We are all part of a collective One Mind

The 2014 Napier Banquet at the Pilgrim Place senior retirement community in Claremont California honored Nancy Mintie for her creative community service as director of Uncommon Good. When she spoke to us and the Napier fellowship university students, however, she did not as many expected issue a resounding call to struggle on for justice, peace and ecology. Instead, after acknowledging how little affect our good works will have on the crises of our time, she shared a new-found hope based on scientific arguments a global consciousness described in Larry Dossey’s book, One Mind: How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters, which ends with this statement of faith: “I believe that the concept of the unitary, collective One Mind, a level of intelligence of which the individual minds of all sentient creatures are a part, is a vision that is powerful enough to make a difference in how we approach all the challenges we face―not as a mere intellectual concept, but as something we feel in the deepest way possible.”1

Based on extensive research into verifiable near-death experiences (NDEs), Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel concludes “the current materialistic view of the relationship between the brain and consciousness held by most physicians, philosophers and psychologists is too restricted for a proper understanding of this phenomenon. There are now good reasons to assume that our consciousness does not always coincide with the functioning of our brain: enhanced conscious can sometimes be experienced separate from the body.2

For example, psychiatrist Raymond Moody tells of a seventy-year-old woman who, despite being blind since the age of eighteen, was able to see as she hovered over doctors resuscitating her body after a heart attack. “Not only could she describe what the instruments used looked like, but she could even describe their colors. The most amazing thing about this to me was that most of these instruments weren’t even thought of over fifty years ago when she could last see.”3

One survivor reports: “I don’t know how long it was before the ‘real me’ was floating close to the ceiling, face downward, looking down with great interest at the body lying on the bed. The interest was because the mind in that body was a total blankness, a complete darkness, like a TV screen switched off. ‘Real me’ was ethereal, had no shape, no substance, but had a mind, enjoyed sensation, could see everything in the room in detail, was a power over and above the body that lay inert. The body had no mind, no feeling, no eyes, no life.”4

These out-of-body experiences (OBEs) occurred during cardiac arrest, when according to current scientific knowledge the brain is incapable of observation and memory. Yet, an OBE is very common in NDEs and the many perceptions during these OBEs have been verified.5

Remembering that her “experience of death was wonderful” Hilda Middleton describes moving from above her hospital bed down “a tunnel with a very bright light at the end. Animals, pictures, everything was so beautiful and all the colors were shades of delicate pink, yellow, blue, etc. I was overwhelmed with joy.” Mary Lowther recalls “indefinable shades of pastel-like colors” and “what I can only describe as billions of beautiful shimmering forms, no outlines, and they were all ‘cloaked’ in what looked like a garment of translucent light.” Audrey Organ says, “I was in a tunnel or glorious golden light with my dad, who had died some years earlier. We were strolling side by side but with no physical walking. We were enormously happy, conversing but without the usual verbal speech, all via the mind.”6 On the basis of his study of NDE survivors, van Lommel reports: “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.”7

A NDE may also free a person to embrace the unknown with hope, as it did for Ella Silver. “I have never before or since had such a feeling of ‘knowing’ for sure I would know joy. It was totally different from happiness. I felt my heart would burst with the excitement of expectation.”8

 

1 Larry Dossey, One Mind: How Our Individual Mind is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why it Matters (Hay House, 2013), 253.

2 Pim van Lommel, “Pathophysiological Aspects of Near-Death Experiences,” in Mahendra Perera, Karuppiah Jagadheesan and Anthony Peake, editors, Making Sense of Near-Death Experiences (Jessica Kingsley, 2012), 90.

3 Raymond A. Moody, The Light Beyond (Bantam, 1988), 134-135.

4 Peter Fenwick and Elizabeth Fenwick, The Truth in the Light: An Investigation of Over 300 Near-Death Experiences (Berkley Books, 1995), 39.

5 Michael Sabom, a cardiologist, compared the memories of those who had OBEs to the knowledge of patients with considerable hospital experience. “He found that most of the patients in the control group―twenty-three out of the twenty-five people―made mistakes in describing the resuscitation procedures. On the other hand, none of the NDE patients made mistakes in describing what went on in their own resuscitation.” Raymond Moody, Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife (HarperOne, 2012), 127-128.

6 Ibid., 84-85, 94.

7 “Many argue 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.” Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (HarperCollins, 2010), 165. For a video on this NDE research see “The Mystery of Perception During NDE” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avyUsPgIuQ0.

8 Fenwick, The Truth in the Light, 71.

Take my hand, precious Lord, and lead me home

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn

Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on through the light
Take my hand, precious Lord
And lead me home

 

When my way grows drear
Precious Lord, lead me near
When my life is almost gone
At the river I will stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand, precious Lord
And lead me home

 

To hear this sung by Mahalia Jackson click on the link the follows, wait for the ad to finish, and then enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMSWJxNlaww

AA founder experienced God as Light

The cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, was inspired by a near-death experience in 1934. While being treated at a clinic for his addiction, the clinic’s director asked Wilson “if he would like to dedicate himself to Jesus to see if such an act would rid him of his alcoholism. “Depressed and filled with despair, Wilson began to weep. I’ll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let him show himself! He shouted.

The effect was instant, electric, Wilson says. Suddenly my room blazed with an incredibly white Light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. I have no words for this. I was conscious of nothing else for a time. Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon its summit where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. Then came the blazing thought, ‘You are a free man.’ I know not at all how long I remained in this state, but finally the Light and the ecstasy subsided. As I became quieter a great peace stole over me, and I became acutely conscious of a presence, which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.’

“Wilson never drank again. He told Dr. Bob Smith, an alcoholic in Akron, Ohio, about his experience, and the doctor also quit drinking and began to pursue a ‘spiritual remedy’ for his own alcoholism. The two men, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, became the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Their twelve-step program, Raj Parti notes, was originally based on these affirmations:

1) We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2) Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.

4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5) Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6) Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7) Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8) Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9) Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10) Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11) Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.

12) Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

“When I look at the twelve steps, I can’t help but think that Wilson’s encounter with the Light was similar to my own with the Being of Light. I also couldn’t help but think that he too was asked to devise a means of spiritual healing much like the one I was being asked to devise. Following my surgery, I realized my addiction to painkillers was abating. Soon I took less than what was prescribed and only as needed for my pelvic pain."

 

Raj Parti, Dying to Wake Up: A Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back (Atria Books, 2016).

 

Objective witnesses to death as an awakening

Morse also relates the story of one of Germany’s most noted poets, Karl Skala, who survived a bombardment during World War II that killed his friend in the trenches. Then, Morse writes, Skala  “felt himself being drawn up with his friend, above their bodies and then above the battlefield. He could look down and see himself holding his friend. He looked up and saw a bright light and felt himself going toward it with his friend. Then he stopped and returned to his body. He was uninjured except for hearing loss from the artillery blast.” After the war he wrote this poem:

Would you really call this dying?

In the near light, but far away.
This light which our hope nurtures.
To the star, high above
everyone has traveled there in their mind
before your body, the mind, the spirit
belonged once to the stars
let this light shine deep in your heart, in your dreams on
this earth.
Death is an awakening.

Linda Houlberg, a hospice nurse in Oak Ridge, TN, published in Nursing ’92 an article about experiencing the death of Virginia, who was both her patient and friend. Virginia had fought hard against her cancer, because she wanted to keep living to be with her husband and two sons. But when the pain became too great, she gave up and just wanted to die.

“I’m ready,” she told Houlberg.

Virginia had worked out some of her feelings about dying by painting. One painting entitled The Light at the End of the Tunnel represented what she thought would happen to her as she died. On the night Virginia died, Houlberg had gone to bed about twelve-thirty. At twelve fifty-six she woke up and looked at her clock. She thought Virginia’s death had caused her to awaken, but then:

All of a sudden I saw her painting as clear as day. I felt her presence beside me, and I could see the tunnel in my mind’s eye. We began moving down the tunnel together, passing by the blue-and-black sides of the painting. I could see the yellow light at the end of the tunnel, and as we got closer, the light became brighter and white.

They reached the end of the tunnel together and broke into a field of bright light. Then Houlberg realized that she shouldn’t stay with her friend. “It isn’t my time,” she knew. “I still have things to do.”

In the morning Virginia’s son called to tell Houlberg that his mother had died at one in the morning. Houlberg sums up her own experience:

I can’t explain what happened to me. My psychic side says that I had an out-of-body experience, that Virginia was afraid to go through the tunnel alone, so she recruited me to accompany her. My logical side says that’s foolish. But it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I knew without any doubt that Virginia was with God—and feeling great.

Melvin Morse with Paul Perry, Parting Visions: Uses and Meanings of Pre-Death, Psychic, and Spiritual Experiences (Villard Books 1994).

Visions of angelic beings

Morse also records the experience of Lady Barrett, a surgeon in Dublin who was at the deathbed of a woman named Doris, who was dying from a hemorrhage after birth. As Lady Barrett tells it:

“Suddenly Doris looked eagerly towards part of the room a radiant smile illuminating her whole countenance. Oh, lovely, lovely, she said. I asked, “What is lovely?” What I see, she replied in low, intense tones. “What do you see?” Lovely brightness—wonderful beings. It is difficult to describe the sense of reality conveyed by her intense absorption in the vision. Then—seeming to focus her attention more intently on one place for a moment—she exclaimed, almost with a kind of joyous cry, Why, it’s Father! Oh, he’s so glad I’m coming; he is so glad. It would be perfect if only W. [her husband’] would come too.

“Her baby was brought for her to see. She looked at it with interest, and then said, Do you think I ought to stay for the baby’s sake? Then, turning toward the vision again, she said, I can’t—I can’t stay; if you could see what I do, you would know I can’t stay.

Lady Barrett knew the sister of Doris, Vida, had died only three weeks earlier. But as Doris was in such delicate condition, the death of her beloved sister was kept a secret from her.

Then Doris spoke to her father: I am coming, turning at the same time to look at Lady Barrett, saying, Oh, he is so near. On looking at the same place again, she said with a rather puzzled expression: He has Vida with him, turning again to me and saying: Vida is with him. And then, I am coming.”

This story shared by Lady Barrett with her husband, Sir William Barrett, physics professor at the Royal College of Science in Dublin, inspired Sir Barrett, Morse writes, “to undertake a systematic study of deathbed visions. His was the first scientific study to conclude that the mind of the dying patient is often clear and rational.”

Also, “Barrett reported several children who were disappointed to see angels with no wings. In one such case he described a dying girl who sat up suddenly in her bed and said, “Angels, I see angels.” Then the girl was puzzled. “Why aren’t they wearing wings?” If deathbed visions were simply a fantasy of the mind, says Barrett, why did this girl see something different from her expectations?” Morse adds that at least fifty percent of the children he has studied see “guardian angels” as part of their near-death experience.

Melvin Morse with Paul Perry, Parting Visions: Uses and Meanings of Pre-Death, Psychic, and Spiritual Experiences (Villard Books 1994).

Mothers learn (from heaven?) their babies will die

Pediatrician Melvin Morse in his book Parting Visions: Uses and Meanings of Pre-Death, Psychic, and Spiritual Experiences reports on many such extraordinary experiences documented in his practice and research. For instance, that the mother of a newborn boy named Jason had an “extraordinary visit” from her deceased father.

I was sitting in my living room reading a paperback book. The baby was asleep in his crib, and I was resting because I had been up half the night with his fussiness. As I was sitting there in the quiet, I had the feeling that I was not alone. I wasn’t afraid, I just wasn’t alone. I looked up and there was my father. He had been dead for a year, but there he stood. For some reason I wasn’t surprised at all. He was just there for a second or two, but I heard him tell me, “Jason is coming with me.” I knew exactly what he meant. He meant that my baby was going to die.

Her knowledge that Jason would die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) was confirmed by his death a week later. Describing her experience as a dream or hallucination doesn’t alter the fact that the information she received during this extraordinary experience was accurate. Her experience may have been subjective, but the information she received was objectively confirmed.

Morse’s also describes the experience of a patient named Judy. “When she was seven months pregnant, she had a puzzling vision, one that took place while she rested on her bed in the afternoon, fully awake. As she told it:  

I suddenly found myself floating out of my body to the ceiling of the bedroom. I hovered in the air, looking down at myself. Suddenly I realized that there was a lady floating in the air next to me. She glowed with a soft white light. The lady and I looked down at my body. It was as though that person on the bed was someone else. The lady began to talk about the person on the bed as though it wasn’t me. 

“You know,” she said with great love and compassion, “she can’t keep the baby. It is going to die.” I wasn’t angry. Instead I felt great love and compassion when she said that, as if this baby’s death was part of a greater purpose and plan.

Judy’s child died of SIDS less than a year later. Morse comments: “SIDS happens in only three of every thousand babies born.” 

Melvin L. Morse, Parting Visions: Uses and Meanings of Pre-Death, Psychic, and Spiritual Experiences (1994).

A prayer for life and death

O God of life and death.

May your grace and peace come,

may your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

Keep us healthy and humble 'til our time has come.

And as we forgive those who've done us harm,

forgive us for the harm we've done.

And do not tempt but keep us safe from evil.

For you are the Way, the Truth, and the Light,

now and forever. Amen