The average American hospice - so Kathleen Singh claims in this massive and comprehensive tome - has now moved firmly within the Medicare system, focusing increasingly on cost effectiveness, with virtually no capacity, inclination or understanding to provide spiritual or transpersonal care and guidance. Many hospices in the States - with the Hospice of Santa Cruz in California as a shining exception - apparently give no more than lip service to the possibility that dying is other than a medical event. Kathleen Singh's book seeks to repair this omission.
It is not intended, she advises, for the person who is to die shortly, nor for their carer. They should put the book down and simply "know that you are safe". The author writes lyrically in prose that is close to poetry:
"If it is your loved one who is dying, go and be with and cherish and comfort your loved one. Speak softly and hold lightly and let him or her know that dying is safe. Pray or sing or meditate with your loved one; so that as he or she enters realms beyond this one of bodies and words, your loved one is fully opened to Spirit, and you will also be attuned to the mystery where you and your loved one are forever connected."
It is her experience, from being with hundreds of people who are dying, that there is, in Mircea Eliades' phrase, a "rupture of planes" and higher energies filter in. She explains how the title - 'The grace in dying' - came about:
"I realised that what I had been witnessing in the process of dying was grace, all around, shimmering and penetrating. I began, with newly opened eyes, to observe the subtlety of this grace, and to observe the qualities of grace in those nearing death. I became aware that all of the observed qualities of the Nearing Death Experience point to the fact that there is profound psycho-alchemy occurring here, a passage to a deeper being."
The book takes the reader through all the stages of this passage, this "falling into the Heart", as the Buddhists put it. The patient may report glimpses of the Light that vibrates the realms of form, such as the one who said: "The sun came into my dream and filled my body with sunlight. I could see through my body". Another was surprised at the "quiet efficiency of the organism's preparation for death". Indeed the author is keen to reassure us that:
"Most terminally ill people, when allowed to die in their own way, at their own pace, without the heroic interventions of the medical establishment, and with compassionate and appropriate palliative care, die very peacefully."
The book ends with the following magnificent meditation, which should be palatable whatever one's religion and even, in parts, acceptable to atheists in its plea that we give our best attention to the person who is dying.
May it leave us in awed appreciation of one of our most precious gifts - the gift of attention. It is a gift to us in that the wise and practised use of it is our ride home, our key back to the Centre. And our attention is a gift to others - in fact, the most powerful and underused gift we can bestow upon each other, in our living as well as in our dying. May we assure our loved ones of our presence.
May we learn, above all else, to discriminate between 'the time of sickness' and 'the time of dying' and to act appropriately. "For every thing there is a season": a time to help a loved one fight to stay alive and a time to help a loved one face death.
May we let our loved ones know, when it is appropriate, that it is OK with us for them to stop fighting, it is OK to begin to turn toward death and the profound passage awaiting them. May we let our loved ones know that they may die in their own absolutely unique way - not according to our expectations - and may we trust the process.
When it is time to help a loved one face death, may we not distract him or her from a deathright, from the natural process of enlightenment, of dying into grace. May we resist the urge to attempt heroics, the obviously futile medical interventions, in the name of caring. In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, a powerful image is the sword of compassion. It can be mistakenly be used for 'idiot compassion', responding to what is inessential in the other person. Or it may rightly be used for true compassion, responding only to what is essential.
May we exercise true compassion and allow the dying person to turn his or her attention to where the natural order of the universe would let it go - to the Centre, to Spirit. May we get ourselves out of the way. May we "not just do something,'' but "be there".
Every dying person withdraws from the world. Let us allow them to do that. The distractions no longer have any fascination or importance. What remains is more essential. What begins to emerge as necessary are simple things: the good, the true and the beautiful. May we allow the attention to naturally return to what is real. As Therese Schroeder-Sheker puts it, let us help them unbind all that binds them to attachment to the body. It is hard for all of us to let go.
We have looked together in this discourse at some of the special conditions that nurture movement into greater depth: silence, withdrawal and simplicity, among others. Let us not distract our loved ones from those things. They are naturally being drawn within and on to beyond, naturally hearing the call to re-merge with the Ground of Being.
Let us create the environment and conditions that nurture movement through the transformations of dying. Let us be the ear that listens without judgement and with deep compassion to all that the voice of our loved one has to say in the phase of Chaos. Let us be the still and quiet point of acceptance where the personal life is reviewed and resolved, honoured and released. The love will endure, never fear. In fact, beyond the personal self, love just gets stronger, purer, freer, deeper. Go there with your loved one. Let us be the silent and understanding companion to the voiceless time of Surrender. Sit and breathe with your loved one, matching your rhythms. Sit and meditate with your loved one, matching your visions. Sit and pray with your loved one, matching your deepest longings. Let us share, far beyond the last breath and even through a breaking heart, in our loved one's transcendence: the entrance, at the edge of life, into the peaceful, resplendent Centre.
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