NDE leads woman to palliative care leadership

Pam Williams from Swansea reported to Dr. Sartori her NDE when she hemorrhaged after childbirth: "The doctor came in his car. Even though it was physically impossible I saw the doctor get out of his car and run up our path; he threw off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and examined me, he appeared to be trying to pull something out. He then banged me on the chest and inserted a needle into my heart and injected me with something. He breathed into my mouth. All the time this was happening I felt fine; warm, happy, full of joy, peaceful, gently floating towards brilliant light. Suddenly in the distance I heard my eldest daughter shout, ‘Mam’. I remember thinking, ‘Oh dear, Jacquie needs me,’ and I came back with a jolt.

 

"The doctor had already sent my husband to phone for the emergency maternity ambulance (no mobile phones in those days). The ambulance came with a specialist doctor in attendance. I was stabilized and bundled with my newborn daughter into the ambulance and with the sirens blaring was raced to hospital. When I went for my postnatal appointment six weeks later, I told the doctor what I had seen. He was amazed that I could describe the event in such detail but didn’t have any explanation. This near-death experience left me with a special legacy: I know for certain that death is not to be feared. I am not a religious person but I believe there is a warm peaceful beautiful place after death. I also felt I had somehow been given the choice as to whether I should continue my journey towards the bright light or return; I chose the latter.

 

"This experience was put to the back of my mind. I was an uneducated miner’s wife with four small children. I did odd jobs cleaning and being a dinner lady when at the age of 34 a number of seemingly accidental events led me back into education. Within the next six years I became a nursery nurse, a RNMS and a staff nurse RGN. Within four years of qualifying I became a sister on the coronary-care unit in Sheffield. Then everything seemed to fall into place: it was not serendipity or chance that had given me skills and knowledge. I humbly felt that this was the right place for me since my own near-death experience enabled me to give help and support to the dying and newly bereaved patients and families. 

 

"My own lack of fear of dying helped me explore aspects of death, firstly at degree, and then at masters level, by which time I was a lecturer in nursing and palliative care. I truly believe that had I not experienced near death, I would not have striven to explore death issues and would probably have remained content not to return to education. As a person I changed from the moment of my near-death experience; I felt an overwhelming sense of joy, and a need to help and support others. I believe strongly in the philosophy of everyday doing something or giving something to help others, often random strangers. I also strongly believe that religion is just a word and that each individual person is responsible for how they choose to live their lives."

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 30-31). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

NDE survivor reports help by her guardian angel

"I too have had an NDE," a woman wrote to Dr. Sartori. "It happened nearly 30 years ago and the whole thing stands out as clearly in my memory as if it happened yesterday. I believe that it has nothing to do with hallucinations or medication. I had a pulmonary embolism in hospital after major surgery. I could neither move nor shout for the nurse, it was as if someone had stabbed me in the back and all the air had gone from my lungs. I distinctly remember a nurse looking at me then running to my bed with oxygen and mask, putting the mask on my face. Then I saw two doctors rush to my bed, one was sounding my chest with a stethoscope and the other was pressing hard on the veins in my legs (I found out later he was looking for a DVT). I still couldn’t breathe and the pain in my upper back was awful.

 

"Suddenly I felt completely calm and felt myself gliding to the corner of the room at ceiling height. I rushed through a tunnel in the corner of the room, and it was full of bright lights and vivid colors and at the front was my grandmother, smiling as she always did when alive. Behind my grandmother were other members of our family and friends, all smiling and welcoming me. Suddenly I had to go back to my family and two young sons. I hovered and looked down at my hospital bed. I could see myself lying there on a drip and oxygen, my eyes were closed but the two doctors, and now three nurses, were no longer rushing about. Two days later I woke up (my husband informed me of the time span) with tubes everywhere and acute pain in my lungs. I did not have the pain either while floating above my bed or in the tunnel.

 

"I began to recover and then about four days later I had another breathing attack. This time I was in intensive care, so a nurse came immediately with oxygen. She pulled the curtains around the bed and said she would return immediately with a doctor. During this time (seconds, apparently) a man all in white clothing came into the cubicle and sat on the end of my bed with his back to me. My breathing was bad, and he actually sat on my feet (I am a tall lady) and I remember clearly having trouble moving my feet from under him. Then he said to me, ‘Fight it, fight it’ over and over again. Then he disappeared in front of my eyes. When my breathing returned to normal, I asked the nurse who it was who had come into the cubicle before she came back with the doctor. She informed me that no one had been in with me. Today I believe it was my guardian angel.

 

"I would like to add that my experience changed my life. I have spent a lot of my life as a carer for family and friends and also in my employment with the blind. Before that NDE I was quite self-centered and an introvert. So, I can say the experience did me a lot of good. One of the first people I looked after was my mother, who passed away 18 months after my NDE. Twenty years later I nursed my father through terminal cancer so perhaps I was saved because I had work to do.

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 33-34). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014

Survivor feels he was sent back for a purpose

Dr. Sartori reports the following experience. "I kept asking what had happened as I knew I had experienced something, but all the surgeon would say was that it had been pretty serious, and they had to wash my insides out with antibiotics as I was so ulcerated with the peritonitis infection. I just wanted to be left alone as I felt so ill. I was given over 20 morphine jabs to ease the pain during that week. During the first three days every time that I closed my eyes I could see a vivid green tunnel off to my left in the wall, and felt that all I had to do was to let go because of the constant pain. I stopped having the tunnel visions as my temperature dropped on the fourth day.

 

"When I finally managed to get out of bed after the fourth day, I noticed my chest looked very red and couldn’t understand why. It was when I mentioned this later to my mother, she explained that they had probably shocked me with the paddles, if there had been problems during the operation, which she thought that there had been. I was a practicing Catholic before this happened and am not frightened to die, as I know this is all just a stepping stone to something better, which is what I tell people.

 

"I am now 46 and have had a son since, but I don’t think he was the reason I came back. I know the docs just said the experiences might have been the morphine, but I know it was something different. I fly helicopters and have rescued people, but I still don’t feel that I have reached the point which I feel that I was sent back for yet. I sometimes wonder if I am doing the right job for me now, which is strange considering how keen I was to fly before this experience. I have mentioned to some rich individuals who I have come across through my flying that they should set up a charity that would respond faster, to help the sick and children in need around the world, and I feel this has something to do with what I know I was sent back for.

 

"I am more interested in the spiritual side of life than I was before, and always said at the time of the operation anybody younger or older wouldn’t have got through the pain, as I felt like giving up at times myself. I now feel everything in life is fate, and know it’s just a stepping stone to something much better. The strange thing that I still think about is that the being I saw; it was like a negative film image with a soft light behind it. There was no speech, but the thoughts were passed to me somehow. I know it was real. I don’t think my NDE was anything to do with the morphine either, as I had 20 injections through that week and the out-of-body experience only happened at the start of my stay in hospital. I don’t know if this experience resembles anybody else’s with the negative image I saw, but thought I would share it with you."

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 36-37). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

NDE makes a woman more "eco-friendly"

Dr. Satori writes: Heather Leese had an NDE while a patient in intensive care after a severe infection in which she nearly died. She has had numerous after effects, including an enhanced appreciation for the welfare of the planet. 

 

"It can be really tiring for me coming to terms with what’s happening right now for me and tuning into this new powerful energy! Some days I really just cannot function and become overwhelmed. My experience with the human relationship and the environment have changed, I would say, after the NDE. I have always tried to be respectful of life and the environment but after the last NDE I had, with going into the coma and experiencing the white light room, I began to feel an overwhelming connection to mother earth’s pain. It’s like I experienced the sadness she was feeling with how she was being treated; with tiredness on top of this it was a heavy burden to bear. I tried to do as much as I could but soon realized I can’t control how other people treat the land. I can only do my best as one being and started living a more clean life by trying to use eco-friendly cleaning products. 

 

"My body could not take a high exposure to chemicals so I can only use organic shampoo and salt crystal deodorant, etc. and I downgraded my car to an eco-friendly 1.1-litre engine. I recycle and when I can afford it buy only organic food and I will pick up litter on the street if it is possible (my dad laughs at me when I do this!). My thoughts on other things like emissions and stuff I can’t really go into or I choose not to because it makes me angry and that doesn’t feel beneficial to me right now. I have come to the general conclusion and have been told by spirits that people are already working on environmental issues and that my job is elsewhere at the moment, but I am in the space right now that if mother earth chooses to wipe us out for the pain we have caused her I am at total peace with this because that is her and God’s business! My family and I do what we can and a lot of people do the best they can with the knowledge they are given. Hope this makes a little sense."

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 38-39). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

NDEs may cause relationship conflicts

Relationship problems may arise between the person and their spouse as their values can change so dramatically; it is not uncommon for couples to divorce following an NDE. Failure of others to acknowledge such an experience can also have a huge impact on the person. A few years ago I was contacted by a lady who described to me some components of the NDE which occurred as she lost consciousness during a road traffic accident. She was severely debilitated for some months due to her injuries and more than three years after the accident she could still not get over what had happened. She had been treated by several psychologists, but she could not quite work through her psychological problems. By chance she had read an article in a magazine about my research and recognized what was described as being similar to what she had experienced. After a few emails the lady was able to understand what she had experienced and was able to move on. It seems incredible that something as simple as a greater understanding of NDEs could potentially save the NHS millions of pounds while being of great benefit to patients.

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 24-25). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

NDE includes battle between demons and angels

The following experience was sent to Dr. Sartori by Tony, aged 44: “In 1994 I suffered a very severe head injury, when I was knocked off my bicycle by a car. I spent eleven months in hospital: seven weeks at one and nine months at another. As a result of the accident, I was in a coma for four weeks, a wheelchair user for eight months and unable to read and write for a long period. Immediately following this accident, a neighbor (who was also a qualified nurse) took the necessary action to ensure that it did not have fatal consequences by ensuring that I did not lose more blood, that I was able to breathe more comfortably and, perhaps most significantly, she telephoned for an ambulance. She has since advised me that I remained conscious, continually muttering, ‘help me, help me.’ However, she thought that my injuries were so severe that when an ambulance eventually arrived, I would not survive the journey to the hospital. 

“On my arrival at the hospital, my friend was contacted and asked to identify my body. On arrival, he has advised me that I was described as being in a ‘touch and go’ predicament. However, following a blood transfusion I was sufficiently stable to be taken by ambulance to a different hospital and was placed on a life support machine for three days. At the time of the accident, I was a ‘lapsed’ Roman Catholic. However, I have been ‘reborn’ since (but have not become ‘overtly religious’).

“Some ‘red angels’, who I later perceived to be ‘devil’s demons’, asked me to join them. After refusing this request some more ‘red angels’ came down from what I assumed to be heaven and fought the ‘devil’s demons’ . . . I can vaguely recall a ‘heavenly angel’ piercing a ‘devil’s demon’ in his/her heart with a spear. In retrospect the physical appearance of ‘heavenly angels’ and ‘devil’s demons’ should not be dissimilar because the devil (Lucifer) had once been a ‘heavenly angel’. I understand that a similar depiction of a ‘near-death’ experience is depicted in the ‘Book of Revelation’. In some respects, this experience gave me cause for concern because I felt that if the ‘devil’s demons’ had thought it worthwhile approaching me it was possible that I had been (am) such a bad person that I might deserve to ‘rot in hell’.”

 

Sartori, Dr Penny. Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences (pp. 20-21). Watkins Media. Kindle Edition. 2014.

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.