Striking NDE shared with Dr. Penny Sartori

This report was sent to Dr. Sartori by a 43-year-old lady called Jules Lyons: “I have started to talk more openly about my NDE, which I kept pretty much to myself for the past 22 years. It only lasted a few minutes (earthly time, according to medics that’s how long I was ‘gone’), yet it felt like SO much longer. It was simply the most amazing, beautiful thing I have ever, ever experienced . . . just talking about it still makes my whole body tingle and sort of glow inside. It’s as clear and vivid as if it happened only an hour ago.

“I was in a very bad way, in the Accident & Emergency unit, it was summer 1987. I was slipping in and out of consciousness. Anyway, I remember the doctor’s voice, saying, ‘there’s nothing else we can do’ to someone, at the same moment I realized I had somehow floated upwards, out of my own body, and was floating upwards towards the ceiling of the hospital room. I could actually feel my back physically pressing against the ceiling of the hospital room. I was watching the doctor and two nurses moving around my own body, lying on the bed below. They were talking, I could clearly hear what they were saying, and it wasn’t very positive! I felt that I was floating there, against the ceiling, for about a minute. I felt strangely calm, deeply calm and incredibly peaceful, just observing, quietly.

 

“Then I was ‘pulled up’ through the ceiling and seemed to whizz off somewhere else, at incredible speed. Next thing I knew, I was floating/flying down a very long tunnel, miles and miles long, very dark and empty, and I could feel the speed I was flying at was fast, as it was like wind flowing over me and through my hair, etc. I felt incredibly calm and peaceful still, no fear at all. I felt a sense of release, if anything: of immense freedom and lightness of being. I could see miles into the distance and at the end of this long dark tunnel was a massively bright white light. Intensely bright white; almost blinding. The tunnel felt cold, dark and windy, yet I felt an OVERWHELMING, all-pervasive sense of deep, deep peace, joy and calm. Like being enveloped in a warm bubble bath or a blanket of sheer calm, bliss and peace. It was like nothing I can ever adequately describe, nor anything I have ever experienced on earth (prior or since the NDE).

 

“When I got to the end of the tunnel, and to the brilliant white light, I found myself now floating along on what seemed to be thin air. Just clear, light, empty space; bright and clear, like crystal-clear air. I suddenly felt a rush of immense joy welling up inside me, felt SO uplifted and SO peaceful and incredibly happy. And, I very clearly remember, for the first time ever, I experienced what it felt like to feel truly FREE, as if every atom of my being was free and glowing with joy. As I was floating along (more like ‘being floated along’ by some external force), there appeared a quite high stone wall, running for miles and miles on my right side, and even though it was high (maybe ten feet high?), I could actually float myself upwards a little bit and see over the top of it.

 

“What I saw, over this stone wall, was simply the MOST BEAUTIFUL, MOST PEACEFUL and most AMAZING place I could ever imagine. Wide, panoramic gardens/landscape with rivers, ponds, fountains, flowers, trees, hills, meadows, valleys, etc. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Yet, the most incredible thing about this place was the color. The colors of everything were so incredibly bright and vivid, almost iridescent and glowing, as if they were alive in some strange way. It was like no landscape at all on earth . . . more like a super-technicolor, really vivid and amazingly beautiful colors, almost like crystal-clear, vibrant, radiating colors. There were a few distinct features which stood out immediately and somehow I knew that one by one everyone had to go inside this building at some point. There were comfortable seats and benches dotted around, all over the gardens and into the distance, with quite a lot of people. Yes, what seemed to be perfectly ordinary people, all sat around, peacefully chatting, all in a quiet, gentle way, like a sense of soft whispering, some were in small groups under trees, some sat on the grass, some walking down the pathways. I couldn’t hear any actual words or distinguish any voices, it was as if they were communicating with each other without speech, and I had an awareness that they were having conversations. They seemed to be wearing some kind of robes, or garments, not earthly clothes, but they were very definitely human!

 

“There was a DEEP sense of peace and calm amongst everyone. I felt very clearly like they were ‘waiting’. As if this was some kind of ‘waiting’ or ‘reception’ area. Everyone in this landscape was waiting. It felt like a gentle summer day, warm, comfortable, not too hot, and I was happily floating along this wall, looking over the top into this landscape, when quite suddenly a gate appeared just up ahead. An ordinary-looking, old-fashioned tall wooden garden gate: the type they used to have in old stone walls or gardens. As I was floating nearer this gate, I could see a figure stood (floating on the crystal clear air just like me!) next to it.

 

“It seemed to take me a while to get up close (the floating sensation/my movements were not being dictated by me, but by some other energy/power carrying me along, at a gentle pace). Anyway, I finally reached this gate, and there in front of me, large as life and as real as I am sat here now, was my maternal grandmother, bless her soul, who passed away when I was five years old (over 38 years ago). My family never really talked about her (nor about any of our grandparents!), so I didn’t really have many memories of her when I was a child and growing up. There she was, real as anything, no ghostly apparition, but real and solid, I could have reached out and touched her, she was calmly stood there, totally alive, well, real and looking lovely and radiant (she ‘died’ of lung cancer).

 

“She smiled such a warm and loving smile, and I felt her hug me, even though she didn’t touch me at all, I could physically feel her arms wrapping around me and such a huge wave of love. She gave me the most warm and loving cuddle ever. It was wonderful, and so real, even though it appeared she didn’t actually move or touch me at all. I felt the most incredible love and peace and happiness and calm, both inside me and in this place, in all these people, like nothing I’ve ever felt here on earth. Such deep calm and peace and love. I clearly remember all of this like it just happened this morning. I felt SO happy. My gran spoke to me, her voice clear and alive, even though her mouth didn’t move from the smile she was wearing, I sensed she was talking directly to my brain/mind, like there were no spoken words, yet I could clearly understand what she was saying.

 

“She gave me a very clear message (three very clear sentences which will live with me forever) including: ‘We are not ready for you yet’ and that ‘You have to go back’ and finally that ‘There is something you have to do. Your purpose.’ She then smiled at me so warmly, it seemed to infuse me with peace and love and joy. Then, in what felt like a split second, I was being ‘floated’ backwards, at far greater speed this time, all the way back along the wall, as I watched my gran disappearing in the distance, I was ‘floated’ all the way back towards and through the tunnel, all the time backwards, still facing where I had just been, and then I felt myself actually going back into my body, which coincided with such a resounding ‘THUD’ that my whole body did a massive jolt/spasm (like those dreams where you’re falling off a cliff and you jolt as you wake up, only 100x greater in strength). And this is when I apparently suddenly ‘awoke’, and regained ‘vital signs’, on the hospital trolley/bed.

 

“Well, that was over 22 years ago; I made a full recovery and had good health for many years afterwards. It was a miracle to me. And it was the start of a lot of things happening happening for me in my life, including my awakening/interest in spiritual matters (I was 21, had no prior knowledge or exposure to anything spiritual or related to near-death experiences or the afterlife). After that, for a few years, I’d sometimes have a really strong sense that my gran was around me, like I could sense her in the room occasionally, and once or twice I could have sworn I actually heard her speak, but I convinced myself I must have been imagining it! I never spoke about these things to anybody for years and years, apart from one close friend. I never did anything to ‘contact’ my gran, or to develop any ‘skills’ in that area (to be honest, the idea of that sort of thing scared me a bit!), but I did start to read a lot of books about all sorts of spiritual subjects, including reading the Bible for the first time.”

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 10-14). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

NDE life review and time distortion

During the life review living images of the person’s life are literally played out and relived from a third-person perspective. It is described by some people as panoramic, and everything occurs at once. The life review can include all of the important events in their life as well as the insignificant. The images have been described as holographic with a simultaneous matrix of impressions.19 It can be in chronological order or just random images that don’t have any particular relevance. In some cases during the life review, the person may be accompanied by a non-judgemental presence that appears to provide a source of strength and comfort as the images unfold. The person is confronted with the consequences of their actions–good or bad–and can feel the effects that their actions have had on others. They may experience a strong feeling of self-judgement as they review their life from this third-person perspective. For example, they may report feeling deeply upset by an inconsiderate remark they made to someone as they relive it in the life review. Equally they may feel elated after experiencing from the other person’s perspective how their actions had helped someone.

Time seems to have no meaning during an NDE. In many cases the experience may seem as if it had lasted for hours yet the time of unconsciousness was literally seconds or minutes. Sometimes it feels as if time is greatly speeded up; sometimes it goes slower. Most of the time, the person cannot put a timescale on the duration of the experience. It is quite remarkable how people can report such lengthy and detailed descriptions of what they experienced during such a brief period of unconsciousness.

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (p. 7-9). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

Home Alleluia

Audio computer-generated music with vocal by Robert Traer

https://christian-bible.com/songs/contemporary/home-alleluia.html

Abba in heaven and with us on earth. Guiding us every day as from our birth.

We pray for everyone going back home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Mary our mother you show us the way. Being more humble and patient each day.

Holding our hand as we make our way home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Healing our conflicts may help us to see, sharing with others will set us all free.

Forgiving those we fear brings us all home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Dark is the valley but you are our light. Your fire within us burns all thru the night.

Bright stars above showing us the way home. Alleluia.       Refrain   

Sisters and brothers now join in this song. Love one another until we’re all gone.

Amazing grace you are leading us home. Alleluia.       Refrain

Refrain  (Sung twice after each verse)

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Woman survives horse-riding accident

Twenty years ago I was galloping a racehorse, on my own on top of a mountain when he lost his footing, the bridle snapped and we went headlong into the ground, with a ton of racehorse doing 30 miles an hour rolling over me. I woke up some two hours later with rain gently falling, looking down on myself. My crash helmet was smashed and someone told me that I would be all right but that I needed to get up as it wasn’t time for me to go as I was still needed by my daughter. I had a feeling that I was ‘halfway to heaven’, watching from above with a voice talking to me. I watched from this hovering position as my body raised itself and started to walk off the mountain and down a steep stony forestry track (some two miles). 

When I reached the forestry car park a man came to my body and helped me into his car and drove towards the main road. I was now hovering above the car as it approached my friend, who stopped the car; they transferred my body into her car and she drove me to the hospital, her husband ran up the mountain to recover the horse. I was examined by a doctor in the hospital but I was actually above the bed watching. They x-rayed my head and told my friend to take me home, this she refused to do. I was hovering above her, telling her to get another doctor. Another doctor arrived and I was wheeled into a small theatre and they undertook a thoracotomy on my collapsed lungs. 

 

As I drew my first breath I went back into my body and felt pain for the first time, some three and a half hours after the accident. The next day my consultant also diagnosed a crushed left leg as well as my fractured ribs, severe concussion, etc. She was enthralled with my story as it should have been impossible for me to even stand up, never mind walk–she likened my injuries to someone who had had a tractor roll over them. It was a life-changing experience, I have always felt a better person for it–there is without doubt a greater power. 

 

Some ten years later I was in a GP’s surgery waiting for my father’s repeat prescription when a man, someone that I had never met before, sat down beside me. He turned to me and said that he had had an out-of-body experience recently when he had a massive heart attack and now recognized someone like me who had also experienced it. It was quite something as he also felt that he had an aura around him, like me–and that it had made him a much better person.

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 6-7). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

Dr. Penny Sartori's research on NDEs

When I began my nurse training in 1989, I’d never heard of an NDE and it was never something I was taught. During my first year I recall looking after a patient on the medical ward; I had worked ten consecutive shifts, so I got to know her really well. On the tenth shift, while I was helping her to wash, she sheepishly told me that she had ‘gone to heaven’ when her heart had stopped in the coronary-care unit. 

 

I remember listening to her experience of looking down on her own body in the bed and going to a beautiful meadow where her dead mother was waiting for her. I thought to myself, ‘She must have been hallucinating or had too much diamorphine.’ 

 

I never gave it a second thought and I didn’t question her further; I simply listened. It was a few years later, after I had qualified as a staff nurse, that I was to realize the significance of what she had said.

 

Dr. Sartori ends her book with these comments:

 

Previous investigations into NDEs have focused on establishing a materialist cause for the experience, which has served to detract from the very important spiritual insights that may be gained. It is time to stop concentrating solely on pathologizing these experiences and reflect on what they can actually teach us about living.

 

One thing I’ve come to realize over the past few years is that heaven is not a location—it is a state of mind and is within us all. We just have to go within and find it.

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences. Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

 

 

Man in car accident sees deceased grandmother

While in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital the doctors inserted a feeding tube into my nose while I was intubated. The nutrients from the feeding tube filled my belly causing my stomach to spasm and all the nutrient went into my lungs because I was intubated. I felt my lungs fill and my breath shorten. The call-button was just out of reach when I realized I had no control and there was nothing I could do. I thought of my family and the life I wouldn't lead. My eyes swelled in tears as I took my last breaths. Then everything went black.

It seemed instantly that I was somewhere else. It was as though I stepped through a doorway in the back of my mind and into another dimension. I first noticed the floor or rather the absence of it. There was a thick mist or fog that covered the ground up to my knees. The very next thing that I noticed was the sound of music. It soothed me. I didn't know the song but it seemed familiar. It was symphonically orchestral and with brass, strings and woodwinds, but the sound was still subtle. The sound seemed to be coming from my right. So, I looked in that direction.

I saw a deep void of darkness, like an astronaut who looked into the stars from orbit. Then I looked in front of me and saw my deceased grandmother. She was standing just in front of the 'White Light.' The light radiated warmth, light, love and anything I needed to know. I also noticed other figures off to the left of me. They seemed peaceful in pairs holding each other and swaying with the music. My grandmother delivered the choice to me. I could stay with her or go back to my life. She told me that if I stayed, everything would be o.k. She said that if I went back to my body, it would be the most challenging experience I would ever endure. Then she showed me my grieving family. It was like I was transported to the moment when my loved ones were talking about me. I saw my other grandparent who were still alive. She was driving to the hospital to see me. My Papa was consoling my grandma saying, 'Don't cry, he's going to make it!' I also saw my best friends driving to see me at the hospital. They were saying how bad it was and how I didn't look like myself. I also saw my mother and aunt in the hospital watching over me. I saw their tears and the uncertainty in there expressions.

The night of the car accident there was a friend of my Aunt whom I had never met. She woke my Aunt up in the middle of the night to say that a young man my Aunt knew was in terrible danger. This friend of my Aunt happened to be a sensitive. My Aunt called my Mother right afterwards. My Mother had just got off the phone with the sheriff's office. My Mother had seen a vision of her mother and I laughing and having a good time. This was during the same time as my NDE. I also had a premonition dream three years before the car accident. 

NDERF.org, 8195

She lost consciousness during birth but found God

I was 8.5 months pregnant and suddenly developed toxemia poisoning. This was my 5th pregnancy, but only second birth. I had lost 3 other babies. I had a 5 year-old-son of my own and a 2-year-old that we had adopted as a baby when I kept miscarrying. I was rushed to a hospital emergency room when my blood pressure went way out of control. My face was so swollen that I could hardly see out of my eyes. The rest of my body swelled to the point that the doctor on call, mistakenly thought I was an obese person and yet I only weighed 135 lbs! Everything happened so very fast, such that I suddenly could not breathe on my own. I lost consciousness at some point. That is when I experienced being outside of my body and was watching how frantically they were working to get me to breathe on my own.

My next realization was that I was no longer frightened about not being able to breathe on my own. I was at peace and very aware of the steps the doctors and nurses were taking to save my life. I understood all the terms they were using and could comprehend that I was not alive as far as they were concerned. I became aware of is the state of each person's relationship with others in the room. There were suddenly no secrets and yet, there was no judgment on my part, but rather an unconditional love. I felt very much loved at this time and I wanted to extend that to the others in the room. But they could not hear me. I could hear and see everything! It made me think of the scripture that says, we 'will fully know as we are fully known.' Oddly, this ability continues today in terms of knowing the truth about people's relationships with others.

I was not allowed to stay in God's presence, which was so full of light and love. I was told, not in words, but rather a thought that I had to come back and continue to be a mother to my sons.

I suddenly became aware of being rushed to the delivery room and being guided through the birth which was so fast! Then I was sent to the recovery room and I wanted my Bible because I didn't want to lose that incredible sense of love and light that I had experienced. However, the recovery room nurse wouldn't let me have my bible! She said I needed to rest. I laughed and had the boldness to tell her that she had no idea what true rest was. I told her I had just been in God's presence and discovered a rest and peace, that no amount of sleep would ever bring. She didn't comprehend what I was saying but did acknowledge that I must have gone through a frightening experience since they 'lost me for a little while'. I tried to explain that I wasn't lost at all and that I felt more alive than I every had felt. I suddenly understood what 'living in the spirit' meant. I also came to see that we put so much effort into our physical being, when in fact life through the spirit is far more powerful and satisfying. Words cannot adequately describe the incredible life and power that I had experienced from being in God's presence. I feel at loss to help others understand that the reality we live in our physical lives is nothing compared to life in the spiritual realm. Words cannot describe adequately what it is like to be in God's tremendously loving presence. I did learn that I can give the same unconditional love to others as though it is flowing through me from God.

 NDERF.org, 8034