NDEs together: Mays excerpt #11

The Mays write: In cases of multiple simultaneous NDEs, two or more people have an NDE at the same time. The NDErs see each other out-of-body and can converse with one another.

Includes Hotshot Case

One case of multiple NDEs happened to an elite 20-person fire-fighting group called Hotshot who were battling a wilderness fire on a steep slope at the top of a mountain in 1989. The group was caught by shifting winds, and they were quickly engulfed in an inferno of flames.

“One by one the men and women fell to the earth suffocating from lack of oxygen. They were reduced to crawling on their hands and knees while they attempted to get back up the hill to a safer area. ... Jake [(John Hernandez), the crew boss,] found himself looking down on his body which was lying in a trench. ... Jake felt completely at peace. As he looked around Jake saw other fire-fighters standing above their bodies in the air. One of Jake’s crew members had a defective foot which he had been born with. As he came out of his body Jake looked at him and said: ‘Look, Jose, your foot is straight.’ ... All of the crew escaped and the only visual evidence on them of what they had been through was a few singed hairs. Jake said that in comparing accounts of their different episodes the men and women were astonished that they had each undergone some type of near-death experience.”

Another case of multiple simultaneous NDEs is described by May Eulitt from Oklahoma. In the late afternoon, May and her two close friends, James and Rashad, were chopping corn stalks for fodder. A rainstorm started, and the three hurried to finish the last wagon load. When they reached the metal gate, James opened the gate, and May leaned over from the wagon to pull him up but slipped. In the wagon, Rashad grabbed May’s other arm just as a bolt of lightning struck the gate.

“[I]t exploded around us with a such an incredible brightness that it felt as if we were being sucked directly into the sun. The next thing we knew, all of that was gone, and we were all in a large room or hall made of dark stone. ... I just felt peaceful, floating along there in the gloom with my two friends in the great, dark hall. The stately walls of this place loomed above us ... I remember thinking that it would have suited King Arthur. It was at that point that I realized that the three of us were united in thought and body. We were holding hands just as we had been when the lightning struck, but our minds were connected as well. Images of Arthur came to me from James and Rashad and I could see the same images that they were seeing.”

In both of these cases of simultaneous NDEs, the NDErs could see and interact with one another. During the NDE, Jake saw Jose’s foot and remarked to him that his defective foot was now straight. May, James, and Rashad saw each other and could experience what each of the others was experiencing. Each NDEr’s out-of-body “body” was objectively visible to the other NDErs.

What do these cases mean? The NDEr’s nonmaterial “body” was seen by another person or animal—by Olga Gearhardt’s son-in-law and by the dying woman’s estranged son. The German shepherd saw and barked at Jerry Casebolt as he playfully taunted him. The 20-person Hotshot team saw each other during their simultaneous NDEs. May Eulitt and her two friends saw and communicated with each other during their experiences together in another realm.

In each of these cases, the NDEr’s out-of-body mind was objectively present to others. In the apparitional NDEs, the NDEr appeared to the other person with a normal physical body.

The NDErs’ vivid subjective experiences while out-of-body coupled with the corresponding objective corroboration of their out-of-body “body” by others demonstrate that the NDEr mind entity is a real thing, a real being. The separate mind entity really exists.

Robert G. Mays, BSc and Suzanne B. Mays, AA,  “There is no death: Near-death experience evidence for survival after permanent bodily death.” An essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies addressing the question: “What Is The Best Available Evidence For The Survival Of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death?” Footnotes are omitted from these excerpts but are in the full text available from the Bigelow website at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.