world, at least since the existence of man, is dominated by evil and that transcendent good succeeds only occasionally in bringing joy to the individual. Developed logically, this thought means that joy and good deeds are signs from a better world beyond (203-204).

Pain is metaphysical, because it discloses that "eternity abolishes time, space, and causality" (215). Only in an "oasis of meaning" may God be experienced.

Throughout the late summer of 1982, Noll's pain so intensified that he lost all appetite and felt mainly nausea and fatigue. He even gave up morphine, because it was ineffective. Finally, in early October he asked his daughter Rebecca to take care of him. She writes in his diary that on the morning of October 9, she was supporting his heavy head with mine, was dabbing the sweat from his face, feeling now and then whether his heart was still beating. Suddenly something startled me, despite total silence and darkness.

Then he began to heave deeply and painfully. I thought to myself, my God, how could you let anybody suffer like this! and almost at the same time, Yes, God does let people suffer. At that moment my father ceased breathing (247).

Page 228

V. DEATH AS RADIANT SUFFERING

Ben Oyler was diagnosed in May, 1985, when he was only seven years old, as an AIDS patient. The story of his death has been told by his mother Chris (Oyler 1990). He was born a hemophiliac and been given many blood transfusions to supply the missing protein necessary for clotting. Chris estimates that Ben bad been exposed to the blood of 48,000 persons, One of whom carried the AIDS virus (31). With hemophilia the mother is the carrier, and her male children have a 50 % chance of acquiring the disease. Thus, hemophilia is X-linked recessive, and all three of the Oyler boys suffered it. Chris' brother Scott was born with hemophilia and glaucoma, which made him blind by age eight. Chris had informed Grant, her husband that she might be a carrier, when they became engaged; but he said: "It doesn't matter" (71).

During the early spring of 1985, Ben constantly fett sick to his stomach. He suffered diarrhea and vomiting but, instead of going away, these conditions persisted and brought fatigue as weIl as weight loss. Ben also acquired a rash and a white coating in the throat, which was a contagious infection. His neck swelled, and he developed a thick, deep cough. The family physician referred Ben to Stanford Children' s Hospital, where he received his AIDS diagnosis and given one year to live.

The shock of the diagnosis made Chris numb. She had to struggle with the anguished image of Ben, his increasingly sunken eyes and narrow face. In anger she cried out:

Oh Ben, why did it have to be you?

Why Ben? Why Ben? How many times I had asked myself that question. Of all the innocent victims, Why did Ben have to get AIDS? It was so unfair. What had we done to deserve this? (33, 37, 53)

Throughout the remaining months of 1985, Chris grieved for his deteriorating, skeletal being, his skinny, little legs, wide mouth and emaciated face. Occasionally, her anger would mix with denial, when wishing she could reverse time and go back to before Ben's random bur fatal transfusion (53).

His agonizing, cramping pain was diagnosed as pancreatitis, which was treated with pain medication and intubation through the nose and

Page 229

throat to drain off gastric fluids. This, in turn, was followed by a case of the shingles, which caused Chris to become Dumb again and then derealized.

In contrast, Ben did not exhibit grief-related phases of denial, anger, derealization, or numbness, bur instead he expressed symbolic language. After Jessica, a first grade classmate, had died of cancer, he talked about her with his mother:

"Will Jessica go to heaven?" "Yes."
"Will I see her again someday?"
"I'm sure you will, Ben."

There was a long silence. Ben just kept looking down and drawing in the sand.

"When will that be, Mom?"
"I don't know, Ben" (59).

Ben's question reflects innate knowledge of his own dying, as projected in the symbol of the heavenly journey. Shortly after, the family arranged for Ben's baptism and, during preparations, he asked: "Are there tacos in heaven?" (66) Still later, when discussing his condition with his maternal grandmother, he expressed his knowledge of death more directly. The grandmother told Chris that "Ben knows he's going to die and he's afraid you and Grant are going to be mad at him.. .he wanted me to call you" (85).

Along with this realization came a leave-taking ritual, when Ben decided to sell his bike. Chris recalls:

I think that was the moment I realized how Ben was changing. Things like bicycles and break dancing and school didn't matter so much to Ben any more. His mind, indeed his soul, was working toward something greater.

It was like the stories you hear about people who get an incredible surge of power and energy in an emergency. Power they never knew they had, Ben had that. Deep inside him there was a source that helped him understand and accept and not be afraid (106).

Page 230

She also explains that Ben had begun to mature shortly after the diagnosis, a fact even observed by the medical staff. Psychoanalysts might attribute Ben's enhancement of power to be infantile omnipotence, but this would be contradicted by Ben's deepening character and feeling. Ben does not regress, but he progresses.

Ironically, as Ben matures psychically, he stops growing physically and begins to lose controI. For example, shortly before Christmas Eve, 1985, he walked into a door jamb, fell, and nearly knocked himself unconscious (154). Sometime later, an emergency code sounded in the hospital. Chris ran down the corridor into the room and saw "Ben's little body jerking up and down on the bed, over and over and over again. Never, never, had I seen a body go through such violent movement" (163). Ben had suffered a grand mal epileptic seizure, after which he said with "barely a whisper:"

"Mom, I want to go home."

Ben had to say it twice before I realized what he was saying. He didn't mean Carmel. He meant really going home. We had to understand Ben dying was like going home. And now he was ready (163-164).

Informed by the doctors that seizures usually occur in pairs, Ben's parents waited for another attack. Meanwhile, they signed papers requesting no extraordinary, life-support treatment for Ben. As expected, Ben had his second grand mal seizure, and it came at 11:00 p.m. on a spring night of 1986.

Grant and I held Ben down and I could feel the convulsions wrack Ben's body over and over and over again.

For me, it was more terrifying than the first. Not because the seizure was worse; it was clearly milder. But because this time Ben was awake when it started. This time he would remember it happening (190).

Chris had asked the doctors for a neurological explanation of Ben's fall and his two grand mal seizures, but she received none. As discussed in chapter one, neurology cannot fully explain epilepsy, particularly its psychiatric aspects and its relation to death. Only the psychiatric view, as maintained by Szondi, could answer Chris' question. Hence, two

Page 231

epileptic convulsions indicate accelerated affect in defense against Ben's impending death as weIl as a search for meaning in death, specifically, acceptance through the symbol of the heavenly journey. Ben's fall would derive from a weakened bodily condition and from an unconscious disposition associated with the paroxysmal-epileptiform situation.

After the second seizure, the doctors increased Ben's pain medication. With Ben's slightly slurred speech, Chris feared that he might not be able to communicate clearly.

"am afraid it'll hurt, Mom," he said.

"We'll get you some different medicine, Ben." "I mean when I die, Mom."

I looked at Ben and my heart stood still. There was total acceptance written on his face. No panic. No fear. None of the denial and confusion I felt in my own heart. Just something that said: I knew this was going to happen and I can handle it, am ready, but I just need a little help (194).

With each epileptic convulsion, Ben's father Grant suffered two attacks himself. He said: "I just felt this pain go down my arm, and couldn't breathe, and I almost fell over" (184). The doctors diagnosed these as "stress attacks," brought on by the pressure of work, mounting medical bills, family tension, and personal grief. In contrast, I interpret the two episodes as paroxysmal-hysteriform anxiety attacks, caused by his decision to remain psychically detached from Ben's terminal illness. The term stress comes from physics; and it refers to the impact of physical forces upon systems like buildings or bridges. It is unsuited to human beings, who struggle with feelings and crises. The notion of anxiety fits Grant's dilemma, more precisely, because he felt helpless and vulnerable, unable to stay in controI. Anxiety expresses the shock of helplessness in the face of death.

It is necessary to interpret his attacks as anxiety-induced in order to understand what happened next. Grant clenched his fist and smashed one of his son's cribs. Smashing the crib is hardly reducible to stress. Instead it is a violent discharge of

anger or the Cain tendency in defense against the dread of death. He had been seized by the same pent-up emotion that had unconsciously driven Ben's epileptic seizures. When viewed together, both father and son had released a paroxysmal­ epileptiform defense against death.

Page 232

With Grant's destruction of the crib, Chris ……. her husband's failure to cope; so she withdraws from him. Having been closer to Ben, Chris feels that her own anxiety had diminished, particularly after one poignant experience:
pain he was releasing;" but then her fear vanished, as she was enveloped in a radiant afterimage:

Sometimes we' d go to the beach to watch the waves crash into the shore, or to spot the seals gallivanting about the rocks. We' would sit there on the sand and recall special times we had in the past.

There was a peaceful quality about our times together. The noise was gone now. That noise in my ears that sounded like the hum of a million fluorescent lights.

That hum was the sound of fear. And when I stopped being afraid, it went away. And in its place was a quiet grief. Sad but peaceful (212.;213).

The room was full of Ben. He was all around us, everywhere. Warm and loving. He was lingering there for a moment to say good-bye. To tell us not to worry, that there wasn't anything to be afraid of, and never was (229-230).

VI. JOY AND RADIANT BEING

Chris has reached a profound sorrow beyond anxiety, because she had surrendered to Ben's dying process. Her sorrow prepared the way for joy, of which the Psalms, Luther, and Tillich have spoken. Chris' depth of feeling was achieved at the ocean, where identification with the undulating rhythm of the waves renewed her. Consciously, going to the ocean signified her need for peace, but unconsciously and archetypally it symbolized descent to the primal origin of life. Meanwhile, Ben approaches death with enhanced controI. He requests that his doctors remove his nasogastric tube, and he signs his will, formally bequeathing his bicyele to his brother Beau. As death grew closer, Grant had to leave Ben's bed. Chris laments: "He could not bear to sit by our son' s death-bed. And I could not bear to leave" (225).

Shortly before Ben's death, his brother Abel exclaimed: "There's a little ghost flying around in my room." His grandmother said it was just a bad dream, but Abel insisted: "It was Ben. He came in here and told me that he won't have to butt anymore 'cause he's got only one more day here. He told me he loved me and he'd miss me a lot" (228­229). .

Early the next morning, as Grant sat beside her, Chris said to her dying son: "Ben, do you see a light? A warm and comforting light? Follow it. It's there for you.... " Ben felt limp, and she reached for his hand, as though he were falling. She "felt the immense power of the ……(lost words ed.)

Ben Oyler's terminal illness presents a compelling challenge to a theology of death. The suffering of an innocent child subverts the natural order of the world. The child dies before the parents. The child does not grow up, marry, produce children, and transmit genes to the next generation. The child barely lives long enough to deepen psychic antitheses and, thus, to bridge them. The death of a child poses a potential obstacle to the primary task of grief work, namely, an actual acceptance of the loss. Acceptance is difficult because the child is an extension of the parent. Consequently, the death of a child also means the death of a parent. Hence, Chris Oyler expresses considerable astonishment, when, in the epilogue of her book, she describes her only bereavement dream:

“He was taller than he used to be, grown up, as if he had never been sick. He stood out in the middle of a crowd and I went to him. But, as I opened my arms for his embrace, he stepped back. "Don't you know, Mom?" he whispered. "You can't touch me here" (236).

The dream has the characteristic of a normal bereavement dream, signifying the completion of grief work. The dream also reveals the cessation of contact-bonding between mother and son and the attainment of the son's primal form in death. His mandate  for her is that she must withdraw her projections from him.

Psychoanalytically, this dream narrates a transition from the biological mother to mother earth, who destroys the mate, since she loves him the most. In an essay on the three fates of Greek mythology Freud argues that the three goddesses of fate represent the three women in the destiny of the mate: the mother who bears him, the woman who

Page 234

marries him, and the mother earth, the goddess of death (1958, S.E., XII) . Because mother earth takes the man in death, he must endure dying as a cruel necessity of nature.

Jung would also acknowledge the brutality of death but assign it to the ego. The death of the ego is compensated by the unification of the self in the eternal, or unconscious. One attains a primal form in death, which is manifest as joy. Thus, death has been portrayed traditionally as a wedding, Jung contends. "On Greek sarcophagi the joyous element was represented by dancing girls, on Etruscan tombs by banquets. When the pious Cabbalist Rabbi Simon ben Jochai came to die, his friends said that he was celebrating his wedding" (Jung 1961, 314-315).

While the judgments of Freud and Jung are realistic and meaningful, neither fits the suffering death of an eight year old boy. Freud's mythic appeal to mother earth as the loving goddess of death trivializes Chris Oyler's profound and anguished suffering. Jung's image of the wedding expresses the union of psychic antitheses but presumes the entire life cycle to remain intact, conditions obviously unfitting for the limited span of a prepubescent boy.

A more accurate view emerges, when considering that the exact cause of Ben's death was two-fold: hereditary hemophilia which created the need for blood transfusions and the infection by tainted blood from one out of 48,000 donors. The hereditary cause involves a 50% probability ratio, and the infection seems to be a virtual matter of chance. Both factors comprise a contingency, but once the virus has been acquired, the disease process unfolds as an irreversible necessity. Ben Oyler's situation entails a primary contingency and a derivative necessity. The unfolding of a pattern of necessity from a contingent cause constitutes the nature of destiny (Hughes 1992, 165).

Of the depth psychologists studied in this book only Szondi assigns priority to the order of destiny. Destiny expresses the basic human condition, of which terminal illness plays an integral role. Concentrating on destiny does not sanction a determinism or deny freedom. In a lecture delivered in 1954 and published posthumously, Szondi argues that humankind does not come into the world by chance but for responsibility (1954/1989, 55). The human task is to achieve participation in a transcendent, spiritual realm, to which one surrenders one's entire being joyously. The spiritual surrender is a withdrawal of the will, a suspension of the drive to dominate the physical world, wherein the spatio-temporal forms of life mask the anxiety of death.

Metaphysically, the order of destiny presupposes a primal freedom. As with Boehme and Berdyaev, freedom precedes life and being and manifests a dynamic nonbeing. Being takes shape in the three dimensional order of space, time, and causality, the order through which the will achieves material domination as a defense against death. The derivative order of being also projects the basic antitheses of good and evil, consciousness and unconsciousness, sickness and health and so forth. Theologically, primal freedom is expressed in the biblical Creation Narrative, when the divine spirit sweeps across the waters of chaos and produces light from darkness (Gen.1:1-4). Because of the primacy of watery chaos, which is connected to Sheol, darkness has priority in the doctrine of God. The divine darkness precludes arguments as to the positive and rational attributes of God. The theology of death belongs to the tradition of the negative (apophatic) theology.

It follows theologically that God does not inflict terminal illness; it just happens. With hereditary causes, the ancestors "send" diseases upon their descendants, not so much as punishment but as a means of preservation. Modern biology teaches that genes seek to reproduce themselves by creating multiple copies and unconscious processes of reciprocal attraction among their bearers. This is as true for the genes of hemophilia as for those of epilepsy. Although not yet confirmed, the same genotropic tendency may belong to the AIDS virus. Yet whether medical causes be fully established or not, the ultimate causality lies in the freedom of being. This fundamental postulate also accords with the conclusion of Frederic Myers, who found no evidence for a determinism underlying death-related psychic events.

Positing the metaphysical primacy of freedom and nonbeing means that death can be neither conquered nor integrated. This perspective deviates from that of Tillich, who struggled against the dread of death, because his inclination was to incorporate nonbeing into being, death into life. His personal view reflected his theological judgment that God is Being-itself and, therefore, that being precedes nonbeing. Tillich maintained the theological ontology of St. Augustine, even as he interpreted the vision of Luther with great intellectual power. While Augustinian ontology retains integrity, it is difficult to reconcile it clinically with degenerative diseases. The latter threaten chronic, unmanageable pain, leading to disintegration and despair. Peter Noll did not integrate nonbeing into being; for his severe and debilitating pain shattered the spatio-temporal and causal forms of his existence.

Page 236

Chronic pain has the power to undermine the will, erode mastery, and inflict a total helplessness in the face of the savage, irrational forces of despair. Chronic pain discloses the darkness of the primal abyss and the absent God. Though nearly broken by pain, Noll affirmed the principle of freedom as ultimate and surrendered to the darkness in praise. The capacity to praise means that one has achieved radiant being, participation in fundamental reality, as illuminated forever by the crucifixion afterimage.

REFERENCES

I. SOURCES IN BIBLICAL STUDIES

Anderson, Gary. 1991. A Time To Mourn, A Time To Dance.

University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Arndt, William and Gingrich, F.W. 1979. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Astour, Micheal. 1980. "The Nether World and its Denizens at Ugarit." Death in Mesopotamia, ed. B. Alster. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 227-238.

Bottero, Jean. 1980. "La Mythologie de la Morten Mesopotamie

Ancienne." Death   in Mesopotamia, ed.  B. Alster.

Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 25-52.

Finkel, Irving. 1983-1984. "Necromancy in Ancient Mesopotomia."

Archiv för Orientforschung XXIX, 1-17.

Gardner, John and Maier, John, trans. 1984. Gilgamesh. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Gray, John. 1961. "Texts From Ras Shamra." Documents from Old Testament Times, ed. D.W. Thomas. New York: Harper & Brothers, 116-133.

Grayston, Kenneth. 1952. "The Darkness of the Cosmic Sea."

Theology LV, 122-127.

Healey, J.F. 1980. "The Son Deity and The Underworld." Death in Mesopotamia, ed. B. Alster. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag 239-242.

Jacob, Edmond. 1962. "Death." Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 802-804.

Kee, Howard, Young, Franklin, and Froewich, Karlfried. 1973.

Understanding the New Testament.     3rd. ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Kugel, James. 1986. "Topics in the History the Spirituality of the Psalms."Jewish Spirituality, ed.A. Green.    NewYork: Crossroad, 113-144.

Lambert, W.G. ed. 1960. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Page 238

Muffs, Yochanan. 1975. "Joy and Love as Metaphorical Expressions of Willingness and Spontaneity." Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults, ed. J. Neusner. Vol. III. Leiden: E J. Brill, 1-36.

Muller, Hans-Peter, 1978. "Gilgameschs Trauergesang Ull Enkidu und die Gattung der Totenklage." Zeitschrift fiir Assyiologie 68 (2), 233-250.

Pedersen, Johs. 1926. Israel: Its Life and Culture. Vol I. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege.

Perrin, Norman. 1977. The Resurrection According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

Rengstorf, KH. 1953. Die Anfänge der Auseinandersetzung zwischen Christusglaube und Asklepiosfrömmigkeit. Munster: Aschendorff.

Silberman, Lou. 1969. "Death in the Hebrew Bible and Apocalyptic Literature." Perspectives on Death, ed. _. Mills. Nashville: Abingdon Press.

Tigay, Jeffrey. 1982. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Tromp, Nicholas. 1969. Primitive Conceptions of Death and the Nether World in the Old Testament. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute.

Weber,Hans-Reudi. 1979. The Cross, trans. E. Jessett. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman's Publishing Ca.

II. SOURCES IN BIOLOGY

Bereczkei, Tamas. 1992. "Biological Evolution, Genotropism, Psychopathology." Szondiana 12(2), 32-52.

Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1970. Genetics of the Evolutionary

Process. New York: Columbia University Press.

Harris, Ann and Super, Maurice. 1987. Cystic Fibrosis. New York: Oxford University Press.

Milunsky, Aubrey. 1989. Choices, Not Chance. Boston: Little, Brown. Smith, J. Maynard. 1964. "Group Selection and Kin Seleetion."

Nature 201 (March 14), 1145-1147./ 239

III. SOURCES IN DEATH STUDIES

Barrett, William. 1926/1986. Death-Bed Visions. Northamptonshire:
The Aquarian Press.

Booth, Gotthard. 1979. "Psychobiological Aspects of 'Spontaneous'

Regression of Cancer." Stress and Survival, ed. C. Garfield. St. Louis: C. V. Mosby. Brooks, Kakie. 1991. "Near-death Experiences." The Observer      Magazine. (June 13/ June 19), 3,22.

Cooke, Mary. 1976. "Death With Dignity-Hawaiian Style." Honolulu      Advertiser (June 24). See. C, 1-2.

Coolidge, Frederick and Fish, Cynthia. 1983-1984. "Dreams of the Dying." Omega 14(1), 1-7.

Dreifuss-Kattan, Esther.1990. Cancer Stories. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Gabbard, Glen and Twemlow, Stuart. 1984. With The Eyes of the Mind. New York: Praeger.

Garfield, Charles. 1979. "The Dying Patient's Cancern with 'Life After Death. ", Between Life & Death, ed. R. Kastenbaum. New York: Springer.

Greyson, Bruce. 1985. "A Typology of Near-Death Experiences." American Journal of Psychiatry 142(8), 967-969.

Gorer, Geoffrey. 1973. "Death, Grief, and Mourning in Britain." The Child and His Family, ed. E. J. Anthony and C. Koupenik.

New York: John Wiley.

Heim, Albert. 1892/1972. "The Experienee of Dying from Falls," trans. R. Noyes and R. Kletti. Omega 3(1), 45-52.

Holck, Frederick. 1978-1979. "Life Revisited: Parallels in Death Experiences." Omega 9(1), 1-11.

Hoyt, Michael. 1980-1981. "Clinical Notes Regarding the Experience of 'Presences' in Mourning." Omega 11(2), 105-111.

Hufford, David. 1982. The Terror that Comes in the Night.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Hughes, Richard. 1990. "My Father's Death." Lycoming Quarterly      6(2), 13-14, 20.

Irwin, Harvey and Bramwell, Barbara. 1988. "The Devil in Heaven." Journal of Near-Death Studies 7(1), 38-43.

Kastenbaum, Robert. 1991. Death, Society, and Human Experience. 4th. ed. New York: Macmillan.

Page 240

Kramer, Kenneth. 1993. Death Dreams. New York: Paulist Press. Kiibler-Ross, Elisabeth. 1969. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan.

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. 1983. On Children and Death. New York: Macmillan. Kiibler-Ross, Elisabeth. 1987. AIDS. New York: Macmillan. Lindemann, Erich. 1944. "Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief." American Journal of Psychiatry CI, 141-149.

Lindemann, Erich. 1976. "Grief and Grief Management." The Journal of Pastoral Care (3), 198-207.

Lindemann, Erich. 1980. "Reactions To One's Own Fatal Illness." Death: Current Perspectives, ed. E. Shneidman. 2nd. ed.

Palo Alto: Mayfield, 311-319. Lockhart,Russell. 1977. "Cancer in Myth and Dream." Spring, 1-26.

MacMillan, RL. and Brown, KW.G. 1982.     "Cardiac Arrest

Remembered. " A Connection of Near-Death Research Readings ed. C. Lundahl. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. Mogenson, Greg. 1992. Greeting the Angels. Amityville, NY: Baywood.

Moody, Raymond, A., Jr. 1975.  Life After Life. Atlanta: Mockingbird Books.

Moody, Raymond, A., Jr. 1988. The Light Beyond. New York: Bantam Books.

Morse, Melvin with Perry, Paul. 1990. Closer to the Light. New York: Villard Books.

Morse, Melvin with Perry, Paul. 1992. Transfonned by the Light.

New York: Villard Books.

Myers, Frederic, W.H. 1903/1954. Hmnan Personalityand its

Survival of Bodily Death. 2 vols. New York: Longman, Green.

Myers, Frederic, W.H. 1893/1961. Fragments of Inner Life.

London: The Society for Psychical Research.

Noll, Peter. 1990. In the Face of Death, trans. H. Noll. New York: Penguin Books.

Norton, Janice. 1963. "Treatment of a Dying Patient." The Psychoanalytic Study of a Child XVIII. New York: International Universities Press, 541-560.

Noyes, Russell, Jr. 1972. "The Experience of Dying." Psychiatry 35(2), 174-184./

Page 241

Noyes, Russell, Jr. 1979. "Near-Death Experiences: Their

Interpretation and Significance." Between Life & Death, 00. R. Kastenbaum. New York: Springer. Noyes, Russell, Jr. and Kletti, Roy. 1982. "Depersonalization in the Face of Life- Threatening Danger." A Conection of Near-Death

Research Readings, ed. C. Lundahl. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

Osis, Karlis and Haraldsson, Erlendur. 1977. At the Hour of Death. New York: Avon Books.

Owens, J.E., Cook, E.W., Stevenson, I. 1990. "Features of 'Near­Death Experience' in Relation to Whether or not Patients were Near Death." The Lancet 336 (Nov. 10), 1175-1177.

Oyler, Chris. 1990. Go Toward the Light. New York: New American Library.

Pfister, Oskar. 1930/1981. "Shock Thoughts and Fantasies in Extreme Mortal Danger," trans. R. Kletti and R. Noyes, Jr. Essence 5(1), 5-20.

Rees, Dewi. 1975. "The Bereaved and their Hallucinations."

Bereavement, ed. B. Schoenberg. New York: Columbia University Press, 66-71.

Ring, Kenneth. 1980. Life at Death. New York: Coward, McCann,& Geoghegan.

Ring, Kenneth. 1984. Heading Toward Omega. New York: William      Morrow.

Sabom, Michael. 1982. Reconnections of Death. New York: Harper & Row. Sato, Koji. 1964. "Death of Zen Masters." Psychologia 7, 143-147. Serdahely, William. 1989-1990. "A Pediatric Near-Death Experience."      Omega 20(1), 55-62.

Serdahely, William. 1990. "Letter to the Editor." Omega 21(3),249./­

Sontag, Susan. 1978. Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.von Franz, Marie-Louise. 1987. On Dreams and Death, trans. E.

Kennedy and V. Brooks. Boston: Shambhala.

Weisman,Avery. 1974. The Realization of Death. New York: Jason Aronson.

Weisman, Avery and Hackett, T. 1961. "Predilection to Death."

Psychosomatic Medicine XXIII (3), 232-256.

Page 242

Wheelwright, Jane. 1981. The Death of a Woman. New York: St.Martin's Press.

Zaleski, Carol. 1987. Otherworld Journeys. New York: Oxford University Press.

IV. SOURCES IN THE STORY OF IDEAS

Aries, Philippe. 1981. The Hour of Our Death, trans. H. Weaver.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Berry, Thomas. 1981. "Dostoevsky and Spiritualism." Dostoevsky Studies 2, 43-49.

Boase, T.S.R. 1972. Death in the Middle Ages. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Burke, Edmund. 1969. "Dostoevsky's Pulmonary Disease."

Minnesota Medicine (April), 685-687.

Cohen, Kathleen. 1973. Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dodds, E.R. 1971. "Supernormal Phenomena in Classical Antiquity." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. 55. Pt. 203, 189-237.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1936. The Possessed, trans. C. Garnett. New York: The Modern Library.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 1958. The Idiot, trans. C. Garnett. New York: Bantam Books.

Frank, Joseph. 1983. Dostoevsky, The Years of Ordeal1850-1859. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Frank, Joseph and Goldstein, David, eds. 1987. Selected Letters of Fyodor Dostoevsky, trans. A. MacAndrew. New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press.

Helgeland, John. 1984-1985. "The Symbolism of Death in the Later Middle Ages." Omega 15(2), 145-160. Joly, Robert, ed., trans. 1967. Hippocrate, Du Regime. Paris: Bude. Livy. From the Founding of the City, trans. B. Foster. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Rice, James. 1985. Dostoevsky and the Healing Art. Ann Arbor: Ardis.

Rudolf, Rainer. 1957. Ars Moriendi. Von Der Kunst Des Heilsamen Lebens und Sterbens. Köln: Böhlau Verlag.

Page 243

Wagner - Simon, T. and Haefely - Grauen, I. "Die Familie Dostojewskij."Szondiana 5(1), 5-41. 1985.

V. SOURCES IN THE STORY OF RELIGIONS

Benz, Ernst. 1968. Dreams, Hallucinations, Visions, trans. T.

Spiers. New York: The Swedenborg Foundation.

Bleeker, C.J. 1963. "Die Religiöse Bedeutung Der Briicke." The Sacred Bridge. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Boyce, Mary. 1989. A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism.

Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Boyce, Mary. ed., trans. 1990. Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Corbin, Henry. 1977. Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, trans. N.      Pearson. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Dinzelbacher, P. 1978. "Die Visionen des Mittelalters." Zeitschrift      för Religions-und Geistesgeschichte (2), 116-128.

Earhart, H. Byron, ed. 1974. "The Ancient Mythology." Religion in the Japanese Experience: Sources and Interpretations.

Encino, CA: Dickenson Publishing Ca.

Flood, Josephine. 1988. Archeology of the Dreamtime. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Gnoli, Gherardo. 1989. "Iranian Religions." Religions of Antiquity, ed. R. Seltzer. New York: Macmillan.

Habicht, Christian. 1969. Die Inschriften des Asklepieions. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Button, Ronald. 1991. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles. Oxford: Basil Blackweil.

Kamakau, Samuel. 1964. The People of Old, trans. M. Pukui, ed. D. Burreie. Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press.

Klimkeit, Hans-Joachim. 1980.  "Das Kreuzessymbol in der Zentralasiatischen Religionsbegegnung." Leben und Tod in den Religionen, ed. G. Stephenson. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 61-80.

Knight, Frank, A.G. 1953. "Bridge." Encyclopedia of Religion and      Ethics I, 848-857.

Lauf, Detlef. 1980. "Im Zeichen Des Grossen Ubergangs." Leben und Tod in den Religionen, ed. G. Stephenson. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 81-100.

Page 244

Luck, Georg, ed., trans. 1985. Arcana Mundi. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Marika, Wandjuk. 1980. "Foreword." Australian Dreaming, ed. J.

Isaacs. Sydney: Landsdowne Press.

Mole, M. 1960. "Daena. Le Pont Cinvat et L'initiation dans le Mazdeisme." Revue de L'Histoire des Religions 157,155-185.

Patch, Howard. 1980. The Other World. New York: Octagon Books.

Peebles, Rose. 1923. "The Dry Tree: Symbol of Death." Vassar Mediaeval Studies, ed. C. Fiske. New Haven: Yale University Press, 59-79. Pukui, Mary. 1972. Nana I Ke Kumu. Honolulu: Hui Hanai. Radhakrishnan, S. trans. 1953. The Principal Upanishads. New York: Harper & Row.

Radin, Paul. 1970. The Winnebago Tribe. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Smith, Jane and Haddad, Yvonne. 1981. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection. Albany: SUNY Press.

Vogel, C. 1964. "Le Pelerinage Penitentiel," Revue des Sciences Religieuses 38, 113-153.

VI. SOURCES IN PHILOSOPHY

Berdyaev, Nicholas. 1952. The Beginning and the End, trans. R. M. French. New York: Harper & Row.

Berdyaev, Nicholas. 1957. Dostoevsky, trans. D. Attwater. New York: Meridian Books.

Boehme, Jacob. 1958. Six Theosophic Points, trans. J. Earle. Ann      Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Bohm, David. 1983. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Ark.

Borkenau, Franz. 1981. End and Beginning, trans. R. Lowenthal.

New York: Columbia University Press.

Koyre, Alexandre. 1968. La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme. New York: Burt Franklin.

Langer, Susanne. 1967. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. Vol.

I. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Langer, Susanne. 1972. Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling. Vol.

II. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Page 245

VII. SOURCES IN PSYCHIATRY

Andermann, Eva. 1980. "Multifactorial Inheritance in the Epilepsies." Advances in Epileptology, eds. R. Canger, F. Angeleri, and J. Penry. New York: Raven Press.

Bear, David, Freeman, Roy, and Greenberg, Mark. 1984. "Behavioral Alterations in Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. " Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy, ed. D. Blumer. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.

Blumer, Dietrich. 1975. "Psychiatric Considerations in Pain." The Brain II, ed. R. Rothman and F. Simeone. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.

Blumer, Dietrich. 1984. "The Psychiatric Dimensions of Epilepsy."

Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy, ed. D. Blumer. Washington, D. C. : American Psychiatric Press.

Blumer, Dietrich and Benson, D. Frank. 1982."Psychiatric

Manifestations of Epilepsy." Psychiatric Aspects of Neurologic Disease II, ed. D. F. Benson and D. Blumer. New York: Grune & Stratton.

Blumer, Dietrich, Heilbronn, Mary, and Himmelhoch, Jonathan. 1988. "Indications for Carbamazepine in Mental Illness. " Comprehensive Psychiatry 29(2), 108-122.

Cirignotta, F., Todesco, C. V., and Lugaresi, E. 1980. "Temporal Lobe Epilepsy with Ecstatic Seizures (So-Called Dostoevsky Epilepsy)." Epilepsia 21, 705-710.

Gastaut, Henri and Collomb, Henri. 1954. "Etude du Comportement Sexuel chez Les Epileptiques Psychomoteurs." Annales Medico­Psychologiques 112. 2(5), 657-696.

Hedri, A. 1963. "Unfall und Schicksal." Mensch, Schicksal, und Tod, ed. U. Studer-Salzmann. Bern: Hans Huber.

Himmelhoch, Jonathan. 1984. "Major Mood Disorders Related to Epileptic Changes." Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy, ed. D.

Blumer. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.

Hobson, J. Allan. 1988. The Dreaming Brain. New York: Basic Books.

Jackson, J. Hughlings. 1931. Selected Writings, ed. J. Taylor. Vol. I. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Page 246

Jung, Carl. 1960. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Conected Works, trans. R. F. C. Hull. New York: Pantheon Books.

Jung, Carl. 1961. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. R. and C. Winston. New York: Random House. .

Jung, Carl. 1925/1989.  Analytical Psychology, ed. W. McGuire.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jung, Carl. 1973. Letters. Vol. I: 1906-1950, trans. R. F. C. Hull.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jung, Carl. 1975. Letters. Vol. II: 1951-1961, trans. R. F. C. Hull.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lennox, William. 1951. "The Heredity of Epilepsy as Told by

Relatives and Twins." Journal of the American Medical

Association 146(6), 529-536.

Niedermeyer, Ernst. 1984. "Neurologic Aspects of the Epilepsies."

Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy, ed. J? Blumer. Washington,

D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.

Riese, Walther. 1958. "The Disease of Vincent van Gogh." Ciba

Symposium 6(5), 198-205.

Roth, Martin and Harper, Max. 1962. "Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and the Phobic Anxiety-Depersonalization Syndrome. Part II."

Comprehensive Psychiatry 3(4), 215-225.

Slater Eliot and Beard, A.W. 1963. "The Schizophrenia-like Psychoses of Epilepsy." The British Journal of Psychiatry, 109, 95-150.

Szondi,Leopold.     1936.     "Der     Neurotiker im      Lichte      der

psychoanalytischen, neuro-endokrinen und erbpathologischen Forschungen. " Schweizer Archiv för Neurologie und Psychiatries 37(2), 313-334.

Szondi, Leopold. 1937. "Contributions to 'Fate Analysis,' An Attempt at a Theory of Choice in Love." Acta Psychologica 3(1), 1-80.

Szondi, Leopold. 1939. "Heilpädagogik in der Prophylaxe der Nerven­ und Geisteskrankeiten." Sonderdruck aus dem Bericht über den I. Internationalen Kongress för Heilpädagogik, 24-61.

Szondi, Leopold.  1949. "Revision der Frage der 'erblichen

Belastung. ", II. Sonderfragen der Medizin, 1-17. Szondi, Leopold. 1956. Ich-Analyse. Bern: Hans Ruber.

Szondi, Leopold.1960. Lehrbuch  derExperimentellen Triebdiagnostik. Bern: Hans Huber.

Page 247

Szondi, Leopold. 1963. Schicksalsanalytische Therapie. Bern: Hans Ruber.

Szondi, Leopold. 1969. Kain, Gestalten des Bösen. Bern: Hans Huber.

Szondi, Leopold. 1972. Introduction a L' Analyse du Destin, trans. C. Van Reeth. Louvain: Editions Nauwelaerts.

Szondi, Leopold. 1973. Moses, Antwort auf Kain. Bern: Hans Huber.

Szondi, Leopold. 1977. Triebpathologie. Zweite Auflage. Bern: Hans Huber. Szondi, Leopold. 1980. Die Triebentmischten. Bern: Hans Huber. Szondi, Leopold. 1987. Schicksalsanalyse. Vierte Auflage. Bern: Hans Huber.

Szondi, Leopold. 1954/1989. "Glaube als Schicksal." Szondiana 9(2),      53-56.

Szondi, Leopold. 1955/1992. "Die Sprachen des Unbewussten."

Szondiana 12(2), 8-31.

Taylor, David and Marsh, Susan. 1980. "Hughlings Jackson's Dr. Z."

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 43, 758­767.

Temkin, Owsei.  1971. The Falling Sickness. 2nd.ed.rev. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.

Temkin, Owsei and Temkin, C. Lillian. 1968. "Subjective Experiences in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: An Anonymous Report of 1825." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 42, 566-568.

Walker, A. Earl and Blumer, Dietrich. 1984. "Behavioral Effects of Temporal Lobectomy for Temporal Lobe Epilepsy." Psychiatric Aspects of Epilepsy, ed. D. Blumer. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press.

Vogel, Paul. 1935. "Joh. Purkinjes Auffassung der Epilepsie." Nervenarzt 8, 228-232.

VIII. SOURCES IN PSYCHOLOGY

Bürgi-Meyer, Karl. 1987. "Das familiäre Unbewusste nach Leopold Szondi im Lichte Transpersonaler Psychologie."Szondiana 7(2), 5-24.

Dajer, Tony. 1992. "Divided Selves." Discover (Sept.), 38-44, 69.

Page 248

Ferenczi, Sandor. 1921. "Die Symbolik der Briicke." Internationale      Zeitschrift för Psychoanalyse 7, 211-213.

Ferenczi, Sandor. 1922. "Die Brückensymbolik und die Don Juan­ Legende." Internationale Zeitschrift för Psychoanalyse 3, 77, 78.

Freud, Sigmund. 1953. The Interpretation of Dreams. Standard Edition. Vol. IV. _

Freud, Sigmund. 1957. "The Unconscious." Standard Edition. Vol.      XIV, 166-195.

Freud, Sigmund. 1957a. "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death." Standard Edition. Vol. XIV, 279-297.

Freud, Sigmund.  1958.  "A Note on the Unconscious   in Psychoanalysis." Standard Edition. Vol. XII, 260-264.

Freud, Sigmund. 1959. "Mourning and Melancholia." Conected

Papers, trans. J. Riviere. Vol. IV. New York: Basic Books.

Freud, Sigmund. 1958. "The Theme of the Three Caskets." Standard      Edition. Vol. XII, 292-301.

Hughes, Richard. 1992. Return of the Ancestor. New York: Peter Lang.

Jaff'e, Aniela. 1963. Apparitions and Precognition. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books.

MacDonald, W. Scott and Oden, Chester.     1977. "Aumakua: Behavioral Direction Visions in Hawaiians." Journal of Abmni Psychology 86(2), 189-194. Murphy, Gardner and Ballou, Robert, eds. 1960. William James on

Psychical Research. New York: Viking.

Persinger, Michael. 1987. Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. New York: Praeger.

Reimbold, Ernst. 1972. "Die Briicke als Symbol." Symbol on I, 5578.

Thompson, C. 1982. "Anwesenheit: Psychopathology and Clinical Associations." British Journal of Psychiatry 141, 628-630.

Ullman, Montague and Krippner, Stanley. 1973. Dream Telepathy. New York: Macmillan.

Wilder, Thornton. 1928. The Bridge of San Louis Rey. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

Witztum, Eliezer, Greenberg, David and Buchbinder, Jacob. 1990. "A      Very Narrow Bridge." Psychotherapy 27(1) (Spring), 124-131.

Page 249

IX. SOURCES IN THEOLOGY

Augustine, Saint. The City of God, trans. P. Levine. The Loeb Classical Library.

Gatch, Milton, McC. 1969. "Sorne Theological Reflections on Death from the Early Church Through the Reformation." Perspectives on  Death, ed. L. Mills. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 99-136.

Gregory the Great, Saint. 1959. Dialogues, trans. O. Zimmerman. New York: Fathers of the Church.

Hughes, Richard. 1982. "Bereavement and Pareschatology."

Encounter 43(4), 361-375.

"Ignatius to the Ephesians." The Apostolic Fathers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

"Ignatius to the Romans." The Apostolic Fathers. Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1970.

Kerr, Hugh. 1943. A Compend of Luther's Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster.

Le Goff, Jacques. 1984. The Birth of Purgatory, trans. A. Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Luther, Martin. Lectures on Genesis. Luther's Works. Vols. 5, 6. Luther, Martin. Lectures on Romans. Luther's Works. Vol. 25. Luther, Martin. "A Sermon on Preparing to Die, 1519." Luther's Works. Vol. 42.

Meinhold, Peter. 1980. "Leben und Tod im Urteil des Christentums."

Leben und Tod in den Religionen, ed. G. Stephenson.

Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 144-164.

Miller, Arlene. 1970. "The Theologies of Luther and Boehme in the Light of Their Genesis Commentaries." Harvard Theological Review 63, 261-303.

Miller-McLemore, Bonnie. 1988. Death, Sin, and the Mortal Life.

Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Oberman, Heiko. 1992. Luther, trans. E. Walliser-Schwarzbart. New York: Image Books.

Pauck, Wilhelm and Pauck, Marion. 1976. Paul Tillich. Vol. I: Life. New York: Harper & Row.

Petersen, Joan. 1984. The Dialogues of Gregory the Great in Their Late Antique Cultural Background. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.   

Page 250

Rosenwein, Barbara. 1971. "Feudal War and Monastic Peace." Viator 2, 129-157.

Steidle, Basilius. 1971. "Die Kosmische Vision des Gottesmannes Benedikt (1)." Erbe und Auftrag 47, 187-192, 298-315, 409­414.

Tauler, Johannes. Vom Gottförmigen Menschen, ed. F. Noerr.

Stuttgart: Redarn, 1961.

Tillich, Hannah. 1973. From Time to Time. New York: Stein and Day.

Tillich, Paul. 1948. The Shaking of the Foundations. New York:

Charles Scribner's Sons.

Tillich, Paul. 1955. The New Being. New York: Charles Scribner's      Sons.

Tillich, Paul. 1969. "That They May Have Life." Union Seminary Quarterly Review XX(I), 3-8.

INDEX

AIDS 57, 228, 235, 240

Apparition 90, 91, 102, 179

Archetype 71, 75, 76, 79-81, 88, 91, 97, 98, 118, 127, 143, 148, 150, 158, 159, 174, 217

Barrett, Williarn 239

Boehme, Jacob 244

Cain tendency 36, 231

Cancer 41, 55-59, 69, 93, 94, 96, 98, 99, 101, 105, 126, 225,226,227,229,239,240

Celtic cross 77, 78, 198

Chinvat Bridge 83-88, 116, 159, 204

Clairvoyance 7-9, 39,40, 61, 71, 102, 103, 149, 192, 201

Death-feigning reflex 35, 51, 136

Depersonalization 136-139, 152, 241, 246

Divination 175, 192, 194, 202, 212, 215

DostoevsIcy, Fyodor 242

Dr. Z. 19, 21, 22, 25, 27, 247

Dream time 80, 243

Epilepsy 5, 6, 8, 10, 16, 17, 19-23, 25-30, 33-39, 41-43, 46, 47, 49-52, 54, 56, 57, 59-64, 76, 93, 99, 104, 108, 117, 136, 138, 151-154, 169, 173, 193, 221, 231, 235, 245, 246, 247

Familial unconscious 45, 51-55, 58, 59, 100, 108, 129, 143, 144, 148, 149, 159, 162, 205 Freud, Sigmund 248

Genotropism 59, 60, 62, 106, 107, 149, 238

Gregory the Great 200,203,205,211,216,217,249 Grief work 109-116, 118, 119, 123, 125, 127-129, 140, 216, 233

Hauntings 9, 113, 126, 171

Heim, Albert 239

Hypnagogic images 7

Hypnopompic images 7

Ignatius of Antioch 190

Jung, Carl 246

Kastenbaum, Robert 239

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth 240_252

Langer, Susanne 244

Lindemann, Erich 240

Luther, Martin 249

Memento Mori 206, 213

NDE 141-146, 148, 149, 151-155, 157-159

Nightterror 123-125,176

Noll, Peter 240

Otherworld journey 90, 158, 159, 197, 198

Paranoia 31, 37-39, 41, 68

Paroxysmal pattern 35, 36, 48, 108, 123, 138, 151, 154, 156, 157

Pfister, Oskar 241

Pontifical selfhood 70, 90, 103, 136, 141, 195, 197, 202, 203, 205

Predilection to death 107, 241

Psychorrhagy 8

Quantum inseparability 8

Quaternity 71, 88, 195

Resurrection 174

Sheol 162-165, 169, 170, 172-174, 178, 181, 182, 185, 187, 189, 222, 235 

Shock 1-4, 7, 9, 12-14, 35, 49, 55, 66, 76, 80, 81, 99, 107, 110, 123, 126, 127, 129, 131-135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 145, 151, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159-163, 167, 177, 179, 183, 189, 190, 197,209,215,216,218, 220,221,222,225,228,231,241

"Split-off" phase 91, 105, 108, 140

St. Augustine 196, 219, 235

Subliminal self 3-13, 15-17, 19, 22, 26, 27, 29, 32, 37, 39, 45, 46, 49, 55, 60, 103, 122

Supernova 219-221

Symbol 48, 55, 58, 64, 67, 71-76, 79-81, 83, 86, 100, 115, 140, 141, 143, 157, 163, 186, 187, 195, 196, 200, 203, 204, 208, 212, 216, 217,218,219,229,231,242,244,248 Synchronicity 91

Szondi, Leopold 246, 247

Telepathy 4, 6, 7, 9-14, 39, 40, 71, 103, 142, 144, 151, 157, 192, 248

Tillich, Paul 250, 253

Ungrund 218-220, 222

Veridical afterimage 9, 12, 14, 109, 126, 127, 220

Vision 2, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 20, 26, 48, 54, 72, 75, 76, 78, 83, 86,87, 90, 91, 103, 104, 106, 107, 114, 119-121, 124, 125, 128, 129, 139-141, 157,166,172-177,179,182-184,186,187, 191, 192, 195, 197, 198, 200-204, 206, 211,215,217,219,225,227,235,250

F I N I S H