Pathway Program of Shared Crossing Project

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall write: "Hospice volunteer, William Peters in Santa Barbara, in 2010 created protocols via the Shared Crossing Project’s Pathway program, designed to assist others in accepting death as a natural process and specific exercises in how to establish ‘links’ between the dying and their loved ones.

"One such introductory exercise to facilitate this bond goes like this: 'Take a moment to deepen into a relaxed and contemplative state and focus on one particular close relationship. Reflect on a specific event or memory that evokes feelings of gratitude for this loved one. Perhaps this occurred at a time of great joy in your life, or when you most needed comfort. Allow these feelings of appreciation to form a bond across time and space, between you and this special loved one. Allow yourself to sense and feel the presence of this being, with you, now.'

"When practiced with some frequency over time, this visualization creates a link that stretches between this life and what lies ahead. Through a series of increasingly elaborate exercises, participants learn the landscape that leads from this human life into afterlife and choreograph their transitions with loved ones. Participants who followed such protocols have attained a more meaningful relationship with death and numerous long-term benefits. These include increased appreciation for life, decreased fear of death, more manageable grief, and a deeper understanding of their own purpose in life.

"Research reveals that these practices enable a variety of profound and healing end-of-life phenomena that Peters has identified and documented as ‘shared crossings.’ These refer to a kind of communication across the veil that yields a transformative gift, including predeath dreams/visions (where the dying express that they have been visited by a deceased loved one who provides them guidance and comfort); the shared death experience (where loved ones report that they went into the initial stages of the afterlife with the dying individual and experienced phenomena such as a shared out-of-body event, witnessing benevolent beings of light, encountering heavenly realms, and ultimately realizing that their departing loved one is safe, well-cared-for, and happy); postdeath coincidences (where an individual experiences a profound energetic event in which they know that a loved one has died, yet are alive and well); and many more.

"We are spiritual beings living in a spiritual universe. Fundamentally, this spirituality means we are all interconnected through the Collective Mind, and that the emotional power behind our hopes and dreams has a basis in reality that guides the unfolding of events in our lives. The very fuel of that spirituality is love, and the more we can express unconditional love for self and others, the more healing or ‘becoming whole’ we will be. The best way to discover this is through cultivating a means of going within, often described as a practice of meditation or prayer. Any physical, mental, or emotional health must be firmly rooted in spiritual health, and prayer is a most natural means of invoking such overall wellness. As hundreds have shared with us, that sense of eternal connection is truly a life changer. We just need to be open to the possibility."

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall, Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness (Rodale, 2017).