When the soul leaves the body, it is no longer under the burden and control of space and time. The soul is free; distance and separation hinder it no more. The dead are our nearest neighbors; they are all around us. Meister Eckhart was once asked, Where does the soul of a person go when the person dies? He said, no place. Where else would the soul be going? Where else is the eternal world? It can be nowhere other than here. We have falsely spatialized the eternal world. We have driven the eternal out into some kind of distant galaxy. Yet the eternal world does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being. The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are moving through all the time. The only difference between us and the dead is that they are now in an invisible form. You cannot see them with the human eye. But you can sense the presence of those you love who have died. With the refinement of your soul, you can sense them. You feel that they are near.
My father used to tell us a story about a neighbor who was very friendly with the local priest. There is a whole mythology in Ireland about druids and priests having special power. But this man and the priest used to go for long walks. One day the man said to the priest, Where are the dead? The priest told him not to ask him questions like that. But the man persisted, and finally, the priest said, I will show you; but you are never to tell anyone. Needless to say, the man did not keep his word. The priest raised his right hand; the man looked out under the raised right hand and saw the souls of the departed everywhere all around as thick as the dew on blades of grass. Often our loneliness and isolation are the result of a failure of spiritual imagination. We forget that there is no such thing as empty space. All space is full of presence, particularly the presence of those who are now in eternal, invisible form.
For those who have died, the world of time is also different. Here we are caught in linear time. We have forgotten the past; it is lost to us. We cannot know the future. Time must be totally different for the dead because they live now within a circle of eternity. Earlier we talked about landscape and how the Irish landscape resisted linearity. How the Celtic mind never liked the line but always loved the shape of the circle. Within the circle, beginning and ending are sisters, and they belong within the shelter which the eternal offers of the unity of the year and the earth. I imagine that in the eternal world time has become the circle of eternity. Maybe when a person goes into that world, he or she can look back at what we call past time here. That person may also see all of future time. For the dead, present time is total presence. This suggests that our friends among the dead know us better than they can ever have known us in life. They know everything about us, even things that may disappoint them. But since they are now transfigured, their understanding and compassion are proportionate to everything they have come to know about us.
THE DEAD BLESS US
I believe that our friends among the dead really mind us and look out for us. Often there might be a big boulder of misery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends among the dead hold it back until you have passed by. One of the exciting developments that may happen in evolution and in human consciousness in the next several hundred years is a whole new relationship with the invisible, eternal world. We might begin to link up in a very creative way with our friends in the invisible world. We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home. They are with God from whom they came. They have returned to the nest of their identity within the great circle of God. God is the greatest circle of all, the largest embrace in the universe, which holds visible and invisible, temporal and eternal, as one.
There are lovely stories in the Irish tradition of people dying and then meeting all their old friends. This is expressed powerfully in a wonderful novel by Mairtin Ó Cadhain called Cré na Cille. This is about life in a graveyard and all that is happening among the people buried there. In the eternal world, all is one. In spiritual space there is no distance. In eternal time there is no segmentation into today, yesterday, or tomorrow. In eternal time all is now; time is presence. I believe that this is what eternal life means: It is a life where all that we seek—goodness, unity, beauty, truth, and love—are no longer distant from us but are now completely present with us. There is a lovely poem by R. S. Thomas on the notion of eternity. It is deliberately minimal in form but very powerfuclass="underline"
I think that maybe
I will be a little surer
of being a little nearer.
That’s all. Eternity
is in the understanding
that that little is more than enough.
Kahlil Gibran articulates how the unity in friendship that we call anam 
ara overcomes even death:
You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
I would like to end this chapter with a lovely prayer-poem from thirteenth-century Persia.
Some nights stay up ’til dawn as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of a well then lifted out into light.
Something opens our wings, something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us, we taste only sacredness.
A Blessing for Death
I pray that you will have the blessing of being consoled and sure about your own death.
May you know in your soul that there is no need to be afraid.
When your time comes, may you be given every blessing and shelter that you need.
May there be a beautiful welcome for you in the home that you are going to.
You are not going somewhere strange. You are going back to the home that you never left.
May you have a wonderful urgency to live your life to the full.
May you live compassionately and creatively and transfigure everything that is negative within you and about you.
When you come to die may it be after a long life.
May you be peaceful and happy and in the presence of those who really care for you.
May your going be sheltered and your welcome assured.
May your soul smile in the embrace of your anam ara.
FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia. Frankfurt, 1989.
Aristotle. De Anima. London, 1986.
———. Ethics. London, 1986.
Augustine. The Confessions. London, 1945.