Being thrown from a horse altered her life

I worked on a horse farm as well as having horses at home and being a lifelong rider. I 'took the rough out' of thoroughbred horses who had started at the track, and this particular day was no different: I was taking a young horse out under saddle for a ride. About a mile from the house and yards he threw me headfirst (by injury and marks on the road, I landed almost directly on top of my head) onto the hardpacked travel and clay road. I seemed to become aware of everything very acutely-- the sun, the wind, the grass blowing in the fields-- from where I was; I was far from the barns and house, but somehow I could see what was going on there. I saw everything that had happened that day from getting up at home several miles away, to starting my day at work feeding and mucking, saddling the horse I'd been riding, all as if I were an observer but I could see up close from above, see even myself, heard the conversations I had with others, everything.

I saw, as if watching from my, nowhere; everywhereness, myself riding out away from the house and getting thrown. I saw myself lying in the road and was curious and calm. I saw the horse make the additional 2 miles around the road back to the barn lot and another worker catch him; mind, this was miles from other houses. I saw my friend and employer look the horse over, look out over the fields for me, and get in the truck to head out on the road looking for me. I was not sure how this was possible but it was not distressing. I was glad that the horse went home. I remember watching myself be found and thinking that I must have died, yet I felt no pain. I saw people at my house miles away get a phone call, I saw the ambulance, and I just moved effortlessly from one place to another. I didn't seem to question why I wasn't in my body at all. I apparently started having difficulties in surgery and went somewhere.

I was on the road where I'd been thrown again, but I was walking and the sky was getting dark. A friend of mine who was deceased was walking with me, talking about my life and I knew that we were going together somewhere. The road became unfamiliar to me and the landscape desolate and cold. A lady of unintelligible age that I did not recognize sat at a crossroads; she told me it wasn't my time and that I had things to do before I could go any further. My friend went past this woman and told me that when it was time, she would be waiting for me. This lady I understood to be some kind of gatekeeper or something. She was not impatient but was firm with me. Suddenly I was seeing myself on a bed, my parents, and medical personnel and I could hear what was said.

My body was 'asleep' but my consciousness was alert. I went into my body and could feel pain and seemed to enter a dream state. I came around at some point and eventually told what I had experienced, which was validated. I had terrible difficulties with my memory for months after the accident but the things I had seen stayed clear as a bell even when I couldn't remember what I had heard in conversation a few minutes before. The emotional aspects of my experience while observing have never left me in the 27 years since. I had a lot of trouble with my vision, memory, headaches, and did a lot of physical therapy , and by the grace of God I wasn't paralyzed as initially suspected that I might be.

I have found that I have the same effect on human patients and for some time after becoming a nurse I chose hospice care to provide whatever comfort the dying seem to sense within me. I haven't talked about that with anyone ever because almost everyone I meet notices something they can't name but some are made uncomfortable by it, and for the first several years I felt like a freak. So much so that I spiraled downward in my late teens and attempted suicide. I was again spoken to by the same entity and assured that I had some purpose to fulfill. I'm not crazy, I don't have brain damage, and I'm not psychotic. I have had psychological tests done for my own peace of mind and understanding. As I have gotten older and experienced life more fully I have accepted that something extraordinary happened to me and it cannot be explained by the rigid narratives of organized religion. I have a deeply held spirituality of the interconnectedness of all life.

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

Meets guardian angel in near-death experiance

I was in the middle of giving birth and in complete pain, when the pain just vanished. My body floated upwards. I looked around to see the room and the nurses panicking because I wasn’t breathing.

I seem to be pulled away from watching to see a domed, very large entrance with figures dressed in pure light. They were walking towards me. I really didn’t want to leave because it was peace such as I had never experienced before. I had a two-year-old son and was giving birth to a much-wanted second son. I just knew everything would be ok. I thought about what it would be like not to go back and I knew that everything and everyone would be fine. It was then that I looked to my side to see an angelic presence. The angel told me it wasn’t my time to go yet, I was still needing... I didn't hear the rest as I seemed to fall back into my body at extreme speed. I was greeted with extreme pain and nurses shouting, 'We got her back!' Then I was told to push. It took me fourteen years to talk about this experience because my son was not expected to live.

It was many years later, after going through multiple transformations in my life and health that I met that angelic presence again. He is my guardian angel and my guide who I talk to. I’m now a shamanic healer self-taught with so many beautiful experiences with the angelic realms and many other experiences. Before my near death experience, I was in an extremely unhappy relationship, and it was my guardian angel who came to my aid and gave me the strength to leave it. 

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

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

Electrocution leads to experience of being home

I was an ornery child as my mother says and always going my own way and years beyond my age at the same time. I grew up with 3 siblings who I love dearly. I wanted to play outside, but none of them wanted to come play with me that day so I went exploring our 10 acres alone for fun. Parents always told us two things stay away from the cows and the electric fence. I remembered the soccer ball went under the fence the day prior so I thought if I would save the soccer ball my siblings might come out and play with me then. I was small and easily could fit under the fence to get it (and had done before I usually was the guinea pig) so I saw that the cows were nowhere to be seen so I at least listened to half of what the parents always preached and decided to move forward with my plan. My last coherent memory was that I was on the ground crawling toward the soccer ball about to go under fence.

All of a sudden, I am transported out of my body and surrounded by the brightest warmest light ever. The only way to explain it is our true home it felt very familiar it felt like home. I had never felt at "home" here on earth before or after this experience. I didn't feel or see my body I believe I was more like pure light source that just flows like a river pure love and joy. I was just so happy to be home. Then I hear the purest sweetest voice that said, "come with me, or stay, the choice is yours, but if you stay it will be difficult." It was only at this moment that I had realized I had died. I immediately thought of my earthly family and how I didn't want them to be sad because I had died at such a young age and so as soon as I consciously made that choice to stay I was transported back into my body that felt light-years away. Here is where it gets even more wild. 

When I came to my body was 10 feet away from the fence, uphill a bit and when I sat up our cows were staring at me. The cows that were nowhere in sight before. I sat there for a while or so I thought trying to process everything. I eventually went inside and asked my siblings who were still playing video games how long I had been gone. The most shocking part to me was when my sister said 30 minutes. What felt like a lifetime to me was only 30 minutes! I didn't dare tell anyone until years later because I didn't want to get in trouble for going close to the fence. In case you were wondering I didn't save the ball it still was on other side and I never went near that fence again. Kids listen to your parents! Although the heavenly being was right being here is very difficult after getting a taste of home I would still have made that choice even today. I remained close to the church and was a strong believer in Jesus throughout my childhood years.

https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1jillian_c_nde.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

Near-death experience reported to NDERF

I had been on a long music tour with Country artist Merle Haggard. We had traveled all the way to the upper western corner of Canada from California and then returned to California. Most of the trip I had spent in the bus bunk with my laptop computer being my connection to the outside world. We traveled for days, probably 4 or 5.

When we finally got back to California I got in my little car and headed for my home about 40 minutes North on interstate five. I hadn't noticed yet that I had become badly dehydrated during the long trip.

I drove to my house in the mountains with little trouble, but it was morning and I was restless. My brother called me from the local Casino and wanted me to come down and play some slots with him. Although I felt light headed, I was still wanting to do something to break my feeling of restlessness from the long trip on the tour bus. I got in my car and headed back into town.

I arrived at the Casino to find my brother and a friend playing slots at the bar. I ordered an orange juice since I was remarkably thirsty and it was too early for a beer.

I sat on the bar stool for about 10 minutes playing Keno with my brother when I began to feel extremely light headed. I could tell I was going to pass out, so out of reflex I tried to stand up to try to regain control of myself. Then everything went dark. My brother says he saw me stand straight up and then become stiff like a board and fall directly backward onto the concrete floor. He also said that blood started to pool at the back of my head near the impact although I don't remember any of that.

Suddenly I was in an ethereal space, floating without my body. I remember being hyper aware of everything around me and I could see my body on the floor with my brother and our friend shaking me and yelling at me to wake up!

The first thought I had was "man, I'm glad that's over with!". I also remember being amazed that my sense of humor was still intact, and that I was still "ME" in this other place. I remember feeling so good and so light with no cares at all. I felt like I was finally going home and immediately was experiencing a presence through my being that I was communicating with instantly. It said to me first "Don't worry, we've got ya". Every thought I had was instantly answered as soon as I thought it. Time seemed to be irrelevant and I didn't care because I was enveloped in a blanket of what I could only describe as pure love and acceptance. I instantly knew everything was ok and I was welcome here (wherever here was). 

I then felt my focus going out into the heavens into a warm dark space with light all around. I knew I was connected to everything instantly and I knew I wanted to stay here. I can't overstate how much it felt like I had already been there before and that it felt like home overwhelmingly.

Then I had the thought that I never wanted to leave this place and wanted to continue further. As soon as I had that thought came the knowing that I had to return to my body because there was more I had to learn on Earth. I felt slightly disappointed at this thought but my bravery kicked in and I felt my focus returning to my life on Earth. It was then that I had several flashes from the past of interactions I had with others on Earth and I could feel and sense the emotions of everyone involved in the exchange like they were my own thoughts and emotions. I then understood the way that every little action we take in our lives echoes in this place forever and that we are all connected to each other and to God.

I cannot say if I was communicating with God or something else but I could feel the presence of what I can only describe as God from the moment I transmuted into this form and space. I felt a tug back toward my body and felt myself going through a dark tunnel that ended with my eyes opening slowly and hearing my brother and our friend yelling my name.

The paramedics had shown up by then and I was carried out on a gurney to the ambulance. I tried to communicate what I had just experienced but was unable to at the time. The paramedic told me I was in shock which slowly subsided. I spent the night in the hospital and even received a visit from my employer Merle Haggard that night in the hospital which was a wonderful thing!

I haven't talked about my experience much until I began seeing NDE videos on youtube with other people describing their experiences. It wasn't until then that I realized what had actually happened to me. Since the episode, I no longer am afraid of death because I know in my core that we continue to be ourselves after we leave this body. It has changed my thinking on the subject profoundly. I am very grateful that I was able to get a glimpse of the other side. Since then, I have lost quite a few friends and family who were close to me and I know without a shadow of a doubt that I will see them again and that they are experiencing the same love and eternal playground that I got to visit on that fateful day.

Doug C NDE 9502 at https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1doug_c_nde_9502.html. 

Elizabeth Krohn's near-death experience

When Elizabeth G. Krohn got out of her car with her two young sons in the parking lot of her synagogue on a late afternoon in September 1988, she couldn't have anticipated she would within seconds be struck by lightning and have a near-death experience. She felt herself transported to a garden and engaging in a revelatory conversation with a spiritual being. When she recovered, her most fundamental understandings of what the world is and how it works had been completely transformed. She was “changed in a flash,” suddenly able to interact with those who had died and have prescient dreams predicting news events. She came to believe that some early traumatic and abusive experiences had played a part in preparing her for this experience.

 

Told in matter-of-fact language, the first half of this book is the story of Krohn’s journey, and the second is an interpretation and analysis by Jeffrey J. Kripal, Associate Dean of the School of Humanities at Rice University who holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought. Kirpal is also Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and served as the Editor in Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion. He places Krohn's experience in the context of religious traditions and proposes the groundbreaking idea that we are shaping our own experiences in the future by how we engage with near-death experiences in the present. Changed in a Flash is not about proving a story, but about carving out space for serious discussion of this phenomenon.

 

Krohn writes: The NDE changed me in ways I never could have imagined. On September 1, 1988 I was a skeptic. Nothing could have dissuaded me from believing that when a person dies, that’s the end—that they are gone and nothing of them remains. But a bolt of lightning literally jolted me into reality.

 

On September 2, 1988, that lightning bolt bestowed upon me a gift, the power and profundity of which remain unmatched more than three decades later. That gift was knowledge that death isn’t the end; knowledge that where we are now is a temporary place, and where we go when we die is home; knowledge that what we do with our time here matters and affects our afterlife; knowledge that our souls, the vessels that carry our consciousness, continue on after bodily death and actually become keenly aware, awake, and all-knowing once unencumbered by our bodies.

 

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.

 

"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.

 

My grandfather’s soft familiar voice, complete with the French accent that made it so distinct during his life, was a soothing presence. He said that audible speech would disrupt my absorption of the surroundings, so he was going to give me information, knowledge, and answers to my questions silently. I believe that this voice was actually not my grandfather speaking to me, but was God using my grandfather’s voice to put me at ease. This was a strange reckoning for me, given that in life I had been such a non-religious and non-spiritual person who gave very little, if any, thought to the existence of God. And yet, here I was, sitting on a bench with someone I thought was God in a place that I knew was Heaven. 

 

The calming voice shared things with me about our family that only my grandfather, and of course God, would know. This presence gave me information that showed a total knowledge of where I was and what choices I would need to make if I chose to go back to my life on Earth. He relayed the clear impression that the choice to remain in the Garden or to reoccupy my burned body was mine to make. I understood that I could take as long as I needed to make the decision to either stay in the Garden or return to my life on Earth, and that I would be given information that would help me make that decision. 

 

I was dead, but I was more alive, conscious, and aware than when I had been that twenty-eight year old woman with the children and the umbrella in the synagogue parking lot a mere second earlier. I was surrounded by and suffused with an unutterable feeling of unconditional love. The love was all-encompassing and embraced me in every possible way. Everything in the Garden emanated love. The lull of a gently babbling brook, the cadence of the soothing otherworldly music surrounding me, and the resplendent, fragrant visual feast of constantly blooming flowers and hypnotic colors I had never seen before, all reinforced the knowledge that I now had: that I was safe, protected, and unconditionally loved by God. I was home. 

 

The glow that I had followed into the Garden initially had moved away from me. It seemed to be a living energy, a conscious entity that moved with purpose. It was still to my upper right, but it had now shifted behind a mountain range, whose outline in the distance was backlit with the glow’s shimmering light from behind the mountains. I resisted the impulse to follow the living glow to the mountains, since the peace, comfort, beauty, and ineffable love that surrounded me where I was sitting were all that I could ever want. The sound of the brook nearby, the music in the air, the sweet scents of the otherworldly vegetative oasis, and the vivid backdrop of the sky and mountains lulled me to depths that I had never known my soul to possess.

 

Regardless of whether my companion on the ornate bench was actually my grandfather or, as I suspected, God, I knew that I was not alone in the Garden, and I knew that the feeling of abundant unconditional love that this presence communicated to me would never leave me. Still today, I can draw on that memory of unwavering acceptance and love when I need to do so. I could have gratefully and willingly remained there for eternity. That love, that place, that afterlife was a gift, tailored to me, from a higher being that loved me unconditionally.

 

The landscape was clearly meant to comfort me and put me at ease. The sound of flowing water, be it a gentle brook or crashing ocean waves, is something I have always found to be soothing. A view of any landscape has always been enhanced for me if there is a body of water in the scenery. I think that is why it was so prominent and noticeable to me among the other sweet sounds that permeated the Garden. What I understood is that all who arrive in this place encounter and perceive whatever is most comforting and beautiful to them. My source of comfort was the all-embracing feeling of unconditional perpetual love and the unmatched beauty of my surroundings all captured in the Garden. This was my personal Heaven.

 

I understood that all who come to this wondrous place are soothed and welcomed by whatever they find soothing, comforting, and pleasurable in life. Therefore, it made sense that my Heaven looked like a perfectly manicured garden. I love gardens and find peace and joy in spending time in a well tended garden. During my time in my heavenly Garden, I saw people in the distance. I instinctively knew that those people perhaps had visions of something other than a garden as their perfect Heaven. People I saw in the distance may have expected their Heaven to be a thickly wooded forest. Others may have seen a boundless field of wildflowers, or a quiet beach with gently rolling waves. Yet we were all in exactly the same place. We were each in a Heaven tailored specifically for each individual soul there. Understanding this loving kindness added to my ease during my visit to the Garden.

 

I also understood that one’s own appearance there projects the best of each person’s soul in their most recent Earthly life. The type of person you are here on Earth colors the experience you will have in the afterlife. What we do with our time here on Earth matters. A lot. Learning this was surprising to me as I never thought that my actions or thought processes during life would have any bearing at all on my death. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I learned in the Garden that not only the acts I performed during my life but even my very thoughts and feelings had woven together to create the tapestry that was my afterlife—my Garden. The fact that I had been a good person in life mattered in the Garden. The fact that I had not been religious did not.

 

I feel so inadequate in my attempt to convey the overwhelming totality of the Garden. Time there is perpetual. Its events and sensations all occur at once. This idea of simultaneous time, the physics of it, is something I understood while I was in the Garden but have difficulty explaining, or even understanding, now. I do understand, however, that it is possible to return from another realm or dimension and be completely unable to help those who have not seen it to understand that it even exists at all. Something can be perfectly true yet completely unbelievable and impossible to scientifically prove.

 

This knowledge that I was absorbing while on the ornate bench in the presence of the loving being who spoke in the voice of my beloved grandfather was also shared with the other humans (or souls) whose forms I saw in the distance. Everyone was in pairs, and no one was alone. Everyone was dressed in what I knew as street clothes. And they were all perfectly beautiful, youthful, and healthy. I wondered: If they were all so perfect, was I?

 

I looked at my left hand, curious as to how the burn from the lightning strike had affected it. My hand looked as if it belonged to a younger woman. There were no chipped nails or imperfections on the skin, and certainly no burn from the lightning. I noticed that there was also no wedding ring. All I saw was the pristine skin of myself at eighteen or so. The skin on my hand was flawless.

 

As soon as I thought of questions, I had the answers. I saw people in the distance, although no one approached me. Why were they all paired up? Did I appear to them to be alone? My companion explained that I was also part of a pair, and that he was the other half of the pair. We must have appeared to the distant human forms as they did to me—as a pair, and as beautiful as I ever was at my best.

 

As quickly as I was receiving answers to my seemingly unlimited stream of questions, I had more questions. There was only one question for which I never received an answer: What did my companion in the Garden look like? Did this partner of mine look like my grandfather at age ninety when he died, or did he look as he did at age eighteen, as everyone else there seemed to? Or did he have an entirely different appearance? I don’t know because I never looked at him. I now think I was not supposed to see him because I would have been overwhelmed at the sight of my beloved grandfather.

 

Or by the beauty of God. 

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn is the author with 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.” 

Near-death experience as a spiritual awakening

“For a few people,” UK neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick notes, the NDE confirms the religious faith they have. “But for many, perhaps most, it is a spiritual awakening that may have very little to do with religion in the narrowest sense, and nothing to do with dogma. It certainly tends to confirm belief in some form of afterlife. But when the presence of some higher ‘being’ is felt, this is only seldom defined as, for example, a Catholic or a Jewish God. And Christian icons such as Jesus and Mary are notably absent except in very rare cases. The experiences have a universal quality.” If an NDE were simply a psychological experience, “one would expect it to be much more culturally influenced than it seems to be.”

Mrs Joan Hensley wrote: Certainly my life changed. I am less frightened of dying personally, and I do believe there is life after death. But it hasn’t particularly made me more ‘religious;’ what I do feel is that there are so many religions in the world, why should our God be the only one or indeed the correct one? I feel my experience proved there is a God—before that I don’t think I really believed in anything, just accepted what my parents believed in.

“Almost everyone who has studied near-death experiences has found that at least some of the people have become more sensitive or intuitive. After his NDE, Dennis Stone of Coventry began to foresee future events. In August 1938 my first premonition of impending disaster occurred. I saw a vision of the Second World War. I found myself standing about a hundred yards or so from my home, watching Coventry burning and hearing the bombs whistling down and bullets spanging off brickwork. I looked down the London road and watched a bomb set fire to a fuel dump close to the local cemetery.

All this I told my family and I became agitated because they did not believe me. That is until it actually happened in precise detail—with one exception: I was not quite in the precise spot on that fateful night. I was ducking the machine-gun bullets from German planes, which, I might add, killed nine of my neighbors close to me.

“One of the most fascinating and detailed letters we received was from a man who suffered two cardiac arrests after a coronary thrombosis, and had several experiences during this time. Most were positive, but he also had an experience of ‘Hell.’ It was really like all the images I had ever had of Hell. I was being barbecued. I was wrapped in tinfoil, basted and roasted. Occasionally I was basted by people (devils) sticking their basting syringe with great needles into my flesh with the red-hot fat. I was also rolled from side to side with the long forks that the ‘devils’ used to make sure that I was being truly roasted. I wanted to call out but no sound would come; it felt as if my brain or consciousness was buried deep within me and was too deeply embedded for either them to hear or for me even to make it work. I was overcome with the feeling of utter doom and helplessness.

He explains away this experience, however, as being due to the treatment he received in hospital. I was wrapped in a tinfoil blanket, an electric heat cage was put over me and during that time I was turned several times and innumerable injections were given.

Fenwick comments: “In those organized religions in which Hell figures, suicide is a sin and might well be considered an entrance qualification. And yet none of the people who wrote to us about a near-death experience during a suicide attempt reported a hellish or even an unpleasant experience. On the contrary, what they experienced seemed to provide a reason for continuing to live.

Anne Thomson wrote: I could cope no longer with three small children and one dreadful husband (whom I later divorced). I took a massive overdose of sleeping tablets and was not found for four hours. I was rushed to the nearest hospital by ambulance from the RAF base in Wales, where we lived at the time. I very nearly died and was unconscious for four days. On the fourth day I was slipping away. I had a cardiac arrest and the doctors and sister were working on me.

I left my body. I went up very slowly, not looking back at myself in the bed. The peace was beyond what I can explain; it was so beautiful, I felt so light in weight and I saw I was going towards a white light—not the white like this notepaper I wrote on, but a spiritual white. I almost reached this light, when suddenly I was pulled downwards and did not stop till I was back in my body. I was heavy, everything seemed so dark and then I came to and slowly came to realize I could not be taken, as three children needed their mother.

I always did believe in God but only because it was bred into me. But since that experience I have a lot of faith towards God and towards life beyond our lives on Earth. I firmly believe God made me well and helped me through all my time of rearing three children alone in the years that followed.”

 

Peter Fenwick and Elizabeth Fenwick, The Truth in the Light: An investigation of Over 300 Near-Death Experiences (Berkeley Books, 1997).

 

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.

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).

Surrounded by God

Hospice physician Pamela M. Kircher describes her own near-death experience as a six-year-old child, when a leaking abscess in her throat led to meningitis. After her mother told her she would either live or die, and then put her to bed, Kircher had what she would later describe as a near-death experience. As if telling the story of someone else, she writes:

“The next thing the little girl experienced was suddenly, inexplicably, being in the corner of the room near the ceiling, and looking down at a little girl in the bed. She was not surprised or frightened, even though nothing in her solid Midwest background had prepared her for an out-of-body experience. She was totally without pain and in perfect  peace.

“She had the strong sense that she was surrounded by God. She did not feel like a boy or a girl or a child or an adult. She experienced the essence of herself — the soul that had existed before she came into her body and that would exist when this life was over. She felt strong and peaceful and totally connected with God.

“Looking down at the little girl in the bed, she was aware of the girl’s pain and felt compassion for her. As she further contemplated the situation, she realized that she must be that girl, and then the experience ended. “That little girl was me,” Kircher writes, “and the experience influenced the path that my life would take. Partly as a result of that experience, I have come to understand how tiny the distance is between the world we think we inhabit and the world of the Spirit." 

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

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

Living without fear of death

May the God of perseverance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves following the example of Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and one voice you may glorify God. (Romans 15:1-6)

Paul struggles to achieve support for his teachings in Rome and elsewhere. Paul argues that diversity can exist within the body of Christ, but his teaching is also a cause of division. He blames the conflicts on those who oppose him, but Paul's opponents must have blamed Paul. And who are Paul's opponents? The former disciples of Jesus, the apostles in Jerusalem who, we learn in Galatians 2 and in the second half of Acts, are led by James, the brother of Jesus.

The apostles in Jerusalem seem to believe that some if not all of the commandments of Jewish law must be kept by all following the Way of Jesus. As they knew Jesus during his lifetime, it is hard to believe that the historical Jesus set aside the Jewish law as Paul claims the risen Christ does. Paul never knew the historical Jesus, but he acknowledges that both he and the former disciples know the risen Lord. Why then do they differ?

Paul was a Greek-speaking Jew from a Roman city; the disciples of Jesus who were the first apostles were Aramaic-speaking Jews from Galilee. Perhaps their experience of the risen Christ was different, because their lives were so different. Yet, despite conflicting beliefs about Jesus, the first apostles and also Paul were transformed by their experience of the risen Christ.

In our time, thousands of survivors of near-death experiences have been transformed by the love and light that embraced them when they were unconscious and their brains were incapable of constructing perceptions, feelings, or memories. Nonetheless, these witnesses had striking perceptions, feelings, and memories. And now tell us that we all are going home. If you trust in their testimony, you too can live without fear of death.

Grace and peace . . . Bob Traer

 

Shared death evidence: Mays excerpt #21

The Mays write: In shared death experiences (SDEs), the SDEr is healthy and awake. They may observe the dying person separate from the physical body at the time of death. Alternatively, they may themselves be drawn out-of-body with the deceased person’s spirit body. The SDEr may observe the life review of the deceased person, similar to the life review in NDEs. The SDEr may observe deceased relatives or friends come to welcome and escort the deceased person to a different realm.

The SDErs are healthy, credible eyewitnesses of the objective facts they observe. If more than one person is present with the dying person, their individual accounts frequently corroborate each other. For example:

Scott Taylor’s shared death experience: In 1981, Scott Taylor’s girlfriend Mary Frances and her seven- year-old son Nolan were involved in a horrific car accident. Mary Fran was killed outright and her son survived for an additional six days with a severe head wound. At the time of Nolan’s transition, Scott and a number of Mary Fran’s family were in the hospital room. Scott witnessed Mary Fran come “across the veil,” approach Nolan, scoop him up out of his physical body, and hold him in a loving embrace. To his surprise, the two of them turned to Scott, embraced him and the three of them “went to the light.” About 10 years later, Scott spoke with another family member who had the exact same experience at the time of Nolan’s death: When Nolan flatlined, she witnessed Mary Fran come “across the veil” and scoop Nolan up out of his physical body. They embraced and she got to be part of that embrace. At some point they turned to her and the three of them “went to the light.” She used the exact same words that Scott used to describe his experience.

The SDEr observes the dying person’s transition to actual death in three ways: (1) Many of the elements observed by SDErs are identical with NDE elements but are observed from a third-person perspective. (2) We can infer from the SDEr’s descriptions many of the things the dying person experiences. These are the same phenomena as the first-person perspective in an NDE. Finally, (3) the SDEr directly experiences elements that commonly occur in NDEs:

The SDEr observes that the dying person is out-of-body, meets deceased persons and a mystical being or presence. The SDEr observes that the dying person sees or is enveloped in a brilliant light and enters an unearthly or heavenly realm.

We can infer from the SDEr’s description of the dying person’s reactions and behavior that the dying person experiences a life review. From the dying person’s expressions of happiness or joy and peace, we can infer they are free from pain, having shed their physical body.

The SDEr themselves describes that their senses were more vivid and their sense of time changed. The SDEr receives veridical information from their experience which they later verify as accurate. The SDEr is told by the deceased person that they need to return to the body or the SDEr just finds themselves back in the body.

The SDEr’s observations indicate that the dying person experiences the same things that NDErs experience in their NDE. If we could administer the NDE Scale to the deceased person, the experience would be counted as an NDE. The elements in the two processes are indistinguishable. The only difference is that the dying person does not return to the physical body but continues to exist after physical death.

Thus, the “spirit body” of the deceased person observed by SDErs is the same as the mind entity that we propose is the essential aspect of the human being. The only difference between the deceased person and the NDEr is that the NDEr returns to physical embodiment whereas the deceased person moves on into a another realm. Thus the deceased person’s conscious Self survives physical death.

 

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.