Dear Cynthia,
I am reading The Mystery of Death, and am hitting up against some statements that just don’t ring true within, and they do not square with the work of others. Page xiv: “There now man stands free to accept or reject this splendor.” …and in the thesis below: “Death gives man the opportunity…for the final decision about his eternal destiny”. “Final decision” and “eternal destiny”? So, Ms. Bourgeault had me intrigued, and then Mr. Boros is throwing in terms that smack of dualism and orthodoxy, rather than a seamless continuum of unfolding consciousness and Reality. “Batter up! Make or break!” And based on countless testimonies of those who have had N.D.E.’s, what Boros is describing doesn’t seem to square. Why or how would anyone truly free to make a choice of God’s splendor or isolation, choose isolation? That couldn’t be anything other than a failure to recognize one’s true identity in God. That’s not freedom. That’s not a choice. I feel I must be missing something or mishearing something. I would appreciate some clarification, or helpful references within the book. I guess I’m feeling a degree of incredulity at the dissonance of the thesis, after being intriqued at Ms. Bourgeault’s lead-in, and the connection with Theillard.
James
Dear James,
It’s hard for you to get onboard with Boros’s thesis, James, because you’re starting from such a completely different hermeneutic than his, from the implicit assumption that yours (nonduality and evolution of consciousness) is superior to his (dualism and orthodoxy.) This is like saying that because Mozart is right, Bach must be wrong. They are different art forms, playing by different rules. Within the theological universe that was Boros’s entire frame (Roman Catholic scholasticism), he has done a remarkable job maneuvering the givens of his artform to arrive at some strikingly original and moving conclusions. So, you are essentially weighing him in the balance and finding him wanting by a priori condemning his artform. This cannot lead to real appreciation or communication.
Nonduality and the evolution of consciousness were simply not on his radar screen. Is it fair to hold him hostage to a new hermeneutical that had not yet taken shape yet at the time of his death? (Ken Wilber’s Up from Eden, laying out the evolutionary roadmap, was published in 1983, I believe; Boros died in 1981.)
I personally appreciate his intuitive apprehension of second body and more subtle embodiment, something still yet not on the “nonduality” roadmap.
I do appreciate, however, your questions on how somebody could “choose” to deny the splendor of divine unity and “choose” isolation. This is not freedom; you correctly assert. However, the ironic fact is that we “choose” it all the time: to protect a known and even dysfunctional identity—a self-image or outgrown identity—rather than leaping into the center of our true identity, which finds its “center” in “unenterable” spaciousness. That is Boros’s point as well here: every time we reject and unfathomable grace in favor of a known harbor of selfhood, we do reify the neural pathways in ourself that will come upon this final “ground luminosity” moment and cause us to reject it because it threatens to obliterate or override our boundaries, which furnish all we have known to date of selfhood. His book is all about helping people not to do that; helping them to recognize here and now that the path toward true identity can come only be surrendering fixed points of reference and opening one’s heart more deeply to love, the ultimate divine unknown.
Cynthia