Remarkably, though he lived his life in the shadow of the constant threat of sudden death, a week before his passing Ben made clear to his family that he was no longer afraid of it. At a family gathering the day after yet another cardiac event, Ben – a committed Christian – said a prayer for those closest to him: “I pray that my family wouldn’t be sad or scared for me anymore, because I’m not sad or scared. I pray they would have the same peace that I have.”
Ben’s lack of fear was the result of a strange experience he had while the paramedics were working on him after he had collapsed at school. After he passed out, Ben realized he could still see and hear what was going on, and just as the paramedics were preparing to use the defibrillator on him, he suddenly ‘awoke’ in a white room with no walls, “a brighter white than he could ever describe that seemed to engulf his surroundings in every direction.” In this never-ending whiteness, Ben “listened to the most quiet he had ever heard in his life.” He found himself in front of a full-length mirror, and as he stared into it, realized he wasn’t just looking at his reflection, but was...
...looking at his entire life. In a sense of time that Ben could never explain, he stood in front of that mirror and watched his entire life, every moment he had ever experienced, play out in front of him in real time. Yet somehow it went by in an instant. In that incomprehensible moment, Ben felt proud of himself, of his entire life, of everything he had done.
Ben was asked, “Are you ready?”, to which Ben – assuming he was going to heaven – replied “Yeah.” After hearing the words “Go now!”, Ben woke to find himself back at his school, being resuscitated by the paramedics.
Ben had undergone what is known as a ‘near-death experience’ (NDE). This strange phenomenon, recorded countless times throughout history and in different cultures around the world, occurs when a person has a brush with death and undergoes an experience that appears to give them a glimpse of an afterlife realm.
Ben’s sister Ally recounts that after this NDE, “it was clear that Ben had a new resolve... in some ways, he had crossed over already; he had seen the other side and formed his opinions about it; he accepted it...he was content with that possibility, almost happy about it.”
When Ben’s father asked him to talk about the peace he felt during his NDE, Ben described it in terms of Philippians 4:8: “It’s just like the verse says (‘And the peace that surpasses all understanding shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’). You can’t describe it. You just have to be there.”
Ally recalls that, following the NDE, in a quiet moment together Ben told her, “I think that God let me have that vision so I wouldn’t be afraid of dying.” He passed away a week later.
What if we could all experience that surety, the peace of knowing that something lies beyond the door of death? How would society be different, if we knew that death wasn’t the end for our loved ones when tragedy took them from us? Our entire approach to death would be forever changed: how we treat the dying (medically and socially), our grief at losing loved ones, and our anxiety over our own mortality.
As it turns out, there is enough evidence for us all to accept this as reality: indeed, as we will see, the survival of consciousness beyond physical death seems the most likely conclusion when we carefully examine the masses of evidence and testimony collected over time from four areas of research:
Experiences had during brushes with death: near-death experiences
Experiences had at the time of death: end-of-life experiences
Experiences involving those beyond death: communication through mediums
Experiences of returning from death: memories of past lives reported by children.
In fact, the evidence from these areas is so strong that the only thing truly stopping us from accepting it is modern science’s blind insistence that it is an impossibility. However, once we grasp that human understanding of the cosmos and our existence has constantly been updated through the ages as our knowledge and experience has expanded with new evidence, it is less difficult to take the next step to accepting survival of consciousness as the most logical explanation for the data that we will present.
Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay may be downloaded with all its references at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.
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