THE BOOK OF THEANNA IN THE LANDS THAT FOLLOW DEATH

Sometimes a book hangs around on the shelf until it is time to read it. This is one such book. Even though its publication date is nearly ten years ago, it has in fact been on my shelves for only three, and it emerged as I was sorting through a pile. I had started it and laid it aside, realising that it had an important message. It is the story, as the subtitle suggests, of a post-mortem journey by Sara Lonsdale, who died of cancer in 1993. Later, her spiritual identity as 'Theanna' comes through in her relationship with her husbandWilliam, who becomes Ellias. The narrative consists of a series of letters describing the progression of her states and understanding. These kinds of narrative are very useful as we try to build up a new understanding not only of death but of the deeper structure of human consciousness and identity beyond the materialist model of extinction.

The first arresting image is that of hatching. Sara's disease means that she is no longer able to live inside the decaying shell of her physical body so she is 'sprung from the world of contained form, mutated into a new, freely unfolding form.' Then she remembers that words and ideas are also limited shells that allow only piecemeal comprehension. So limitless being assumes form when born into physical life and moves beyond this form in death. But moving beyond implies a process of surrender and release that brings freedom. Death is an opportunity for 'inward spiritual self-substantiation' where one can become 'more of what I am.'

However, the process is muddied by our expectations, which are, according to Theanna, dominated by the Lord of Death who has been trying to keep the realms of the 'dead' and the 'living' separate and ensure that humanity remains trapped in time and in various types of 'death mind'. These come in four forms: death mind A expects a bleak and negating nothingness, death mind B is a representation of punitive reckoning with sins and failings. Death mind C is apprehensive and uncertain while the rarer death mind D embodies the darkest expectations. Because the next world seems to be mind-dependent, it matters hugely what set of expectations one has, since they may become self-fulfilling and trap us until we glimpse larger possibilities and reach out for help. This is the price of metaphysical ignorance that is almost endemic in modern Western culture. We are stuck in our outer selves and lose sight of the multidimensionality of existence and of the human-divine connection.

'The foremost encounter in death is always with oneself.'. This for me is the kernel of the book, the encounter with the ego as the limit of the ordinary mind. Death 'cracks the ego-shell' in which we are so heavily invested and which indicates the meaning of the mystical injunction that we must 'die before we die' so that we do not die when we die. This insight moves us beyond the separation of self and other. If the first death is that of the body, the second is the letting go or surrender of the limited and fearful ego, an initiation into the freedom of the self beyond the self. Hence 'the entire dying process is about learning how to let go, how to move on when it is time for you to travel further than your body can allow you to go. When you have died, you have nothing left to cling to. You are free. At last you begin to live in freedom and in joy. This joy is an utter rapture of release. You let go of yourself, and right away there you are again - only different.'

There are many layers to the book. Besides the accounts of journeys, birth, death and rebirth, there are more cosmic themes including the alleged role of Theanna in breaking the current patterns of death, then her love for and relationship with William-Ellias. Her return is part of a process of thinning the veils and of a gradual awakening and manifestation of the 'inner-self presence' over the next two decades. This amounts to an infusion of a new kind of knowledge-being that moves beyond polarities into wholeness and uses the power of love and gratitude in service. Readers will find that the book is strong stuff, perhaps too strong and concentrated. However, it pushes our boundaries beyond the comfort zone and reminds us that life asks us all a question of being (Who am I?) and that death strips away all but the essential, leaving behind the dross of our daily preoccupations. It is an invitation to transcend, to hatch out from our self-imposed limitations.