Dr. Penny Sartori's research on NDEs

When I began my nurse training in 1989, I’d never heard of an NDE and it was never something I was taught. During my first year I recall looking after a patient on the medical ward; I had worked ten consecutive shifts, so I got to know her really well. On the tenth shift, while I was helping her to wash, she sheepishly told me that she had ‘gone to heaven’ when her heart had stopped in the coronary-care unit. 

 

I remember listening to her experience of looking down on her own body in the bed and going to a beautiful meadow where her dead mother was waiting for her. I thought to myself, ‘She must have been hallucinating or had too much diamorphine.’ 

 

I never gave it a second thought and I didn’t question her further; I simply listened. It was a few years later, after I had qualified as a staff nurse, that I was to realize the significance of what she had said.

 

Dr. Sartori ends her book with these comments:

 

Previous investigations into NDEs have focused on establishing a materialist cause for the experience, which has served to detract from the very important spiritual insights that may be gained. It is time to stop concentrating solely on pathologizing these experiences and reflect on what they can actually teach us about living.

 

One thing I’ve come to realize over the past few years is that heaven is not a location—it is a state of mind and is within us all. We just have to go within and find it.

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences. Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.