God is benevolent & forgiving: Krohn excerpt #18

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her essay The Eternal Life of Consciousness—"One of the clear messages I received in the afterlife was that our actions and thoughts in life will play a role in our afterlife. I learned that we personally have a hand in determining what type of afterlife experience we will have.

"I learned in the Garden that the core of a person—the soul—survives. A handicapped person, a sick person, or a person suffering from mental illness in life becomes a soul without limitations in the afterlife since they have shed their physical body. We are all equally whole there.

"However, what we do while we are here matters greatly in determining what our afterlife will look like. It has to do with an individual’s expectations, actions, and thoughts. It was surprising to me to learn that my thoughts here played a role in my afterlife. If a person has led a good, loving, clean life in which they helped others, then that person knows at a soul level that they are good. But it is also important that a person’s thoughts are good, loving, and charitable, as well as their actions. God hears us when we pray to him, out loud or silently.

"I learned that God knows what’s in our minds and hearts, as well as knowing how we act as a person in our life on Earth. A person who knows they have led a good life will expect Heaven to be beautiful. And it will be—partially because the person has “earned” it, partially because it will meet the person’s expectations, but mostly because God has a hand in this, too.

"Fortunately, since in this dimension we are all flawed humans, God is benevolent and forgiving. It is through a combination of God’s love, our own thoughts and actions in life, and our own expectations, that our afterlife is shaped and becomes a uniquely personalized experience for each of us." 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018).

Conversing with God often: Krohn excerpt #17

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her essay The Eternal Life of Consciousness—"The only common factor to all of the strange phenomena that have happened to me is the fact that they started after my NDE. To me, it is obvious that my near-death experience is related to my after-death communication and increased sensitivity, spirituality, and knowledge about consciousness and the afterlife. It is as if the voltage I received from that finger of electricity charged me with an energy that pulses through everything. The energy of that lightning was somehow alive and made me more alive—more sensitive to and conscious of my surroundings.

"Speaking of consciousness, what does all of this mean with regard to human consciousness after death?

"Because I can trace all of this back to my near-death experience and I have a complete detailed memory of what happened during my NDE, this means that I was conscious during the entire event. There is no reason to think that my consciousness would have been any different had I decided to stay in the Garden. I was there, in the afterlife, and was fully aware of what was happening. Fully conscious. Meaning, my consciousness survived my bodily death.

"Because I have such a clear memory of every detail of my NDE, even now thirty-three years after the event, not only was my consciousness intact—it was supercharged. I was more aware, alert, and alive than I ever was before, or have been since. The ADC was striking in its intensity, its accuracy, and my wakeful awareness. Hearing my grandfather’s voice, seeing the smoke-filled room, and feeling that overwhelming love, plus the knowledge that Barry heard the phone ring, heard my conversation, and saw the smoke that filled the room, is further evidence that human consciousness survives permanent bodily death. 

"I have just barely scratched the surface here in describing how my life has been altered by my near-death experience and after-death communication. This abbreviated version of my story just touches on how my relationships have changed, my outlook has changed, and I, as a person, have changed. I keep saying I’m not the same person, that I was one person before my NDE and returned from the afterlife as someone completely different.

"Before the lightning strike, I would have considered myself a good person because I was a law-abiding citizen who lived within society’s constraints. I always loved and was there for my family, and of course for my children whom I loved unconditionally. Barry and I saw to it that our children had a nice, clean home, lots of toys, a good education, healthy food on the table, and clean beds every night. I was an attentive mom, a caring wife, and a thoughtful friend.

"But after the lightning strike, good took on a new, more nuanced meaning. I was suddenly very tuned in to the spiritual side of life. I am much more patient, more giving, more caring, and more loving than I was prior to the NDE. I am kinder, calmer. A person is greatly changed when they no longer fear death. My friends today are very different people from the friends I had before my NDE. My current friends have a similar outlook to mine. Most of the friends I had before my NDE have drifted out of my life. Looking back, I hardly recognize the person I was before.

"I have never been a religious person, and that hasn’t changed. If anything, I am less religious now than I was prior to my visit to the afterlife, as now I am completely turned off by any type of organized religion. Religions tend to believe that their way is the right way. They tend to say that if you want to go to Heaven when you die, you need to do things their way to ensure that you make it there. They also dictate how to pray. That just doesn’t feel right to me any longer. After seeing what I saw in the afterlife, and knowing what I was taught in the Garden, I just don’t have the desire or inclination to associate with any particular doctrine.

"What I now know is that there is a force that I call God, a higher being. And God hears us no matter where we are or how we are praying. He hears us if we are praying together, but also if we are alone. I feel no spiritual compulsion to attend religious services, though I do go occasionally for family, communal, or social reasons. But to go for the purpose of talking to God just doesn’t work for me. I connect with that higher being much more effectively on my own time, in my own way.

"I have to admit, I never ascribed to the concept of spirituality before. Now, my NDE and trip to the afterlife have made me a very spiritual person. I find myself conversing with God often. I marvel at the splendor I see in nature that I rarely noticed before. I can look at an animal and see the beauty in its soul. Most importantly though, I understand that bodily death is just a tiny point on the continuum in the life of human consciousness."

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included.

Synesthesia follows NDE: Krohn excerpt #16

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her book entitled Changed in a Flash: "Another odd result of my near-death experience is that I now have what neuroscientists call synesthesia. Actually, I do not know if the synesthesia is a result of the near-death experience itself or is a function of being electrocuted by lightning. Either way, I never had it before September 2, 1988, and it was not until decades after my NDE that I first heard the word 'synesthesia,' much less understood what it meant.

"Synesthesia is essentially a neurological phenomenon in which the senses crisscross or fuse so that an individual might “hear” colors, “see” music, “taste” shapes, and so on. It sounds unbelievable, but it is actually much more common than people think. There are around eighty different types of synesthesia. I have a version called Grapheme-Color Synesthesia, where a person will associate letters, numbers, or even words with a specific color.

"I think the Garden experience flowed out of the near-death experience and into my daily life through a new set of abilities to sense things through multiple and unexpected sources. Shortly after my NDE, I was in bed with burned and bandaged feet. Perhaps this made me more attuned to the nuances of my perceptions. In any case, I began to realize that, whenever I heard a day of the week mentioned, I immediately and distinctly associated that day with a color. My perception of the color of a day of the week came to me as had the information I received in my NDE, as an instant download of knowledge.

"If Jeremy mentioned that he wanted a friend to come over on Tuesday, I would see blue. If Barry said he wanted to take the boys to the zoo on Saturday, I would see orange. The colors I associate with the days never vary. Monday was and still is always red, Tuesday is blue, Wednesday is yellow, Thursday is green, Friday is yellow, Saturday is orange, and Sunday is brown. These colors may vary from one synesthete to another, but they don’t for a specific person.

"Months of the year took on distinct hues for me, as well. For example, August is orange. It was the time I spent in the Garden immersed in meaning, knowledge, and sensory stimuli all at once that colored the months as it did. While I was in the Garden, the colors carried information. I received knowledge simply by being there and being immersed in the riotous Garden palette. And then again, when my deceased grandfather called me on the phone, I was shown a red point of light. That light carried love. So, the idea of associating color with other ideas is something I’ve become comfortable with.

"It was not long after I acknowledged to myself my newfound way of seeing the calendar as colorful that I realized I was doing the same thing with numbers. The digits from zero to nine all evoke a sensation of color within me. Zero was and still is white, one is orange, two is blue, three is yellow, four is blue, five is red, six is purple, seven is yellow, eight is green, and nine is orange.

"These colors are not nearly as spectacular as the otherworldly colors of the Garden, but they do saturate my life. Between the synesthesia and the ability to see colorful auras around living things, hues flow together for me like watercolors now. This ability allows me to see and sense my world awash in a glorious rainbow."

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.

Tumultous energy relationship: Krohn excerpt #15

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her book entitled Changed in a Flash: "Yet another strange new ability I discovered after my NDE was the ability to see auras. An aura is a field of light generated by an energy-producing entity. That entity can be anything from the sun, whose aura gives life and light to our world, to a light bulb, whose filament brightens when fed electricity. In addition to the typical auras that all people can see, I also see colored auras emanating from living things; plants, animals, and humans. Unlike the auras from a light source like the sun or a light bulb, auras of living beings are delicate, evasive, and constantly changing. They are all different colors and textures. Some are bright, others dim. Some are thick and dense, others thin and wispy. Some are solid and unmoving, others diffuse. Some are steady, others sparkle, twinkle, and pulsate. The colors of auras range from white to black, and all colors in between. I can see this energy as it rises off or emanates from living people. I can also feel it if I close my eyes and put my hand into someone’s energy field.

"In order to see these auras, I have to unfocus my eyes. A white background aids me in detecting them, although that is not always necessary. A good way to practice seeing auras is to look at the old “Magic Eye” books. Those picture books have complex abstract patterned pictures that, if you stare at them long enough, will come into focus as a three-dimensional picture of something clearly definable. The trick is to unfocus your eyes and look through the picture. Once you get the hang of that, the clear three-dimensional pictures almost pop off the page at you. Auras work the same way for me. For example, I can look at a person, a tree, or a dog and unfocus my eyes to look through the living being. When I do that, the outline of an aura just pops out at me.

"The different colors and textures of the auras depend on things like the health and emotional status of the being. Accordingly, the colors and textures of auras change constantly around people. One day I may see a blue steady solid aura around someone, and the next day I see a green wavy aura around the same person. Sometimes the auras shimmer and sparkle. Sometimes they don’t.

"The only one I know the probable meaning of with any degree of certainty is a black aura. My feeling is that a black aura bodes ill for the person generating it. I don’t know if what generates it is physical (say, an illness) or what such an aura might signal or represent: a comment on the mental status of the person (i.e.; depression), an indicator of a serious physical illness (i.e.; terminal cancer), or something else entirely.

"I have only seen a black aura once, and I felt dread. It was in 1992, around someone I knew well. I was driving and had stopped in the left lane at a red light. I looked over to my right. In the car stopped next to me was a close relative of mine. His head turned toward me, but he didn’t smile or acknowledge me at all. I wasn’t even sure he was seeing me, even though he was looking at me. I said to myself, Look at that! He has a black aura. I’ve never seen one of those before!

"I had no idea what that indicated but thought it was strange that he didn’t respond to my smile or wave. Four hours later, he had a massive heart attack and died. This was a young man, and it was as devastating as it was surprising. No one expected anything like that to happen. This was very early in my post-near-death-experience life, and I had no idea what auras meant. All I knew was that I could see them, whereas prior to 1988 I could not.

"I see auras, but I still have no idea what they mean, which implies, of course, that I think they mean something. I do think they carry information, that they can speak to us, if we learn how to interpret and interact with them. When I returned from my near-death experience, I found that I had this new ability to see, sense, and interact with energy. Whatever these auras are, my own ability to see them has something to do with my NDE.

"My interaction with energy doesn’t end with auras. Ever since my near-death experience, I cannot wear wristwatches or fitbits. Anything battery operated in close contact with me stops working. The batteries drain quickly. Even my cell phone, if it’s in my pocket or otherwise very close to my body, drains more quickly than if it’s sitting on a desk or tabletop. And, on occasion, light bulbs near me just burn out. Once I was walking down a flight of stairs and, as I walked down, the light bulbs above my head popped and burned out as I passed by.

"My relationship with energy has been tumultuous since 1988."

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash. 

A spirit lives in our house: Krohn excerpt #14

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her book entitled Changed in a Flash: There is a spirit who lives in my house. I can sense her, and sometimes I see her. She hovers on the second floor, floating from room to room. She does not interact with us or even seem to notice us, nor does she intentionally make herself known in any way. Our dog McKinley used to sense her presence and bark as she looked up toward our second floor. Several times I heard her bark when I was in another room. I’d come into the den that opens up to the second floor to find McKinley barking at the figure that I could see, as well.

I kept the information about the floating woman to myself until Andy was in high school. He came downstairs one morning to ask if I had been upstairs, as he thought he had seen, or sensed, someone in his bedroom. And then he thought he may have sensed a woman standing behind him as he was looking into his bathroom mirror. When I asked him to describe what he had seen, he hemmed and hawed and then said only half-jokingly, “I may have imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was a ghost.”

He said that the apparition was not terribly frightening to him. He sensed no ill will from it. He told me it was a young woman and proceeded to describe her clothing, exactly as I had seen it. Andy was somewhat amused that, in addition to his mom, only he and our dog McKinley had seen the woman. If he ever saw her again, he never spoke about it.

Eventually, I decided to tell Matt about our additional resident. He has never seen her but was very entertained whenever the dog or I did. Before she passed away in 2015, McKinley used to sit at my feet when Matt and I would watch television at night. Occasionally, something would catch my eye, and McKinley and I would look upstairs at the open balcony at the same moment. McKinley would whimper or bark, clearly seeing the apparition, just as I did. McKinley would not look away until the woman had floated out of our view.

To my knowledge, the only other person who has seen the spirit was a friend of Mallory’s. When Mallory was fourteen or fifteen, she had a group of five or six friends over to our house one Saturday night. They were all crammed together on our couch watching a movie when suddenly one of the teenage boys screamed, “What is that!?” He was looking upstairs at the balcony, pointing and screaming. None of the other kids saw anything. He was truly terrified, though, as evidenced by the fact that he wet his pants and went running and shrieking from our house. Although he and Mallory remained friends, he would never set foot in our home again. It was after that episode that I decided to fill Mallory and Jeremy in on the fact that someone, or something, was living upstairs with them. They were fine with it, though, to my knowledge, they have never seen her.

My sense of the spirit upstairs is that she is seeking something. She reminds me of myself just after I was struck by lightning, when I was “hovering” until Jeremy and Andy were safely inside the synagogue. My hovering, I believe, ceased when I understood that I was dead and knew that my children were safe and in the hands of people who loved them. Knowing that, I could get on with being dead, and that’s when I went to the Garden. Because of the way she acts, I sense that she is caught somewhere between realms. Her marginal status is what may explain her movement from place to place. I think it is also why she does not appear to direct her movements with any purpose. She doesn’t appear to see us, nor does she attempt to interact with our household in any way.

I think it is significant that the woman never comes downstairs. We built our current house in 2003, higher off the ground than our previous house that sat in the same spot in order to now be up out of the flood zone that too frequently ravages Houston neighborhoods. Before the new house was built, we never sensed or saw any apparitions. Perhaps the woman is a leftover remnant of energy, a scrap of charged matter, the residue of some memory encoded into the space where the upper part of our house now sits. I don’t know.

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.

Phone call from the dead: Krohn excerpt #13

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her book entitled Changed in a Flash: Many strange things have happened to me since my near-death experience. One of the earliest and strangest took place in the spring of 1990, a year and a half after the lightning strike.

I had recently found out I was pregnant with my daughter. Barry and I were sound asleep in bed, and I received a stunningly obvious after-death communication.

"It was about 3:30 a.m. when the phone on my side of the bed rang. This was back when people only had land lines plugged into the wall. I think we are all conditioned to expect the worst when the phone rings in the middle of the night. It is usually news that is urgent, important, and bad. No one calls at 3:30 a.m. to give you good news.

I love my sleep, and at the beginning of my third pregnancy, after chasing two active boys around every day, I relished it. So I didn’t really wake up when the phone rang on my side of the bed. It was Barry’s shaking me and telling me to get the phone that finally roused me out of a deep slumber. I hesitated to answer because I feared it would be something terrible. That is not exactly how it played out, though. My hesitant “hello” into the phone was answered with the soft French accented voice of my dead grandfather. “Hello, darling,” he said, using the affectionate nickname he’d always called me in his life but that I hadn’t heard in far too long.

Stunned, I asked why he was calling me. Barry, who was now wide awake, kept asking who it was. I shushed him. I didn’t want to give Barry any indication of who I was on the phone with, as I knew it wouldn’t sit well with him. I asked my grandfather where he was. The conversation went something like this:

“You know where I am. You’ve been here and seen it.”

“But why are you calling me?” I asked.

“I need you to tell your mother something for me.”

”Then why are you calling me? Why not just call her? Umm, I can give you her number if you need it.”

“I’ve tried contacting her, but she can’t hear me. But since you were struck by the lightning, you can. Contacting you takes a terrific amount of energy, and I don’t have long to talk. There is something that I want you to tell her for me.”

“Of course I’ll tell her.”

He then relayed what was to me a mundane bit of family information that he felt my mom needed to know.

By now, Barry and I were both sitting straight up in bed, wide-awake. Barry was still pestering me to tell him who was on the phone. I was still ignoring him.

“Did Grandma find you?” I asked my grandfather.

“Who the hell are you talking to?” Barry demanded. I ignored him.

Grandpa answered: “Yes. She is fine. We are together. All is well. She is whole again.”

I was so happy to hear this. Grandma had had dementia when she died, and the woman she had once been had gotten lost. At the end, her life was a ride on a bridge that crumbled as she crossed. She couldn’t look back and see her history. So hearing that she and my beloved grandfather were together and her memories were intact was healing for me.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

“I already know. You’re pregnant. And it’s a girl, just as you were told it would be.” His voice became weaker, fainter.

“I can’t hear you well,” I said.

“I have to go. This is taking a terrific amount of energy. I can’t do this often, but I will call you again. Please remember to call your mother and tell her what I said.”

“I will, but please don’t hang up,” I pleaded.

“I will talk to you again. I just can’t do it right now. You need to remember—remember when you were here, the feeling of unconditional love. Never forget that.” This was the message, of course, that I had also been told when I was in the Garden. I begged him not to go.

“Remember the unconditional love. You will have this feeling again soon.” And with that, the connection faded away.

As I reluctantly, tearfully hung up the phone, our bedroom immediately filled with an odorless vapor, as if we were in a dense cloud. In any other situation, of course, if our bedroom filled up with smoke, both of us would be running to get the boys and get out of the house. But the situation was anything but normal. Inexplicably, while we were both sitting in this thick mist, or whatever it was, neither of us acted in fear. And neither of us spoke.

At the far end of the long hallway that extended toward the children’s bedrooms from ours, I saw a bright red light shining through the fog. Like a laser pointer, it pierced through the mist. When I saw that light, I was immediately overcome with the same palpable sense of unconditional love I had experienced in the Garden and had been told moments before to never forget. This must be what he meant when he said “You will have this feeling again soon.” Somehow, the light carried the love. 

 

Suddenly, the light and fog vanished in an instant. It was all just gone, as if nothing had happened.

Barry turned to me and now calmly asked who had called. “My grandfather.” I replied.

“Which one?” he asked.

I told him. I then asked him, “Did you see anything?” He replied: “What smoke? I’m going to sleep.”

He had seen what I had seen but would not talk about it.

After that exchange in 1990, Barry and I never talked about it again until 2011, almost twenty-one years after it happened. By then, we had divorced, had both remarried, and had traveled independently to Jerusalem to attend the rabbinical ordination of our son Andy. By this time, I had begun to tell my now adult children about some of the extraordinary things that were routinely happening to me. Andy in particular has always taken a very special interest in my experiences. Jeremy and my daughter Mallory have as well, but I often wonder if Andy’s proximity to me at the time of the strike somehow affected him spiritually. He grew up to become an Orthodox rabbi.

On the night of his rabbinic ordination, at a dinner celebration in his honor, Andy casually asked Barry if he remembered the night when I was pregnant with Mallory and the phone had rung. My ears perked up and tuned into their conversation across the dinner table.

“You mean the call from her grandfather? Yes, I remember.”

Of all the cynics and doubters of my experiences whom I have encountered through the years, none have matched Barry. This was especially true during our bitterly contested, quite ugly divorce. As Andy asked him about the call, I listened, slack jawed, as Barry recounted it just as it had happened, having remembered all the details as if it were yesterday. Like so many others, he hesitates to make the jump to any conclusion about whether or not I was really talking to my deceased grandfather. But the fact that Barry admits to having heard the phone ring, hearing my half of the conversation, and seeing the smoke and its instantaneous disappearance is enough for me.

I called my mom the day after the phone call in 1990 to share that bit of family information that my grandfather had told me. She asked me how I knew that and I recounted my experience of the night before. Our short conversation ended with Mom in tears. “I know he has tried to talk to me. I try so hard to hear him, and I just can’t.”

I find it puzzling how different we all are. On one side is Barry, who actually witnessed this communion across two worlds and yet cannot allow himself to fully believe what I suspect he knows to be true. On the other is my mom, who fully believes in these exchanges between the two realms but cannot bring the experience upon herself, no matter how much she may want to do so. I should add here that, as time has marched on and life has dealt Barry some pretty swift blows, he has become more spiritual and less cynical in recent years.

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.

Radio receiver to the cosmos: Krohn except #12

Elizabeth Krohn writes in her book entitled Changed in a Flash: "One particular precognitive plane crash nightmare is different from my usual ones. I have never published this story because I feel it infringes on the privacy of those involved. For that reason, in the following recounting of this nightmare, I have changed identifying information, such as names, dates, physical characteristics, and locations, to protect the identities of the victims’ family members.

"Matt and I went out to dinner with friends on June 29, 2011. The following day, June 30, I was feeling sick nearly all day, I thought maybe from food poisoning. By early evening, though I was feeling better, I was still weak and exhausted and went to bed early.

"At a point during my sleep, I was in one of my plane crash nightmares. As usual, I was completely aware of the fact that I was dreaming. This one was different, however. Before this incident, my vision of what was to happen had always appeared to me like a photograph that I was viewing as an outsider. That snapshot is what would appear on the news after the event. So it was all the more startling in my dream that night when I was on the plane that was destined to crash.

"Another element that set this nightmare apart from the others is that I found out the following day that the events had been happening as I was dreaming about them. This crash didn’t happen a day or two after my nightmare—it happened during the nightmare, which was unusually long. It just kept going on for far longer than I was comfortable. In the other nightmares, as soon as I saw whatever image depicted the given event, I was released to wake up by whatever force was holding me there. This however, was not a single image. It was a movie, and I was in it, bound to endure every minute until the plot ended. It was about to become very unpleasant.

"It was nighttime on the flight, dark and quiet, and many of the passengers were sleeping. I could hear some flight attendants speaking in a foreign language nearby in the galley. I looked at a paper napkin that was embossed with the name of a major foreign airline whose nationality matched the language the flight attendants were speaking.

"I was seated on the tray table (not a seat with a tray table—on the tray table itself) of a woman who was buckled into her seat. We were very close to each other, face to face. In the seat next to her was a little boy playing with an electronic toy.

"The young woman, who was remarkably pretty with shoulder-length dark hair, could see me and was talking to me. She told me her name was Monique Frankel. It was as if we were at some kind of social function, introducing ourselves and making small talk.

"She introduced me to her son Thomas and told me that he was seven years old. Thomas spoke to me, too, but not in English. Monique was speaking to me in accented English. I don't remember asking her anything. I just remember her telling me things about herself and her family. She told me that she also had a daughter, and that her daughter was with her husband on a different flight because they thought it was a bad idea to all fly together. I somehow knew that this was a flight from Buenos Aires to Barcelona, and that they were going home from vacation.

"Without warning or a hint of turbulence, the plane banked sharply to the left. It began rocking violently back and forth, and I was being thrust toward Monique’s seat as if the nose of the plane were up. There was a terrible sensation of falling. People were now awake and screaming. Monique had a panicked look in her eyes. She and I both knew that I could leave the plane before it crashed. All I had to do was open my eyes and the nightmare would end. But I could not open them. Monique had grabbed on to my forearms and was screaming in my face. Screaming, in a panicked and primal way. Everyone else on the plane was screaming, too, and the passenger cabin was bedlam. Amid all the noise, items were flying through the cabin, including people who had not been belted into their seats. At the top of her lungs, Monique was pleading with me to take Thomas with me when I left the plane. She was begging, wailing, “I know you can leave! Take Thomas! His father is George Frankel! Find him and get Thomas to him! Take Thomas! Please!”

"I knew I couldn’t take Thomas or anyone else off that plane with me. I also knew opening my eyes and waking up were becoming more and more urgent. But as long as Monique had a grip on my arms, I was stuck on that plane. Finally, mercifully, there was a jolt, and she let go. My eyes ripped open, and I was safe in my bed. Crying, gasping, but safe. Immediately I sent myself an email with the details of what had just happened.

"The email I sent myself was time-stamped at 11:38 p.m., and the plane crashed at 4:40 a.m. in a time zone that was five hours ahead of mine. I was dreaming about the crash as it was happening. Matt was surprised when I showed him the email, particularly because it had people’s names in it. So far, that has been the only time I have received such detailed information.

"As it was a jumbo jet crash with hundreds of people on board, no survivors, the tragedy was major news all over the world. Three days after the crash, the passenger manifest was printed in the local newspaper, along with the ages and nationalities of everyone on board. There I saw it:

"Monique Frankel, age 38, Netherlands
Thomas Frankel, age 7, Netherlands, son of Monique Frankel

"I did a little research over the next few weeks and found a human interest piece from a Dutch newspaper. The article was about victims of the plane crash, and it highlighted Monique and Thomas. It said that Monique’s husband George and their daughter had been on another flight. They had interviewed George, who explained that the family never flew together in case something like this were to happen, just as Monique had explained it to me on the doomed plane. The article also had photos of the family from their recent vacation in Buenos Aires. The photos clearly depicted the woman and child whom I had met in my dream. Seeing the photos took my breath away.

"Years later, as Jeff Kripal and I were working on Changed in a Flash, I decided to try to find George Frankel. I wanted this story to be in the book, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to upset anyone by publishing it. After all, he and his daughter are also victims.

"I found George on Facebook. He was about to get remarried and looked very happy. His daughter is beautiful, and she seemed happy and loved. I did not disturb his contentment by contacting him. I figured it was best to just let him move forward with his life. For that reason, Jeff and I did not put this story in the book.

"So, why am I telling it now?

"Shortly after finding George on Facebook, I was fortunate to be invited to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. It was there that I was introduced to Whitley Strieber. Whitley has written numerous books and hosts several podcasts, my favorite being Dreamland, on the topic of UFOs and similar phenomena. He and I became friends while we were at Esalen, and I told him about this particular nightmare because it upset me more than any of the others. Whitley responded with something that changed my entire attitude toward how I can approach nightmares such as this one.

"Whitley said, 'Elizabeth, you told me you learned in your NDE that time is simultaneous, right?'

“'Yes. Time is not linear,' I replied.

“'Well,' Whitley said, 'If that is the case, then that plane crash happened, but it will happen again, and again. Right?'

“'Yes. That’s awful. So?' I asked.

“'So, learn how to go back there, he suggested. 'Go there again, and perhaps you can offer some comfort to Monique. Comfort her with the knowledge that death is not the end of her life. Give her comfort that some part of her lives on.'

"It was like a light bulb going on. Of course, Whitley is correct. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to get back to that crash. But if I could, it might possibly bring some reassurance to Monique, or other such people I might meet in similar future encounters.

"A mom to two young boys when all this started, I was busy all day every day. I didn’t approach any of this curious change as some kind of scientific experiment or academic case study. It was not intellectual for me, but rather emotional, and the emotion I most felt was anger. I had no desire to become some radio receiver to the cosmos. I didn’t want the moral burden of any of this. But the premonitions continued to plague me, every one of them made of the same stuff—that undeniable knowledge that these tragedies were perfectly true. I had no idea what to do with this unsolicited information. I was frustrated, angry, and determined to get answers. And while I have learned a great deal since these visions of the future started, there is still so much I don’t understand.

"It has never stopped. Thirty-three years after the lightning strike, these incidents continue, occasionally even when I am wide awake. One day in February of 2003, Matt and I were driving to meet some friends for dinner. I turned to him, grabbed his arm, and said: 'Earthquake, an area in western China.' That was on a Sunday evening in Houston. In the early morning hours on Monday, the earthquake hit China. It happened too late for the Monday papers in the United States and was in too distant a rural area to attract media attention, at least as far as we knew. But in the Tuesday paper, there was a brief on the international page about a severe earthquake that had taken place in western China at approximately the same time that I had grabbed Matt’s arm and told him it was happening. 

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.