Ways of Being: The alchemy of bereavement and communique

487 Pages·2015·4.39 MB·English

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Ways of Being: The alchemy of bereavement and
communiqué

Michele T Knight

This thesis is presented for the
Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Social Work
of
The University of Sydney
NSW, Australia

2011

Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to my mother and to my son. Embodying
what has gone before, and what is yet to come, their lives conjoin
to create what is now.

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Acknowledgements

A social science research study positioned within the body of
enquiry of bereavement exploring the subjectivity of after-death
encounters occurring between bereaved individuals and the
deceased, defined by the study as communiqué, takes the
individual into fathomless depths. It is there in those depths that
the unseen is seen, the unknown known, and the unspoken
spoken. The echo from those depths and the experiences of those
who plumbed them are rendered in print on the following pages.
I would like to acknowledge and thank my supervisors,
Associate Professor Lindsey Napier and Dr Margo Rawsthorne,
whose expertise, critique and support of the study guided it to its
completion. I also acknowledge with the highest regard the co-
researchers who participated in the study. Their willingness to
participate and their support and enthusiasm for the study never
once faltered. Their generosity in sharing a deeply private and
profoundly meaningful aspect of their life is a true testament to
the courage of the human spirit.
There are many who have believed in this study and whose
faith has endorsed it. Of these I would like to acknowledge Ms
Jackie Adams and Mr Sol Cohen. I also acknowledge the time
and effort of Dr Stephen Juan, Ashley Montagu Fellow for the
Public Understanding of Human Sciences, Faculty of Education
and Social Work, the University of Sydney, who edited the thesis
for clarity of text, syntax and grammar.

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Abstract

This qualitative research study utilises heuristic enquiry
(Moustakas, 1990) to explore the natures and meanings of
communiqué; unexpected and unsought after-death encounters
occurring between bereaved individuals and the person/s close to
them who died, the deceased.
The study has its origin in the author’s own lived experience
of bereavement which provided the psychosocial and
psychospiritual context for her experiences of the returning
deceased. The study focuses on the lived experience of these
encounters and explores them in open-ended interviews with
twenty-one bereaved men and women. Together with the author
they embark upon a journey of self-discovery and self-awareness,
plumbing the depths of sorrow and anguish to discover for
themselves an internal reservoir of resilience, a greater sense of
connectedness, renewed hope and a new way of being in the
world.
Their perceptions reveal that the impact of a death,
regardless of its nature, can be traumatic and difficult enough
without the added complexity of communiqué, after-death
encounters, occurring between themselves and the deceased. As
they shared their stories, they constructed their own
bereavement narratives in accordance with what death, life after
death, after-death encounters and spirituality meant for them.
These narratives reveal that the impact of their communiqué
challenged how they defined and understood themselves as
human beings, how they defined and understood themselves as
spiritual beings, and how they lived in their metaphorically
visible social and cultural worlds.

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Glossary of Terms

The following terms are utilised in the study in order to
establish and distinguish key contexts and relevant relationships:
Alchemy
Within the context of the study, the term alchemy or
alchemical is analogous with and informed by Carl Jung’s
interpretation and understanding of the scientific practice of
alchemy as an external representation of internal psychospiritual
transformation and growth. Alchemy, which strove to
scientifically transmute base metals into gold and considered to
be the forerunner of modern chemistry, is a correspondential
representation of the development of the human psyche and of
the psychological process of individuation. “Alchemy represents
the projection of a drama both in cosmic and spiritual terms. The
opus magnum had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and
the salvation of the world ...” (1977, p 228). Thus, the terms
alchemy or alchemical correspond to the metaphor of self-change
and psychospiritual growth through transformation.
Being
Within the context of the study, being is a term analogous
with that which is known through direct experience. Through
means of observation, sensing and feeling, the individual can gain
an intimate awareness of their being. “In the simplest and most
direct form, we can say that being is you, what you are … to have
being is to be alive, to exist. The affirmation ‘I am’ is a
declaration that I exist as a living being” (personal
communication, P.W. Groves, 24 May 1998).
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Bereavement
Within the context of the study, bereavement is
contextualised as the subjective experience of a death-event and
can be described as “the objective situation of having lost
someone significant” (Stroebe, Stroebe & Hanson, 2005, p. 5).
DeSpelder and Strickland define bereavement as the experience
of the loss by death of a significant other, or of someone close. It
derives from a root word meaning shorn off or torn up. Thus “at
root, bereavement conveys a sense of being deprived, of having
some part of one stripped away against one’s will, of an intense
disruptive force over which there is no control” (2005, p. 268).
Communiqué
Within the context of the study communiqué is utilised as a
collective term referring to after-death encounter phenomena
occurring between a bereaved individual and the deceased. These
subjectively meaningful after-death encounters are diverse and
occur when the now disembodied and non-material person/s, after
experiencing their own death, spontaneously and without
assistance or provocation from any embodied individual, engage
and interact with the bereaved individual in a manner deemed by
that individual to be significant or meaningful.
Co-researcher
Within the context of the study, the term co-researcher
denotes study participant. Heuristic inquiry acknowledges
participants who contribute primary data in the research process
as co-researchers (Moustakas, 1990). The essence of heuristic
inquiry is the intersection between the researcher and the co-
researcher of a shared commonality of a particular subjective
experience. In a heuristic study the researcher brings the
subjective experience of the topic of investigation to the co-
researcher as the co-researcher brings that same subjective
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experience to the researcher. Both originate from the same
ontological perspectives.
Death
Physical death is the complete cessation of relevant
biological functioning which enables a human being to exist as an
embodied and material individual in the visible social world.
Within the context of the study, death is contextualised as a
transitional life event which enables the material body to be put
off. This putting-off enables the now disembodied and non-
material individual to exist post-mortem in non-material form.
Disembodied, The
Within the context of the study, the disembodied constitute
those individuals who as the result of undergoing their own
subjective death-event subsequently exist as non-material
individuals in non-material reality.
Embodied, The
Within the context of the study, the embodied constitute
those individuals who exist in material form, who live life in the
materiality of the visible social, cultural and material world, and
who are otherwise known as “human beings”. Embodiment is
“the mode by which human beings practically engage with and
apprehend the world” (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 2006, p. 128).
Thus an embodied individual is one who exists as a material
being in the material world whereby life is experienced in ways
“profoundly influenced by social processes and shaped by
particular social contexts” (Howson, 2005, p. 12).
Material Reality
Within the context of the study, material reality is utilised
as a collective term which encompasses all aspects of the space-
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time world. This space-time world, which is observable, is
delineated by flowing linear time in which human beings dwell
and exist as embodied individuals. This observable and
scientifically measurable space-time world includes for example
planet Earth and its geographical phenomena, the galaxy in
which the planet is located, the Milky Way, its astronomical
phenomena and the expanding universe itself. It is the space-
time world in its entirety. Material reality is known and
experienced via the human sense organs of sight, sound, taste,
smell and touch.
Non-material Reality
Within the context of the study, non-material reality is
utilised as a collective term for a specific locale and for the
phenomena originating from that locale. This locale and its
phenomena co-exists with the space-time world and though at
times interpenetrates it, exists outside of flowing linear time and
is not sequenced by time-regulated events. Permanent entry into
non-material reality, in contrast to brief encounters resulting
from near-death events or alternate out-of-body experiences, is
affected when an embodied individual undergoes their own
subjective death-event.
Psychospiritual
Within the context of the study, the term psychospiritual
represents the interconnected systems-relationship between an
individual and the growth of their emotional, psychological and
spiritual selves. This systems-relationship exists in relation to,
and is intersubjective with, varying influences occurring within
the individual’s visible social and cultural world and their life-
cycle. Accordingly the individual perceives crisis events as
opportunities for self-growth and growing spiritual
understanding and/or emergence. The term psychospiritual is
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