Spiritual Psychology
After I Died
Out of Body Visit to Dystopia
L F Peterson Ph.D.
Copyright © 2025
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Preface
After I Died, is a profound and thought-provoking story combining existential themes with rich allegorical imagery. Readers are invited to reflect on the nature of life, death, and choices ultimately defining us. The story is a message of hope and transformation, illustrating loss and despair as opportunities for renewal.
The existential journey begins with a car crash rapidly transitioning into a surreal exploration of the afterlife. A labyrinthine, multi-dimensional plane displays doors symbolizing choices, regrets, and human experiences. The protagonist is guided by a cosmic figure representing wisdom and enlightenment. The story questions whether humans are truly free or merely puppets of desires and fears.
A dystopian critique of consumerism and late-stage capitalism permeates the narrative. Cities of opulence, grotesque depictions of consumption, and the commodification of human emotions serve as metaphors for the hollow promises of material wealth.
Grief is central to the protagonist’s journey reflecting unresolved guilt over the death of a loved one. The story is rich with allegorical elements. The language is poetic, blending metaphors, philosophical musings, and sensory details to create a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere.
The dystopian elements of the story serve as an amusing, satirical critique of contemporary society, particularly the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, technology, and unbridled consumerism. The story illustrated the dangers of losing touch with authentic human connections and values.
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After I Died
The Veil of Mist and Metal
The last thing I remember was the screech of skidding tires fracturing the midnight silence of Alternate Route 66. A sickening lurch seized my stomach as my Toyota flipped through the air, tumbling like a discarded erector set toy. Glass shattered around me. Fragments exploded into thousands of crystalline stars suspended in slow motion. Their jagged edges mirrored the splintered bones beneath my skin. Then came the dense, velvet blackness heavy with the acrid scent of gasoline.
I awoke feeling a damp chill of ancient stone pressing against my back. The cold seeped deep, leaching memories from my marrow. A hollow ache stretched into an endless cavern before me. Its walls etched with luminous runes pulsing rhythmically like timeless veins of Valhalla. Colors shifted hypnotically. Crimson bled into cobalt and cobalt dissolving into poisonous green. Stalactites dripped liquid moonlight droplets sizzling softly as they struck the stone floor. Spirals of silver mist curled upward like smoke from extinguished candles.
Within the mist an ephemeral form emerged. I glimpsed the face of a women. Her eyes shimmered with sorrow and silent understanding. I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. Nothing changed. A mental fog enveloped my mind. The figure remained, patient and expectant, reaching out with ghostly fingers.
The cavern walls rippled into living memories. Runes opened portals revealing scenes from my life. I beheld moments of joy, regret, love and loss. I witnessed choices made and opportunities missed. My existence unfolded in vivid clarity. A voice whispered.
“You’ve crossed the threshold.”
Your shadow peeled—a second skin.
left trembling where these doors begin
to breathe. The air, a blade half-drawn,
splits before from everon.
Time unspools in lichened threads,
each footfall sows what silence shreds.
No north, no south just gravity
of choices drowned in naivety.
The lantern coughs its yolk of light,
reveals the bridge was always night.
You clutch the railing, rust and psalm,
it melts to ash within your palm.
Now leap or kneel, both rites the same:
this threshold bears no mortal name.
No map, no key, no ghost to plead.
just footprints swallowed by your deed.
The voice resonated with the harmonic dissonance of collapsing neutron stars. A figure emerged from the shadows cloaked in robes stitched from living nebulae. The Pillars of Creation swirled in slow, cosmic ballet. The eyes held twin supernovae. Their light searing and penetrating. When she raised her hand the cave groaned. Doors materialized. Each door taller than redwoods and forged from materials defying logic. One door dripped molten gold. Another door bled sap-like ichor. Yet another door hummed with the subsonic growl of event horizons. I was perplexed and dumbfounded. My autonomy was forfeit to a greater force. My fate resembled a puppet on controlled by invisible strings.
“Fear not. I am Hypatia,” the voice intoned. Her words left after images in my dislocated brain cells. Syllables glowed into fading glyphs of dying fireflies. “I will be your Docent. I will lead you through the museum of the after world. You presently stand at the Axis of Existence. Doors are mirrors to experience and understanding. Souls default to paths of choices.” Her finger traced the arc of a door crackling with equations. Symbols twisted like constriction vipers. “Choose wisely or fate will select for you. I strongly advise the former.”
I staggered back. This isn’t real. I’m undoubtedly hallucinating or lost in a magorical dream. Am I still alive? Am I unconscious, laying on the road beside the deer after the accident?
Hypatia’s laugh bore the sound of glaciers calving into black seas of endless consequence. “Plato’s Cave pales from what you will encounter, child. You straddle knife’s edge between worlds. Your journey begins now with the first door.” Her robes billowed revealing a skeleton draped in endless galaxies. Her skull reflected billions of stars shining like diamonds. “You will learn why Midas starved. You will learn why his golden daughter still weeps.”
The door swung open with a groan. A city stood beyond framed in obscene opulence. Skyscrapers stood sheathed in iridescent platinum. Streets lay paved with sapphires singing in minor keys. Fountains spewed liquid amber hardening mid-air into gilded statues of weeping angels. Androgynous beings clad in quantum-fiber robes beckoned from the city’s edge. Their movements synchronized like clockwork moon waves. Their razor teeth clicked chants, “Accumulate, appropriate, propagate, but never hesitate.”
“Enter,” Hypatia whispered, her voice a hive-minded chorus of syncopated enigmas. “Behold the aggregate of gluttonous damnation and ravenous over indulgence. You will feel right at home.”
A tongue laps at the edge of hell,
Where grease congeals in clotted well.
Each bite a pact with bloated gods,
Who chew the stars and spit out frauds.
The oven hums, a corpse’s low hymn,
Its flames lick ribs grown paper-thin.
No broth to soothe, no wine to drown.
Just throats to choke on thorny crowns.
The butcher’s moon carves meat to bone,
Reveals the rot we’ve sown, then own.
Carrion blooms in gutters deep,
Where hunger’s roots refuse to sleep.
The plate, the pyre, the same coiled creed,
The beast becomes the feast we feed.
I knew not where I was. I knew not how to proceed. My foot hovered over the threshold with dubious uncertainty. Is this what others declared the afterlife? Am I stuck between worlds? The air smelled of burnt credit cards and desiccated fly orchids.
Somewhere in the labyrinth of glittering spires a shadow emerged from a wall of solid jade. It eyes were hollow. Its gaping mouth, full of chrome gears. The gears gnashed relentlessly with the intensity of a rock crusher. In its jade hands rested the skull of a boy still wearing a faded baseball cap. The contradiction was stupefying. The shadow opened its jaw wider. The gears ejected a copper coin landing at my feet. The coin bore a question mark. My mind swam with confusion. I felt a prisoner in a circus charade. My future woefully uncertain. I soon realized incongruity was to be the prevailing theme of my journey.
Hypatia’s hand clamped my shoulder. Her touch was colder than the hollow void between stars. “Every door demands sacrifice, Eric. Will you let this city’s song drown your heartbeat? Will you rewrite your personal symphony? Will you be seduced by the wailing siren of the river Cocytus? Time will tell. Perhaps you allow charlatans to fill your head with nonsense? I know well the Zealots of ignorance. They stoned me while I was alive.”
What choice did I have but to acquiesce. Wasn’t life a sacrifice in and of itself? I sacrificed everything in the name of survival. I worked long hours in jobs I disliked. I fought to climb the corporate ladder. I felt my value diminished with every rejected suggestion. I stiffened in meeting someone for the first time, asking me my job as if it ultimately defined me. Perhaps you have been there. Perhaps you too have felt a pawn in a grander scheme beyond your control or birth right.
The Banquet of Mortified Dust
The moment I crossed the threshold the cavern dissolved into a cacophony of crumpling tin foil. The chaotic chorus resembled the birth-cry of a ravenous flock of surrealism tugging my consciousness. Chrysopolis arose around me forming a carcinogenic wonderland. Light didn’t fall, it assaulted the senses. Towers of liquid mercury reflected rippling Fun House distortions. My face cascaded across endless mirrored crevices and canyons. The smog choked air oozed burnt saffron. The clouds resembled neoplastic credit cards waved by Black Friday shoppers. Competition for the last remaining sale items waxed fierce. I smelled ore and vanilla-sweet decay, much like rotting orchids left in sweet sorrow at gravesides.
We gather where the table bends
beneath the weight of unborn ends.
Each plate a shard of fractured sun,
each sip the tears that clocks outrun.
The first course: wings of moth-chewed hymns,
dissolving on the tongue like whims.
The second: ash of childhood gates,
served cold with rust on tarnished plates.
The third—a rind of midnight’s breath,
too bitter for the teeth of death.
The fourth—a broth of hollowed years,
slurped raw to drown unspoken fears.
The final toast? A chalice poured
from veins of gods we long ignored.
We chew the silence, throat by throat—
our feast the dust that feasts on hope.
“Welcome,” a voice uttered like counterfeit coins in the eyes of a corpse.
Epicurus lounged on a bench fashioned from a gleaming Rolex. The Aiguilles hands moved with the quartz synchrony of rigor mortis. His frayed tunic bled gold thread dissolving mid-air into vanishing regrets. The pomegranate in his hand pulsed like the caged heart of Hestia. Its seeds glowed with trapped circumstance. When he bit the fruit, juice ran red like lethe water mixed with strawberry sludge.
“This is where your species turned desire into sacraments. Bow to the alter of wanton materialism! Obsolescence rules here. Spend, expend, disburse, waste, squander and splurge. Scarcity drives the price. Forget sacrifice. Immediate gratification is the shibboleth. Discard yesterday’s products with the alacrity of spewing diarrhea from the backside of a turkey buzzard. Credit is your friend, my friend. Why wait? Learn to burn through every last cent like there is no tomorrow. You can do it. If not you, then who?”
Epicurus gestured to a plaza. Chimeric stockbrokers sported heads fashioned from Bloomberg terminals. They feverishly traded ingots stamped with IMF forget-me-nots. A nurse in green scrubs attracted crowds with the promise of Time-Enhancement Ampoules. “Lose ten years!” her Jumbotron lips mouthed while injecting herself between prehensile toes webbed with Venetian ducats. Holograms of Midas and Croesus formed a pantheon above the crowds. Arms were outstretched to invite potential buyers. Mouths recited Dies Irae’s Day of Judgment in Auto-Tuned Gregorian chant.
Dies iræ, dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla
Quantus tremor est futurus
Quando iudex est venturus
Cuncta stricte discussurus
“Why can’t they see the raucous vulgarity?” I whispered. I watched a man gamble away his daughter’s laughter for the false allure of a lotto ticket. From his sternum grew grotesque ticker tape tumors. Tapes were emblazoned with ominous digits of 666, the sinister badge of insatiable greed. His relentless hunger devoured everything. The dry bones of his family withered in tattered rags while he feverishly scratched through lotto tickets with dreams of drinking Dom Perignon. The gamble for the multitudes never paid off. His fate was to drink Mad Dog Twenty-Twenty from a paper bag in a skid row alley.
What defines real? I wondered. Each reflection revealed quantum realities. Not of heaven. Not of hell. Simultaneous truths. Simultaneous lies. Simultaneous hyperbole. A spectral image with shifting faces threw a switch causing computer monitors to flicker to life. I glimpsed a CEO with diamond cuff links sitting in a limo window reviewing merger documents. Across the street a child’s silhouette carried water buckets through monsoon rains. The child’s blistered feet stopped momentarily to peer into a window where wealthy patrons lifted wagyu with golden chopsticks. Nearby, a calloused and soot-stained boy rummaged through dumpsters for discarded baozi. A crumb transformed into a cockroach. The cockroach morphed into a rice grain clutched by a construction worker’s widow sitting alone on a nearby park bench.
If one sunk low enough, even Hell might resemble a promotion, I thought. Hell might be the absence of memories. Or, Hell might be remembering what was better forgotten. Why is embarrassment one of the most intransigent pains to pursue, like hounds leaping with teeth to peel the scab and prevent healing?
I glimpsed a pharmaceutical empire’s neon sign casting pollution-green shadows over a favela clinic. A young girl painted murals in an alley with medicated paint stolen from a nearby warehouse. She used brushes fashioned from abandoned Tesla windshield wipers. Her mural depicted coma patients floating between skyscrapers and shanties. Their bodies were connected by IV lines pumping liquid gold to private rooms for the rich. Sewage was pumped to rooms occupied by the pejorative masses.
Epicurus snapped his fingers. The scene tore like gilded vellum revealing tell tale clockwork truths. “See how citizens become deranged marionettes with fused ulnas and titanium torsos, bowing to the god of emotionally insulated absurdity. Their brains are toasters. Their chest cavities house credit card terminals clicking like a Microsoft computer mouse.”
I could not disagree. It was impossible for me to ignore the down trodden who slaved to provide luxury for the rich. Adam Smith was wrong. The Wealth of Nations did not ensure the rich would become benevolent benefactors altruistically helping the poor. On the contrary, the rich became constipated goats grazing on bloated profits leveraged by board members without conscience. Corporate elite fought for room at the golden trough of self indulgence. Exploitation became the right of passage to private clubs and estates of conspicuous waste.
Epicurus laughed. “Diamonds hold value because they are artificially manipulated to ensure scarcity. “Think about it. Value is manipulated with greed to possess diminished quantity. The rich gorge with gold plated spoons while the poor eat off cardboard. I ask you, what is the most common cause of hunger in the world? Is it drought? Is it flood? Is it locusts? Is it crop disease? In truth, the poor go to bed hungry because markets are filled with food they cannot afford. The problem is unequal access.”
Your shadow grows a price tag, dear—
the markets hum but you can’t hear:
a code that counts each breath you’ve sold
to hoard the light, then ration gold.
We starve in aisles of phantom wheat,
kneel to gods of counterfeit
who mint the dust we’re told to crave—
then lock the surplus in the grave.
“Consider how seeds for agriculture are deliberately irradiated by large corporations to ensure only one crop for one seed. The zombie seeds are impotent. Farmers become slaves to the machine. Crops are bought and paid for by co-ops.”
“Do you really believe pharmaceutical research seeks cures? Don’t be naive. If a cure is discovered, it is quickly archived. Cures kill future business. The goal is to produce medication to maintain the disease. Keeping a steady line of customers is the commercial game no matter the corporate motto.”
My head spun in dizzying recognition of contradictions and dialectical class war. Epicurus was keen in his observations. My heart ached with sympathy recalling the popular phrase, ‘Money isn’t everything, but not having it, surely is.’ Privilege changes perception. Dough is for show. Yachts the size of cities resemble pyramids of CEO avarice.
In the neon glow of midnight cities, capitalist consumption hums its siren song, a kaleidoscope of touchscreen promises and same-day deliveries. Shelves bend under curated abundance. Organic avocados wrapped in biodegradable guilt, eggs laid by open range hens, smartwatches tracking existential voids as fitness goals. Credit cards transmute desire into entitlement; each swipe whispers, This could be you. Perfume commercials and titanium espresso machines resurrect the promise of status.
The receipts tell parallel stories. The 72-inch TV purchased on installment bloats landfills with obsolete models. Fast fashion mountains smolder where villages once harvested indigo. Influencer-endorsed serums promise immortality to faces wearied by infinite scroll. The grand bargain flickers. Personal fulfillment is promised through accumulation. Selfhood is defined by branded totems. Every purchase becomes a tiny revolution against mortality. Every marketing video a secular Eucharist.
The paradox ripens like overstocked fruit. Abundance starves, choices paralyze, liberation is sacrificed through obedient consumption. Tomorrow’s catalogs draft new vocabularies.
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