Survivor foresees the consequences of his life

I was 4 years old. As I recall it was in the summer or fall. I had been having difficulty breathing and in the evening I was taken to the emergency room by my mother and father. This wasn't unusual; I averaged a trip to the hospital at least once every two weeks. On one occasion I distinctly remember listening to a doctor advising my parents to stop caring for me and to let me die, telling that I was not worth taking care of due to the extremeness of my asthma and would be dead by the time I was age 9.

Anyway, I was laying on an examination table, my parents were to the left of me. The door to the room was closed and I was in extreme pain. Every breath felt like burning razors were tearing through my lungs and throat. I don't remember the moment, I stopped breathing; only, all of the pain stopped and I found myself in a vast place.

The air, if you could call it that, was filled with an unearthly white light. The place seemed to expand for all eternity. I do remember a being of light, God, standing near me. It was looming over me like a great tower of strength, yet radiating only warmth and love. Its first words sent a shock through me, 'Bobby, I'm sorry for the pain this meeting will cause you. When I created the Universe, I put rules and limitations in place. Every time you come here, it changes you, because this is your second time here. You will remember more than you're supposed to, and it will cause you more pain than you know. You will suffer as no one in your family ever has, and I can't change that.' As those words were spoken, if that's what you could call them, I caught glimpses of my life and felt pride, love, joy, and sadness, all pouring into me. Each images was of me, but from the standpoint of a being standing with me or looking on.

I remember the conversation going on for an eternity, but in reality it only lasted a minute or two at the most. I remember a white light that seemed to pulsate and understanding that it was some kind of extension of God. It stored the moments of every moment and life. It allowed a mortal to experience them. If I was to label this, I would call it the Book of Fate, that contains all that has, is, and will be.

Somehow I felt the light from that device and God merge to become one with me. I saw my life, all 128 years of it. I saw my mother die, and me being unable to do anything about it as I had moved away. I saw my sister struggling with depression and worse due to a rape she experienced in her mid 20's. I saw my father die a few years after my mother. I saw a home I'd built for my family, in a place halfway across the country,. This home was far away from my home. I also experienced the final moments of my mortal life. I was in a bed, I don't know where, my children and grandchildren were there with me. I remember thinking, 'It's finally done.' I remember feeling a horrible wave of sadness rip through me as I thought of my daughter who had died before me, and then I remember thinking of my wife. (Keep in mind I was 4 years old while experiencing the life experiences of an 128 year old man) I remembered the night we were married, the room was dimly lit and she was standing in front of me getting undressed. I remember seeing a strand of gray in her hair and then looking back on that moment, realizing how in that moment I had been reborn and everything was worth it. Then I realized I'd be able to see her and my daughter again, and gave into death for the final time.

That wasn't the end though, I was shown the consequences of my life, thousands of people that I'd interacted with and felt what they felt about me, saw their life and how I had impacted them. Next I saw the consequences of my life and the influence of my actions. I saw people reading my books, teaching lessons to children that I had taught them.

I remember waking up confused and trying to deal with everything. For a long time afterwards I struggled to deal with what I saw, every time my mom got sick, I wondered if it was time for her to die. I tried to always be strong, and in time eventually came to blame myself for my mother's oncoming death and sister's oncoming rape. I couldn't deal with the things I had experienced and it took nearly 29 years after this before I could begin to stop blaming myself and accept that I had nothing to do with those things. 

NDERF.org, 8010

 

Survivor gives thanks for being in God's presence

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

Pathway Program of Shared Crossing Project

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall write: "Hospice volunteer, William Peters in Santa Barbara, in 2010 created protocols via the Shared Crossing Project’s Pathway program, designed to assist others in accepting death as a natural process and specific exercises in how to establish ‘links’ between the dying and their loved ones.

"One such introductory exercise to facilitate this bond goes like this: 'Take a moment to deepen into a relaxed and contemplative state and focus on one particular close relationship. Reflect on a specific event or memory that evokes feelings of gratitude for this loved one. Perhaps this occurred at a time of great joy in your life, or when you most needed comfort. Allow these feelings of appreciation to form a bond across time and space, between you and this special loved one. Allow yourself to sense and feel the presence of this being, with you, now.'

"When practiced with some frequency over time, this visualization creates a link that stretches between this life and what lies ahead. Through a series of increasingly elaborate exercises, participants learn the landscape that leads from this human life into afterlife and choreograph their transitions with loved ones. Participants who followed such protocols have attained a more meaningful relationship with death and numerous long-term benefits. These include increased appreciation for life, decreased fear of death, more manageable grief, and a deeper understanding of their own purpose in life.

"Research reveals that these practices enable a variety of profound and healing end-of-life phenomena that Peters has identified and documented as ‘shared crossings.’ These refer to a kind of communication across the veil that yields a transformative gift, including predeath dreams/visions (where the dying express that they have been visited by a deceased loved one who provides them guidance and comfort); the shared death experience (where loved ones report that they went into the initial stages of the afterlife with the dying individual and experienced phenomena such as a shared out-of-body event, witnessing benevolent beings of light, encountering heavenly realms, and ultimately realizing that their departing loved one is safe, well-cared-for, and happy); postdeath coincidences (where an individual experiences a profound energetic event in which they know that a loved one has died, yet are alive and well); and many more.

"We are spiritual beings living in a spiritual universe. Fundamentally, this spirituality means we are all interconnected through the Collective Mind, and that the emotional power behind our hopes and dreams has a basis in reality that guides the unfolding of events in our lives. The very fuel of that spirituality is love, and the more we can express unconditional love for self and others, the more healing or ‘becoming whole’ we will be. The best way to discover this is through cultivating a means of going within, often described as a practice of meditation or prayer. Any physical, mental, or emotional health must be firmly rooted in spiritual health, and prayer is a most natural means of invoking such overall wellness. As hundreds have shared with us, that sense of eternal connection is truly a life changer. We just need to be open to the possibility."

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall, Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness (Rodale, 2017).

Slave song: "I'm Going Home"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Slave Songs of the United States” by Charles Pickard Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison, and William Francis Allen, 1867.

Quantum energy and love binds the universe

A natural result of feeling the infinite love of the universe is to recognize that conscious awareness is the very same force at the core of all existence. Such oneness and dissolution of the sense of self, and complete identity with all of life and the source of all that is, is the pathway toward truth. Indeed, the deepest lesson of my journey was realizing that unconditional love was the very fabric of the spiritual realm from which the totality of reality emerges.

The binding force of love reported by the vast majority of spiritual journeyers over millennia brings to mind the concept of ‘the ether,’ a substance that scientists in the late 19th century postulated might possibly serve as the medium pervading the entire universe through which light waves travel. Light fundamentally connects our entire universe with itself, pervading every bit of the physical universe throughout time.

In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed an experiment to investigate the ether, and they proved that the ether as it was postulated (as a classical medium, like air and water) did not exist. Yet in an amazing turn of events, the most recent work in physics demonstrates that the ether is now the way most modern physicists would describe the vacuum energy, the amazingly powerful source of energy that quantum physics has revealed to exist in the very fabric of spacetime itself. Vacuum energy is a potentially endless source of energy that could revolutionize our society, if we could just determine a way to harness it for our use here on earth. Ether has not resurged as an idea in physics, but it is a relativistic ether that is fully compatible with the ideas of relativity. But the concept of ether, which many would identify as the substance that acts as the binding force of our universe, is almost identical to the infinite binding force of love.

Our concepts of a loving, merciful, and compassionate force operating in the universe (whether from the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam or from other traditions, such as Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Hinduism, or Buddhism) have originated from human encounters in the spiritual realm. Most of those traditions emerged from individuals who had witnessed extraordinary features of the invisible realm that revealed a much deeper connection with the universe. In essence, this is the most basic definition of spirituality, that we have a connection with the universe that enables us to sense vital aspects of it and to have some influence in achieving our goals and desires.

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall, Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness, 2017.

Alexander and Newall: we are cocreators with God

Experimental results in quantum physics serve as the smoking gun to indicate that consciousness is fundamental in creating the universe: All of the observable universe (and all of the rest of the cosmos that exist anywhere or anytime) appears to emerge from consciousness itself.

The mathematical precision of our world and the fine-tuning of physical parameters involved in its structure provide compelling evidence of a highly ordered consciousness underlying all of existence. I believe that this ordering intelligence, which many might see as a creative God, is actually the very source of our conscious awareness as sentient beings. There is no separation between this ultimate creative force and our conscious awareness of existing in this universe. The observer, the self-awareness of the universe for itself, is us at the deepest level.

The great psychologist William James (1842-1910) offered up what he called ‘the More,’ His concept was simply that one could not fully explain the events of human lives through interactions defined in the physical realm alone. I view ‘the More’ as a top-down organizational principle that sets the stage for true evolution on a grand scale—that is, evolution of information and understanding of the universe, aligned with a structure suggestive of meaning and purpose in human existence. In many ways, this grander evolution of consciousness is the reason the entire universe exists.

By consciousness, I mean that self-awareness, that knowing in this moment that you exist, that you are a human being alive in the here and now—the observer part of awareness—the knower of knowledge. We are all participants and cocreators in this grand evolution of consciousness itself.

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall, Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness

 

Eben Alexander on praying for the dying

"Those familiar with my coma ordeal often write to me to ask what they can do for someone close to them who is presently in coma due to accident, illness, or other reasons. They are distraught at the thought of losing their loved one and wish to prevent it at all costs. Often they ask if prayers will make a difference. They are usually inspired by my inexplicable recovery and desperately wish to know if prayer will help their loved one survive and recover. The key thing to remember is that our existence does not end with the death of the physical body. Prayer can have tremendous power—remember that your prayers will get through to your loved one’s soul on this journey, providing him or her with comfort and love. Whether or not the physical body recovers is not the end goal. If such recovery allows for growth in understanding our relationship with the universe in pursuit of our intended life’s lessons, then it becomes possible.

"No matter how deep in coma a loved one might be, assume that the loving energy of your prayers will help you connect with their soul. Use the energy of that loving connection to manifest the highest and best good for all involved. This does entail detaching from the outcome, and asking that ‘thy will be done.’

"It is crucial to realize that death is not the end of our soul connections with loved ones. Prayer often opens the door to show us that connection, as we sense that the soul of our departing loved one is not actually departed at all, even after they have left their physical body once and for all.

"Recall that healing is to hallow or to make holy, essentially to ‘make whole.’ The reuniting with the infinitely loving creative force at the death of the body is a most beautiful lesson of the true oneness underlying our existence, the eternity of spirit and interconnectedness of all souls.

"Our job, as caregivers and as loved ones of the dying person, is to share gifts—of recognition, of acceptance, and of forgiveness (of the departing soul, of siblings, and other family, but most especially of ourselves) to comfort and console the dying. Dying is a natural aspect of the cycle of life. Telling a dying person that it is okay, that you are also at one with it, offers powerful healing to all parties. Interpret what you witness with your heart, not your head. Stay alert throughout the dying process."

Eben Alexander and Karen Newall, Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Heart of Consciousness, 2017.