ARTICLES
“Crossing the Veil & Coming Back to Life” An Ensemble Theater Piece Based on Near Death Experiences
by Robert Cornett, M.T.S.,
Published in The International Association of Near Death Studies “Vital Signs” Volume 42 #4, 2023
I have been a student of conceptions of the afterlife, after death communication and near death experiences for most of my adult life. In recent years I have been called to be trained as an end of life doula working with hospice patients and their families. Death and what happens after is something I have needed to deeply explore and understand in this lifetime. This quest began during my studies at Harvard Divinity School where I explored conceptions of the afterlife across world religious traditions and transpersonal psychologies. As a student of the history of religion and spiritual systems of thought I have come to understand that a profound spiritual awakening has been taking place in humanity over the past two centuries. A key part of this awakening has involved an
understanding of the existence of the soul and an understanding that consciousness continues after death. The implications of this are profound.
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In 1975 Doctor Raymond Moody published his book, Life After Life, the first qualitative study of 150 people who had reported near death experiences (NDEs). Since that time there has been 50 years of research and thousands of case studies of people who have had medical crises that brough them to the edge of death or who have actually been declared clinically dead and came back from the experience feeling they had travelled out of their bodies and had some sort of spiritual or transcendent experience. This research has opened the minds of millions of people around the world to the possibility that life continues after death.
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​A few years ago I had the idea that these moving stories of near death experiencers would make a very compelling theater piece. As I began sketching out ideas for a play I had the good fortune of meeting Ted Pugh and Fern Sloane, professional actors and leaders of the Michael Chekhov School of Acting in Hudson, NY. I approached them with the idea for a play about NDEs. They warmed up to the idea and gathered together a group of actors to read through my initial script. Over several months I reworked the script until we felt we were ready to start rehearsing. I had imagined this as an ensemble piece that would emerge from a creative exploration and imagining into the experience of what may happen after the moment of death. The hope was that by engaging with and entering into the experiences of real people who have reported near death experiences the ensemble would discover powerful ways to give dramatic expression to these stories. The Michael Chekhov acting techniques turned out to be the perfect vehicle for the project. After many months of experimenting, the result was the creation of an ensemble theater piece, “Crossing the Veil & Coming Back to Life”
I. A Departure from the ordinary word and crossing a threshold into an unknown reality.
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II. A Wandering and undergoing various trials and tests and awakenings in the Initiation stage.
III. Ending in a Return to their origin point by crossing a threshold back into the ordinary world, integrating newwisdom learned along the way and sharing it as an elixir with the community. Sharing the story can lead to a senseof healing in the community.
I believe that people who come back from their NDEs and have the courage to share them with others are like the mythic heroes and shamans in indigenous cultures. They bring an elixir of healing to their community. They help them see an expanded sense of the universe we live in and the possibility that when we die our lives will continue and we will meet our loved ones and others who have gone before us. Above all, these stories demonstrate the transformative power and the importance of Love in our lives. The Jungian psychologist and scholar, Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote this about stories and story tellers: ”A story is not just a story. In its most innate and proper sense it is someone’s life. It is the numen (or divine spirit) of their life and it is the first hand familiarity with the stories they carry that makes their story “a medicine”, a medicine which strengthens and arights the individual and the community.”
Our work together as an ensemble has been a true labor of love. We hope our performances honor the real people behind these stories and bring a sense of hope, wonder, inspiration and healing to the audiences that come to see it.
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Robert Cornett is an actor and playwright and holds a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. He has done extensive study of the literature of post-mortem experience and communication. He is a certified End of Life Doula working with hospice patients and their families in the New York Hudson Valley.
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The play has been performed multiple times over the past two years for several community, artistic, spiritual and church groups. We also were honored to perform at the 2023 International Association of Near Death Studies (IANDS) annual conference in Washington D.C. I feel blessed to have found such a talented group of professional actors to bring this piece to life and to share these powerful stories with the communities where we have performed. Those who come back from near death experiences and tell their stories seem to me to be akin to the heroes that the scholar of mythology, Joseph Campbell, describes in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Campbell describes the “Hero’s Journey” is a travel story with three stages: