I missed the burst of national outrage over “our” Charlemagne diva fallen from the top 200, barely batting an eyelid at the Sussex royal gossip, shunned the bye and survived this green holiday season thanks to a simple book about meaning, This life… and beyond. Three hundred pages can change a life, and especially a death.
For those who have already read or heard of the book Life After Life of American physician and psychologist Raymond Moody (bit.ly/3izdsNO), bestseller 1970s sold 13 million copies, the concept of “life” after death is not new. The Dr Moody, 78 today, also a doctor of philosophy, had of course been the subject of mockery and charges from the scientific community at the time. One hundred and fifty people to testify to ecstatic and intangible psychic phenomena did not constitute a very imposing cohort to believe in ghosts or NDEs (near death experiences). The Dr Moody’s has studied thousands since.
The French psychiatrist Christophe Fauré ventures into the same terrain 50 years later, but this time as a spokesperson for documented phenomena, supported by hundreds of thousands of testimonies and studied by a community of scientists who are both curious and serious, more focused on quantum physics than on mysticism and guardian angels.
An international study by New York University School of Medicine published in 2020 reports that 11% of people on the planet would remember having had this type of experience (NDE), or about 850 million people. It’s starting to look like a continent.
The Dr Fauré also came, in his medical practice in palliative care, to cross the phenomena of NDE, EFV (end-of-life experiences) and VSCD (subjective experience of contact with a deceased) in his patients, nor crazy or addicted to morphine.
His medical studies had convinced him that it was a simple malfunction of the brain. And patients on the verge of death or returning from limbo did not always dare to tell their experiences, for fear of being taken for cuckoos.
The West and rationality
The Dr Christophe Fauré, specialist in mourning, first went through fiction (To die is not to lose you, 2021) to tell the inexplicable, an easier avenue at the start in the face of this challenge to rationality. “I’ve been studying these phenomena for decades, but I didn’t dare speak about them publicly,” admits the psychiatrist in the introduction to This life… and beyondwhich has just been published by Albin Michel.
This book is a turning point for all those who fear the end credits or who badly negotiate mourning, an investigation into the continuity of consciousness after death.
A friend to whom I recommended reading it and who lost her 14-year-old daughter a few years ago found in it a certain comfort and another approach to grief.
All people who seek reassurance about their own mortality will hasten to assert how Cartesian they are! As if it were the alpha and omega of good mental health to be “very Cartesian”.
For my part, I was blown away by the testimonies quoted by Dr.r Fauré only by the quality of his reflection on consciousness and matter. For having me also collected confidences in this direction, of which those of the psychoanalyst Guy Corneau on his NDE (public), there is no doubt that these experiences of contact with a source of Love where the assessment of our life proceeds under our eyes, where we are led to understand that we are One, unified by the same universal consciousness, is totally mystical-farted in the eyes of a materialistic scientific approach. The free electron always bothers a lot.
And how to explain the visions of deceased relatives who came to welcome them for the great departure, or the phenomenon of terminal lucidity a few hours (or days) before dying for people who have suffered from Alzheimer’s for years and are unable to recognize their loved ones? a little ago? The true nature of consciousness still seems to elude us and is understudied, according to Dr.r Faure.
In the West, these phenomena have not been integrated for millennia and not everyone has read The Tibetan Book of Life and Death or listened to Languirand on the radio when they were little.
beyond doubt
The psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik mentions about these spiritually advanced experiences, which he also faced, that “doubt is exciting”. In effect. I, who prefer to reassure my B by telling him that I will stay with him after the outing (yes, but mom, it won’t be the same!), I can finally make him read testimonials.
Consciousness would not be linked to the brain or to matter, according to the hypotheses studied; it is not localizable, unlike emotions or thoughts.
Don’t control, manipulate, seduce, tie up, cheat, love
Fauré devotes an entire chapter to responding to objections and highlights the verifications made in good and due form: tangible proof of past lives or events preceding birth, especially recounted by children, found objects, even NDEs shared with relatives. But above all he explores the implications of these returns from “travels” imbued with lightness, love and peace.
“If all of this is true, the implications are confusing, almost disturbing, because in our Western world we have no cultural reference to integrate the meaning of this notion. Only Asian traditions have such references,” writes Fauré.
And ultimately, the part that interests me, although basely utilitarian: how can these discoveries help us to live? This is where the Drs Fauré or Moody say the same thing by calling for an ethic of life imprinted with Love and wisdom, where there would be no division between me and the others. Each wave is not separate from the ocean, a metaphor for universal consciousness.
So, like an apostle with a tragic destiny who passed by to say hi to us, John Lennon was right.
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one