Dying woman experiences death & resurrection

I was feeling deep despair caused by an incurable disease that was diagnosed by the doctors. It seemed to me that I had no chance to live a normal and pleasant life, filled with happiness and joy. I was desperate. My despair was so deep that every night I prayed to God to take me. I hoped never to wake up again. At the time, I thought that death was permanent and I didn't believe in life after death.

I used to live in a small studio on the ground floor in Paris. I was living from social aids and wasn't able to work because of my disease. The medical treatment was extremely tiring. Despite brilliant studies at the university and the beginning of a doctorate about a great French writer, I passed my time to wandering through the city, visiting some friends and being unable to find a meaning to existence. So it happened that I walked for hours in the city. I was trying to wear out my last vital energy and hoping every night that God would put an end to my existence. I don't know if I died on that evening, but before going to bed I was in an extreme state of physical and mental fatigue. My pulse seemed to be hanging by a thread. So, in bed I said my usual prayer. “Please God, call me back to you.”as I fell into a deep sleep.

On waking the next morning, I opened my eyes looked at my room. I felt extreme well-being, and very full of light. I realized that I was about one meter above my body. All around myself an unbelievable light was shining; white and very luminous, like a fluid. My body consisted of white, very strong light. Surrounding my light-body, there were magnificent white flowers. They smelled so wonderful, that I couldn't explore their scents completely. It was as if they was bouquets of lilies all around my body and they were also emanating light. I felt light and it was not a dream, my room was as I knew it, perfectly real around myself and behind the curtains morning dawned.

I understood that I wasn't in my body but hanging slightly above it. I felt alive and very light, happy and perfectly at ease. I had no fear, but knew that my physical heart might have stopped and that life was continuing outside of the body. Everything was so soft, so light; and so good and pleasant.

I sensed a presence at my right. This presence wasn't really distinct from me. It was a perfect, loving, sweet and pleasant, nice and sensitive part of myself. It was like an intimate companion knowing me from time immemorial, and yet was also myself. This presence that I thought was Jesus, was whispering something into my ear that I don't remember exactly. I was something like, “You/we have to go back now to the physical body, as I love you and everything is well.” Then I remember thinking, “I'm coming back.” I agreed to come back to my physical body.

My return to the physical body was so gentle and so simple. It was like a river gliding gently down into its bed. I remember that I laid down in my physical body, so tenderly, so gently and pleasantly. I was again back in my physical body when the echo of my sentence, 'I'm coming back' called for a follow-up, something like a goal about existence. Coming back why? I had been so happy and so calm. Then I remember saying, this time with my mouth in my physical body. “To love the world.” Such was my assignment. Then, I looked at my room, everything around me seemed calm and serene. Everything was as I left it the evening before, but there was an atmosphere of indescribable peace and simplicity. I saw that I was well awake and a choice came to me. I could go back to sleep to keep this experience deep down, or I could get out of bed and try to understand it. I decided that everything was ok, that what I came to experience was a gift. I looked at my room, slightly illuminated by the morning sun, and closed my eyes and went to sleep in perfect peace.

I experienced several strange experiences since, but this one remains engraved in my memory. It seems to me that I was resurrected on that morning by the grace of God. I keep in mind this sensation of peace and perfect well-being, that I try to find and/or to recreate as soon as I can by prayer or meditation, or simply by coming back towards my heart. I take very seriously my new 'mission' to love the world. As it seems to me that that's what we are here for - to learn to love.

Even though other experiences happened in my life (of which one was quite amazing), I keep this first experience as a proof of life after death and that we shouldn't worry at all. We are known, loved, supported and guided. We are loved so much, in such a gracious and gentle way, without any setbacks or suffering. If only we knew how much we are loved, and especially with this very subtle and strong quality, like the infinite scent of the flowers, like a gentle and perfect breeze. We are loved in all our details, in our tiniest aspects and everything in us that loves is called to exist for ever. Of this I'm convinced today.
 

https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1francois_d_ste.html

STEMI heart attack ends fear of dying

On 3/28/19 I experienced what I now know to have been a STEMI heart attack. I managed to drive myself to the hospital, where I collapsed at the entrance of the emergency room waiting room. I was found, loaded onto a gurney, and whisked to what I now know was the cardiac catheter lab. I was in and out of consciousness and struggling to breathe. A squad of heathcare professionals surrounded me and various members took turns leaning over me to yell instructions and questions. Being unable to breathe, I was unable to speak. This caused the squad to repeat the same questions louder and sometimes nose-to-nose. How rude, I thought; I just wanted them to leave me alone.

Suddenly, I felt better. I wondered how they did that. Not only did I feel symptom free; I felt great! I felt buoyant, focused, and incredibly peaceful. My reverie was interrupted when I heard another guy in the room making groaning and choking noises. I wondered who he was and how he got in there. I decided to have a closer look as I was mainly interested as to whether they were rudely yelling at him as they had been at me. I approached and looked over their shoulders and sure enough, they were nose to nose with him yelling, 'Mr. X (my name), Mr. X, stay with us Mr. X.' 'No way,' I thought to myself, 'Here is ultra-pleasant and there is not. I'm staying put.'

It took me some time to figure out that if Mr. X was lying on that treatment table about 30 feet away, then who was having these thoughts and perceptions? The idea that I already had died crossed my mind. I realized that my internal dialogue was occurring in grammatically correct English and that I was able to have thoughts, deductions, and decisions. I concluded that my brain's executive functions were intact. I decided to test my short-term memory. Sure enough, I could remember everything leading up to collapsing at the entrance to the emergency room. Not only that but I could remember all of it in exquisite, vivid detail. I then decided to test my long-term memory and arbitrarily chose 8th grade. Immediately, I was furnished a rush of detailed memories. The sharpness and vividness of those memories quickly overwhelmed me. I wondered, 'Where could all that have been stored?' I concluded that my long term memory system was intact and it was much broader and deeper than I believed possible.

I began to get lost in the peaceful feeling I was experiencing. It was the peace which surpassed all understanding, and I wanted or needed nothing more, ever. I don't know how long I remained in this state but I eventually decided to do a little exploring.

Immediately, I found myself standing on a short-grass prairie and gazing at the horizon. There were no trees, no roads, no animals, or any fences. It was just me and the endless prairie. As I studied the scene, I realized that out on the horizon was a black, cylindrical, horizontal cloud, skimming along the surface of the land. It stretched out of sight in both directions. I felt the immense energy that was headed my way. I was fascinated by the cloud and got lost in it. Suddenly, I realized that the cloud was death, or at least my brain's symbolic projection of death. I knew if the cloud touched me, I was dead.

Two thoughts occurred to me. The first was that I couldn't understand why I still felt totally relaxed and peaceful. Shouldn't I be feeling pain, fear, or panic? A voice inside my head said, 'No.' The second thought was, 'Shouldn't I being inventorying regrets and having a life review?' Again, the voice inside my head said, 'No need. You do a lot of that back in the world.' And that was that.

I turned my attention back to the cloud and was surprised to see that it had gotten much closer. It wasn't touching me yet, but with a running start I could spit into it. I tried to form a thought but was utterly unable to do so. I took this as a sign that physical death was imminent. I felt myself entering the gravitational pull of the black cloud.

At that instant, I heard a voice from behind me, just over my right shoulder. The voice said, 'Where's the tunnel of light? Where are the loving dead relatives beckoning you forth? Where are the angels of light urging you to fear not and be of good cheer?' The voice was affectionate and light-hearted. At that instant, I could breathe. I knew with certainty that I would live. I re-inhabited my body with a thud, a development one would think that would cause great jubilation. It did not. My first thought was, 'This thing feels like it's made of wet concrete. It must weigh a ton. I'll never be able to move it. How does anyone do it.'

Then, I went unconscious for an indeterminate length of time and awoke amidst all kinds of electrodes and beeping equipment. The nurse happily informed me that I was a lucky man, that I had just survived a STEMI heart attack.

My recovery produced some amusing anecdotes but was surprisingly easy. As is suggested by the above, I had some prior information on NDEs because I had read several NDE accounts back in the 1970s. I never floated, I never entered a tunnel of light, and I was never melted by the overwhelming awe and unity of the universe. The afterlife and the experience of consciousness without corporality seem like givens. For me the takeaway of my experience was: Nothing hurt, and the afterlife tenderly awaits your arrival. 

https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1jeff_l_nde_9453.html

Dr. Reggie Anderson's experiences of heaven

Dr. Reggie Anderson writes from the perspective of a firm Christian faith. He describes, however, his loss of faith as a young man and how the love he shared with the woman who became his wife—and having what he describes as a very powerful dream—renewed his childhood faith.

Anderson begins his book with his first experience as a resident caring for a dying patient. “Throughout medical school I had taken care of dying patients, but this was the first time that I, as the senior resident, would be the one in charge when a patient died. I didn’t know what to expect.

Dr. Anderson, the elderly woman began, her voice starting to fade. Will you hold my hand? I’m going to see Jesus, and I need an escort.

“That night, I experienced the veil parting—the veil that separates this life from the next. As I held the dying woman’s hands, I felt the warmth of her soul pass by my cheek when it left her body, swept up by an inexplicably cool breeze in an otherwise stagnant room. I smelled the familiar fragrance of lilac and citrus, and I knew the veil was parting to allow her soul to pass through.

“Since that first patient, I’ve walked with countless others to the doorstep of heaven and watched them enter paradise. On many occasions, as I held hands with the dying, God allowed me to peer into heaven’s entryway where I watched each patient slip into the next world.

“Sometimes I’ve even witnessed patients leave this world and come back. As they’ve shared their stories with me, I’ve often remembered the time early in my life when God allowed me to step into heaven’s foyer, even though I no longer believed he was real.

“The one thing these experiences have in common is the intensity of the sights, sounds, fragrances, and feelings that I sensed. Heaven is more real than anything we experience here, and the sense of peace, joy, and overwhelming love is beyond description.”

Reggie Anderson with Jennifer Schuchmann, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale Momentum, 2013), 4-5.

 

Death involves entering another state of being

Physician Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004) suggested to her colleagues: “We shouldn’t nail the dying to the threshold between two states of consciousness. We shouldn’t prolong their lives with medication, injections and life-support machines. We should let them go. They’re not going into nothingness. They’re entering another state of being. We must let our dead go into that world.”

David J. Darling, Soul Search: A Scientist Explores the Afterlife (Villard, 1995), 180.

Dr. Jonathan Kopel, a member of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, writes that: “Near-death experiences have positively impacted the medical profession and physician-patient interactions. Counselors trained with NDE literature reduced suicidal thoughts, bereavement, and post-traumatic stress disorder among their patients.

In addition, patients who experienced an NDE showed significant transformation in their spiritual and emotional lives, with many stating a renewed sense of meaning, existential awareness, and mystical experiences. Family and friends of patients who experienced an NDE also reported increased comfort, hope, and inspiration.” 

Kopel and other healthcare professionals affirm that: “NDEs represent a growing paradigm shift beyond the naturalistic interpretations of science and medicine.”

Jonathan Kopel, “Near-Death Experiences in Medicine,” Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent), 2019 Jan; 32(1): 163-64.

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl G. Jung (1875-1961), “made every effort to strengthen the belief in immortality, especially with older patients when such questions come threateningly close. For, seen in correct psychological perspective," he affirmed,"death is not an end but a goal.”

C. G. Jung, On Death and Immortality (Princeton University Press, 1999), 3.

 

Psychiatrist Carl G. Jung's near-death experence

In a hospital for surgery in Switzerland in 1944, the psychiatrist Carl G. Jung had a cardiac arrest and recalls this “near-death experience” [which occurred before Raymond Moody used this phrase to identify this experience while dying].

It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxidized silver.

Far away to the left lay a broad expanse—the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the sliver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back—as if in the upper left of a map—I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth.

Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view—approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious thing I had every seen. Then Jung recalls: A short distance away I saw in space a tremendous dark block of stone, like a meteorite. It was about the size of my house, or even bigger. It was floating in space, and I myself was floating in space. I had seen similar stones on the coast of the Gulf of Bengal. They were blocks of tawny granite, and some of them had been hollowed out into temples. My stone was one such gigantic dark block.

As I approached the steps leading up to the entrance into the rock, a strange thing happened: I had the feeling that everything was being sloughed away; everything I aimed at or wished for or thought, the whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence, fell away or was stripped from me—an extremely painful process. Nevertheless something remained; it was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak. I consisted of my own history and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am. I am this bundle of what has been and what has been accomplished.

The experience gave me a feeling of extreme poverty, but at the same time of great fullness. There was no longer anything I wanted or desired. I existed in an objective form; I was what I had been and lived. At first the sense of annihilation predominated, of having been stripped or pillaged; but suddenly that became of no consequence.

Everything seemed to be past; what remained was a ‘fait accompli,’ without any reference back to what had been. There was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.

After he had recovered from his cardiac arrest, Jung wrote: I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible. It was not a product of imagination. The visions and experiences were utterly real.

We shy away from the word ‘eternal,’ but I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought into a concrete whole. Nothing was distributed over time; nothing could be measured by temporal concepts. The experience might best be defined as a state of feeling, but one that cannot be produced by imagination.

How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow? There would be things that would not yet have begun, other things that would be indubitably present, and others again which would already be finished and yet all this would be one. One is interwoven into an indescribably whole and yet observes it with complete objectivity.

“Carl G. Jung’s Near-Death Experience,” http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/carl-jung.html. See also Carl G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 289-90.

After cardiac arrest doctors hear patient's laugh

Dr. Paul Sanders was a family physician before retiring. He told Dr. Janis Amatuzio of his own personal experience that was extraordinary.

I had just arrived home from work one evening when the phone rang, and the nurse told me that Dad had suffered a cardiac arrest. Those were the days before the patient directives and do not resuscitate orders were in place.

Dr. Sanders rushed back to the hospital and to his Dad’s room. He recalls: As I got to the doorway something quite extraordinary happened. I glanced to my left and saw my father’s motionless body lying in bed, ringed by nurses with their backs to me. Dr. Seacamp was on the other side of the bed, intently doing CPR. He glanced up quickly as I stopped in the doorway. 

And just at that moment, I was startled when to my right I heard more than sensed the absolutely unmistakable sound of my father’s booming laugh. It was bold, gleeful, and joyful, that wonderful sound I hadn’t heard in so many months as he suffered with his disease. My heart jumped with joy.

I knew in an instant that he was fine, and I turned to Dr. Seacamp, saying, “Let him go.”

Oh, so you heard him, too! Dr. Seacamp, replied.

I knew something extraordinary had happened and that we had witnessed a miracle. I miss my father greatly, but I will never forget the sound of his laughter and the experience of awesome joy as I walked into that room. 

Janis Amatuzio, Beyond Knowing: Mysteries and Messages of Death and Life from a Forensic Pathologist (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2006), 160-161.

View into eternity at bedside death

Psychiatrist Raymond Moody in his 2010 book Glimpses of Eternity documents “shared death experiences” involving physicians, nurses, and hospice workers. A hospice psychologist in North Carolina writes of her experiences: 

The deathbed scene is not fully in this world. And although I am not religious, hospice work has awakened me to a spiritual dimension of life.

In my opinion, everyone who works with the dying long enough must have some awareness of these experiences. I believe the spiritual experiences of dying people somehow leak out and pervade the area around them. If you step into that area with the right temperament, you will receive, I feel, a sense of the sacred in the presence of the dying.

I have experienced the room taking on a different configuration a number of times. The only way that I can describe it is that moving energy pulses through the room. I often feel something that I can’t name.

The bedside of the dying offers a view into eternity. Like looking through a window into elsewhere, from time to time I see lights and twice have had clear views of what appear to be structures. On both occasions I saw patients leave their bodies in a cloud form. I saw them rise out of their bodies and head toward these structures.

I would describe these clouds as a sort of mist that forms around the head or chest. There seems to be some kind of electricity to it, like an electrical disturbance. I don’t know if I see it with my physical eyes, but it’s there all the same. There is no doubt in my mind that you can sometimes see people depart for the other side.

Shared death experiences may confirm communication between the living, dying, and dead. A sergeant at Fort Dix in New Jersey sharing his experience, which was verified by his physicians:

I was terribly ill and near death with heart problems at the same time that my sister was near death with a diabetic coma in another part of the same hospital. I left my body and went into the corner of the room, where I watched them work on me down below. Suddenly, I found myself in conversation with my sister, who was up there with me. I was very attached to her, and we were having a great conversation about what was going on down there when she began to move away from me.

I tried to go with her but she kept telling me to stay where I was. “It’s not your time,” she said. Then she just began to recede off into the distance through a tunnel while I was left there alone.  When I awoke, I told the doctor that my sister had died. He denied it, but at my insistence, he had a nurse check on it. She had in fact died, just as I knew she did. (90-91)

Raymond A. Moody with Paul Perry, Glimpses of Eternity: An Investigation into Shared Death Experiences  (London: Rider, 2010), 102-03. 90-91.

Patient's NDE felt like "going home"

Neurosurgeon Allan J. Hamilton reports that he is able to predict when his patients are going to die. He first experienced this premonition while assisting a veterinarian with animals. “I began to notice that there seemed to be some energy or light that spread out from the animals themselves, and then completely enveloped them right before the moment of death.“

Later, as a medical student, I became aware that I could perceive a pale yellowish hue around human patients, almost like the light thrown by a candle. This glow would seem to shine from underneath the patient’s skin. Invariably, when I saw it, patients would die soon. As their impending death drew nearer, the yellow-colored light grew more tightly focused around their bodies and faces.”

While caring for Harry who had survived a heart attack, Hamilton noticed “that yellow, waxy light in his eyes, from his skin.” There were “no symptoms like chest pain or arrhythmia. I had nothing solid to go on except my premonition. I told a white lie to the charge nurse to get Harry back into the ICU. I explained, “I thought I had seen a run of ventricular tachycardia on his monitor. I had just not been quick enough to capture it on the paper strip.” With this warning, the supervising nurse immediately granted his request.

Prior to this reversal in his recovery, Harry had shared with Hamilton his near-death experience during his heart attack.

I got to tell you that there really was nothin’ scary ‘bout it. I just felt at peace, loved. I just seemed to rise up in the air, like a puffy cloud. I could see myself lying in the grass. But it wasn’t like I was scared. I just felt like I was going home, like being on furlough to see my family during the war or something. You know, something that you’re jus’ dying to do. I suppose that’s a pun or somethin’. But you get what I mean, don’t you? It was like I was lookin’ forward to it. Like I’d been lookin’ forward to it for the longest time, and now I was goin’ to finally get there, get to do it.

Now, Harry continued, it isn’t like I wanted to die or somethin’ like that. ‘Cause I sure as hell din’t want to leave Phyllis [his wife]. But at the same time, I knew there wasn’t anything to fear ‘bout what lay beyond this life.

After his cardiac arrest, shocks to his heart, CPR, and an injection with Adrenalin failed to bring Harry back to his physical life.

Allan J. Hamilton, The Scalpel and the Soul: Encounters with Surgery, the Supernatural, and the Healing Power of Hope (Penguin, 2009).

Cardiologist affirms consciousness beyond death

Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel in his book Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of Near-Death Experience presents medical research verifying that: “consciousness, with memories and occasional perception, can be experienced during a period of unconsciousness ― that is, during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity and all brain functions, such as body reflexes, brain stem reflexes, and respiration, have ceased. It appears that at such a moment a lucid consciousness can be experienced independently of the brain and body."

“Many argue,” he adds, “that the loss of blood flow and a flat EEG do not exclude some activity somewhere in the brain because an EEG primarily registers the electrical activity of the cerebral cortex. In my view this argument misses the point. The issue is not whether there is some immeasurable activity somewhere but whether there is any sign of those specific forms of brain activity that, according to current neuroscience, are considered essential to experiencing consciousness. And there is no sign whatsoever of those specific forms of brain activity in the EEGs of cardiac arrest patients.”

Van Lommel reports that this “endless consciousness” during a NDE includes “nonlocal aspects of interconnectedness, such as memories from earliest childhood up until the crisis that caused the NDE and sometimes even visions of the future. It offers the chance of communication with the thoughts and feelings of people who were involved in past events or with the consciousness of deceased friends and relatives. This experience of consciousness can be coupled with a sense of unconditional love and acceptance while people can also have contact with a form of ultimate and universal knowledge and wisdom.”

To explain NDEs, he turns to quantum physics and endorses “the not yet commonly accepted interpretation that consciousness determines if and how we experience reality.” In this view “consciousness is nonlocal and the origin or foundation of everything: all matter, or physical reality, is shaped by nonlocal consciousness.” If this is the case, van Lommel concludes, “Our endless consciousness predates our birth and our body and will survive death independently of our body in a nonlocal space where time and distance play no role.”

Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperCollins, 2010), 161, 165, 247, 223, 228, and 307.

After-Death Communications (ADCs)

Hospice physician Pamela M. Kircher reports that: “While After-Death Communications (ADCs) are common during NDEs and in the last phase of life, these visitations occur under other circumstances as well. People are often ‘notified’ of a death by the deceased person. ADCs are quite common in the days or first few weeks after the death of a close relative. Most of these communications seem to have the purpose of reassuring the grieving relatives or friends.”

But sometimes a visit from a dead loved one communicates a warning. For example, “A warning from a dead mother saved another person from a car accident. As a man was driving his usual path to work, he distinctly ‘heard’ his mother (who had died two years before) tell him to take another route. Feeling a bit foolish, he did take another route. Later in the day, he heard on the news that there had been a ten-car pile-up in the fog right where he would have been that morning had he not taken the alternate route.”

“I honestly believe,” Kircher concludes, “that everything that happens in life is for a purpose that will ultimately serve our highest good and that I am responsible to look for ways to be in alignment with that highest good.”

Pamela M. Kircher, Love is the Link: A Hospice Doctor Shares Her Experience of Near-Death and Dying (Awakenings Press, 2013).

 

Experiencing the presence of God

Hospice physician Pamela M. Kircher believes Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and what she describes as Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs) that do not involve nearly dying are very similar. From listening to many people’s stories, she concludes:

"First, and most important, is that NDEs and STEs are two avenues to the experience of being in the presence of God. One is not more important than the other. They are just different paths. Each is a type of spiritual awakening. Second, it is easier for some people to dismiss their mystical experiences as just an unusual event than it is for those who have had an NDE to do so. Lastly, it is difficult to differentiate between an STE and an NDE. Sometimes the mystical experience occurs in a terminally ill patient who has weeks or months to live.

She gives two examples of STEs that seem to have similar life-altering consequences as NDEs. “Prior to the experience, the scientist was a confirmed atheist. He felt certain that when we die, all that we are returns to the earth. In his spontaneous mystical experience, he suddenly understood the Universe and knew that it is all unfolding in exactly the way that it needs to unfold for understanding to develop. He could see how everything relates to everything else and how truly beautiful and intricate it all is. When the experience was over, he was changed man."

Kircher also tells the story of a woman who “was already feeling very discouraged when someone told her she ought to kill herself because she was of no use to anyone. That evening as she was recalling the encounter, she suddenly found herself surrounded by a peaceful white light that seemed to imply she was very much worth having around. She said that the experience was very unexpected. It was a life-changing event, and she has never felt so despondent since." 

Pamela M. Kircher,  Love is the Link: A Hospice Doctor Shares Her Experience of Near-Death and Dying (Awakenings Press, 2013).

Near-death experiences of God

After years of researching near-death experiences, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long is convinced that conscious human experience transcends brain death. Long writes that in 1998: ”I started the Near Death Experience Research Foundation and its corresponding website, NDERF.org. One of my goals for the site was to collect as many NDEs as I could and to collect them through a questionnaire that would make it easy to separate and study their elements. At NDERF we explored all of the elements in the NDEs of more than one thousand people, examining consistency among the accounts. In reaching conclusions about these accounts, we followed a basic scientific principle: What is real is consistently seen among many different observations.”

Jeffrey Long, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (2011), 1 and 3.

Long intended the God Study “to be an objective view of the powerful experiences with God that many people report when they are at death’s door.” He analyzed responses by NDE survivors to multiple-choice questions and reviewed their responses to open-ended questions. The study considered all the responses to the NDERF questionnaire from November 11, 2011, to November 7, 2014.” In this material, the narratives clearly verify: “NDErs were usually highly confident that it really was God in their NDE.”

Before their NDE, 39 percent of the respondents believed that ‘God definitely exists.’ “At the time they shared their NDEs with NDERF, an average of twenty-two years later, 72.6 percent of the NDErs believed ‘God definitely exists.’ To put this another way, there was an 86 percent increase in those who believe God definitely exists after their NDEs.” Combining the “NDErs who currently believe that ‘God definitely exists’ with those who currently believe ‘God probably exists,’ you find that this is the belief of a whopping 81.9 percent of NDErs — compared to 64 percent for the combined group before the NDE.”

Jeffrey Long, God and the Afterlife: The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience (2016), 35-36, and 39).

 

There is only Love

I was in hospital about to get an intravenous (IV) drip with anesthesia. When the line unkinked, the drugs came racing into my body. I felt my heart immediately go into extreme tachycardia. 'My heart!' I yelled, 'My Heart!' The nurses came running toward me.

Suddenly, I was flying about 8 feet over my body. I was watching the scene below as the nurse scrambled through the cabinet looking for something. She was pulling things out and onto the floor. The nurse assistant ran into the surgery room. She grabbed the doctor, who ran over to me and started doing compressions while the nurses got the big needle out. they were arguing about whether it would be better to put it into my chest or into the IV line. I thought I was in a dream state until I looked at the EKG, and it was all flat lines with the alarms going off.

I said to myself, 'Oh Fu#$! I am Dying!' I could see the doctors down below trying frantically to bring me back. I said, 'I don't want to die! Oh My God! NO!' I tried to dive back into my body, but instead I was falling backward through a dark tunnel at what seemed like thousands of miles per hour. It was horrifying until I started slowing down. I realized that it wasn't a dark tunnel. It was a tunnel with so many lights. There were so many colors I had never seen before. I wasn't afraid any more.

At the end of this tunnel was the most beautiful place in existence. I seemed to have arrived back in the room but in another dimension. I was looking at everyone and everything in that hospital through what I can only describe as 'through the eyes of God.' I felt the Love of God for all these people in the hospital; the patients, the staff, and the receptionist. I never saw my own life, but I saw everyone else's life pass before my eyes. I saw the receptionist and everything about her. I saw her heart. I felt her love for her babies. I felt her pain and her thoughts. I saw the technician and everything in his life right then. I saw each person for who they really truly were. I saw what motivated them and I saw their beautiful soul-full hearts. I saw their souls as if through the eyes and heart of God. I saw them and I loved them, each and every person. I seemed to pull back from the room and up, out of the building. I saw people on the street and knew their pain. I saw them with pure love.

Then I began getting an information download. There was no talking, just information going into me with absolute love. It was very clear, very loud, and very certain, that We are ALL VERY IMPORTANT TO GOD. The message was that our lives are deeply important to God and to the existence of the universe. Our love we have and the love we cultivate on earth, especially for people we have a hard time liking, that love somehow expands the universe and does some very important things. I felt that there was something at stake, that we have a very important job to do. Human Beings are beloved and our choice in how to act is given to us to prove God. I don't know how to describe it, I am trying hard to explain it here but it's hard to explain. It may take my lifetime to explain what I learned.

In this place we go to, we will have lightness, laughter and joy, and our soul family is there waiting for us. Our jobs on earth are to find out how to break through all these illusory walls everywhere that we erect to hide who we are. We need to really love each other and love ourselves. I felt as though there was a sense of humor too. I was like a deep appreciation for our lives and even for our failures. We are suppose to learn from our failures and not beat ourselves up over them. We find a way to forgive and love ourselves because in reality, in the real place of creation, there is only Love. It seemed the message was that if we couldn't find a path to love, then we are destroying something very very precious.

I recognized a big crowd of people around me, but they didn't have human form. I recognized their souls. They had pink shapes but also resonated to the energy which was them. My great-uncle Steve, I felt him there. I also felt the presence of my grandmother who is actually alive. It was then that I realized that when we pray, we actually send our soul-self to the side of the person. It is an act of love which makes creation. The love was incredible and the beauty was so absolutely, outrageously incredible. When I was looking down at all these people and the doctor who was trying to save me, I was thinking, 'I love these people. Oh, these people are so loved!' I wanted to go back so badly and tell them how loved they were. I was standing alongside this soul family of mine and in the presence of what I would describe as total love from the one who made it all. Yet, I wanted to go back.

NDERF.org

Let go and let God

I have not had a near-death experience (NDE), but my father did when during surgery he suffered cardiac arrest. A scientist by training, he had never heard of this experience and doubted his own memory of it. Yet seeing himself outside his body, observing the surgeon trying to revive him, moving through darkness toward a clear vision of my deceased mother, and feeling unconditional love from the brilliant light behind her, before returning to his body.

He lost his fear of death, he told me, and I saw that he became a warmer person. My life was also transformed by his experience, as researching NDEs has altered my view of life, death, consciousness, and God.

For surgeon Bernie Siegel, “the knowledge that God is a loving, intelligent, and conscious energy” has come from dreams, drawings, and near-death experiences. He believes: “first, there was consciousness and consciousness was with God” and “consciousness was God, because God speaks in dreams and images―the universal language.” In his experience with patients, Siegel has learned that consciousness can be healing. 

To a cancer patient Siegel proposed: “visualizing God’s light melting a tumor that appears as a block of ice.” To another: “Let go and let God.” Siegel tells his patients: “By accepting ourselves as God’s creation, seeing beauty and meaning in what we are, just as we are, we accept others as God’s creation too.”

Bernie S. Siegel, The Art of Healing: Uncovering Your Inner Wisdom and Potential for Self-Healing
(New World Library, 2013), 198, 42, 36, 163, and 92.

 

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.

The bereaved perspective: Kerr excerpt #6

Dr. Christopher Kerr writes that two research studies: "assessed the effect of our patients’ End-of-Life Dreams and Visions (ELDVs) on the bereaved, specifically, how ELDVs affect grief and bereavement for those who lost a loved one. These studies,* which combined included roughly 750 bereaved loved ones, demonstrate that participants felt the dreams helped with their overall grief (58.2%), accepting their loss (49.3%), working through the pain of grief (46.1%), adjusting to their new world without the deceased (39%), and continuing the bond with their loved one (45.9%). In general, the more comfort they felt an ELDV brought to their dying loved one, the more comforted caregivers were during bereavement. The impact of ELDV’s impact on grief processing was also quantified and shown to be statistically significant when measured using validated instruments such as the Core Bereavement Items. The video of a widower named Norb is one example (Link to Norb Interview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cmo7UyFBwY).

"In addition to the above studies which focused on the impact of the dying patients’ experiences on the bereaved, we also published a study which focuses on the dreams of the bereaved, specifically dreams that focus on loved ones who have passed.** The distinction is important: these individuals were not actively dying yet they too often reported a continuous connection to loved ones who had passed. In this study, 58% of 278 bereaved respondents reported dreaming of the deceased. Prevalent dream themes include pleasant memories or experiences, the deceased free of illness, memories of the deceased’s illness or time of death, the deceased in the afterlife appearing comfortable and at peace, and the deceased communicating a message. The following video is of a woman named Patricia who is recalling dreams of her deceased husband, Chuck, who had passed 13 years earlier. In these dreams, Patricia gets to reexperience a daily ritual that they shared during their long marriage (Link to Patricia Interview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTzzAUgJDq0).

"Those who dreamed about a loved one did so with varying frequency: daily (7.5%, n = 12), weekly (23.6%, n = 38), monthly (15.5%, n = 25), less than monthly (26.7%, n = 43), and other (25.5%, n = 41). Most respondents reported that their dreams were pleasant (n = 89), specifically dreams that featured pleasant past memories or experiences (n = 105). Other prominent categories included the deceased free of illness (n = 65), memories of the deceased’s illness or time of death (n = 56), the deceased in the afterlife appearing comfortable and at peace (n = 43), and the deceased communicating a message (n = 41). Many respondents described the content of their dreams in vivid detail. Most respondents who dreamed of the deceased also felt that this experience impacted the emotions related to their bereavement process (60.2%, n = 97). Some reported that their dreams helped them accept the death of a loved one. Others described how their dreams helped them retain a connection with the deceased: 'I feel closer to mom than at the time of her death. At the time I felt cut off. Now feel as if I was reconnected in at least a small way.' The deceased continued to live in the consciousness of those left behind, in a way that represented both the bereaved’s vantage point and that of the deceased. Again, these experiences are less 'dream-like' than experiential.

"Taken together, the above studies strongly suggest that both the dying and the bereaved experience meaningful inner processes that strengthen connectivity amongst those they love and were loved by, whether physically present or not. Such connectivity exists beyond our physical forms and supports the existence of a consciousness that extends beyond our dichotomized understanding of life and death."

*Grant PC, Depner RM, Levy K, LaFever SM, Tenzek KE, Wright ST, Kerr CW. Family Caregiver Perspectives on End-of-Life Dreams and Visions during Bereavement: A Mixed Methods Approach. J Pall Med. 2020; 23(1);48-53. 

Grant PC, Levy K, Lattimer TA, Depner RM, Kerr CW. Attitudes and Perceptions of End-of-Life Dreams and Visions and Their Implication to the Bereaved Family Caregiver Experience. Am J Hosp Pall Med. 2020; 38(7);778-784.

 

**Wright ST, Kerr CW, Doroszczuk NM, Kuszczak SM, Hang PC, Luczkiewicz DL. The Impact of Dreams of the Deceased on Bereavement: A Survey of Hospice Caregivers. Am J of Hospice and Pall Med. 2014; 31(2);132-138.

 

Christopher Kerr, “Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness,” an essay written for the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies in response to the question: “What is the best evidence for survival of consciousness after bodily death?” Dr. Kerr, MD, PhD, is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo. The full text with notes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.