Frances Zammit kindly sent me a copy of Kelly Connor's book, To Cause a Death: The Aftermath of an Accidental Killing (Clairview, Forest Row, 2004). It was a gripping read - as a 17 year old Kelly Connor accidentally knocked down and killed an elderly pedestrian. Finding no comfort or understanding from her family, religion, the medical and psychiatric profession, she coped alone, or at times failed to cope, with the question 'Do I deserve to go on living, having taken another life?' For a while after the accident she was subject to nightly visions in which angels and demons argued over her soul. She understood that they were interested in her everyday intentions, how much she loved. Having no religious context in which she could discuss these visions she kept them to herself. The next couple of decades included endless travel around Australia (where her family had emigrated from Manchester, UK), time in psychiatric hospitals, failed suicide attempts (she felt the need to talk to the woman she had killed and see if she was forgiven), a change of name and a brief marriage and birth of her daughter Meegan.
There was a glimmer of understanding when staff at the women's refuge she was living in at the time recommended a therapist to Kelly (originally known as Brenda). While previous attempts to come to terms with her 'crime' had been met with an attitude of denial and failure to engage, this therapist launched into a story in which a young man on a horse knocked over and killed his younger sister. He was banished by his grieving mother, who had witnessed the accident but had been unable to prevent it. She was the mother, the therapist explained, and her mother the young man who had been forced to experience the pain of banishment. She had to forgive her mother for her inability to comfort her in the present life. Kelly was not able to connect with this story at the time, but when through sending her daughter to a Waldorf school she came to read and study the works of Rudolf Steiner, the notion of karma and the need to make amends in this life for injuries caused in past lives fell into place. Everything about the accident seemed contrived to ensure that Brenda Connor and Margaret Healy met when they did so fatefully on a zebra crossing in 1971. Neither were on their usual path and had taken diversions to be at that spot at that time. Kelly came to believe that the 'accident' that had so shaped her life and that of those around her was pre-planned, and that there was a working out of grace and purpose through it all.
The final chapter digresses from the autobiographical to an explanation of Steiner's teachings on kamaloca, the astral plane on which the dead work out their karma and review their lives. According to Steiner's anthroposophical teachings the dead spend roughly three days in a kind of half sleep before awakening in kamaloca. The time spent there is roughly one third of their earth life, with the review process taking place at the ratio of one year in kamaloca for every three spent on earth, working backwards from death to birth, so that someone who died aged 90 would spend thirty years in kamaloca. During this time of review the deceased relive not only their own part in events but the effects of their actions on others. Those who participated in these events are often consciously or subconsciously aware of what is happening and may think or dream about the deceased person at that time. If the dead are not to carry the unresolved karma into another life they can be forgiven or helped to shed any burdens by the actions of the living.
Anthroposophy is broadly in line with other sources in terms of recognising a period of rest for most following death, and one or more past-life reviews, as well as the possibility of continued interaction between the living and the dead. He is unusual in being prescriptive about the timing of these events. Other sources tend to stress the variability in the time a soul spends in kamaloca or on some similar plane, depending on the speed of their spiritual advancement. Bruce Moen in Voyage to Curiosity's Father (Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, 2001), for instance, describes an out of body visit to the mother of a friend he had been asked to check up on after her death. Sylvia had died in a confused state and he had helped her move on. She had not by all accounts been a particularly holy or spiritual person during her last lifetime, so Bruce was surprised to learn a short while later that she had already 'graduated' and become a 'Being of Light' (in Steiner's terms, had completed her time of review in kamaloca). Moen was shown that once Sylvia knew she was dead her religious upbringing told her that Jesus would come and take her. When Sylvia was asked by a guide if she wanted the love of Jesus to fill her heart she replied that she did, and the negative energies she carried from her former life was successively washed away until she reached a stage at which there was simply nothing to hold her there any longer, as she had become filled with pure unconditional love - no punishment, no divine retribution, just a rebalancing of her energies. I guess this is what Christian teaching means by grace and the undeserved nature of our reception of it.
Whether or not one wishes to engage with the spiritual journey and anthroposophical conclusion, To Cause a Death makes an excellent read.
There was a glimmer of understanding when staff at the women's refuge she was living in at the time recommended a therapist to Kelly (originally known as Brenda). While previous attempts to come to terms with her 'crime' had been met with an attitude of denial and failure to engage, this therapist launched into a story in which a young man on a horse knocked over and killed his younger sister. He was banished by his grieving mother, who had witnessed the accident but had been unable to prevent it. She was the mother, the therapist explained, and her mother the young man who had been forced to experience the pain of banishment. She had to forgive her mother for her inability to comfort her in the present life. Kelly was not able to connect with this story at the time, but when through sending her daughter to a Waldorf school she came to read and study the works of Rudolf Steiner, the notion of karma and the need to make amends in this life for injuries caused in past lives fell into place. Everything about the accident seemed contrived to ensure that Brenda Connor and Margaret Healy met when they did so fatefully on a zebra crossing in 1971. Neither were on their usual path and had taken diversions to be at that spot at that time. Kelly came to believe that the 'accident' that had so shaped her life and that of those around her was pre-planned, and that there was a working out of grace and purpose through it all.
The final chapter digresses from the autobiographical to an explanation of Steiner's teachings on kamaloca, the astral plane on which the dead work out their karma and review their lives. According to Steiner's anthroposophical teachings the dead spend roughly three days in a kind of half sleep before awakening in kamaloca. The time spent there is roughly one third of their earth life, with the review process taking place at the ratio of one year in kamaloca for every three spent on earth, working backwards from death to birth, so that someone who died aged 90 would spend thirty years in kamaloca. During this time of review the deceased relive not only their own part in events but the effects of their actions on others. Those who participated in these events are often consciously or subconsciously aware of what is happening and may think or dream about the deceased person at that time. If the dead are not to carry the unresolved karma into another life they can be forgiven or helped to shed any burdens by the actions of the living.
Anthroposophy is broadly in line with other sources in terms of recognising a period of rest for most following death, and one or more past-life reviews, as well as the possibility of continued interaction between the living and the dead. He is unusual in being prescriptive about the timing of these events. Other sources tend to stress the variability in the time a soul spends in kamaloca or on some similar plane, depending on the speed of their spiritual advancement. Bruce Moen in Voyage to Curiosity's Father (Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, 2001), for instance, describes an out of body visit to the mother of a friend he had been asked to check up on after her death. Sylvia had died in a confused state and he had helped her move on. She had not by all accounts been a particularly holy or spiritual person during her last lifetime, so Bruce was surprised to learn a short while later that she had already 'graduated' and become a 'Being of Light' (in Steiner's terms, had completed her time of review in kamaloca). Moen was shown that once Sylvia knew she was dead her religious upbringing told her that Jesus would come and take her. When Sylvia was asked by a guide if she wanted the love of Jesus to fill her heart she replied that she did, and the negative energies she carried from her former life was successively washed away until she reached a stage at which there was simply nothing to hold her there any longer, as she had become filled with pure unconditional love - no punishment, no divine retribution, just a rebalancing of her energies. I guess this is what Christian teaching means by grace and the undeserved nature of our reception of it.
Whether or not one wishes to engage with the spiritual journey and anthroposophical conclusion, To Cause a Death makes an excellent read.
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