Kamaloca

The wisdom of love in the mystery of death

Death is universal; we will all experience it, which is why we tend to ponder the following questions: Where are the dead? Where are my dead; where are my friends, family, and acquaintances who have left this mortal life? Is it possible to locate them; is it possible to communicate with them, and is it possible to still be in relationship with them? Is it desirable to want these things? Can it be done without submitting to weird or freaky practices?

Yes, it is desirable. No, it doesn’t require participation in séances or religious services or spiritual societies; nor does it need a commitment to any particular belief system. All it takes is willingness, and a few key insights, some of which I can relate to you out of my own experience, some of which come from the writings and lectures of Dr Rudolf Steiner (1864-1925). Steiner was a scientist-initiate who, perhaps more than any other modern figure left the legacy of a mighty bunch of keys with which we can open doors of understanding into every realm of life and death.

The door that this article will peer through focuses on just one aspect of the realm of the dead, the realm that Steiner calls kamaloca; the place where the dead review the life that has now ended. I’ve chosen this focus because kamaloca is the first destination that we will all visit after crossing the threshold of death; it’s also the place from which we can most directly contact, and be contacted by, our own dead. Moreover, it’s a place that I have some direct experience of; but first let’s hear something of Steiner’s description before I tell you about mine.

Many people who survive near-death experiences report that the moment before death a panorama of one’s life appears. According to Steiner, this flash panorama is the starting point of a long process of reviewing the life just ended. This pre-death flash panorama is followed after death by a second panorama that lasts for three-days, giving the deceased person a comprehensive visual re-membering of the life that has been lived. For most of us this may well be a decidedly unpleasant experience given that we have devised ingenious ways of neglecting to see or to remember a lot of the mistakes and failures of our life.

Steiner tells us that this three-day vista is but a prelude to the main experience of kamaloca, which itself has three main characteristics. When the deceased enter the realm of kamaloca the first experience they have is a sense of being under intense scrutiny; of having nowhere to hide; of being completely exposed and vulnerable; of no longer being able conceal one’s thoughts and feelings.

The second experience is a surge of longing and desire for what has been left behind; e.g. people, possessions, body, identity, food, substances, sex, money, influence; these losses now flood to the fore causing extreme anguish. Kamaloca offers no respite and no distractions from these longings. No compromises are possible; we must experience the intensity of this loss in order to understand how far we have fallen into materialism; how far we disconnected from the spirit.

Then, a third, deeply significant aspect of the panorama begins to unfold in which the emphasis is no longer on what the self experienced during earthly life, but rather, how the self was experienced by others. Think about this for a moment. How would it be to receive a totally uncensored account of the effect you have had on all the people you’ve ever encountered; all the hearts you’ve ever broken; all the loyalties you’ve ever betrayed; all the anger you’ve ever expressed. It won’t be easy; but, thankfully, you will also experience all the love, kindness, joys and compassion you’ve ever freely given to others.

The third aspect of kamaloca continues for approximately one third of the time alive, beginning at the point of death and ending at the moment of birth. Therefore, if one dies at age ninety, kamaloca would last for around thirty years. This article will demonstrate a concrete way for you to test these claims for yourself.

You might by now be thinking that kamaloca sounds like an unbearable ordeal. Well, yes, and yet, what better way is there for us to develop compassion for the other, and as a consequence find the resolve to put our wrongs to right? The purpose of kamaloca is that each of us has the opportunity to uncover aspects of ourselves that that need refining. It is here that we find whether we have achieved the karmic intentions that brought us to earth. It is here that we again realise our true nature, our true purpose. Most importantly, it is in kamaloca that we can once again directly experience the interaction that takes place between the earth and the spiritual realms. To put it more concretely, kamaloca is a kind of bridge, or half-way house, between the living and the dead.

Moreover, I have evidence that not only is there is far more interaction between the living and the dead than we generally recognise, but there is a way that the living can directly facilitate communication with those in kamaloca. This can be experienced quite distinctly for anybody who may want to assist the journey of a loved one across the threshold; though that doesn’t, in my experience, involve ‘seeing’ or ‘talking’ with the dead, but rather simply being open to and observant of issues that arise concerning those who have died. In fact, I must at this point stress the importance of, at all times, ensuring that one’s consciousness during this interaction is in observational mode rather than interpretive mode.

Before describing the process further it may be useful if I explain how my awareness of this evidence has developed. In 1993, I began my first serious foray into a study of Rudolf Steiner’s work at Parsifal College in Sydney. This was 21 years after an accident in which, at age 17, I caused the death of a woman pedestrian. Despite the long passage of time my need to understand the purpose and consequence of the accident was still such a powerful motivator that much of what I learnt at Parsifal College was seen through that prism. I took a great interest in aspects of kamaloca that directly related to my experience around the accident, but then, unbidden, an aspect of kamaloca that I’d neither read nor heard about began to make its presence felt.

It began with a vague uneasiness about my father’s journey through kamaloca; I kept getting a sense that his journey had been somehow snagged or halted. My rational self didn’t know if it was possible for such a thing to happen so I kept pushing it aside, telling myself to just forget it. But instead of going away, the unease got stronger. Finally I submitted to the urge and used Steiner’s indications to calculate my father’s place in his kamaloca journey. He had been dead 13 years, which meant he had already reviewed approximately 39 years of his life (one year of kamaloca time being equivalent to three years of earth time) and, because he was travelling backwards from death to birth, he was about age 13 in his review process.

This completely perplexed me; I didn’t know a thing about my father’s life when he was a boy so why was it being called to my attention now? I mulled over this, noting with interest that my daughter was also 13 years old. Over the next few days the uneasiness grew to such a pitch that I knew I had to find out something about my father’s life at age 13. So I rang my mother whose two least favourite topics are death, and my dad. I knew I couldn’t just come straight out with my question so I told her that Meegan needed some information about her granddad for a school project. “What do you know about dad’s life when he was the same age as Meegan?” I asked. To my astonishment she described how my father had almost lost his life at age 13 when he was savagely beaten by his employer. I had never before heard her speak of my father with such compassion. During the conversation I was very aware that my father’s snag had now been loosened. He was free to continue his journey.

I didn’t understand what had happened or why, but I was able to clearly observe that a change had taken place. After that, I frequently had the experience of finding myself in a conversation (sometimes with a stranger) that would suddenly change direction and turn to mention of somebody that was dead. On these occasions I found myself wondering about the kamaloca journey of the person mentioned so I’d look for an appropriate moment to ask for details about the age and year the person died; allowing me to mentally calculate where that person was in terms of their kamaloca journey. (E.g. A person who died 3 years ago at age 50, would have journeyed through 9 years of kamaloca time; hence they would be revisiting their 41st year, approx.) Then I’d wait for the opening, which always came, to ask something relevant to the present kamaloca age, i.e. 41. Invariably, a lament or regret would then come tumbling forth about some terrible difficulty that had passed between the two of them at that very time.

Here are two illustrations. A woman in her 50’s was feeling an unusual need to speak to her mother who had died some ten years earlier; the need grew to such alarming proportions that the woman became uncharacteristically weepy. When I calculated the mother’s kamaloca age and the daughter’s then corresponding age, she was immediately able to identify a difficult situation that had passed between them. After being given the opportunity to talk about it she was able of her own volition to express both compassion and forgiveness towards her mother, which allowed her to let go of the incident and of the general distress she’d been feeling.

Another person, unable to contain the hurt and bitterness that she felt towards a deceased relative, began to talk with great agitation about an occasion on which she felt that a deep insult had been perpetrated against her. My calculations revealed that the deceased person was at the kamaloca age of the event in question. But in this case, so deep was the hurt, that no forgiveness or understanding was expressed by the living person.

Initially, I didn’t understand the significance of these events, so I just went on observing, but as my understanding of consequence has deepened so has the mystery begun to unravel. I am now quite certain that we, the living, are intrinsically bound up with the kamaloca journey of the dead; we also re-live the events that are being played out in the kamaloca journey of our dead ones. Therefore we can, if we choose, help our dead in very significant ways.

The spiritual intention behind kamaloca is to provide proof of the importance of consequence, in particular, the consequence of how we treat each other. Every action, every thought, every intention that we experience with or towards another person, binds us to that person if the other person holds onto it. In kamaloca we must endure the full pain of knowing exactly how much the other person is bound to the consequence of our previous encounter. The pain of this is amplified by the knowledge that once dead we can no longer take steps to heal or rectify the situation. In other words, after the threshold of death has been crossed, the dead are completely reliant on the living to effect any change in the karma (i.e. consequence) that binds the two together. We can choose to hold onto our thoughts and feelings towards the dead or we can strive to loosen the bonds.

The extent of our success, or not, in this striving will determine the extent to which the consequence continue to be felt in kamaloca. Where there is no forgiveness the binding inevitably must continue, which means both parties will sustain the ill will through as many incarnations as it takes until forgiveness reigns. This cycle will continue until we have the ability to look upon ourselves with unwavering honesty; and to look upon others with unwavering compassion.

Kelly Connor lives in Forest Row, UK, and travels nationally and internationally giving talks and workshops about kamaloca. Personal consultations are available in Forest Row, online or by telephone (£40 ph).
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Kelly ran workshops about kamaloca in California during 2009. Click here to see the flyer.