After Elizabeth Krohn realized that her consciousness was outside her body, which was lying inert on the pavement of the parking lot of her synagogue due to the lightning bolt that had hit her, she began to accept her continuing conscious experience happening after her death. She writes her book, Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018), "I was connecting all these dots, a warm, inviting golden glow appeared to my upper right. It was not a fixed light but more of a moving beacon that I knew I needed to follow. There was no defined form to the glow. It was more like the diffused light that shimmers around the sun, a flame, or a light bulb. In any case, I understood that I was dead and that my children were safe with my family and the community at the synagogue, so I gave in to the temptation and followed the warmth that beckoned me.
"Things
immediately became even more foreign to me than they already were. I was
suddenly jolted by the understanding that time is not linear. Things were
happening in my field of vision, and new capacities were awakening within me,
but they were all taking place at the same time. My movement was no
longer encumbered by my physical body. Whatever it was that I had become flew
without resistance or exertion toward the warm glow.
"As I followed
it, I was led to what I came to call the Garden, although it was unlike any
garden here on Earth. Many things about my visit to the Garden I struggle to
describe. The words I need to accurately report what I saw just don’t exist. We
simply can’t perceive the Garden 'where' (in space) and 'when' (in time) we are
now.
"I have a theory
that there is a reason the ability to sufficiently describe my surroundings doesn’t
exist: perhaps it isn’t supposed to exist. One of the things I learned
in the afterlife is that no two souls have identical afterlife experiences.
Each experience in the afterlife is tailored to each individual soul, their
expectations, and their needs. Each soul perceives the afterlife, and
everything about it, differently. The idea that one particular vision of the
afterlife is the only one would be untrue. Therefore, if the words to describe
what someone perceives after death don’t even exist, then no one can be misled
or have any preconceived notions of how their personal afterlife will appear.
My theory of 'nonexistent adjectives' is perhaps the Universe’s way of
protecting us from inaccurate expectations of the afterlife.
"Even so, I will
try to describe what I saw, felt, and learned using our limited existing
language and vocabulary. But any attempt to articulate the captivating beauty,
knowledge, and all-encompassing unconditional love falls short when I attempt
to describe such a place. The glow led me to a beautiful bench made of what
appeared to be hand-carved wooden scrollwork, which had been sanded and
polished until the wood was glossy. The wood itself was much more gorgeous and
richly colored than any wood I have seen on Earth. The graceful curves and
swirls of the deeply carved wood almost looked fluid and felt like a creamy
silk or satin to my touch. It was incredibly beautiful and elaborately ornate
and looked like an elegant baroque throne built for two. The unique beauty of this
bench was only surpassed by the otherworldly comfort I felt when a familiar
voice welcomed me and told me to sit on the bench. The voice was that of my
beloved grandfather, whose death the previous year was the reason I had been at
services that fateful day, when I was struck by the lightning.
"When you find
yourself dead, in a place of otherworldly love and beauty, with a sudden
understanding of everything, and you hear your beloved deceased
grandfather tell you to sit on the most elaborately crafted bench you have ever
seen, you sit. I took a seat on the ornately carved bench and found that it
conformed to whatever my individual 'body' had become as soon as I sat down.
The bench morphed around me. As I sat, cradled in the most comfortable seat
imaginable, I began to look around. I saw that I was surrounded by a Garden of
foreign plants, the likes of which I had never seen before, or even imagined.
The plants continuously blossomed into magnificent flowers that seemed to
explode with colors from another spectrum inaccessible here."
Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a
Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers
Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the
Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of
Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.
Footnotes in the essay are not included.
No comments:
Post a Comment