Extraordinary knowing by her grandmother

EMMA LOUISE
(BORN 1849, DIED 1933)

As told by granddaughter Janice B. (1884 NDE as related by two relatives)

The setting for these events is 1884. My grandmother lived with her family in a large home in Greenville, Michigan. She was the mother of four living children ranging in age from ten to an infant. My grandfather was a family doctor.

I will tell her story of a near death experience as I remember it being told to me many years ago.

My grandmother was seriously ill. An upstairs room on the third floor of the home was set aside as sickroom for her, away from the hubbub of her active children. A "hired girl" cared for the children and took care of running the household while grandmother was sick. During this period of time my grandmother seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of what was happening in the household and in the neighborhood, although no one was providing her the information nor could she hear what was happening on the floors below. The only example of this that I can recount is, for instance, she said, "A neighbor has brought over some freshly-chummed butter and left it at the back door. Will you, please, bring it in." There was no way she could have seen or heard this happening. I was told there were many other such instances.

There came a time when she became increasingly ill. My grandfather brought in a medical colleague for consultation. While they were with her she ceased to breathe and neither my grandfather not his colleague could feel a pulse. They declared her dead but my grandfather was not one to give up easily. He rigged up a battery to give a shock to her heart. She began to breathe again and lived another fifty years.

She recounted a most remarkable experience during this period of time after being declared “dead." She felt as though she were taking a gentle journey down a river. She heard beautiful music. She felt a degree of peace and joy such as she had never experienced before. She believed she was in heaven and recognized that she had died. While this was going on she began to have conflicting thoughts-I must go back, my children need me vs. I can't leave this contentment and beauty. This internal struggle went on for some time. Then she awakened and recovered her health, living a full and satisfying life, and seeing her children all grow up and have successful lives of their own.

Welcomed by a collective consciousness

I had a tonsillectomy and all went well until discharge, when I was given an injection of sulphur. I have no recall of any of this until I reacted about 15 minutes later in the car on the way home. I remember being sick on my mother’s lap and seeing the skin reaction. Next recall is sitting in the wall of the emergency section of the hospital and watching the events separate from myself.

The time seemed inconsequential and I was uninterested until a separate space opened in the room and I left. After a hazy journey (seemingly short), I was enveloped in light and exquisite and infinite love. By now, I recall this as an ageless soul. I felt, as best as I can describe, in a state of total bliss. Once again, there is no language to convey feelings. There seemed to be a collective consciousness who welcomed me, but at the same time conveyed the knowledge that I was the one responsible for the decision to stay or go back. 

I recall these decisions not as a small child but a person with accumulated knowledge to evaluate the choice and make a decision. The decision to return was based on the knowledge that I was not finished in my life and there were things to accomplish and fulfill. There was no distress at the thought of return and, once the decision was made, there was no more recall.

These experiences have stayed crystal clear and as fresh as when they occurred.

NDERF.org #184

 

Sees dead Grandpa who warns her Mom in dream

I was visiting a friend with Muscular Dystrophy, in Lake Tahoe. Barney was in a wheelchair, accompanied by his brother and friends. I had met Barney a short time before at a camp where I had been living. Barney had called me and invited me up to visit with him and his brothers in Lake Tahoe. I said ‘yes’ and booked a flight. After a couple of days, things were getting a little boring and I needed some outside time. Barney was not able to get around, so the time was spent mostly inside.

His brothers had been playing outside and invited me to come join them. They had tied a rope around the bumper of a car and were pulling their friend in a snow saucer across the snow-covered road. Laughing and giggling, they were having a great time. All of a sudden, the young boy they were pulling went out of control. As I was watching, I was horrified and immediately made a declaration into the Universe: ‘Oh God, don't let that happen to him. I know he won't survive the accident!’ He was heading for a parked car and I knew it wasn't going to be good. At that moment, he rolled over, bruised his shoulder, got up and walked away.

The following day I found myself doing exactly the same thing. It was in the late afternoon and Barney’s brothers asked me if I wanted a go at it. Not thinking about what had almost happened the day before, I said ‘Sure.’ I sat down crossed legged in the snow saucer and held onto the rope. The boys piled in the car and began to pull me through the snow. As I was being towed I said ‘Go faster!’ and at that moment a voice came in my head and said, ‘We’ll show you where 'Go faster' gets you.’ The boys turned off to the right and I swung out to the left, towards a parked car! I was moving at a rate of approximately 30 mph. A voice came in my head and said ‘You better turn your head or you will hit the car face on.’ So I turned my head and took the impact to left side of my head. ‘Oh my God, we killed Barney’s girlfriend! What are we going to tell him?’

I left my body and went into an aura of all white light! It was totally warm and Peaceful, pure Love emanating through me and around me. At that moment, my Grandfather, who had passed away earlier that year, appeared to me and we embraced. ‘My darling, you have a decision to make.’ I knew the decision was to stay or to come back.

At that moment, I had an opportunity to view my life. Everything seemed whole and complete, I knew my dog and cat would be taken care of, and I was pretty much willing to go, but I had some questions to be answered. I asked if there would be anything wrong with me if I chose to come back. A voice answered ‘No. The only thing that would show would be the scar of the tracheotomy.’ ‘Would I remember this dream?’ The voice came back, ‘Yes and if anyone would ask you about the scar, it would be an opportunity to share your experience.’ ‘If I chose to stay, what would be the cause of death?’ ‘It will show that your spinal cord had been severed.’ ‘If I stay, what will become of me?’ ‘You become the Light.’

At that moment a Highway Patrol man showed up by my side. My brother was in the Highway Patrol so I immediately recognized the uniform and came back into my body. I told him ‘I am having this incredible dream!’ He said, ‘No, you hit the car.’ I wanted to tell him about this out of body experience I was having but he brought it back down to a physical level. With that, I wasn't interested and went back out of my body. Soon the ambulance showed up, rolled me over, put me inside the ambulance, and rushed me off to the hospital.

On the way, I remember sitting up, out of my body and looking out the ambulance window. I remember remarking to myself ‘Oh, there is Lake Tahoe, and I have a ticket to fly.’ So once again, I was out of my body looking over Lake Tahoe from above. The ambulance pulled into the hospital, wheeled my body into the emergency room and I remember them asking about emergency contact numbers. I came back into my body and tried to give them the phone number of my mom, but I then started throwing up. There was blood and yuck and grossness all over me and I didn't want to hang around for that. So once again, back out I went.

When I finally came back into my body, I was sitting up in my body on the operating table. I was looking over my left shoulder, watching the doctors do the tracheotomy. When they finished, I lay back down in my body and resumed my life.

Now getting back to the point as to when I made my decision to come back. In the beginning, I met my grandfather in the Light. When the voice in the Light was talking to me, it seemed like it was coming from above. The voice was neither female nor male. When I was having the question answer period, it was as if my Grandfather had left. I remember there was a period of time that I was left alone, in this beautiful white marble surrounding, which I later described as a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Later I came to learn that my mother had a dream that night. My grandfather had come to her in a dream. He told her ‘Lauren is dead.’ My mother then said ‘No, you will not have her. She was only your granddaughter and you will not take her from me.’ She then became physically violent with him and then he left. That was her dream she shared with me, later on in the hospital. Simultaneously to my mother’s dream I remembered being in the Light and acknowledging the space, saying ‘that the gift I am being given is to stay, but I can't accept the gift right now, because my mother will grieve greatly for my loss.’ I saw that every time she fell into depression, she would sink deeper, because of my death. The voice came back and said, ‘So shall it be and what you shall receive is a blessing.’ At that moment, I knew I was going to survive the accident. Nobody else knew I was going to live, but I did.

I think that is why I was having so much fun coming in and out of my body. I was in the intensive care unit for several days in order to stabilize my body. I then had 9 hours of reconstructive surgery to wire my face back together. I remained in the hospital for several days after surgery, I was then able to fly back home. Six weeks later I was on vacation, in Mexico, with my mom. I was known in the hospital as a miracle case. I came back, full of Joy, making people laugh doing the IV Disco down the halls and making obscene calls to respiratory therapy, holding the phone up to my tracheotomy and breathing heavily! 

NDERF.org #7116

 

Discovers purpose to live "heaven on earth"

I had cancer (Hodgkin's Lymphoma), and on this morning, I could not move. My husband rushed me to hospital, where, after doing scans, they diagnosed me with grade 4B lymphoma (the highest grade). The senior oncologist looked at my report and told my husband that it was too late, and that my organs were now shutting down. I only had thirty-six hours to live. However, the oncologist said he would do whatever he could but prepared my husband that I would most likely not make it, as my organs were no longer functioning. They started me on a chemotherapy drip as well as oxygen, and then they started to take tests, particularly on my organ functions, so that they could determine what drugs to use.

I was drifting in and out of consciousness during this time, and I could feel my spirit actually leaving my body. I saw and heard the conversations between my husband and the doctors taking place outside my room, about forty feet away down a hallway. I was later able to verify this conversation to my shocked husband. Then I actually 'crossed over' to another dimension, where I was engulfed in a total feeling of love. I also experienced extreme clarity of why I had the cancer, why I had come into this life in the first place, what role everyone in my family played in my life in the grand scheme of things, and generally how life works. The clarity and understanding I obtained in this state is almost indescribable. Words seem to limit the experience - I was at a place where I understood how much more there is than what we are able to conceive in our three-dimensional world. I realized what a gift life was, and that I was surrounded by loving spiritual beings, who were always around me even when I did not know it.

The amount of love I felt was overwhelming, and from this perspective, I knew how powerful I am, and saw the amazing possibilities we as humans are capable of achieving during a physical life. I found out that my purpose now would be to live 'heaven on earth' using this new understanding, and to share this knowledge with other people. However, I had the choice of whether to come back into life, or go towards death. I was made to understand that it was not my time, but I always had the choice, and if I chose death, I would not be experiencing a lot of the gifts that the rest of my life still held in store. One of the things I wanted to know was that if I chose life, would I have to come back to this sick body, because my body was very, very sick and the organs had stopped functioning. I was then made to understand that if I chose life, my body would heal very quickly. I would see a difference in not months or weeks, but days!

I was shown how illnesses start on an energetic level before they become physical. If I chose to go into life, the cancer would be gone from my energy, and my physical body would catch up very quickly. I then understood that when people have medical treatments for illnesses, it rids the illness only from their body but not from their energy so the illness returns. I realized if I went back, it would be with a very healthy energy. Then the physical body would catch up to the energetic conditions very quickly and permanently. I was given the understanding that this applies to anything, not only illnesses - physical conditions, psychological conditions, etc. I was 'shown' that everything going on in our lives was dependent on this energy around us, created by us. Nothing was solid - we created our surroundings, our conditions, etc. depending where this 'energy' was at. The clarity I received around how we get what we do was phenomenal! It's all about where we are energetically. I was made to feel that I was going to see 'proof' of this firsthand if I returned back to my body.

I know I was drifting in and out between the two worlds, but every time I drifted into the 'other side', I was shown more and more scenes. There was one, which showed how my life had touched all the people in it - it was sort of like a tapestry and showed how I affected everyone's lives around me. There was another which showed my brother on a plane, having heard the news I was dying, coming to see me (this was verified to me as when I started to come round, my brother was there, having just got off a plane). I then saw a glimpse of my brother and me and somehow seemed to understand it was a previous life, where I was much older than he was and was like a mother to him (in this life, he is older than I am). I saw in that life I was very protective towards him. I suddenly became aware he was on the plane to come and see me, and felt 'I can't do this to him - I can't let him come and see me dead'. Then I also saw how my husband's purpose was linked to mine, and how we had decided to come and experience this life together. If I went, he would probably follow soon after.

I was made to understand that, as tests had been taken for my organ functions (and the results were not out yet), that if I chose life, the results would show that my organs were functioning normally. If I chose death, the results would show organ failure as the cause of death, due to cancer. I was able to change the outcome of the tests by my choice!

I made my choice, and as I started to wake up (in a very confused state, as I could not at that time tell which side of the veil I was on). The doctors came rushing into the room with big smiles on their faces saying to my family 'Good news - we got the results and her organs are functioning - we can't believe it!! Her body really did seem like it had shut down!'

After that, I began to recover rapidly. The doctors had been waiting for me to become stable before doing a lymph node biopsy to track the type of cancer cells, and they could not even find a lymph node big enough to suggest cancer (upon entering the hospital my body was filled with swollen lymph nodes). They did a bone marrow biopsy, again to find the cancer activity so they could adjust the chemotherapy according to the disease, and there wasn't any in the bone marrow. The doctors were very confused, but put it down to me suddenly responding to the chemo. Because they themselves were unable to understand what was going on, they made me undergo test after test, all of which I passed with flying colors, and clearing every test empowered me even more! I had a full body scan, and because they could not find anything, they made the radiologist repeat it again!!!!

Because of my experience, I am now sharing with everyone I know that miracles are possible in your life every day. After what I have seen, I realize that absolutely anything is possible, and that we did not come here to suffer. Life is supposed to be great, and we are very, very loved. The way I look at life has changed dramatically, and I am so glad to have been given a second chance to experience 'heaven on earth'.

NDERF.org #2766

See her book Dying To Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing

I've done "what I was told to do in the light"

It was a beautiful sunny summer day when I was at our family's wood cabin in northern Michigan. We went there every summer and spent a week. In front of the cabin was a river. The water was perfectly clear. I could not swim at the time. I was wading out in the water and the water was at chest height. I was looking at the sky and listening to nature and I took another step out and found there was no bottom and I went under the water and the river started to move me to the right.

The last thing I remember thinking and seeing in my body, was that I could see so far under water and that the water was so clear. The next thing I remember was I came into this clear white light. As soon as I came into this light, all my fear of drowning was gone and I felt this light envelop me. This clear white light was all around me that I could see. I didn't look behind me but I know it was behind me too. I felt this total love and acceptance of me and I felt the same with the light. I knew I was part of this light; I belonged to this light. I was home. I then realized there was a presence in this light and I realized I was light, too.

We were the same but with different personalities. I couldn't see anybody for myself or a body in the light. The light then told me ‘you are here to learn how to love and to gain knowledge’. When I was told this, all the implications of the word love and knowledge were imparted to me. With the word 'love', it wasn't just about physical love but the love of nature, accepting all people as the same, everything that pertained to love. The same was with knowledge. It wasn't just about book knowledge but about learning about different cultures, histories of the world. I felt when I was told this that it wasn't just my reason for being on earth but all of our reason for being here: mankind.

When I look back over my life I can see I have been doing exactly what I was told to do in the light that day. My life has been all about learning and since I have been on the net, I have made many friends all over the world. There was no time there. I don't know if I was only there for seconds, minutes or what. I knew my body was safe when I came into the light. I knew I was going back to my body. I don't remember leaving the light. I don't remember getting back into my body. That has all been blocked.

Since I am here all I can guess is that I came to a shallow place and was able to get my feet under me and stand up and get out of the river. I had a hell of a time learning how to swim the next year in school. It took me quite some time to float on my stomach with my face in the water. 

NDERF.org #7375

Intervention by angel-like beings

In 1984 as a bus was about to run me down. I was in front of the left headlight and felt the bus come in contact with me. I was lifted up and then backwards and landed many yards away from the bus on the sidewalk. The moment the headlight was in front of me I was quickly taken to a place away from the bus, there were several angel-like beings there and I was frantically telling them that I have a young daughter to care for. After that I remember being many yards away from the bus frantically picking up my belongings. I have always thought that this was an intervention. The witness told me that he had never seen a person lifted up and backwards, he was amazed as was I. I felt lucky to be alive!

NDERF.org #2374 

True Home and True Self Revealed in Explosion

 The Third of May, 1969
"B" Co., 2nd Bn/47' Inf (Mech.), 9' Inf Div.

It was toward the end of the dry season, and my platoon was pulling out. Our mission was simple: drive down the road, show the flag, and make sure that we still had the right-of-way. The two slowly moving tracks (armored personnel carriers) in front of mine were already kicking up the pulverized dirt road into little clouds of dust. Lady, the platoon mascot, trotted alongside wagging her tall. She no longer went with us ever since a mine had blown up the track that she had been riding on, I exchanged my cloth hat for a helmet, put on my wire-rimmed sunglasses, and half-cocked the .50 caliber machine gun as we passed through the base camp gate and picked up speed. Lady stopped a few feet beyond the gate and watched us go.

Our four tracks soon achieved a monotonous but comfortable 40 m.p.h. which created a welcome breeze. To either side of the road for mile after mile lay a grid work of rice-paddy dikes dividing the land into tidy rectangles of various sizes. The pale yellow stubble of last season's crop failed to hide the earth in the fields. Separated by cracks an inch wide, the clay soil of the paddies had dried into flagstone-sized blocks. Although the land was flat, the fields did not extend far into the distance, but rather ended abruptly at the ubiquitous wood line.

This woods was composed of thick, lush, green nipa-palm and stood from twenty to thirty feet tall. From no place in the Mekong River Delta could one escape from being completely surrounded by it, Sometimes it might be a couple of miles away, and at others only a few hundred feet. It grew where the delta tributaries were, and they, like a root system were everywhere, "We" controlled the larger towns and villages, the roads, the skies, the major waterways, and the rice paddies. The wood line belonged to "Charlie."

With diesel engines roaring and trailing a huge, mile-long cloud of dust, the column began to approach one of the spots where the dreaded jungle wall squeezed in on the road from both sides. Instinctively, I began to watch the wood line more closely. All of a sudden, a very large anti-tank mine was command-detonated eight feet directly beneath my lil' ol' lilly-white *ss. I immediately knew what was happening (because my track had been blown up before just three weeks prior to this), and thought to myself, "Oh sh*t, here we go again." I was catapulted upwards along with everyone and everything else. People, dust, weapons, ammunition, helmets, and C-ration boxes formed an expanding inverted cone with myself in the middle.

On the journey upward, external time decelerated. The rates of the rotations of all of the objects surrounding me rapidly decreased-in an apparent violation of the law of conservation of angular momentum. I was fascinated by the unnatural ever-slowing gyrations of the bodies of my comrades and wondered, "Is this the end? Are we all dead?" At the apex of my trajectory, time stopped completely and an inexplicable calm descended. The state of consciousness that then prevailed was as to the normal waking state as the normal waking state is to a dream. Whatever It was, It was peaceful, omnipresent (temporally and spatially), omniscient, and absorbed everything into an indivisible Whole.

The entire universe past, present, and future collapsed down to a single Center upon which everything depends for its existence. It is That which does not change. It is the "Light" of Pure Consciousness which illuminates all things. It is the ultimate meaning of the enigmatic Biblical passage, "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light" (Matt. 6:22). It is the great Nothing-for it includes all things, and therefore, is Itself not a thing. That's how It gets to be the All-in-All.

Furthermore, there was (and still is) absolutely no doubt as to Its authenticity anymore than one would doubt upon awakening from a dream that the waking state is "real" and that the dream was "just a dream." In short, God Himself took over my reins in the sense that "I" no longer existed as a distinct entity-only He exists, There was an overwhelming feeling of bliss, love, compassion, and strangely enough a dazzling sense of déjà vu. The knowledge obtained that the True Home and the True Self of all things had been miraculously revealed.

The events of my life up to that point were unhurriedly and nonjudgmentally reviewed in great detail-not in chronological order, but somehow all at once-although some events were emphasized more intensely than others. Subsequently, "I" was allowed to exist again (there was no choice in the matter-it simply happened) and was given the opportunity to be aware of anything that I wanted to be aware of with the understanding that time was not a factor; indeed, there was "all the time in the world." I proceeded to focus on this or that aspect of my life and concluded that there wasn't too much to be ashamed of Actually, I made extremely poor use of this gift, but then, I was just a naive 22-year-old with a somewhat skewed concept of relative importance.

I could "see" a 360 degree panorama of the road, the wood lines on either side, and the other three tracks of my platoon (two in front and one behind us), The entire episode seemed to be housed in my head, but I was uncertain whether or not my head was still attached to the rest of my body-although, under the circumstances, this point did not seem important one way or the other. In other words, I really didn't care if my life was to be snuffed out or not within the next few seconds. I was then gently (but unequivocally) "informed" that I would survive the explosion without serious injury and even that I would make it out of Vietnam in one piece. So, selfishly, I turned my attention to the immediate situation and very calmly and deliberately concluded that I should: 1) stay conscious so as not to drown in two inches of rice-paddy water, 2) stay loose so as to break as few bones as possible, and 3) roll away from the track so that it wouldn't crush me to death if it tipped over. Only after my mind had run out of things to decide on did time start to rush back in. The transcendental state of consciousness terminated and I reverted back to the normal waking state. I could see the ground about 20 feet below me and began to fall towards it.

I was left with an intense feeling of awe and well-being. Ever since, I have been convinced with a conviction that precedes even my conviction that two plus two equals four. That God IS for me. It is no longer a matter of faith or belief, but rather, one of knowing for sure because I have seen Him as He is. However, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that He is loving, compassionate, and forgiving-properties which I had not previously made adequate allowances for. I will always be thankful to Him for reaching down and picking me up in the palm of His hand so to speak at that particular instant; in fact, it still brings tears of gratitude to my eyes even as I write this thirty years later. Also, I no longer fear death (pain and suffering yes, but not death itself)- because, by His Grace, this particular raindrop remembers the ocean from which it comes. Unfortunately, the experience of this state is up to God not down to us, but take my word-for-word for it, It is always Here and Now and a lot closer than you think.

I have never experienced anything (before or since) which came anywhere near close to being as real and as profound as the state of consciousness which I have feebly attempted to describe. However, my remembrance of it has sufficed to console and comfort me through the vicissitudes of life-especially through the hard times. Sorry, I have not noticed any paranormal or psychic or supernatural abilities with respect to myself-just an unshakable conviction in the reality of something spiritual. If you ever run across a sure-fire method for reawakening this state within me (without blowing me up or telling me to meditate on OM for thirty years), please let know. May God go with you (He will anyway, but it's a nice thought).

NDERF.org