Seeking Peace in the Next?ro;”and This?ro;”Life

Comfort was cold and hard to come by for any New Yorker in the days following the disaster in Lower Manhattan. But for those who lost family and friends, if comfort could be found at all it was in the knowledge that their loved ones were now resting in peace?"in a better place." Yet when lives are claimed so suddenly, so violently and so young, even the most devout can feel that former systems of belief, morality and faith were attacked along with them.

Still, there remained many who, as they'd done countless times in the past, offered words of reassurance: spiritual leaders, religious or secular, speaking as representatives of their respective philosophies and as individuals.

Franciscan friar Cassian Miles of St. Francis of Assisi was parted from a dear friend, Reverend Father Mychal Judge, who died at the World Trade Center while administering last rites to another victim. Rev. Judge was a colleague and resident of the same monastery, whom Miles first met at seminary school on Sept. 11, 1951.

"The reality of what happened last Tuesday is that no one died?'life is changed, not ended,'" Miles says, quoting a popular Catholic prayer. "I don't mean to sound uncompassionate," he continues gently, "but when I see posters of people listed as missing, I wish I could say to their families, 'Your loved ones are not missing. They have gone to the fullness of eternal life.'"

Miles tries consoling members of his own congregation who are facing bereavement by conveying the idea "no one dies alone," often reaching for the Times' obit section to prove his point. Surprisingly for a Catholic cleric, Miles himself takes comfort in near-death-experience stories. "People who've had one of these experiences and been revived always say someone told them that their mission on Earth was not yet finished?that they were taken too early. We all have our part to play."

Mohammad Tariq Sherwani, director of the Muslim Center of New York for 10 years and a U.S. resident since 1969, agrees. "Everything is according to destiny. The timing of death is fixed, and cannot be changed," he insists. "But this is hard to understand when someone's father is not at the table in the evening and his food sits cold, or another's 22-year-old son went off to his first job and does not return home. In grief it is hard to see that out of this evil, good may come, perhaps in more unity on Earth."

Sherwani relays the Muslim doctrine that when someone is killed "as an innocent, which these people were," that person's sins are washed away and they are received "in the best place in the hereafter." For those unsettled by the fact that men would perpetrate crimes in the name of any religion, Sherwani adds, "God will punish the people who were responsible. If not in this world, then in the next."

Others will look to less traditional sources for answers, and Sarah Pollitt, an administrator at the College of Psychic Studies in London, is prepared. She feels that after 120 years "and two World Wars," the college has learned "to be aware of the power of prayer," and its ability to create "an energy of love and healing that is fed into the collective."

Particularly for those who lost someone in the tragedy, Pollitt announces the school "continually, every day, has proof of life after death," and is currently "focusing on the people who died and their families who are grieving their sudden and shocking deaths, sending them love, light and healing."

Pollitt further clarifies the college's ideology on this subject by referencing the famous lines from Henry van Dyke:

A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean?I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with one another/Then someone at my side exclaims, "There, she is gone!"

Gone where? Gone from my sight, that's all...

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching for her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "There she comes!"

"When I witnessed the crash on television, I began getting a series of visions," said Danielle Daoust, a seasoned clairvoyant and cofounder of a global network of psychics. "What I saw on the other side was a huge amount of activity. There may have been hundreds of thousands of people trying to help here, but that number was multiplied a million times over in the heavens, where the individuals who died would have been met immediately and comforted. Those last e-mails and phone calls to relatives were also many people's way of making peace with their lives. And remember all the candles lit the other night at 7? You can bet the folks who crossed over saw them. Their pain now is simply in knowing their families are grieving." Danielle suggests those in mourning and concerned for the deceased say one simple, important prayer: "Tell them to follow the light."

Even so, for all this talk of the veil between worlds and the glory of a hereafter, as Joseph Campbell wrote, "We must die before we understand the mystery of life." And as Jack Bemporad, a New Jersey rabbi born in Italy, reminds us, it is here on Earth that the living must carry on.

"Judaism does not believe evil must exist to have goodness. It believes a society based on peace is possible, and encourages people to work toward one. Now, when something this horrible happens, it's natural for people to look to symbols to interpret the event, and reaffirm life. To remember why it's worth living. For example, we had a couple in synagogue who lost someone in the tragedy, and I told them I didn't know exactly what happens after death, because it's never happened to me, but I did know they had a grandchild next to them. I don't want to use the word reincarnation specifically, but in a way, yes, part of their son was living in this child. I encouraged them to spend time with that child. To hope he can make a better future."