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Dr. Eben Alexander III

Dr. Eben Alexander III has been an academic neurosurgeon for the last 25 years, including 15 years at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Over those years he personally dealt with hundreds of patients suffering from severe alterations in their level of consciousness. Many of those patients were rendered comatose by trauma, brain tumors, ruptured aneurysms, infections, or stroke. While many comatose patients died, there were occasional ones who recovered. None of them was able to provide much insight concerning their experience.

In the predawn hours of November 10, 2008, Dr. Alexander himself became a comatose patient. For reasons that remain obscure, he was overcome by a fulminant bacterial meningitis and was comatose on a ventilator in the Intensive Care Unit within hours. His physicians were stunned to find that the culprit was a bacteria that almost never causes spontaneous meningitis in adults! After six days on triple antibiotics, showing no response and with little neurological function remaining, his physicians had few words of encouragement for his family.

On day seven he said “Thank you” when the breathing tube was removed! However, his earliest recollections were strange and involved no recall of his life before coma. Like a newborn, he had no functioning language, nor knowledge of this world, our culture, or the loved ones surrounding him. Foggy-minded for several days, he steadily improved and began writing and organizing his recollections of the experience. Memories from the time in coma were inexplicable. They were like a patchwork quilt, with no apparent sequence, nor temporal relationship to one another. The purest and most extraordinary part of his journey happened deep in coma. How, then, was it possible for that rich experience to originate in his badly infected brain?

Reports of “Near Death Experiences” (NDEs) have been limited in their value of elucidating what occurs after actual death. The treasure trove is in teasing out what death is like, not near-death. The discussions many scientists have about “Near Death Experiences” still conclude that “when the brain actually dies, so does the mind/soul/self etc.” That is why Dr. Alexander’s experience is so important. In the midst of his week in coma, he had a remarkable spiritual experience. His will be a key addition to the NDE literature! That is why he is writing the book.

The ramifications of his quest were life-changing! He has spent the last two years trying to solve the riddles from his journey. In analyzing his experience, including the scientific possibilities and grand implications, he envisions a profound reconciliation of modern science and spirituality as a natural product. He has been blessed with a complete recovery and is now writing a book about this most powerful, life-changing story.

Websites & Background Information:

• Life Beyond Death

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Steve Paulson Interviews Dr. Eben Alexander, III at the 2012 Bioethics Forum

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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154. Neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander’s Near-Death Experience Defies Medical Model of Consciousness
Alex Tsakiris Interviews Dr. Eben Alexander
Skeptiko
November 22, 2011

Original Link

Download MP3 Recording Of This Interview

Today we welcome Dr. Eben Alexander to Skeptiko. Dr. Alexander has been an academic neurosurgeon for more than 25 years, including 15 years at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In November of 2008, he had a near-death experience that changed his life and caused him to rethink everything he thought he knew about the human brain and consciousness.

Dr. Alexander, welcome to Skeptiko.

Dr. Eben Alexander: Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Alex Tsakiris: Well, your story is really quite amazing. For those who haven’t heard of it and aren’t aware of what you went through, do you want to tell us a little bit about your experience?

Dr. Eben Alexander: Yes. It really struck out of the blue. I’d been quite healthy up until that time. In fact, I was in reasonably good shape because my older son had been putting me through a big workout, anticipating a climb of a 20,000 foot volcano in South America.

Alex Tsakiris: Wow.

Dr. Eben Alexander: Luckily I was in pretty good shape. At 4:30 in the morning, November 10, 2008, I got out of bed. I was getting ready to go up to work. I was working in Charlottesville at the time and I had severe sudden back pain, much worse than I had ever experienced. Literally within 10 or 15 minutes, it got me to a point where I could not even take a step. I was really in tremendous agony.

My wife, Holly, was rubbing my back. Then my younger son, Bond, came in and saw I was in a lot of distress and he started rubbing my temples. I realized when he did that that I had a severe headache. It was like he took a railroad spike and put it through my head. But I was already really going down very quickly. I didn’t know it at the time.

I found out much later that I had acute bacterial meningitis and it was a very unusual bacteria. One that the incidence of spontaneous E. coli meningitis in adults in the U.S. is about 1 in 10 million per year. So it’s really rare. We never found out where it came from. But at any rate, it was in about 2 to 2-1/2 hours it drove me deep down and in fact, my last words really were to my wife, “Don’t call 911. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

Luckily she overruled that and she did that because she saw me having a grand mal seizure on the bed. Of course I don’t remember that and I really don’t remember anything that happened for the next week because I was gone. I was very sick during that time as I heard later. In fact, I was so sick that I was on a ventilator the whole week.

They did several lumbar punctures trying to guide therapy. I was on triple antibiotics very early on, due to a very good medical team. They did a lumbar puncture about the second or third day into this and my cerebral spinal fluid glucose, which is normally around 60 to 80 and in a bad case of meningitis might drop down to about 20, well my glucose went down to 1. So I was really sick.

Alex Tsakiris: So at this point, nothing should be going on in your brain and yet something was happening in your conscious awareness.

Dr. Eben Alexander: Yeah, I’d say that’s correct. To me, and I’ve spent a lot of time in the last three years trying to explain this and that explanation initially, all I was doing was trying to explain it neuroscientifically. Meningitis is very helpful because it’s probably better than anything else at really diffusely wiping out the neocortex. But one can always argue that there’s some idling function at a deep level that might still survive.

In fact, one of the hypotheses that I entertained about all this was because the experience that I’ll describe to you seemed very hyper-real and extremely crisp and vivid, much more real and interactive than sitting here and talking with you right now. I mean, it was extraordinary. That is something that is often described in near-death experiences and of course one of my early hypotheses was well, maybe there’s some differential effect against inhibitory neuronal networks that allowed over-expression of excitatory neural networks and gave this illusion of kind of a hyper-real situation.

I can tell you from having lived through it that it was so powerful and so beyond that kind of explanation that I wasn’t very hopeful that that would work out in the end. But I figured I needed to give it a chance and look at the microanatomy in the cortex and the different connections with the thalamus and basal ganglia and see if I could come up with some way that one might have an illusion of hyper-reality.

I can tell you because of the kind of content of the experience and the powerful, overwhelming nature of it and the fact that it was so complex, I think much of what I remembered from that experience, I don’t think my brain and mind could possibly manage that even now.

I mean, the kind of mental function that occurs when you’re in that hyper-real state, the way that information comes in from spiritual beings and kind of the interaction with them is so intense and extraordinary, it’s really inexplicable in earthly terms. But it would basically outrun any of those kind of theories. That was something I was looking for. In fact, I never found an anatomic distribution that would support that over-activity of excitatory pathways.

Alex Tsakiris: Great. Thanks for doing that. I think we’ve jumped a little bit ahead of the story. For those who don’t know, tell us a little bit about your NDE.

Dr. Eben Alexander: Okay. Well, you were asking what it is like when one has their cortex shut down like that, and in fact, for one thing I was surprised that I remembered anything because as a neurosurgeon having had many patients who were in comas for various reasons and had a lot of them recover, my understanding was that in general you don’t really remember anything.

Even when the patients seem to be interacting I knew that usually if they’d been sick, for instance with meningitis, that they really wouldn’t remember much of it. Occasionally there were exceptions to that. You’d have patients who would remember very remarkable things from deep inside, but before I had always kind of explained that away with the standard answers. “Oh, that’s what the brain does when it’s very sick.”

What I do remember from deep inside coma, for one thing my first awareness was I had no memory whatsoever of my life. I had no language, no words. All of my experience in life, knowledge of humans, Earth, the universe, all of that was gone. The only thing I had was this very kind of crude existence. And I call it in my book the “earthworm’s eye-view,” because it really was just a crude, kind of underground.

I have a vivid memory of dark roots above me and there was a kind of monotonous pounding, a dull sound in the background pounding away eternally. It was just murky and gross. Every now and then a face, an animal or something would boil up out of the muck and there might be some chant or roar or something. Then they’d disappear again.

It sounds very foreboding to talk about it right now, but in fact, since I knew no other existence I don’t remember being particularly alarmed when I was in that setting. I think that that was the best consciousness that my brain could muster when it was soaking in pus. It turns out that that seemed to last for a very long time. Given that it was my first awareness of anything, it actually seemed to be years or eternity. I don’t know. It seemed like a very, very long time.

Then there was a spinning melody, this bright melody that just started spinning in front of me. Beautiful, beautiful melody compared to that dull pounding sound that I’d heard for eons. It spun and as it spun around, it cleared everything away. This was the part that was so shocking and so hard to explain. It was as if the blinders came off and the reality there was much more crisp, real, and interactive and fresh than any reality I’ve ever known in this earthly existence. That part is very shocking and hard to explain when you go through it, and yet what I’ve found since then is that a lot of people who have had NDEs discuss the same kind of hyper-reality. But it’s very shocking to see it.

For me, I was a speck on a butterfly wing. I had no body awareness at all. In fact, I had no body awareness through this entire kind of deep coma experience. I was a speck on a beautiful butterfly wing; millions of other butterflies around us. We were flying through blooming flowers, blossoms on trees, and they were all coming out as we flew through them.

Beside me on the butterfly wing was a beautiful girl. I remember her face to this day. Absolutely beautiful girl, blue eyes, and she was dressed in–what I was trying to write all this up in the months after I came back—I described as a kind of peasant garb. I can remember the colors very well. Kind of a peach/orange and a powder blue, just really beautiful.

She never said a word to me and she was looking at me and her thoughts would just come into my awareness. Her thoughts were things like, “You are loved. You are cherished forever. There’s nothing you can do wrong. You have nothing to worry about. You will be taken care of.” It was so soothing and so beautiful, and of course as I said, my language wasn’t really working then. So those particular words were words I had to put on it when I came back out. But a lot of this flowed perfectly when I came back out.

In fact, I didn’t read anything about near-death experiences or about physics or cosmology because of the advice my older son, Eben IV, who was majoring in neuroscience at the University of Delaware advised me. Three days after I left the hospital, when he came home for Thanksgiving back in 2008, he said, “Well, if you want to write this up as a useful report, don’t read anything. Just write everything down you can remember.”

I spent the next two months typing everything I could remember in the computer. It came out to about 100 pages of memories from this deep experience within the coma. I think from that beautiful valley scene on the butterfly wing, waterfalls, pools of water, indescribable colors, and above there were these arks of silver and gold light and beautiful hymns coming down from them. Indescribably gorgeous hymns. I later came to call them “angels,” those arks of light in the sky. I think that word is probably fairly accurate.

On this butterfly wing, the first time I was there, I remember having this sensation. It was as if there was a warm summer breeze that just blew by. Then everything changed and the scene stayed the same but I became aware. Again in looking back on it, that was my awareness of a Divine presence of incredibly indescribable, kind of a superpower of divinity. Then we went out of this universe.

I remember just seeing everything receding and initially I felt as if my awareness was in an infinite black void. It was very comforting but I could feel the extent of the infinity and that it was, as you would expect, impossible to put into words. I was there with that Divine presence that was not anything that I could visibly see and describe, and with a brilliant orb of light. There was a distinct sensation from me, a memory, that they were not one and the same. I don’t know what that means.

In my awareness, when I say I was aware, this goes far, far beyond the consciousness of any one—this is not Eben Alexander’s consciousness aware of being in that space. I was far beyond that point, way beyond any kind of human consciousness, and really just one consciousness. When I got there they said that I would be going back, but I didn’t know what that meant.

They said there were many things that they would show me, and they continued to do that. In fact, the whole higher-dimensional multiverse was that this incredibly complex corrugated ball and all these lessons coming into me about it. Part of the lessons involved becoming all of what I was being shown. It was indescribable.

But then I would find myself—and time out there I can say is totally different from what we call time. There was access from out there to any part of our space/time and that made it difficult to understand a lot of these memories because we always try to sequence things and put them in linear form and description. That just really doesn’t work.

But suffice it to say that I would find myself back at the earthworm eye-view. What I learned was that if I could recall the notes of that melody, the spinning melody, that would start the melody spinning again and that would take me back into that beautiful, crisp, clear hyper-real valley on the butterfly wing. My guardian angel was always there and she was always very comforting.

Then we would go out into what I came to call “the coral,” which was outside of the entire physical universe. Again, they would show lessons and often those lessons would involve becoming a tremendous part of what they were demonstrating.

So much of it is just indescribable and so much of it there are reasons why we cannot bring a lot of that back. And there are reasons, in fact, it’s why I’ve come to see that we’re conscious in spite of our brain. To me that makes a lot more sense.

I go into detail about all that in my book, but it turns out that I would oscillate from this beautiful, idyllic place in the core, coming back down into earthworm eye-view, and it seems it was three or four times. Like I said, sequencing was so strange because when I was in the earthworm eye-view, everything seemed to be one kind of soup of just mixed foam. It was very hard to put sequence on it but it was very clear to me that several times I would use the memory of those notes and spin that melody and go back in. They would always say, “You are not here to stay.”

Alex Tsakiris: Dr. Alexander, a couple of questions. First, what is the title of your book?

Dr. Eben Alexander: Okay. Well, I’m going through several possible agents right now. I don’t have a publisher and I have a feeling that agents and publishers will have their own ideas. What I can tell you is that the tentative working title right now, and this could easily change, is Life Beyond Death: A Neurosurgeon’s Life-Changing Near-Death Odyssey.

Alex Tsakiris: Let me hone in on a couple of things. It’s an amazing experience, an amazing account. Tell us a little bit about coming back into this world. I want to hone in on a couple of things that we need to nail down if we’re going to really try and understand this account from our world.

One thing I want to nail down is the time perspective. How do we know that these memories were formed during the time when you’re in a coma? You’ve already laid out a couple of points about that in that normally we wouldn’t even expect you to have a lot of clear, coherent memories three days after coming out of this coma. But you said that’s when you started writing down this account. You also said you tried not to contaminate your memories with talking to other people. So those are good parts of your story.

What are some other aspects of it that you can tell us that make you confident that these memories were formed while you were in this severely compromised mental state?

Dr. Eben Alexander: I can tell you that when I first started waking up, it was very shocking because as I said, I didn’t have memories of my life before and my family, loved ones, sisters, my wife and sons, they were there. So initially I have a very distinct memory as I was emerging, which was on the seventh day of coma. I was still on the ventilator and still had the endotracheal tube in.

My awareness was of several faces. I remember one was my wife and one was a good friend of ours who is also my infectious disease doctor and a neighbor, Dr. Scott Wade. Then one was also my 10-year-old son. These faces were there. I did not recognize them. They would say words. I didn’t understand the words, but I had a very powerful visual memory. They would kind of boil up out of the muck and then they’d go away.

I’m fairly sure that was Sunday morning because much, much later, after I’d written everything down and I did start asking people about things that had happened, it seemed that that’s when people were doing that. Now in fact, they’d been doing it all week but I think I was unaware of it during the week. That’s mainly based on the people that I do remember seeing who only those who were there that Sunday morning were.

My language started coming back very quickly and so did my visual cortex, because I think—again, it’s so hard to put a time label on this. But in talking with people who were there, I think that probably over an hour or two or three I started getting language back quickly. My auditory cortex started coming online. My ability to understand speech, so what’s called Wernicke’s area in the dominant temporal lobe was starting to come back up to speed and I can understand things. I could then start making speech.

So I was having a very rapid return of cortical function, but I was still kind of in and out of reality. In fact, in my book I go into great detail describing what I call the “nightmare,” which was kind of a paranoid, crazy thing where I was halfway in and out of reality. My younger son, Bond, he can describe it to you. It was kind of a very frightening thing because I would seem to be with it and then I’d be saying things that were just out of my mind.

Of course, initially as I explained to some of my physicians, what I remembered was this incredibly powerful hyper-real spiritual experience. They would say, “Oh, yes, well you were very, very sick. We thought you were going to die. I can’t even believe that you’re back.” They were predicting that I would have two to three months in the hospital and then need chronic care for the rest of my life. So they were obviously quite shocked that I came back like I did. It was just so strange.

Initially I thought, “Gosh, it was almost too real to be real.” That hyper-reality that people describe, I just wish we could bottle that up and give it to people so they could see what it’s like because it is not something that is going to be explained by these little simplistic kind of talking about CO2 and oxygen levels. That just won’t work. I promise you that won’t work.

Alex Tsakiris: That’s an interesting point because as you mentioned briefly, you know it won’t work because you actually went and tried to see if there was a model that you were aware of from your training that could fit your experience, right?

So you became a near-death experiencer who became a near-death experience researcher from a neurophysiological standpoint. I think that’s one of the things that really draws people to your story. Tell us a little bit more about your quest to understand this from the perspective of your background as a neurosurgeon.

Dr. Eben Alexander: Okay, well I can tell you that I mentioned a few minutes ago that initially I was getting the message from my physicians that I was extremely sick and it doesn’t surprise them that I had very, very unusual memories. There was one other thing that really got my attention that I’ll mention, and that is I told you about the faces I saw kind of floating in the muck, which I think—again, it’s hard to put a time on it. I know that some of them appeared that Sunday morning and maybe the Saturday afternoon. Some could have been earlier.

There was one that I think was earlier, although she seems like all the rest. Her name is Susan Reintjes and she’s a friend of my wife’s. They worked together 25 years earlier teaching in Raleigh. Susan’s had a lot of experience helping coma patients. She wrote a book called, Third Eye Open. It’s about her going into a state or trance and then going to them in whatever fashion. That’s not something I claim to understand. But not through the physical material realm.

In fact, she had done that with a lot of patients and she discussed that in her book. Holly called her up, I think it was Thursday at night that Susan heard all this and said, “Yes, I’ll try and help.” I remember her being there very clearly. I mean, just like all the rest. She was there and she never was physically there. She did this from Chapel Hill where she lives.

Of course, in the first few days as I was coming around and I told my wife about the six faces that I remembered, that does not include my guardian angel who I still didn’t know at that time, but those six faces. And Susan Reintjes was there. Holly said, “She did come to you channeling. She came to you in the psychic realm.” I can tell you when Holly told me that I said, “Of course. Don’t need any explanation for that.”

Of course, as I healed—it probably took three or four weeks for a lot of my neuroscience and neurosurgical training to come back—all along that time I was still writing all this down and not reading anything. I was very tempted but my son had told me, “You want this to be worthwhile, don’t read anything else. Just write it all down.” I just was shocked; I was buffeted because my neuroscience mind said, “No, that couldn’t happen.” The more I heard about how sick I was, my cortex shut down, “No, that’s impossible, your cortex was down.”

Of course, for a while I was going after the hypotheses that involved formation of these very complex, intricate memories either right before my coma or right coming out of it. That really did not explain it at all. Part of the problem, when you get right down to it, is that whole issue of remembering the melody because that was a very clear part of it. I remember the elation when I figured that I could just remember that melody and that spun the melody in front of me.

Then all of a sudden, boom! Everything opened up and I went back out into that valley, so crisp and beautiful, and my angel was with me, as I came to call her, my companion on the butterfly wing. And then out into the core, outside of the universe. Very difficult to explain in that fluctuation.

I guess one could always argue, “Well, your brain was probably just barely able to ignite real consciousness and then it would flip back into a very diseased state,” which doesn’t make any sense to me. Especially because that hyper-real state is so indescribable and so crisp. It’s totally unlike any drug experience. A lot of people have come up to me and said, “Oh that sounds like a DMT experience, ”or“ That sounds like ketamine.” Not at all. That is not even in the right ballpark.

Those things do not explain the kind of clarity, the rich interactivity, the layer upon layer of understanding and of lessons taught by deceased loved ones and spiritual beings. Of course, they’re all deceased loved ones. I’ve kind of wondered where it is that these people are coming from. They say, “The brain was very sick but it was very selective and made sure it only remembered deceased loved ones.” They’re just not hearing something.

Alex Tsakiris: You know, I think that brings up a very interesting point and one that we’ve covered a lot on this show. To be fair—well, not only to be fair but to really understand the entire phenomena and understand how it fits in our culture, in our society, which I think is important because here you are, someone like yourself with your obvious intellectual capabilities but also medical understanding and you have this experience and you have to come back and try and make it make sense with all your training.

I think all the rest of us are right there with you trying to make sense of these completely counter-intuitive experiences and then trying to jam them back in our head and in our experience. In that sense, I do have a lot of empathy and appreciation for the NDE researchers, both the skeptical ones and the non-skeptical ones. So let me talk a little bit about that NDE research and get your perspective on it. Of course there are a few of these brave researchers out there who have stuck their neck out—really only a very few—and have tried to tackle this.

It seems to me that they’re really barely making a dent in the medical model that we have. The medical model that we have sees us as these biological robots and death as kind of the ultimate Boogeyman. Can we really believe that we’re really going to change such an entrenched system?

Dr. Eben Alexander: I think so. I think that is very much a possibility. There’s this whole issue of mind and brain and duality versus non-dualism and the physical material reductivist models. I go into this in great detail in my book but I think you have to go back about 3,000 years to really get to the beginning of the discussion and to start to see why certain things have transpired.

I think most importantly was the part of this discussion that happened between Rene Descartes and Spinoza back in the 17th Century. They started us into our current era. Our current era is one of mind/consciousness/our soul has been put in the realm of the church more-or-less. There was kind of a truce of sorts that I guess Descartes came up with back then to say there’s mind and then there’s body and just let the natural scientists, those with an interest like Francis Bacon and Galileo and Newton, let’s not burn them all at the stake. Let some of them survive.

So I think it was a good thing to have that truce so that science survived. I mean, I’m a scientist and I love science and the scientific method. I’ve just come to realize that the universe is much grander than we appreciate. So I have to simply broaden my definitions.

I think science is still very important to get us there. Getting back to that mind/brain issue, what happened over time is science kind of grew up and got to be more and more powerful at giving us many things. Science has been a real wonder. But I think that it’s been somewhat at a price and that price came from splitting out mind and body back then and that dualistic approach because as science gained more and more of an upper hand, people were losing track of the kind of mind part of it, the consciousness part.

Alex Tsakiris: Let’s talk about that a little bit right now because part of that does seem to be contradictory to your experience and the experiences we’ve heard from other folks who have had these transformative spiritual experiences in that if there is this broader knowing—and much broader—broader doesn’t even begin to describe it but that we hear over and over again.

We hear it from your account; we hear it from many near-death experience accounts. We also hear it from all sorts of transformative spiritual accounts, kundulini accounts, spontaneous spiritual awakenings. There’s this sense of knowing, much, much greater knowing that then must be crammed back into our body and it doesn’t fit, you know? So your account says that and others do, as well.

Can we really then hope to get out of the consciousness loop that we’re in now? Is it just going to be a matter of a philosophical shift like we had back in the 1700’s? Or is there something fundamental to the way that we’re constructed that’s going to keep us limited in how much we can really tap into and understand that knowing that you experienced?

Dr. Eben Alexander: In my view, what I think is going to happen is that science in the much broader sense of the word and spirituality which will be mainly an acknowledgement of the profound nature of our consciousness will grow closer and closer together. We will all move forward into a far more enlightened world. One thing that we will have to let go of is this kind of addiction to simplistic, primitive reductive materialism because there’s really no way that I can see a reductive materialist model coming remotely in the right ballpark to explain what we really know about consciousness now.

Coming from a neurosurgeon who, before my coma, thought I was quite certain how the brain and the mind interacted and it was clear to me that there were many things I could do or see done on my patients and it would eliminate consciousness. It was very clear in that realm that the brain gives you consciousness and everything else and when the brain dies there goes consciousness, soul, mind—it’s all gone. And it was clear.

Now, having been through my coma, I can tell you that’s exactly wrong and that in fact the mind and consciousness are independent of the brain. It’s very hard to explain that, certainly if you’re limiting yourself to that reductive materialist view.

Any of the scientists in the crowd who want to get in on this, what I would recommend is there’s one book I consider the bible of this. It’s a wonderful book but it is really for those who have a strong scientific interest in it. It’s called Irreducible Mind, Edward Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Bruce Greyson, Adam Crabtree, Alan Galt, Michael Grassa, the whole group from Esalen and also based in the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, have done an incredibly good job. Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century is the subtitle and that’s exactly what it is.

I felt their book was quite illustrative and of course it caused a huge splash when it came out in 1987, but again a lot of the reductive materialists like myself were not really going to put in the work to go through all of that. We just thought, “We can’t understand it so it can’t be true.”

Alex Tsakiris: I think you’re being a little bit too generous there because some of the folks do do the work. Do tap into the research and still come out the other end holding onto that materialistic model that we’re stuck with here because there’s a lot invested in it. With that, what I wanted to do was I sent you a couple of audio clips that I thought you might like to respond to because it fits in with what you were just talking about–people who have walked in your shoes and are still there in that model.

The first clip I’d like to play for you is a former guest on this show, Dr. Steven Novella, who is a clinical neurologist at Yale University. He’s a well-known and outspoken skeptic of near-death experiences but a nice guy who’s willing to engage the topic. What I thought I’d do is play this little clip and see any response you might have to it, okay?

Dr. Eben Alexander: All right.

Dr. Steven Novella: The three basic kinds of explanations are one is spiritual; that it represents the fact that the mind can exist separate from the brain. The second one is a psychological experience of some sort. And then the third is that it’s organic; it’s neurophysiological. The evidence and some of the best explanatory models that people are putting forward are blending the second two, the psychological and the organic, the neuroscientific. I think what we’re seeing is that there’s a core experience that’s primarily organic. It’s just the kinds of things that can happen to the brain under various kinds of stress.

Alex Tsakiris: Now, I’ve got to add that if you really listen to the whole interview with Steve and the follow-up that we had, what he’s talking about is really a bunch of fluff. [Laughs] There really isn’t any research that shows any neurophysiological cause for near-death experience. I really held his feet to the fire and he was unable to produce anything of any real substance about that research.

But maybe you can talk because it speaks so much to the position that you were in just a few years ago, about that position and that kind of entrenched “It has to be in the brain” kind of thing and how you think that relates to near-death experience.

Dr. Eben Alexander: I would say for one thing I think that a healthy skeptical approach to all this is a good thing because it helps us get to the truth. It helps us know the answer. What we have to be careful of, of course, is not getting in the trap of having our prejudices rule the day. A lot of these experiments and studies, how you interpret them will depend a lot on what your prejudices are going in.

I found early on in my experience, I had to do as Descartes recommended when he was talking about getting to the truth, and that was to really ignore or to reject everything I had ever accepted as real. That was the only way to start getting to where I could figure any of this out. I

know that a lot of the reductive scientific crowd out there—I have a favorite quote from Stephen Hawking. He says, “There’s a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority or imposed dogma and faith, as opposed to science which is based on observation and reason.” What I would say is I think his statement is true as a general statement but that science, and certainly those who believe in science and scientists, are as prone to addiction to imposed dogma and faith as our religious zealot. So one has to be very careful to really step back and want to know the truth. That’s what I think we all would like to know.

Alex Tsakiris: In this case, if we really do step back one of the things that’s troubling to me, and you touched on it a minute ago, is how overwhelming the evidence seems to be. At this point, we can confidently say that near-death experiences didn’t just start happening in the last 20 years since we had advanced resuscitation techniques.

We can confidently say that 4% to 5% of everyone who has a cardiac arrest is having this. There’s obviously hundreds of millions of people over time who have had these accounts and we have thousands and thousands of well-documented, consistent accounts across cultures, across times. These are the measures that we would normally use to say, “This is a real phenomenon.”

And then when the skeptics, and really the mainstream scientists have pounded against it for 20 years with really what amounts to a bunch of very silly explanations but ones that have been carefully looked at and dismissed—was it CO2 , a fear of death, other psychological factors? Is it all the different things like REM intrusion? All these things.

Clearly this would normally be something where we’d be putting a lot of attention into it. Or that it would then become the presumed explanation for it. But none of that’s happening. They have managed to hold back the dyke, you know? So what do you make of that?

Dr. Eben Alexander: Okay, I think in trying to get back to your original question with the previous guest, to me one thing that has emerged from my experience and from very rigorous analysis of that experience over several years, talking it over with others that I respect in neuroscience, and really trying to come up with an answer, is that consciousness outside of the brain is a fact. It’s an established fact.

And of course, that was a hard place for me to get, coming from being a card-toting reductive materialist over decades. It was very difficult to get to knowing that consciousness, that there’s a soul of us that is not dependent on the brain. As much as I know all the reductive materialist arguments against that, I think part of the problem is it’s like the guy looking for his keys under the streetlight. Reductive materialists are under the streetlight because that’s where they can see things.

But in fact, if you’re keys are lost out in the darkness, the techniques there are no good. It is only by letting go of that reductive materialism and opening up to what is a far more profound understanding of consciousness. This is where I think for me as a scientist, I look at quantum mechanics and I go into this in great detail in my book, is a huge part of the smoking gun. It shows us that there’s something going on there about consciousness that our primitive models don’t get. It’s far more profound than I ever realized before.

That’s where I’m coming from because my experience showed me very clearly that incredibly powerful consciousness far beyond what I’m trapped in here in the earthly realm begins to emerge as you get rid of that filtering mechanism of the brain. It is really astonishing. And that is what we need to explain. Thousands or millions of near-death experiencers have talked about this.

Not only that but as you mentioned a few minutes ago, people don’t even have to go to a near-death situation. There are plenty of mystical experiences that have occurred over millennia that are part of the same mechanism. That’s why all this talk about oxygen, tension, CO2 and all that you can pretty much throw out the window. You really need to be working towards explaining all of those phenomena. Part of the problem is they’re hard to explain but that is a clue.

Willy Lomans was asked, “Why do you rob banks?” He said, “Because that’s where the money is.” Well, same kind of thing. They are hard issues and the whole understanding of what consciousness really involves. I came a lot closer to that in my coma experience and coming out of it and in doing all the very intense homework for the three years since then to try and understand it. It’s a difficult question because it’s close to the real truth that we’re going after. If it were easy it would be widely available. It would already have been written up by somebody who wanted to publish or perish. That’s not how it works. It’s not that easy.

Alex Tsakiris: Dr. Alexander, in the little bit of time we have left what’s it been like being so public about your experience?

Dr. Eben Alexander: Well, many people have come up to me and said, “Wow, this takes a lot of courage to do this.” You know, it probably would have taken courage to talk like this right after I came out of it. I learned to put the lid on it but then as I did more and more work and talked with more people and started realizing, “Oh my gosh, this is all real.” Then I can tell you, it takes no courage at all. It simply is so powerful to know this.

One thing I’m trying to do in my book is to show why it’s so logical, why this is a very rational way for things to work, especially when you really delve into the profound mystery of conscious existence. Again, I’d recommend Irreducible Mind to any people with a scientific bent who really want to get into it.

Go in there because the whole issue is far, far deeper than we would like to think. It’s absolutely wonderful to realize this. I think it’s going to change this world in wonderful ways. But a big part of it, of course, is to try and broaden the boundaries of science and of what we accept and will use to get towards truth. I’m very hopeful that science and spirituality will come together hand-in-hand and go forward to help with getting these answers and help people to understand the true nature of our existence. A side effect will be that humanity and the grace and harmony that we will see around this world will expand tremendously as we move forward in that fashion.

Alex Tsakiris: Great. It’s certainly an amazing account and you do a great job of bringing forth this information. We wish you the best of luck with that and we’ll certainly look forward to your book, coming out when? Probably next year maybe?

Dr. Eben Alexander: I certainly hope so. I’m hoping to finish it now. I do have a web page which is lifebeyonddeath.net for any people who have an interest. I tell you, I’m so busy on the book. You can send me email or sign up for the newsletter or whatever, but I won’t be responding for a few months. If people are interested, they’re welcome to get in touch and sign up for the newsletter, which won’t come out until I’m done on the book. Then we’ll move from there.

It’s just a wonderful gift and I think people will see that it actually makes more sense than anything else has so far. That’s why I think it’s of inestimable value to get this out to the world.

Alex Tsakiris: Thanks so much for joining us today.

Dr. Eben Alexander: Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Alex.

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Nancy Evans Bush

Nancy Evans Bush has a BA in English is from the University at Albany-SUNY, and a master’s degree in Pastoral Ministry from St. Joseph College in Connecticut, with additional graduate study at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut. She has three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Nancy is a past-president of The International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc. (IANDS) and because of her own distressing near-death experience, has been their go-to researcher on distressing NDEs for 30 years (see below for more information).

Website & Background Information:

• Dancing Past The Dark

Book:

• Dancing Past the Dark: Distressing Near-Death Experiences

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REFLECTIONS FROM THREE DECADES WITH IANDS
Nancy Evans Bush Interviewed by Amy Stringer
From the Fall 2009 edition of “Vital Signs”
The newsletter of The International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc.

Download the complete interview with Nancy here (pdf)

EXCERPT:

VS: Please tell us about your own NDE which you had during childbirth.

NEB: It was not a radiant experience; it was an utterly terrifying experience of the void. I had never heard of anything like it. I didn’t know anybody else in the world had ever had such an experience. That left me with a sense that I was walking around with secret knowledge too terrible to tell anybody.

There was a group of circles. They were clicking, black to white, white to black. They weren’t…I didn’t think they were evil, but they were malicious, maybe the way a sibling would be malicious when you’re being really heartless to each other. There was no question: they were authoritative. They knew stuff I did not know. I was the stranger there; they weren’t. It never occurred to me that this was hell, and it never occurred to me that I was dead, only that this was what it would probably be like when I was dead. I just knew that this was a place other than where I thought I had been.

I was told I did not exist. I had never existed. It had been a joke. My life was a joke; my baby’s life was a joke. I had a 17-month-old daughter; she did not exist. My mother did not exist. Hills, trees, robins, Earth did not exist. It was so utterly clear I was being told something true. It’s hard to explain …what would have been the point of arguing? What they were saying was incontrovertibly true.

[I had] no context for it. The Christianity I grew up with was a pretty amiable theology — Congregational UCC, God is love, and Jesus loves the little children. My father and grandfather were ministers from a very liberal, intellectual tradition. Oh, some people talked about hell, but we knew that God loves his people, and if you try to do the right thing, you’ll be all right.

When I woke up my first conscious thought was, “Calvin was right…predestination.” There are sheep, and there are goats, and I must be a goat; some people are just automatically on the outs with God. And, the reason that occurred to me was because it was so contrary to anything I thought I deserved.

Most of the people who have written about unpleasant experiences talk about them as happening to people who were sin-ridden, guilt-ridden, hostile, God-denying, love denying, suicidal -– all of that. None of which applied to me. I was far from perfect, but for heaven’s sake, I had been saved twice at Billy Graham crusades! I had been born again…..and again! There was nothing in my background that could in any way help me explain this experience. I didn’t even know where to look for an explanation.

Six years after the experience, I was about to have a cup of tea with a friend when she said, “Here’s a book we just got today. Take a look.” I think the book was Jung’s Man and His Symbols, and I was flipping through it, and suddenly there on the left-hand side of a page was a large illustration of one of the figures from my experience. I got a feeling of just sheer horror, because my immediate thought was, “My God! Somebody else knows about this!” I was so horrified that I simply threw the book and ran. It was not until several years later I discovered the circle was the yin/yang symbol. And this lead to the question, how does a Chinese symbol get into the transformative experience of a New England Congregationalist who has had no contact with Taoism, New Age, paranormal activity? The question would turn my life around.

VS: How did your NDE affect your relationship with IANDS and vice versa?

NEB: Within a few weeks at IANDS I began to realize that there was a name for that experience I had twenty years earlier and had been trying to bury ever since. That was uncomfortable, because I knew beyond question that not all NDEs are glorious, and not all experiencers lose their fear of death — and clearly, nobody was going to want to hear that.

But, there were occasional clues in the letters coming into the office, little hints or even outright statements that other people knew about experiences like mine — “Why don’t you people tell the truth?” Somebody had to figure out what to say to these people. And, although I had no background to start with — well, I was there, and the letters kept coming in. As for how it affected my relationship with IANDS, I think it’s accurate to say that in some ways it has kept me pretty much an outsider, even on the inside. More than a few people would prefer that my type of experience not be considered an NDE and that this conversation would happen someplace else, if at all.

In the face of so much genuinely wonderful talk about radiant NDEs, it’s been hard always to have to say, “Excuse me, but that’s not true for everyone, it’s not universal, that doesn’t always apply.” Looking from the other point of view, I think it’s been difficult for many people, because of the very fact that my experience was “negative.”

VS: One of your greatest contributions to the study of NDEs has been exposing and explaining the distressing NDE. Will you share some satisfactions and frustrations this endeavor has brought?

NEB: I suppose one satisfaction is that I didn’t stop talking just because the topic was unwelcome. The need is so great, and I’ve been able to say so little. But every once in a while I’ve heard from someone that my work has helped. That’s worth the struggle. And of course, because I didn’t stop searching for answers to give to other people, eventually there came a kind of resolution, of understanding, of my own experience. Finally getting beyond the literal interpretation and arriving at a deeper comprehension makes all the difference. And, I keep hoping that some of my conviction is getting through, that we have to recognize that the universe is made up of darkness as well as light, so we’d better pay some attention to the implications of that.

So, there are certainly satisfactions.

One frustration is that getting this has been such a long process of stumbling along. I was a junior high English teacher when the NDE happened, not a psychologist, not a theologian, not a philosopher, had absolutely no background in psychic anything — nothing useful in that sense; so it’s been like following breadcrumbs through a very dense forest, piecing a trail together one little chip at a time. I’ve been just wild, sometimes, wishing that more people from other disciplines, who might have had some insight, would speak up, would write an article for the Journal, would say something. Within near-death studies, PMH Atwater has done some fine work, moving people to accept that these NDEs exist; she has a great understanding of the difficulties for experiencers. Physician Barbara Rommer’s book Blessing in Disguise was useful for its experience accounts, though I found it disappointing as information. Otherwise, within near-death studies there has been a scattering of articles and mentions of distressing NDEs in descriptive studies. Christopher Bache added some helpful insights as a transpersonal psychologist, and Gracia Fay Ellwood as a scholar of religious studies, and one should add Michael Grosso as a Jungian; but otherwise, there is still a great general silence. When I first felt I knew enough to say something to other people, it was with the article Bruce Greyson and I put together that was published in 1992 in the journal Psychiatry — 30 years after my NDE! Probably my biggest continuing frustration is the general conviction that if a person has a horrifying NDE, they’ve done something to deserve it; there must be something about them. No researcher, to my knowledge, has analyzed moral character or previous behaviors to explain radiant NDEs, but an astonishing number of people seem quite sure that a scary NDE is a manifestation of deep-seated guilt, hostility, fear, hatred of God, rigidity, lack of love, meanness, and on and on. No wonder it’s been hard for experiencers to come forward to share their difficult NDEs!

VS: As an experiencer, what question annoys you most? Why?

NEB: Probably the one I dislike the most is, “Do you believe these NDEs? Are they really true? Do you really believe near-death experiences?” It’s such an annoying little mosquito of a question because it indicates just such a lack of thought. They are experiences! You can’t ask people, “Is your experience true?” any more than you can ask someone with an abscessed tooth if their experience of pain is true. You’re having the experience; of course it’s true — as a genuine experience. Now, what does it mean? That is something different. Do I believe these experiences? Of course I believe them. Do I believe they are literally true? That’s a different question with a far more complex answer.

VS: What question do you wish more people would ask?

NEB: I wish more people would look at the NDE and ask, “And so…?”

The horizon is so very much wider than what we’re looking at. There’s entirely too much stopping at the literal level, at the sensational level, thinking that the experience itself is all there is, or that it’s enough. I wish people would wonder more about what these experiences point to — both the beautiful ones and the difficult ones — not just that everything is wonderful and there’s “life after death.” What does it mean that there are both bliss and the abyss? Why all these continuing visual images across millennia? What are all of these amazing spiritual experiences trying to tell us about being, about ourselves, about the nature of the universe and the way it works? What are we supposed to do with the information? What will it take to make us change?

VS: Do experiencers, as Garrison Keillor says, have “the answer to life’s persistent questions”?

NEB: I think some do, but I suspect that, for the most part, those people go quietly in the world and make few speeches.

The idea that experiencers come back with answers is part of the myth of the NDE, the myth that it’s all wonderful. (And because we haven’t looked hard enough at a bigger picture, IANDS hasn’t done much to address this.) It seems to me that many experiencers have a glimpse of an answer, but don’t know how to interpret it or don’t know how to work at how to live it. Too many folks get stuck in self-congratulations for their feeling of being special, for having “evolved”, or they get sidetracked with psychic abilities, or having had a powerhouse personal experience. Some think they have Ultimate Truth, and can’t accept that there are also very different perspectives.

It’s bound to be more pleasurable to marvel at a glorious NDE than to dig into one’s own psychodynamics to clean house afterwards, or to explore the history and disciplines surrounding these experiences that the religious traditions and Buddhism have found helpful. Some good words are there — “love, learning, service” — but too often actions don’t follow. Many people don’t want the information, they want only the experience, or they don’t see how knowing about something like this can be helpful. And, a good number of experiencers suffer deeply, and wonder why IANDS hasn’t said more to help them understand what’s going on. It’s complex, this business of revelation and communication.

In fact, the messages have been with us since well before Deuteronomy, and in the Gospel, and the Koran and the Sutras, and in all the religious and mystical traditions; and each time there’s a breakthrough, the convinced have to struggle with their egos, and there’ll be a group of people who know that “This news can change the world!” And of course, they’re right, but the work of self-discovery and self-discipline is terribly difficult, so inevitably the great “shazam” doesn’t happen and the world goes on un- rescued. The deepest enigma for human beings remains learning to live what we say we believe. That’s the hard part.

VS: How have perceptions about NDEs changed, from your 28-year perspective in the field?

NEB: The most obvious shift is that the near-death experience is now so well known that it has become the stock visual image for dying. Thirty years ago, when someone in a movie or soap opera died, you’d see the hand drop, or the eyes close. Now the room fills with light, the camera pulls up, and there is the actor’s body, and misty figures coming in, and everyone knows what’s happening.

It’s nice to know that we’ve helped make NDEs so much a part of the culture. On the other hand, this bland acceptance leads to a trivializing of the experience. The awe is missing, and the wonder. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, ho hum, another NDE. Sweet.” People (the media, certainly) tend to have accepted the superficial myth of the beautiful NDE, and stopped asking questions…

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ABOUT NANCY EVANS BUSH
By Nancy Evans Bush
Dancing Past The Dark Website

Original Link

It was a break between presentations at the 2006 IANDS conference, and I was chatting in one of many small groups crowding the hallway outside the auditorium of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Suddenly a young Japanese man burst through the crowd, rushing toward my group. He grabbed my hand.

“You saved my life!”

I did not know him, but he was passionate, shaking, gripping my hand in both of his. “You saved my life! I must say thank you!”

And he bolted away, disappearing into the swirl of people. I have not seen him since. I still do not know his name, nor what it was that he believed had saved his life.

Was it an unusual incident? Decidedly unusual. But surprising? Not entirely.

The Incident of the Young Man came in the later years of my thirty-year crusade on behalf of the countless, unnamed people whose own near-death experiences had been ignored in favor of the wonderful stories of light and love. Almost no researcher it seemed, wanted anything to do with the frightening or empty NDEs. For all those years, I had been one of the rare exceptions.

When I fell into a “temporary” management job at a start-up nonprofit organization in 1982, I was coming from a background in secondary school teaching, health care research, and public administration. I had never heard the term “near-death experience.” But the start-up sounded interesting and was close to my home; the work itself seemed low-key, the office volunteers friendly.

It took only a few weeks as office manager of the fledgling International Association for Near-Death Studies, IANDS, for me to realize there was a name for a bizarre and terrifying experience I’d had twenty years earlier, an event I had never spoken of to anyone. Somebody else knew about mysteries like that! The problem was, my near-death experience had been one of cosmic abandonment and annihilation. Where to find information about such things when all attention was on the wonderful, light-filled experiences, with only a rumor about another kind? There was no bibliography, no specialist to ask, no place to look for a shred of obvious information to help understand something like a disturbing, even horrifying NDE.

Eventually it dawned on me that as I was the person in the IANDS office, the one with best access to the phone calls and mail and the University of Connecticut library, perhaps I should begin piecing together whatever scraps of information might be assembled. That was the turnaround, and I’ve never looked back.

It was the beginning of encounters with hundreds of near-death experiencers and their stories — of anguished letters from the mothers of very young children who told troubling tales after a near-drowning; of people who awoke from surgery terrified to live and even more afraid to die; of the letter from a 93-year-old woman in Montana, reverently telling of the angel who appeared at her bedside in 1916, “acknowledging this to humans for the very first time.” There were hilarious stories and tragic ones, bewildered people and frightened ones. And every once in a while, there was a letter or phone call that said, “You aren’t telling the whole truth, with all this love and light. My experience wasn’t like this. My experience was hell. Why aren’t you telling people the truth?” And so I began keeping a file.

Within three months of my arrival at IANDS, I was named its executive director. Not long after, I began editing its quarterly newsletter. Informational overload! Bits of answers to questions began to emerge, like strings of information that could be braided together to create new understandings. One was the realization that small children could also have detailed NDEs; in 1983 I wrote the first study of children’s near-death experiences, whose accounts included not only those of the two four-year-olds who nearly drowned but one of a child not yet two, with convincing descriptive detail about the circumstances. Most of the children’s experiences were quite wonderful, but some were frightening, or had distressing elements.

For almost five years, until IANDS left its UConn offices, the phone calls and letters continued in a veritable avalanche. There were TV and radio talk shows calling, and experiencers desperate to talk. A minister’s wife in Iowa, barricaded in her bedroom. Why? Because in her NDE, she had learned how to bring world peace, and she considered this God’s mission for her life. She had been calling television stations to spread the word. Now her family was having her admitted to the state psychiatric hospital.

There was the young man from New Orleans who called, weeping with grief, who would not give his name but shared the light-and-love-filled deathbed vision of his partner, wasted with AIDS. “We didn’t know it could happen to us…but it was so beautiful!”

So many stories, so many lives! And along with them, the file of disturbing NDEs grew, as is described in a chapter of Dancing Past the Dark. What that chapter does not mention is the range of letters. It might be a single line on paper torn out of a spiral notebook: “I had one of those, but I cannot talk about it.” It might be badly typed on drawing paper. Most were very short, even abrupt; but a few, handwritten, covered pages and pages describing the circumstances of the person’s life and situation at the time in far greater detail than they described the distressing NDE. One man, a touring evangelist, sent his account in the form of a hell-threatening brochure he handed out at his revival meetings.

Over at the Near-Death Hotel, as IANDS President Kenneth Ring’s home came to be known, the author of the first statistically-grounded book about NDEs — and an irresistible host as well — was swamped with house guests. Near-death experiencers longing to talk about their encounters with heaven, their light-filled, blissful NDEs, made the pilgrimage to meet him and each other. They couldn’t talk enough, get together enough, share enough about their peaceful and wonderful experiences. On the distressing NDE scene, not only were there not enough experiencers to make a minyan, but although people with distressing NDEs were occasionally willing to correspond for a couple of letters, they were not, and still are not, much interested in developing relationships centered on their experiences. (Which, considering the relative size of my house and the fact that I, too, am such an experiencer, has been a blessing.)

For reasons detailed in the book, including that lack of interest in sharing, it took ten years to collect enough complete experience accounts; but by 1992 Bruce Greyson and I could put together the breakthrough first study of distressing NDEs, published in the journal Psychiatry. Since then, I have presented subsequent work in journal articles and at conferences. I wrote the chapter about these experiences for The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Years of Investigation(2009, Praeger) and have presented on them widely.

The conference recordings may be the likeliest source of whatever helped the young man in Houston, for from the outset I have insisted, based on research findings, that “There is no evidence that bad people have bad experiences and good people have good ones.” It is a life-giving message for the many people whose only explanation of a frightening visionary experience is that it foretells eternal torment. For many years, the IANDS office forwarded to me the “difficult” letters that needed an especially careful response for a troubled experiencer. Since early 2011, I have been writing the blog about distressing NDEs and related matters that now forms the heart of my website, http://dancingpastthedark.com. So many, many stories, so many lives touched!

My BA in English is from the University at Albany-SUNY, and a master’s degree in Pastoral Ministry from St. Joseph College in Connecticut, with additional graduate study at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut. My three children have grown families of their own, providing me with seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Now President Emerita of IANDS and retired, I live in coastal North Carolina. I do not play golf.

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Anita Moorjani

Anita Moorjani was born in Singapore and then lived in Sri Lanka until she was 2 years old. An ethnic Sindhi woman from India, her family then moved to Hong Kong where she grew up speaking fluent Sindhi, Cantonese and English, as well as being conversant with a multitude of cultural idioms. She was educated in English schools in Hong Kong and later studied in England before returning to Hong Kong to take up a senior management position for a French fashion company where she traveled all over the world using her multi-cultural, multilingual background in a variety of business and social settings. In December 1995, she married her husband and soulmate, Danny. In April 2002 she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and after nearly 4 years of battling the disease, she was taken to the intensive care unit of her local hospital in February 2006 where she was given less than 36 hours to live. Her remarkable NDE and seeming miraculous recovery from cancer has created enormous interest and commentary on an international scale.

Websites & Background Information:

• New Book: Dying To Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing
• Anita Moorjani Website
• Anita Moorjani on Facebook
• Anita Moorjani Describing Her NDE On NDERF
• NDERF Interview with Anita Moorjani
• Anita Moorjani Contact Information

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Anita Moorjani and Wayne Dyer join Lisa Garr on The Aware Show
March 8, 2012

Best-selling author and teacher Wayne Dyer joins Anita Moorjani to discuss her miraculous recovery from cancer and many other thought-provoking subjects. Topics include: what it’s like on the other side of life; how to enter the deeper state of consciousness that permeates all life; past lives, parallel universes, and multi-dimensional realities; how past lives (and future lives) are all happening right now; how every possibility exists right now — including miraculous healings — and you can switch from one reality to another by understanding this; how we are all God; how we have become a culture that is pathologically fearful; how there is too much fear around cancer (and illnesses in general); how cancer (and other illnesses) can arise out of our body’s attempt to heal itself and should be welcomed as such; how Wayne Dyer has dealt with his leukemia; the importance of being ourselves and living life fearlessly; how to practically apply the information discussed in this interview.

About 22 minutes into the interview Anita explains how she can still return to the state she experienced during her NDE:

“It’s actually the opposite of focusing or choosing … it’s almost like a release, like a letting go, like a surrender … so there is no goal or anything … it’s like any sense of wanting to attain anything has to be released. This is the dichotomy: even the desire to attain that state has to be released, so it’s literally a state of total release and total surrender, so there is no attachment to anything physical, any outcome or even the physical body … Once I do that … it feels as though I have access to the infinity, to the higher, to the unlimited, to the potential, to the ambiguity. The minute you put limitations on it, ANY kind of limitation, even the limitation of ‘this is the state I want’, you are limiting the possibility. It really means opening yourself up to absolutely anything … with NO expectations, and you become available to everything, absolutely everything.”

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Anita Moorjani Special Report

This special report contains three parts: In part one Anita Moorjani describes her near-death experience; in part two, Anita is interviewed by NDERF; in part three, Anita responds to a question posted on the NDERF website. Taken together, this is an exceptionally interesting, informative, and inspiring overview of not just the NDE experience, but how the profound insights gleaned from such an experience can be applied to every day life.

Anita’s story appears on the NDERF website and in Jeffrey Long’s book, Evidence Of The Afterlife: The Science Of Near-Death Experiences. The NDERF interview with Anita appears on Anita’s website and the NDERF website. A summary of Long’s book can be read here.

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PART ONE

ANITA MOORJANI’S NDE

Original Link

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 36 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 40 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 3-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 also 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 dependant 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 first hand 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 him and was like a mother to him (in this life, he is older than me). 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 — 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”.

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PART TWO

NDERF INTERVIEW WITH ANITA MOORJANI
anitamoorjani.com
From 2006

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Original Link Two

Anita Moorjani was born in Singapore and then lived in Sri Lanka until she was two years old. An ethnic Sindhi woman from India, her family then moved to Hong Kong where she grew up speaking fluent Sindhi, Cantonese and English, as well as being conversant with a multitude of cultural idioms. She was educated in English schools in Hong Kong and later studied in England before returning to Hong Kong to take up a senior management position for a French fashion company where she traveled all over the world using her multi-cultural, multilingual background in a variety of business and social settings. In December 1995, she married her husband and soulmate, Danny, who loves her unconditionally (and still does, despite her becoming a NDE freak now).

In April 2002 she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and after nearly four years of battling the disease, she was taken to the intensive care unit of her local hospital in February 2006 where she was given less than 36 hours to live. Her remarkable NDE and seeming miraculous recovery from cancer has created enormous interest and commentary on an international scale.

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NDERF: Hi Anita. It’s nice to talk to you again. It’s only been a few months since your NDE and recovery, so I was wondering how are you feeling these days? Has media and public interest in your experience had any effect on your ability to come and go as you please?

ANITA: Physically, I’m feeling really great, thanks for asking. I don’t recall having this much energy at my disposal ever before. As for the media and public interest, that’s been a lot of fun. It’s not that people recognize me straight off the bat, you know. I mean, a lot of people have heard my story, but most don’t know what I look like, because they’ve mostly either read about me on the internet, or heard about me on the radio. (I’m becoming a regular on Chinese radio!!)

It’s only when I introduce myself that people say “ohhhhh, so you’re the Anita that died!!”

Another fun aspect is that I am getting a lot of invitations to attend social as well as spiritual gatherings. What I love most is that people keep hugging me. When they meet me, they say “I was really moved by your experience. Can I have a hug?” And of course, I say “sure!” I just love that part!!

NDERF: Yes, and I can see you are becoming expert at giving cyberhugs on the forum. Now you can hug worldwide! What has been the most difficult part adjusting to 3 dimensional reality since returning from your experience?

ANITA: That’s a good question. The most difficult part is not being able now to see this world in the same way as everyone else does. I don’t see things the same way as most people, nor can I process information in the same way I used to. I can’t. It feels like I have seen beyond the illusion of this physical world, and I can’t go back to thinking the way I used to. Sometimes I feel misunderstood. One of my fears is of becoming lonely, should no one understand me.

NDERF: Yes, I can imagine there would be a sense of loneliness that could come with an experience that is difficult to put into language. Can you tell me more about how this way of thinking affects your physical reality?

ANITA: When I was in the NDE state, it felt like I had woken up to a different reality. It felt like I had awoken from the “illusion” of life, and from that perspective, it looked like my physical life was just a culmination of my thoughts and beliefs up to that point. It felt like the whole world was just a culmination of mass consciousness. That is, the culmination of everyone’s thoughts and beliefs. It felt like nothing was actually real, but we made it real with our beliefs. I understood that even my cancer was not real, it was also part of the illusion, so if I went back to my body, I would not have the cancer any more.

And another thing is that, there was this incredible understanding of how we are all interconnected. And how what I felt within me affects my whole universe. It felt like the whole universe is within me. As far as I am concerned, if I am happy, the universe is happy. If I love myself, everyone else will love me. If I am at peace, the whole universe is peaceful. And so on.

Also, there is no such thing as time and space in that dimension. It felt like everything was happening simultaneously. I saw what could be interpreted as past lives, I saw what was happening currently (my brother on the plane, and conversations between my family members and doctors), and I also saw the future of this life pan out. But it was as if they were all happening at once, and I was living them all at once. It felt like, only after coming back, my mind has to process it as happening in linear time, but in that dimension, it didn’t feel that way at all. And distance and solid walls did not stop me from seeing and hearing everything that pertained to me at that time.

So now, back into 3D life, it feels like even solid walls and distance only exist because we decide or believe them to exist.

NDERF: Wow, I can only imagine an experience like that would mess with your mind!! So can you tell me more about how the NDE has affected the way you think and process information now?

ANITA: Well, first of all, my view of the world has totally blown apart. Over these months, I have had doctors telling me, over and over, that what happened to me is completely unexplainable. Medically, it should not be possible. They can’t figure out where the billions of cancer cells went in just a matter of days. Medically, every way they look at it, I should have died. My organs were shut down. Either the cancer should have killed me, the drugs should have killed me, or the billions of cancer cells trying to leave, flooding my shut down system, should have killed me.

In view of what physically happened to me, I am no longer able to see any physical disability in the same light anymore! Where, in my own mind, would I draw the line between what is “fixable” or “curable” and what is not? By what scale or logic would I draw these conclusions from? Certainly not from what is “medically” possible! I can’t apply that to my life anymore. The word “impossible” has no meaning to me anymore. The boundaries of what is possible or not is very shady to me.

I look at everything in our reality, including things like illness and aging, so differently. I challenge anything that is considered “natural” or “normal”. To me now, everything feels like human construct — that is, just another product of personal and mass belief.

Having had the experience I have, it feels like nothing is real, but every single possibility exists.

I now live my life knowing that I can create my own reality based on these new truths that I have learned.

NDERF: That’s a really powerful way to live. I want to go into what you say about creating your own reality, but before I do, just while on the topic of the physical body, it sounds as if you no longer see the challenges of illness in the same way — in fact, it almost sounds like you feel “invincible”. Can you elaborate more on that?

ANITA: OK, before my experience, one of my biggest fears in life was cancer, another fear was chemo (I watched 2 people die while on chemo), and also I had a myriad of other fears. It was almost as if my life was being “caged” in by my fears. My experience of life was getting smaller and smaller.

Now move forward to my NDE. This state caused a huge internal consciousness shift within me. Seeing through the illusion was a big part of it, feeling connected to the entire universe was another part, and becoming aware of being flooded in an all encompassing, loving, energy was also another factor. This was an energy of unconditional love — an energy that does not discriminate or judge. This universal energy is there for us no matter who or what we are. It was in this very awake state that I made the decision to come back into life. It was one powerful decision to come back and experience LIFE in this body again. You see, as soon as the choice to live or die was presented to me, I KNEW that once I made the decision, NOTHING outside of myself could kill me. NOTHING. Just the fact that I was presented with the choice and that I had made the decision, made it real. And as soon as I made the decision, every single cell in my body responded to that decision, and I healed almost immediately.

The doctors continued to take tests, but could not find anything. I understood that everything that was being done after that – all the tests, biopsies, drugs, etc. etc. was being done to satisfy everyone around me, and although a lot of it was very, very painful, I KNEW that I would be fine. My higher self/soul/spirit/connection to all that is, whatever you want to call it, that part of me had decided to continue to live through this body, and nothing in this physical 3D world could affect that decision. It felt like any decision made from the real reality far outweighs anything in this “illusion”.

This is that invincible feeling. The feeling that nothing outside of me can harm me.

NDERF: Do you think this feeling can be attained by others, or do you feel that it is something that can only be achieved either by an NDE or by a special few?

ANITA: I strongly believe it is something that can be attained by others. I certainly don’t feel special, or chosen or anything like that, in any way. Perhaps one just needs to be at the right “place” psychologically in their physical lives for something like this to happen.

It can certainly look like this is just a random event that happened to me. But bear in mind that I had cancer for nearly 4 years. During those four years, I changed dramatically. Living with terminal cancer at a reasonably young age and watching yourself deteriorate changes you and your perspective on life. It can’t not. I feel that those years “prepped” me for exactly the type of death experience that I had. I don’t know if I would have been emotionally mature enough to handle such a shift if it happened sooner, like say, without all the emotional and psychological “clearing” that took place within me from living with the cancer for almost 4 years. I feel that I had reached a place in my life that “allowed” this shift to happen. I was already at a point in my life where I wasn’t particularly attached to any way of thinking, and had also reached the stage of letting go of desiring any specific outcome. In my opinion, getting to this point was important for me.

The NDE gave me that last “push” that I needed, to see beyond the illusion. And once I saw that the body is not the real me, and that the cancer was also just an illusion, I was then able to see how loved I am, and I recognized my own magnificence, and once I made the decision to live, the physical body only reflected this “new found” state.

I’m sure there are people who are at exactly the right place internally, for such a shift to take place. And they don’t have to have an NDE for this to happen. Perhaps all they need to do is to bring into their awareness of what is possible. And perhaps, just by the fact that something like this has happened to me, I can be the catalyst for such an awareness to be brought into their reality.

I believe that once people are willing to expand their minds to let in such occurrences into their own reality, it may even trigger off further inner work to allow for such a shift to happen within them. I don’t believe everyone has to have to have something as drastic as an NDE to see such miracles occur. Perhaps just a willingness to let go of beliefs which may be holding them back.

From that state, where this life looked like an illusion, it looked like our strong attachment to certain beliefs is what holds the illusion in place. Perhaps a willingness to look at and let go of beliefs that may be holding us back could help us to move forward faster, as a mass consciousness.

NDERF: This now takes me back to a question I differed earlier. How do we create our reality?

ANITA: From the perspective of the other dimension, it really felt like nothing is real, only our beliefs about them make them so. Now knowing that, I review what I believe, and only hold on to what serves to expand my life, and let go of anything that feels restricting, or doesn’t make me feel positive in any way.

I feel that once you start believing that something is possible, you start to let it into your awareness, and then it starts to become true for you. The more you believe it, the more it starts to become real for you. This is why it is so, very important to believe in positive things, rather than negative things. Whatever you believe, you will find that you are correct. The universe has a way of presenting to you exactly what you believe. If you think life is great, you are correct. If you think life is tough, you will be proved correct too.

My own personal intention is to bring to people’s awareness what our human body is capable of doing, so that they can let it into their belief system. The more people start to believe it, the more we will start to see this kind of thing happening.

For example, a miracle is only labeled such because it is an event outside of our belief system. Once we see it happen, we can start to believe it. Once we start to believe it, it can then enter into our own reality and happen more and more often. It’s as simple as that.

NDERF: Yes, if our beliefs create our reality, then it certainly is important to believe in positive things, and things that serve us, rather than things that work against us. But how do we do that in a world that is seemingly so full of negativity?

ANITA: Remember I said earlier that I felt that the Universe is within me? The external world is only a reflection of my internal world!

A lot of people say that the world is very negative, but that’s not exactly true. Look around you. EVERYTHING exists simultaneously in this universe, the positive as well as negativity. There is poverty, there is wealth, there is sickness, there is health, there is love, and there is hatred and fear, and there is happiness and there is despair, and so on. And there is NOT more negative than positive. It’s just because we choose to see the world in this way, that it feels like there is more negative. And the more we choose to see it this way, and give it our focus and energy, the more of it we draw into our lives, and create it in our own personal reality.

Remember, I believe that this reality is created by mass consciousness. That’s what I felt I broke through, during my NDE. Each of us as individuals ALWAYS has the choice to choose what we want to see and believe as reality.

NDERF: So if someone’s life was not working for them, how would you suggest they turn it around?

ANITA: I love this question. It gives me the opportunity to talk about the importance of unconditional self love. I would strongly suggest practicing unconditional self love.

Remember, I said that the universe is only a reflection of me. If I am frustrated with the way life is working for me, it is futile to change the external elements without looking at what’s going on internally. A lot of us are very negative towards ourselves. We are our own worst enemies. The first thing I would say is to stop judging yourself and stop beating yourself up for where you are in your life right now. If I am finding that I am constantly frustrated with people, and judging them, it is because that is how I am internally treating myself all the time. I am only expressing outward my own inner dialogue to myself. The more I love myself unconditionally, the easier it is for me to see beauty in this world, and beauty in others.

If I can love myself and not judge myself, and see my own perfection, then I will automatically see all these in others! And the more I love myself, the more love I will have for others. It’s not possible to love another more than you love yourself. Contrary to popular belief that it’s selfish to love yourself, this is just so not true. We cannot give what we do not have.

No matter where you are, it is only the culmination of your thoughts and beliefs up to that point. And you can change it. Remember, I reversed my cancer at the 11th hour. Even when the doctors said it was too late, it was still not too late. So the first thing is to realize that it is NEVER too late to do something, or change anything. It’s important to see the power that the present moment holds in turning our life around.

If you believe in things like “like attracts like” then the absolute best way to attract what’s best for you is to love yourself to the point where you are filled with love, and will only attract to your life everything that confirms this belief about yourself. It’s actually very simple, really.

NDERF: Can you tell me, how does one become unconditionally loving in a world that is not always loving?

ANITA: First of all, remember that I feel that the universe is only a reflection of me. So the unconditional love is not extended out to the world (or universe), it is unconditional love that I extend inwardly, towards myself! Each day, I learn to love myself unconditionally.

Also, let me explain that there is a difference between “being loving” and “being love”.

Being loving means giving love to another whether you have any for yourself or not. It means giving what you yourself may or may not even have to give. This type of giving of love can eventually drain you, because we don¹t always have a limitless supply. And then we look to the other to replenish our pool of love, and if it is not forthcoming, we stop being loving ourselves, because we are exhausted.

Being love, on the other hand, means loving myself unconditionally so that it overflows, and anyone and everyone around me just becomes an automatic recipient of my love. The more I love myself, the more it flows out to others. It almost feels like being a vessel for love to flow through. When I am being love, I don¹t need people to behave a certain way in order for them to be a recipient of my love. They are automatically getting my love as a result of me loving myself. So to stop being love, to me, means to stop loving myself. Hence, I will not stop being love on account of another.

NDERF: So how would you suggest someone elevate their own loving energy?

ANITA: I feel it’s my self-dialogue that either elevates or diminishes the energy I radiate outwards. When my inner dialogue turned against me, over time, it depleted my energy, and caused a downward spiral in my external circumstances. I was always really, really positive on the outside, effervescent, loving, etc. etc. and still my world was crumbling around me, and I was getting depleted, and sicker and sicker.

Sometimes, when we see someone who is really positive and effervescent and kind, yet their lives are crumbling around them we may think “see, this being positive thing doesn’t work”. But see, here’s the thing. WE DON’T KNOW that person’s own inner dialogue. We don¹t know what they are telling themselves, inside their own heads, day in and day out.

Remember, I am not advocating “thinking positive” in a Pollyanna-ish sort of way. “Thinking positive” can be tiring, and to some people it can mean “suppressing” the negative stuff that happens. And it ends up being more draining.

I am talking about my own mental dialogue to myself. What am I telling myself, day in and day out inside my head. I feel it¹s so very important not to have judgment and fear in my own mental dialogues to myself. When our own inner dialogue is telling us we are safe, unconditionally loved, accepted, we than radiate this energy outwards and change our external world accordingly.

I also think it is very important to see perfection in the moment. The present moment is very powerful. Each moment holds promise, and each moment can be a turning point for the rest of your life.

I am often misunderstood when I say that each moment is perfect. And that everything is perfect. People are afraid of seeing perfection in a situation that is not of their liking, thinking that seeing perfection means not changing it. To me, seeing perfection does not mean keeping the situation static. It means seeing perfection in exactly where you are in your journey right now, no matter where that may be. Seeing perfection in the journey. Seeing perfection in the becoming. Seeing perfection in the value of the mistakes as you are becoming. Seeing perfection in the moment, wherever in the journey that moment might be. That is seeing perfection.

NDERF: This is very powerful — being able to change the exterior in a very positive way, just by changing our internal world with a positive, self-loving, inner dialog. This is a very clear explanation of “The Universe is Just a Reflection of Me”. It also explains why there is so much negativity in the world. It must be a reflection of other people’s negative inner dialogs, being projected outwards. Is that what you feel?

ANITA: Yes, that is exactly what I feel. You want to know the best part about feeling this positive energy about yourself? I don’t feel I even have to say anything to anyone to uplift them, but just because of my own loving self talk to myself, people around me feel my positive presence. Without even having to say anything, you will start to notice people being attracted to your positive presence, and be energized by your energy. Your positive inner dialogue helps elevate others around you even when you are not saying anything to them, just thinking positive thoughts about yourself!!!! Because energy just radiates and flows out and touches others!! This is why this self loving inner dialogue is so very important in making a better world.

Have you noticed that there are people who just seem to light up a room when they walk in? Or people you just notice, even in a crowd because they are just radiating energy? You can bet that they have a very positive and strong self image and are running some very positive internal self dialogue programs.

What are we internally telling ourselves each and every day? Are we just beating ourselves up, and judging ourselves? Are we too hard on ourselves, and are we our own worst enemy? That’s the real work!! I feel we must start by changing that inner dialogue, by loving ourselves more and more, and then, even without having to say or do anything to anyone, the whole outer world changes to reflect that inner world. I have really noticed my physical world and others around me reflecting this.

NDERF: You’ve mentioned this feeling of oneness before. The connection to everything and the all that is, which you felt while in the NDE state. Can you elaborate a little more on this feeling?

ANITA: In that NDE state, I felt like I was connected to everything. I was everything, and everything was me. It’s something that is so hard to explain, because the right words just don’t exist. It felt like there is no separation, until we come into physical life and look at the world through the mind. In fact, it felt like the separation IS the mind.

There was SO much clarity in that state, but somehow, it did not feel like the clarity came from the mind. It’s as if something else was doing the understanding, and that something else was able to identify the mind as being separate, and the mind as being the cause for disconnection from the all that is. It felt like the ego and the mind were one. So in that state, which is beyond the mind, there was no ego and no attachment. And all was one. The connection was felt with EVERYTHING. There was no discrimination and no judgment against ANYONE or ANYTHING. Any crime committed, or any sickness of the body all stemmed from the same thing. All stemmed from a separation and disease of the mind, and is also caused by how the mind interprets the separation.

If we are able to stand outside the mind, there is no problem. We are perfect. Even imperfection is the creation of the mind. Judgment too. EVERYTHING. But as soon as we get “into” our minds, we feel a need to process, and see separation in order to understand. But ALL stem from the mind. In truth, we are not our minds.

Yet, when in that state, even though I felt one with everything, I still seemed to recognize myself as a separate being from the oneness, as if I had my own evolution. It was like I had this mind, which is not me, but I sort of … had an obligation to “evolve” it as best as I could, but I was OUTSIDE of my mind looking at it. When we are in the physical, we are INSIDE our mind looking out. And the separation between all becomes more glaring and obvious.

It felt like all the problems and the issues of the world stemmed from too much mind identification. That is the illusion. The mind is the illusion.

But I believe we always have the choice to wake from this illusion. If I become awake, then by extension, those around me are affected accordingly. We can live in this world, but choose not to live in the illusion. We can choose to see right through the illusion and yet express ourselves in the physical. After my NDE, it feels like this illusion is just human construct. A construct of the mind.

NDERF: And speaking of “mind,” what are your thoughts on telepathy? Do you see it as mind to mind communication?

ANITA: It definitely feels like something from beyond the mind, and not mind to mind. To me, it feels like it’s the connection we have with each other like I described above, the connection with the oneness, the all that is.

I feel that we connect with others when we are in touch with that universal connection. Here’s what it feels like for me. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I am able to telepathically communicate with you. What has happened is that I have cleared my mind, and made it more transparent and become more connected to that universal oneness, and you are doing the same thing. So, you and I are sort of accessing the same pool of “oneness” info. But the reason it feels like mind to mind communication is because here in the physical, we are both communicating and connecting on the mind level. But because we are both accessing the same info at the same time from that oneness pool, and then when we use our mind to communicate with each other, we notice we have both come to the same conclusion, and then we interpret it as our minds have communicated to each other. But actually, we’ve both tapped into the same “oneness” pool. That’s sort of how it feels to me.

This is why I feel it is important to keep clearing the attachments of the mind, and make it more open to being connected to this oneness. And then the people who are appropriate for us, will connect with us because they will be at the same level of this clarity, and will be accessing this same oneness pool from the same level we are. People who are closed are walking around in a fog, colliding with others who are also in the same fog, and they are fumbling and struggling along with life. Whereas those with the clarity are transparent, and practically walk right through the ones in the fog. And no one can bump into them or derail them, because they are so transparent and light in their energy. That’s kind of how it feels like to me.

NDERF: I’d like to go a little deeper into your life, perhaps a little into your past, your beliefs, and how you currently live your life. In your NDE you said you understood everything about why you were who you are. Can you elaborate a little more on that and your specific life situation, like your cultural upbringing and any religious beliefs you may have?

ANITA: OK. I am multi cultural and multi lingual. My parents are from India, I was born in Singapore, my grand parents lived in Sri Lanka, but I grew up in Hong Kong, and I had a British education. In addition, when I started working, partly because of my linguistic skills, my work entailed my traveling all over the world.

I was born a Hindu, but am not a practicing Hindu. I went to a multi-national school and was surrounded by Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, and so on, as well as people who weren’t religious at all. Growing up in Hong Kong, religion is not a big factor in our life, because Hong Kong is very multi cultural. Spiritual beliefs just seem to be a philosophy that people weave discretely into their own lives.

I personally have no strong beliefs of any denomination, one way or another.

When I was still studying, I was very confused because I couldn’t understand the glaring contradictions between the different religions (because I was exposed to many religions), nor could I understand the glaring contradictions between the religions and the sciences. I couldn’t understand how we could be taught one thing in a religious studies class, about the creation of life, and then learn something completely different, about the same topic, in a science class. I spent a lot of years searching for answers to my confusion, but never found anything satisfactory. Until I had my NDE, that is. Now I don’t search anymore. I still don’t know all the answers, but I don’t feel the need to search anymore. I feel death taught me how to live life.

Anyway, during the NDE state, I understood the importance of my being multicultural, and I understood why I had been exposed to extremes in culture and education (a combination of Eastern and Western). It just all became so, so crystal clear to me. When I was given the choice of whether to come back or not, my initial thought was to continue to go into death, because in that state, there is no attachment to loved ones here. But immediately, it was followed by the understanding, or clarity of “I now understand! So let me go back into life and live with this new understanding!”

Also, there was a lot of clarity around why my (absolutely wonderful) husband is who he is, and why we had come together. I understood that there was still a lot we had to do together, and that if I chose death, he would follow shortly after, as it felt like our purpose was very linked. It also sort of felt like I would be missing out on a lot of the gifts that life still held for me, as a result of who I had become up to this point in my life if I did not come back. In a way, it sort of felt like…”The work is done. The stage is set. Now just go and be”. Words aren’t adequate, but that’s sort of it.

NDERF: In your NDE, you mentioned getting a glimpse of a previous life. Do you believe in reincarnation, and do you think it’s because of your Hindu background?

ANITA: Actually, truth be told, it’s because of my Hindu background that I interpreted it that way — as a past life. But in actuality, it felt like everything else I was experiencing in that state. It was all happening simultaneously. So in actual fact, it felt like a parallel life. I also saw my future, and it all felt just as real. Past, present and future. It all felt like it was happening simultaneously.

There are certain aspects of my experience that even my own mind sometimes has trouble grasping. But hopefully it will come to me sometime in the “future”, as I expand my own thinking to encompass it. It’s to do with time and space not existing in that dimension. So, in answer to your question, I feel we have to change our concept of time, and how we understand time, to really grasp an understanding of it. It certainly didn’t feel like “consecutive lives” or “consecutive events” the way we understand it here in the physical.

NDERF: Can you elaborate a little more on how you now live your life, while being able to see “beyond the illusion?”

ANITA: I sometimes hesitate to use the word illusion, because while we are here, it feels very real, and it’s the only reality most of us know. It can be frustrating for people who feel pain to hear that it’s only an illusion. But that’s not exactly how I mean it. If I may use it in this context, this is what I mean.

Bear in mind that during that state, it felt like I woke up into a different reality, a reality where time and space does not exist, and from that perspective, this physical reality looked like an illusion — a dream. It felt like even time is an illusion, which we need in the 3D (physical state) so our mind can process information in a linear fashion. Remember, in that realm, even brick and mortar walls and physical distance did not stop me from knowing what I needed to know. And there was no separation in terms of past present and future either. All was simultaneous. It felt like our physical mind needs to create the “illusion” of time and space in order to process this in a linear fashion.

It felt like I had awoken to a state that went beyond mass consciousness, and that the life I had been living up to this point was just an illusion/dream created by my thoughts and beliefs and also a culmination of mass consciousness. It was in this clarity, that I saw that even my cancer was part of the illusion, caused by my mind and who I believed I was up to that point in time. I saw that who I truly am is a perfect and powerful magnificent spiritual being. I understood that no one on this planet is more or less spiritual than another. It’s just whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

And now, I can’t seem to live my life in any other way than with this knowing that there is nothing to forgive, nothing to judge, (these are all part of the illusion — mass consciousness beliefs). And I now feel that “God” is something that is within me, within you, and within every living creature on this planet. So how can we not be perfect?

So in answer to your question, I feel that the physical world is set up for us to see imperfection, especially in ourselves. However, the more I look through that “illusion” and can recognize my own magnificence and express it, and the more perfection I see in myself, the more wonderfully I am seeing my life unfold. Remember, I am not saying look for perfection in the world. I am saying, look for perfection in yourself. In your journey and in your becoming. And you will see it reflected back to you in the world. Life has become easier, and I have become much more loving as a result. That is how I see beyond this “illusion”.

NDERF: Which leads me to the question of your purpose. So would you say that your purpose now is to just be here, in the physical, and express yourself in the physical, or is there something more?

ANITA: To me, the purpose is BEING. And that is different from being HERE. The focus is different. When the focus is on being here, we can get lost here. The physical world is full of “other people’s version” of life. Whereas when the purpose is BEING, it means being YOU, and only subscribing to YOUR version of life (or creating your version of life). To me, it means being an expression of exactly who I am.

My purpose is to be as much me as I can be!

Before my experience, I used to pursue my purpose externally. But after my NDE, I discovered there was nothing outside of myself. And there was nothing to pursue. I just had to be, and the external would fall in to place

NDERF: Can you elaborate a little more on the difference between pursuing your purpose externally (which is what you used to do), and just “being” which is what you do now?

ANITA: When we “pursue” externally, we seem to see the world as being competitive and limited, and we use external measures to judge our achievements. To me, herein lies the illusion. There is no limited supply of “beingness”. We seem to measure our “beingness” by the achievement of goals. I don’t, and neither do most people who are happy. My point is to shift your views. See the magnificence in your being whether you are rich, or poor, physically impaired or not, with the one you love, or not, and so on.

I am now just focused on being, and am now the creator of my life — that is, the artist of my life. I don’t any more sit and think about the external competition. Each of us is unique, with unique traits and talents. I only have to express my own “beingness” and “uniqueness”. A true artist doesn’t really care about whether there is anyone who can create as well as or better than he. He is too busy expressing himself, purely for the purpose of expressing. He has found something within, and is only expressing his inner beauty, and the world shares in it. The more inner beauty you uncover and express, the more the universe shares in it and reflects it back to you.

That’s the difference between “being” and “pursuing”.

NDERF: Do you think what has happened to you could be attainable by anyone?

ANITA: I don’t know for sure, but it sure feels like it can be. I certainly don’t feel “chosen” or more special than anyone else on the planet. Do I feel I can “recreate” this state, now that I have experienced it? The answer would have to be yes. I feel like I am living my life from this state now.

In terms of others, the way I see it, each person is unique. And each of us processes information differently. Some of us are more logical, some of us are creative, some of us are more scientific, some of us rely on religion for our answers. My point is that it does not matter. We are all unique. I have a method of processing and expressing which may not be suitable to a lot of people. I am only a product of my own life situation.

However, I strongly feel that by whatever means a person processes their life’s information, it should be one that serves them, and expands them and their views of the changing world (not restricts or limits them and their life experiences).

Whatever or whoever you are, open yourself up to the possibility that perhaps life can be different if you think differently from the way you do now.

In terms of what happened to me, if it can happen to one person, why can’t it happen more and more? How can we, as a mass consciousness, allow it? How can we expand ourselves to allow it?

I don’t have all the answers for anyone else except me, because I only know how I process information. I am only able to process how I allow these things to happen to me.

But yet, in the state I am now, I can only see perfection in where I am, at not knowing any absolute answers and making it my own personal journey to expand myself, and experience more each day. As I express myself more and more, I feel more connected with the universe.

However, it does feel to me like an attachment to beliefs, and an unwillingness to let go of them and look at things in a new way is what is holding mass consciousness behind. But hey, that’s just the way I look at things!

NDERF: Can you expand on what you mean by people’s attachments to beliefs and an unwillingness to let go of them may be holding us back as a mass consciousness.

ANITA: It feels to me now that our “physical” lives have been built around things seeming to be a certain way. Bear in mind, though, that people depend on things being a certain way. Livelihoods depend on it. Our health, wellbeing and safety depend on it.

People’s lives are “built” on certain beliefs and their lives work within the framework of everyone around them believing that these things are true. If everyone around you believes in something, you are inclined to believe it too, and think of it as being true. And your life evolves, as a mass consciousness, based on these seeming “truths”. This way of being has been going on for a long time. It has the feel of being solid, with solid foundations. In that 4D state, it felt like, this is how we created this present physical reality — this “illusion”. By everybody believing in the same things. That, in itself, makes it true for the mass consciousness.

If we, as a mass consciousness, believed in something completely different, then the world would be a culmination of that collective belief. From that perspective, it really felt like our collective belief created this “illusion” of truth.

I want to add here, though, that perhaps the way the world is structured right now, it’s just not ready to know the whole truth. Humankind are not ready for the “illusion” to be shattered. Everything is held in place by everyone believing and thinking a certain way.

So if someone came along who is able to see beyond this “illusion”, it is much easier for those still living within the illusion to “shoot” the messenger than to alter this “illusion”. It would cause too much uncertainty and chaos. It can’t be done overnight. Human mass consciousness is not able to come to terms with it. EVERYTHING would have to be looked at differently if people saw through the illusion overnight, and it would cause CHAOS, not peace and love (which those who see beyond the illusion are trying to bring in). Our medical systems, our judicial systems, our education systems, our religious systems would have to be COMPLETELY overhauled and re-evaluated. And it can’t be done overnight.

However, those who see through the illusion, see this. And those who see this, become focused in creating a reality for themselves based on their own truths, rather than what has been created by mass consciousness.

The universe is changing at the pace that it is capable of changing, that’s why those who see beyond the illusion are able to see the perfection in things being “just so”. The so called “strife” that goes on, the wars, the disparity between rich and poor, the contradictions in religion and sciences, this could be just a natural occurrence of a consciousness that is waking up and starting to see through this man made illusion of mass consciousness.

Everything is happening at a pace which is perfect for our fragile consciousness to handle. The way our world is right now, it is not geared up to deal with the REAL TRUTH. The mass consciousness does not yet seem fully ready to handle it. Maybe it never will be. Maybe while we are here, we are meant to deal with things at this level. However, to me, it certainly feels like this ability (to live beyond the illusion) is something that is attainable by the individual, should they choose to do so.

NDERF: Thank you so much, Anita, for taking the time to answer these questions and for going more into depth with your story. Given all the interest your NDE is generating internationally, I think the things you have said here are extremely valuable for helping clarify the complexity of your experience. Much love to you and your family as you continue disseminating your NDE for all to hear!

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PART THREE

IMPORTANT CLARIFYING QUESTION & ANSWER FROM THE NDERF WEBSITE

Original Link

Question: What I found most interesting in Anita’s account is that she talks about the information she got about the influence of her inner attitude on her life. Now if I understood that correctly it is about somehow being totally in tune or such … something like being totally yourself. I would appreciate if she could say more about that. To me, this is actually the key issue about the NDE. What can we gain from it to live life in a better way?

Anita Moorjani: Oh, this one is easy! The number one lesson I learned is that it’s really important to always be me, and to value myself. For me, this insight was the key to understanding why I had cancer. Now I’m not saying I know why others get cancer. But in my case, my biggest insight was that my inability to value myself was one of the key elements that fed my own cancer.

Living in a world where I learned to believe that I am not lovable enough, not deserving enough, and not perfect enough, until and unless I could live up to some unrealistic expectation of what it means to be perfect, is a big part of what caused my body to become sick and fall apart. I bought into a fictitious belief of what it means to be perfect. But my experience caused me to become aware of the fact that I was never less than perfect or less than magnificent. I just thought I was, and thinking and believing these untruths is what eventually drove me to become sick. I had been spending my life, up to that point, trying to attain something I already was.

Also, I used to mistakenly think that “positive thinking” is all that is required to lead a positive life. I learned, however, that it is far more important to be yourself than it is to be positive. And sometimes, being yourself does not necessarily mean being positive, and it’s important to know that that’s ok too.

I agree that it’s good to find things in life to feel positive about, and it’s wonderful if we are able to cultivate a disposition where we can easily find things to feel positive and grateful for. But I have learned to be careful not to deny myself the right to feel bad, negative, angry, etc, when I am really feeling that way. It’s not always easy to be positive, especially if things are not going well at a particular time. So it’s even worse when we are adding to a bad situation by judging our negative feelings about the situation!

Prior to my experience, I would have suppressed those emotions and not allowed myself to express them, because I would have judged them as being negative. I always thought I had to be positive. But by suppressing these emotions, I was denying a very real part of myself. In essence, I was sending a message to myself that parts of my being were not deserving of being expressed. And as I continued to deny these emotions, they only became bigger. As you probably already know, what you suppress only pushes against you even harder. So over a period of time, it became harder and harder to keep those negative emotions under wrap. Which means, it became harder and harder to be the positive person I was trying so hard to be, because I was just so focused on trying to suppress the negative emotions! Trying to stay positive then just becomes an energy drain.

Realizing my magnificence means accepting all my feelings and emotions (and not just the positive ones) without judging them. None of our emotions are actually negative. We only judge and label them so. I have since learned to embrace all my feelings and emotions without judgment, and this makes it much easier for me to be a happier, lighter and more positive person, and relieves me of the burden of trying to be positive during times when I don’t actually feel that way.

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Cami Elizabeth Renfrow

When Cami was 22, she lost control of her car and was crushed when her airborne car landed on top of her. It shattered her sacrum, fractured her skull, and devastated much in between. Cami’s survival and ultimate thriving surprised many medical professionals who worked with the severe injuries. Cami subsequently experienced long, ongoing periods of altered states of consciousness. These experiences illuminated the suddenly self-evident fact that our physical bodies and experiences are manifestations of Consciousness. Years of oppressive chronic pain took their toll, with arthritis and fibromyalgia pain syndromes settling in after the initial trauma recovery. Over time, during moments of quiet, mystical visions and spontaneous healing unwound these layers of pain. Following the path unfolding before her, and with the help of shared information from many wise professional sources, nutrition, homeopathy and changing my thought and movement patterns, the tide turned. Cami’s perceptions and body felt more clarity and freedom than had ever been a part of her experience. Following many personal miracles of recovery, she came to recognize that she was channeling healing energy with focused concentration. This included channeling energy through her hands. By diving into the darkness, Cami’s life has become brighter than ever. She now views her tortuous car accident and its aftermath as the greatest gift she’s ever received and is driven to share what she’s learned with all who want to learn it.

Websites & Background Information:

• Cami’s Story On NDERF
• Cami’s Website: Barefoot Healing

Book:

• Dance Through It

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Excerpt from the detailed, informative, and deeply insightful summary that Cami has posted on NDERF’s website:

“I left my marriage as soon as I could walk again. I experienced ongoing mystical states of consciousness to the point of greatly disrupting my life. I began sensing other people’s emotions and physical states. I dropped birth control and influenced my fertility instead through communicating with my unborn children. I experienced major, major neuroendocrine changes, major electrical disruption to the point I had to stop wearing a watch and many holistic medical tests that rely on the electricity of the body do not work on me. Healer after healer in various modalities said they had never seen what they saw was happening in my body (i.e. shaman, clairvoyant, naturopath…). I got stopped on the street more than once to be asked what the light was around my head, or from light healers who just wanted to make contact. I dropped western medicine — despite a shattered pelvis my children were born at home because they made it clear to me ahead of time that’s how it would be safest and healthiest for all of us. My sexuality/libido radically shifted and orgasms began to fill the room around me rather than my body. My family shifted from a middle class normal house to giving our belongings away and living on the road, following intuition rather than society’s shoulds. I discovered I could heal with my hands (and we ALL have that ability). When I began going to professional holistic medical conferences without any previous training, the teachers called me aside for encouragement, praise of my questions (the most insightful in twenty years of teaching) etc. without any previous training — I seemed to know about healing from the inside out. Everything I’ve learned since has seemed to be remembering rather than learning. We have handled *almost* all of our health challenges as a family with plant medicine, or with our hands. (My healthy five year old son has never needed a doctor — we’ve handled all normal emergencies with energy/spirit/plants). I end up running into person after person who is experiencing difficulties with ‘kundalini awakening’ and I like to help them through.”

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CAMI R NDE
Written by Cami Elizabeth Renfrow
Posted on the NDERF Website

Original Link

EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION:

Accident: Direct head injury

After the initial life-threatening trauma, days later in the hospital during a period of laser-focus on the breath for hours over days was when the greatest shifts occurred — I drifted off between breaths into much deeper states of consciousness than I had reached during the NDE itself. This state seemed to seep in during a long period of time rather than in one swoop as the initial NDE had apparently happened.

Similar states returned many times over the years following, when I would have to rush to privacy before dropping to my knees in gratitude, tears, and revelation/vision/burning-bush quality experiences. They returned full force whenever I was alone in the mountains for years. I had to spend lots of time alone because this ‘other’ world was so much more real and present than this earthly one for a long time and I never knew when the state would hit — not good to be in a grocery store when this happens! People don’t get it when you’ve got tears running down your face and you’re staring at your hands as if you just tried them on for the first time!

I think many of the states that occurred are described in other questions. I will add one portion here that was not addressed:

“Between breaths, I simply slipped from one form of consciousness into a much more spacious and connected and powerful one. From this state I felt honored to keep the body breathing and endure this particular blazing burden. It wasn’t suffering, it was fuel. I was filled with the sheer joy and gratitude of experiencing this particular delicious incarnation, this body and personality. This joy of Self has returned over and over through the years, at times gracing me with a sense of being blessed at every pleasure and pain of being in the flesh. I believe now that this space of being is our birthright and available in any life, once we let go of our definitions and expectations about what we are. In hospice volunteer situations I have seen people in what I believe to be this state in their final days and months, talking with long-gone friends and startled by unexpected visions and messages, as the veil slowly becomes more permeable. It is a gift to us. I don’t believe life and death are binary states.”

Here’s what I’ve gleaned from what was learned during the experience:

LEARN HOW TO DIRECT YOUR WILL AND ENERGY CONSCIOUSLY

The experience of the web of consciousness brought tremendous weight to bear in my own efforts to tame and become aware of the energies I am putting out there. They slip right out and shape consciousness into reality, and if you are fooling yourself about the subtle emotions you’re allowing yourself to have, they are still causing ripples in your life. Our self-honest intentions matter more than we know. The way I like to deal with slippery intentions is not to ignore or suppress them, but to be aware, to notice, to fully experience and listen and digest, then to align and transform the energies through genuine personal emotional alchemy, raising the issue up into the light and beaming the emotions out that would instead be healthiest, integrating the experience into myself. I have found that if you can resolve the situation within you, it usually resolves outside of you as well.

BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUSNESS, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

There isn’t anything you can imagine that can’t be, because it’s all a play of consciousness. Us included. The further I go along this route, the more strange things I hear and see. Nothing is impossible.

AS LONG AS LIFE ITSELF GOES ON, YOU DO TOO

As long as life itself does, in any form, in any world, in any plane of existence, you go on too. Only the frame for the witness shifts. We go on. We exist as life itself, as divinity itself, and we ARE the face of God in this world, every single messed up one of us, every single rock and tree. We Are God.

We Are Divine. At the same time, we’re inherently limited and blemished as humans. Just do the best you can.

AS A PART OF DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS, YOU ARE DIVINE

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself. I exist as I am, that is enough.” – Walt Whitman

We each have within us the same light that shined within Krishna and Jesus and the Buddha and everyone who’s ever carried the torch. We are each Divinity’s opportunity to experience and create a unique face of life, to allow it to shine right through our inevitable, insufferable flaws. And when that particular life form is done, we recycle back into the ocean — a wave that dances and melts back in, to re-form and experience anew, moving our way higher and higher up the spiral of lessons.

FEAR NOTHING – LEAST OF ALL DEATH

“To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” — Walt Whitman

It’s all chosen — by you — through love. There is always a healing path right through the middle of it. The worst you can imagine — the very worst — may even be rejoiced on the other side, and none of it ever goes unnoticed. You have infinite support available to you, whole worlds cheering for you to weather it well and grow with love so you can come home. BE BOLD.

JOY IN INCARNATION

Your higher self incarnated because as a sensate, embodied being you can have experiences your spirit alone cannot. Don’t be afraid of desire. Don’t be afraid of passion, of adventure, of a little sin, of failure, of living in your own unique way. Don’t be afraid of anything. Life truly is a big play — have fun with it, don’t take it so seriously. Life in all its glory goes on, no matter how messy it looks from here and now.

TACKLE IT NOW

You know that part of yourself you’re putting off thinking about? Maybe it’s a relationship or habit. The part you know down deep isn’t quite lined up with the rest of you? Tackle it now. The pattern’s not going to go away without your attention, and eventually (maybe after a few more lives) you will resolve it. Wouldn’t it be more pleasant to just do it now and move on up the spiral?

SELF-HEALING IS YOUR BIRTHRIGHT: THE KEY IS PAYING ATTENTION

We each have the power to heal with our hands. We each have the power to immerse ourselves in direct communication with nature, receiving revelation and insight. We each have the power to use sexual energy as a sacred transformational force. We each have the power to interact with the subtle energies that make up our bodies and world. We have the power to control our fertility and contraception through communication with our unborn children.

KNOWING you have the power makes the difference. And practice, because that will bring it into manifestation. Examine your shadow fearlessly, bringing your unconscious energies into new relationship and alignment with the whole. When we can lovingly recognize our dark and light, and respect the information brought to us by our dark, our flaws, our challenges, our pain, we can begin to channel the energies more effectively and put their power to work for us.

THE MACROCOSM IS THE MICROCOSM

As within, so without. Once you decide to recognize the mirror, you will see how to change its reflection. At this time of increased social, political and environmental change it is even more important to tend to the fires within. We can make the greatest changes in the world by starting with ourselves. Whenever I have an outward situation catch my attention, like a sprained ankle, or strained relationship, it means it is time to settle and look inward for the cause. There is always an energetic root, and it’s an effective place to leverage change.

THE BODY ALWAYS WINS – YOUR BODY IS THE TEMPLE

Our bodies can often signal the way through a sticky situation. Sometimes it’s through a sense of uneasiness in the gut, a sense of ‘Yes’ in the heart, sometimes a tightness in the throat from holding back my own truth. Once you begin decoding it, your body holds infinite information. It is our radar, our antennae, for moment to moment guidance through life. And you can try to overrule it at your peril. I see so many people who refuse to listen to their emotions, their physical symptoms, because they are needed in many other directions. They discount the signals their body is giving because — down deep — they know what it is going to ask them to do and are not ready to face it. So ultimately, the body takes them down with a chronic pain syndrome or disease until they listen and make the changes demanded by the higher spirit working through the body. They can offer self-care early, when it will involve pleasure. Or they can wait to make changes until they’re forced to, when it will involve pain. But ultimately, the body always wins because it is the domain of the subconscious. Nourish and cleanse it with food and movement every day, listen to its wisdom, and feel free to negotiate for clearer communication.

PRACTICE TURNING YOUR THOUGHTS HIGHER

To my great surprise at some point during the near death experience, the smallness of my last thoughts on earth stood out as one of the few things that would be a shame about my death — “Oh, this is going to be a big one. I’m costing us money again.” The death itself wouldn’t have been much of a loss to the fabric of life itself, but those poor, tiny last thoughts were a loss. It seems like we need to hold the highest state we can — ideally through every moment of life, but at least as we pass through the needle. So I try to practice bringing my emotions to the highest space possible — boundless love, a keening gratitude, joy and peace. Surround yourself with books, music and other art that uplifts you, that brings you to a better self, and practice getting there in an instant. Just in case the mountainside comes at you fast.

WE ARE NEVER OUTSIDE THE LIGHT

Blessed be those who are cracked, for the cracks are where the light shines through. The veil just makes us think we have dark within us. We may turn away, hide our faces. But the source of all keeps shining on us anyway, waiting for us to look up and notice. Every day I try to remind all the parts of me to let the light stream through despite unending flaws, despite every day still weaving myself through the human impulses that distract from the stronger desire to be in Oneness. If you squint just right, ugly turns beautiful. When I think of that primal desire at the root of all others, I picture all of us humans like salmon leaping upstream, each in our own way, choosing our own path, our own thrust (maybe even secretly tsk-tsk-ing a neighbor salmon’s trajectory). We’re all after the same thing whether we know it or not.

From the sublime artist to the drunk to the emotional manipulator, we are all seeking reunion. Our decisions make their own logic within the context of where we are and what’s in our way to get back home, and it’s easy to hurt each other by misreading this pure universal desire.

BAD THINGS AREN’T ALWAYS BAD

I believe when we are struck with challenges and suffering and we weather them with the most open heart we can — without blame or recrimination, without grasping, accepting responsibility for all of our own circumstances — we are each claiming a small win for the whole of life. We freely and joyfully chose our family, our flaws, our recurring fights, for our own good.

THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY

For the first ten years after the accident I had rare words for any of this and it remained a burning, insanity-producing secret inside of me that I had no way to unlock. It was physically difficult to open my mouth to discuss it! When I first was experiencing these states, not only did my lips not want to move (it can’t be put into words), but I couldn’t even make the conceptual part of my brain move (it can’t be put into concepts). All of me resisted, wanting nothing to disturb the pervading peace. And as soon as a word started in my mind space, even a nice word like ‘Truth’ or ‘Love’, it diminished the Whole. It implied there was something (truth) and so carved part away from the whole, inherently implying that there is also not something (untruth). It is partially for this same reason that for years afterward I had difficulty using the word ‘I’ without inwardly grimacing at the lie of it all . There is no ‘I’. The sense of I can be shifted to be limitless — it’s only a sense of boundary and perspective. So right here, in this very sentence, I’m lying despite my best efforts.

Do you see the problem here? How simple questions like “How are you?” can become a trap if you’re trying to be painstakingly truthful? Not one of those words can be parsed unambiguously. There was no longer a perspective from which to solidly answer innocent questions. One. Everything we ever need to know comes straight from that one inescapable thing. Call it the Tao, the unity, collective consciousness, or God. Labels only confuse the situation. The map is not the territory.

If anything I say doesn’t resonate with you, toss it out. YOU are the only one who can decide truth for yourself. Take nothing at face value, no matter the authority. They may be speaking truth at their level, but only you can decide if it’s a paradigm that’s useful to you. We are all using the metaphors and perspectives and senses and cultural overlays available to us, and there are hundreds of beautiful books describing similar experiences in modern cultural concepts and terms. Once we break the code of reading metaphorically, most of the world’s sacred books can partially be read as deeply informative symbolism for this same living process as it moves through the various layers and energies of a human being’s life and body.

God is too big to fit inside one religion. Refuse to cling to any definition of what “God” is! It’s certainly not an embodied being or a masculine entity. (The systemic imbalance of a single-gender God is absurd on the face of it.) Even the word “God” felt like sacrilege to me for years, like condensing the ultimate force into a shoebox with sides: there were so many cultural projections onto the concept of “God” of personification, and my experience was not of God as a separate paternal force. Instead I interpret this potent word as the underlying, glorious, intelligent, sublimely loving force that simply IS, leaping again and again into existence through all of us. By this definition, and by my experience, there is nothing that is not God.

Every religion has a branch devoted to the mystical perspective — the Christians have the Gnostics, the Jews the Kabbalists, Muslims the Sufi, Hindi the Jain. I had to reach out to the writings of the mystics and the sacred texts of other cultures, ones who have not separated the body away from the spirit, to understand the process that was beginning to open up in my body electric. I recognize a little inherent kinship with some of the principles of Vajrayana Buddhism: the path of using everything in life — including the dark within us, those things we like to stuff into the shadow — as fuel for burning off the veil. Obsessive reading of archetypal Jungian psychology was crucial in building the dictionary of my own inner messages. But these are labels. Volumes of reading can offer comfort in gaining cultural reference for similar experiences.

Reading and sharing help us know we’re not alone in our human journey. But ultimately, you must bow only to the guru within.

THE GURU IS WITHIN YOU

Everything you ever want to know can open up with enough intense focus. A breeze moving a leaf, birdsong at just the right moment, running water, that soft sense of warmth in your heart…. it is your birthright to learn how to hear the answers springing from the fabric of life around you.

Pay attention.

Throw out your books and allow the living spirit to devour you.

Thanks again for all your work on this important subject.

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

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At the time of your experience was there an associated life-threatening event?

Yes. Crushed under a car — head fracture, shattered pelvis, not breathing or conscious, many other broken bones. (Kind of a traditional NDE — love, light, reunion with love, reincarnation was obvious, imparting of some wisdoms and truths, life review, life planning, return)

Then the deeper more fundamental parts happened later that week during the hospital stay when I doubt my life was in present danger. At that point the catalyst was probably intense pain and an intense focus on the breath for a very long time.

Was the experience difficult to express in words?

Yes. It took me 10 years to begin discussing it, and 16 to finally write it out in a fuller form. Incredibly, incredibly difficult to express. Here’s a snippet from my little eBook about the difficulty of putting these things into words:

Speaking of ‘difficult to express in words’ — I can’t answer your next question because there WAS no time or space. Thoughts couldn’t be sped up because time disappeared. I have no idea the time period this all happened in. All of these questions are incredibly hard to answer because they are using a framework I would not use for the wording.

Here are some of the things I wrote about the futility of words in the eBook Dance Through It available for download at http://barefoothealing.net/dance-through-it .

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness?

AFTER the initial life-threatening trauma, days later in the hospital during a period of laser-focus on the breath for hours over days — I drifted off between breaths into much deeper states of consciousness than I had reached during the NDE itself. This state seemed to seep in during a long period of time rather than in one swoop as the initial NDE had apparently happened.

How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness?

More consciousness and alertness than normal. Everything I describe except the rather mundane out of body experiences, involved a much, much higher level of awareness and exquisite alert sensitivity than ever before. And remaining with me after was a higher presence and intelligence (for lack of a better word) that has never fully left.

All of these experiences make this worldly life look like just a drama or dream. They were all more real than anything I could tell you about this person who still exists, like her name or…

Please compare your vision during the experience to your everyday vision that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience.

Vision was not necessarily part of my experience. Bliss overruled it. Feeling and knowledge and sensation and dazzle overruled it.

Please allow me to comment on #6 above – I can’t answer it truthfully because there was no such thing as time.

Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience.

I didn’t remember much in the way of hearing. Other senses (Gnostic revelation, receiving wisdom, feeling bliss and love beyond words) took hold instead, rather than sight and sound.

I need to answer the following question, #10, here because it is unanswerable for me the way it is written.

During one part of the experience I left the body in a traditional OBE — seeing it from the outside, but not with any mystical quality, just a factual shift in perspective of seeing things from three places at once. So the answer would be the third choice for this part.

During one part of the experiences (the NDE) my body/personality was left behind like clothes dropped onto the floor. I actually had to look around to pick it back up for the life review (and felt only a distant fondness for it — that life wasn’t very important to me anymore). So the answer here would kind of be the second answer.

During one part of the experiences (in the hospital, the greatest shifts and wisdom) I was fully, expansively human much, much greater than the body and not confined to it but very much innately related to it and in charge of making it breath (had to return to the body repeatedly to force it to inhale, then drift away, then return to exhale, then drift away — an eternity between breaths). I was in fact at the time in crushing pain so that certainly would have confused my senses quite a bit. Yet although I was greater than the body, it seemed to be a crystallized/manifest form of the greater human, so I certainly claimed it as mine. Strangely, even the horrifying pain felt like bliss because it was INCARNATION — I was deeply honored to be undergoing it and treasured that mess of flesh I was in charge of. So the answer here would be kind of #3 and also #1. It became clear the body is just a tangible representation of the greater being. I loved it and treasured it and in fact valued every sense it was experiencing as beauty but was not even slightly confined to it. This state returned many times over the years. Bliss.

Did you see or hear any earthly events that were occurring during a time that your consciousness / awareness was apart from your physical / earthly body?

Yes. During the least-mystical parts (the OOB experiences) I watched what was happening — in one part, the car was being lifted off me and I watched from two perspectives (above and below) while in fact being face down and unable to see it at all — and in another part, being above myself in the ambulance.

Later, in the hospital, returning between breaths I was in a state of non duality (perfect oneness) and sensed everyone and everything as all together ONE, playing a scene together. For instance, one time I watched a nurse come in and turn my body over (carelessly) causing such pain I begged silently to die but was unable to force my voice out loud to tell her to stop moving me. Yet at the same time, I saw her as me and saw that she was acting exactly what she was supposed to. As she walked over to me it was as if I was doing it myself, and time and space suspended. These OBE-type or non duality type states were ongoing off and on for years and tremendously confusing.

What emotions did you feel during the experience?

Bliss, belonging, gratitude, joy, connection, pure transmission of knowledge, expansiveness, divinity, infinity, omni-sentience, omniscience, unlimited, lack of time and space, perfection, clean. There was no blame or recrimination and nothing but love. Deep, deep, deep familiarity that makes everything else look like temporary theater.

Did you pass into or through a tunnel?

Uncertain. I am not a person who notices what is going on around me in a tangible, sight and sound sense. I instead sense energies and abstract concepts usually, and always have. And the experience reflected this — my memory is very fuzzy about the transitions, but the wisdom imparted was the most real thing I’ve ever experienced, making the remainder of this life look like a dream.

Did you see an unearthly light?

Uncertain. I FELT the light, rather than seeing it. It was felt as indescribable joy, peace, love, acceptance, connection, infinity, belonging, power. It felt *clean* and there was perfect whole communication between any energies that could be distinguished from each other.

Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice?

I encountered a definite being, or a voice clearly of mystical or unearthly origin. This is tough. There were not only one but many ‘beings’ but at the same time they were just me because we were all one. I didn’t see or hear them but sensed them. And when I came back at first I really just experienced it as ONE and they were various flavors or whispers of the one but I was them and they were me and we were all together ‘God’ — all the details took time to trickle back in.

Did you encounter or become aware of any beings who previously lived on earth who are described by name in religions (for example: Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, etc.)?

No. No, however I experienced the certainly that we all have Krishna/Christ consciousness within — that we are all divine. When I ‘returned’ it was with the knowledge that I was Christ (yes, I know how crazy that sounds and I am a highly flawed person) because we all have that potential within us. Christ is a reality within me, and yet I don’t really know if the person himself ever existed — and it doesn’t matter, because the Christ-love itself is a burning reality / potential within all of us. SO experienced love that you could identify as that if you wanted to, but that’s not the interpretation I had.

Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased (or alive) beings?

Yes, I experienced every loved one I had ever known (and the ones I didn’t think I loved too) all there. The ones who were still incarnate on earth were there (seemed to be split — part of them in the human form, nearly unreachable, and part remained there in the higher form, fully within me and me within them). It was more Going Home than I have ever experienced in this actual life on earth.

In addition, I was given a vision, one of the few that took visual form even though I experienced it mainly as feeling/knowledge. Here is a snippet from my little ebook about this subject:

“I was shown a ‘bank’ of recently dead people (who were no longer people of course, and couldn’t even be seen — they were just energetic entities I could sense — and in fact seemed to be part of me — part of this Force of Love — as much as they were separate beings). Many had died tragic, unexpected deaths.

All were full of joy. Of all the beautiful agony we could see in the loved ones remaining on earth, all of it appeared noble. All of it appeared purposeful. These recently dead were trying to comfort and communicate with the earthly human part of those left behind, nearly laughing with compassionate outreach. It was as if they were trying to wrap their arms around those left behind and say, “Can’t you feel me? I’m right here with you even more than in life because my half of the veil is lifted. No body or personality holds me back from you. I did my job, I died when I was supposed to. Your job is beginning. We are a team, we chose this together, it’s your turn to grow from this and transform it with your open heart. After this life we’ll plan another together as we have so many times. In the meantime let’s get this one right and make good use of your pain for the benefit of all of life. Everything is exactly as it should be and I wouldn’t change it if I could. The only shame of this whole mess is if you let it destroy you and waste the chance for growth. Are you sure you can’t feel me?” It was almost a sense of coaching and cheering and reassuring.

This sense was so powerful that for years after I returned to a more normal type of consciousness, anytime I heard of a tragedy too big to recover from (losing three children in one day for example) my instinctive first emotion was a genuine sense of gaping awe and respect for the people involved, admiration that they would sign on for such difficulties, and for the potential for growth and useful power in proportion to their pain.

In addition, some of this communication seemed to go on between recently dead and people back in the world who were NOT loved in this life but perhaps nemeses(!). They were part of the soul group and beloved teammates in growth nonetheless, and the sense of love between them at that higher level was equal to that between people who had played a pleasant role in each other’s lives.

Did you become aware of past events in your life during your experience?

Yes. During the life review this was what happened:

Here I could see the whole picture, how every thought and motivation of the previous life passage snaked tendrils of manifestation into the world and how each tendril rolled out to affect other people and all of life. I felt everything. Every little kindness. Every subtle dig, each moment of carelessness, the wasted potentials, the comfort passed on to others, the secret joys, impatience, self-pity, a genuine smile to a lonely person at the right moment…. Ripples from a tossed pebble, I experienced how everyone experienced my actions and intentions, and how everyone they affected felt, and so on down the chain of action and reaction flowing even into nature itself. More importantly, I could see the bar — how things could have been if enacted with pure love. Each action was balanced by its effect on the life force in total. The chain ran from my link back up, retracing and revealing why I made the choices I did, why my full intentions were not in alignment with my professed goals, saw the causes and effects throughout multiple lifetimes. It was as if the web of this incarnation was a soft silk and we were holding it up to examine thread by thread, seeing how it draped in all directions from each point we lifted, seeing where the tensions ran through other layers and other lifetimes.

With this review there was no blame, no shaming, no rejection. The supportive sense around me remained lovingly, fully understanding, as if actively trying to both celebrate the successes and compassionately witness the total alongside me.

Regardless of who we are, we’re ALL embraced with loving compassion at death and throughout our lives. We are never out of the light, not any part of us. I saw that imagining ourselves to have parts that are hidden from the light is its own punishment, but the light is always there, patiently and fully shining on anything we’re willing to expose. We are our own judge, and the dark of our separation must be its own hell in the end. The review was overwhelmingly a time of gratitude, ecstasy, joy and surprise from the chain of good effects from small loving actions. I saw how easily our most subtle intentions ripple through the life surrounding us, and how kind acts must be accompanied by self-honesty to have their full power, how good acts lose their power if they are accompanied by misaligned intentions. I could see that the same joy of heaven on earth can be created as a living force while we’re alive.

Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world?

A clearly mystical or unearthly realm. The moment of transition from this life is utterly alone, for each of us. But as my body launched through the windshield, it pitched me headlong through the limits I had known in life as a human being, and I emerged into the deep familiarity and recognition of the Tribe of Life itself. Peace permeated my awareness, and a love that for years brought a cry of gratitude just from the memory.

From Dance Through It:

A primal space within recognized this state of being from before birth, from between lives. (Lives! There were so many of them!) I felt the bright embrace of being recognized, truly known and understood, and fully actively loved in spite of it all by the flavors and whispers of life present. I was clean, and I was home. Time and space fell away as the constructs they are, and I expanded into a sense of connection and simultaneous awareness of the inner intentions of every energetic body there. Although these energies could be distinct, the overriding truth was clear: together we were one intertwined, infinite Being, connected through full innate awareness and sentience of all life at once. So dazzling and convincing was it all that my current life and identity dropped away unnoticed like clothes carelessly shed onto the floor.

It seemed the whole of existence and human experience permeated the air, retrievable with the flick of intention: every language, every tear drop, every shed skin cell, every body of music, every story, every loss, every secret. It was everything I’d ever wanted to learn, everything there was to learn, right there ready to spring into awareness with the slightest intention. More vivid and self-evident than anything I had experienced in life as a human, it still is the most undeniable thing I’ve ever witnessed. I’d trust the knowing that came from this, before answering the simplest fact like What’s your name? or When did you start your current job?. As much as those things seem like they have a straightforward answer, this deep level of knowing made them look like fun trivia you’d memorize about a character in a book. So this was death. Now I remembered.

Did time seem to speed up or slow down?

Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning. There was no time or space during the NDE itself or in the state of experiencing pure consciousness that came later. Here is what I write in Dance Through It:

This (having my attention called to the life review) was the only part of the experience that had a sense of time — a realization that it was now time for a transition. Otherwise time seemed to be only an occasionally useful construct rather than part of the fabric of reality. To break the flashes into stages I have to narrate its shape with space and time, because that’s the way we conceive our world. But it didn’t happen in any special order or place. Heaven isn’t ‘up there’. It isn’t even a place. Even when we leave our bodies we aren’t really even going ‘up there’ except in the more material, earthly perception. There is no ‘up there’. There is no first this, then this, then finally that. Cause and effect, the path taken and the path untaken, the before and after, fate and free will, inside and outside, me over here and you over there… they are all illusions of the one piece of fabric that weaves it all together. Time and space are necessary constructs to tell the story.

Did you suddenly seem to understand everything?

Everything about the universe. Actually I shouldn’t say everything. It was instead everything I turned my attention to that I understood — it was all available but not at once, needing my intention and attention to bring the wisdom in.

I very strongly know that any language, song, memory…. in history is available to us in the ether – at various times in my life since this experience I have felt any and all knowledge was available to me with the flick of intention. Not to say I can actually manifest it, but they’re all out there and available. In fact in later years much of the healing work I learned came in this way — dense scholarly works on obscure holistic methods made perfect sense deep within me, as if I had already read or written them.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?

Uncertain. Things are *still* coming back to me(!) after all these years but I don’t remember I boundary. I do remember resignedly slipping back into duality/polarity/the veil at one point, described below. I also remember that back in the ‘real’ world in the hospital later, at one point I begged (within) to die and got a solid, resolute rejection of NO because the choice had already been made. This felt ridiculous because death/life already felt so porous, no solid boundary between them.

Did you come to a border or point of no return?

I came to a definite conscious decision to return to life. I don’t remember the decision itself but do remember this:

Here, in reviewing the past, we planned the future. As part of the life review I willingly laid out the challenges and flaws of the next stage of incarnation (which ended up being in the same life and body). Like all spirits in the review process, this benevolent team of energies and I chose together to leverage past strengths for the good of others and for future growth, to put certain obstacles in place for the better flow of the stream. I worked out with my soul group what roles we were to play in the coming life this time, cruel antagonists appreciated equally to tender lovers. This was co-choreography of the life ahead, a complex dance planned with a bit of room for improvisation. Although we were aware of the difficulties we were taking on and certainly didn’t desire them for the sake of suffering, we yearned for the growth and ultimate reunion the lessons would bring us. No one I saw was eager to again experience the separation brought by the veil of illusion — the veil that makes us believe we are all distinct, finite beings, the veil that offers us the narrative of time and space.

Despite the reluctance to slip again into the confusion of duality, separation and polarity, I felt a sense of resolve, determination and honor and an eagerness to enact my mission. (Oh, but to figure out what the mission is once back in duality! That’s another book!) Cheering well-wishes rose from behind the curtain as I headed out to take the stage.

Also, during one of the stages to come later in the hospital I distinctly remember being lowered back into duality as if from the feet up, like being dipped into a distasteful but necessary swamp. I felt the pure awareness split into polarities as I slipped into the swamp — bad and good, light and dark, male and female all split off from the whole, making a big mess I had chosen to undergo once again. I DO NOT REMEMBER if I made the choice or if it was made for me. I certainly agreed to it and planned for it eagerly but don’t know if there was ever an option to truly die or if this was always planned for me life as a re-set for the next stage. So my answer to this question is meaningless since “I don’t know” is not an option.

Did scenes from the future come to you?

Scenes from the world’s future. This is tough, because I’m not sure these things came in during the NDE itself. I think they may have come in afterward. Many insights about the nature and future of humankind came in but not in a Nostradamus-type way.

During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness suggesting that there either is (or is not) continued existence after earthly life (“life after death”)?

Yes. It was self-evident that we go on as long as life in any form on any plane does. We are unlimited, unbounded, divinity, and only our frame of awareness shifts at the moment of death. (to a much more pleasant state, by the way!)

During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness that God or a supreme being either does (or does not) exist?

Yes. There is nothing that is not god. Here is what I wrote in Dance Through It:

God is too big to fit inside one religion. Refuse to cling to any definition of what God is! It’s certainly not an embodied being or a masculine entity. (The systemic imbalance of a single-gender God is absurd on the face of it.) Even the word God felt like sacrilege to me for years, like condensing the ultimate force into a shoebox with sides: there were so many cultural projections onto the concept of God of personification, and my experience was not of God as a separate paternal force. Instead I interpret this potent word as the underlying, glorious, intelligent, sublimely loving force that simply IS, leaping again and again into existence through all of us. By this definition, and by my experience, there is nothing that is not God.

During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness that you either did (or did not) exist prior to this lifetime?

Yes. Reincarnation was self-evident, so much so that when it was ‘time’ for the life review I actually had a jolt when trying to remember which life it was I had just discarded that needed to be reviewed. We go on forever, and there is no time — so there is no such thing as ‘prior to this lifetime’.

During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness that a mystical universal connection or unity/oneness either does (or does not) exist?

Yes I AM. There’s no other way for me to answer this. The whole experience was in this state of unity, and this sense of one/non duality lasted a long time afterward, washing in waves and confusing the hell out of me when trying to navigate in this earthly life! I had a very hard time fitting my boundaries back to something we call ‘I’ because ‘I’ had been completely wiped out. It is just a matter of shifting boundaries.

During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness regarding earthly life’s meaning or purpose?

Yes. Horrible things were celebrated (by OURSELVES!!) as beauty and opportunity. Please see my writing above about the recently dead trying to contact loved ones to see more about this. Bad things are rarely actually bad! We chose it ALL ourselves from the highest level of wisdom and omniscience, not with eagerness for suffering but for growth and reunion (the lifting of the veil).

During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness regarding earthly life’s difficulties, challenges, or hardships?

Yes. Horrible things were celebrated (by OURSELVES!!) as beauty and opportunity. Please see my writing above about the recently dead trying to contact loved ones to see more about this. Bad things are rarely actually bad! We chose it ALL ourselves from the highest level of wisdom and omniscience, not with eagerness for suffering but for growth and reunion (the lifting of the veil).

During your experience, did you encounter any specific information / awareness regarding love?

Yes. Love is the primal force. Love is the light. Love heals.

And of course the Golden Rule is the only rule that matters in the life review.

During your experience, did you encounter any other specific information / awareness that you have not shared in other questions that is relevant to living our earthly lives?

Yes. I write extensively about the ‘gleanings’ in Dance Through It.

But here is what I wrote about the most important, transformative part of the experience, watching intention move across consciousness to create form.

I crossed into a state that was deep, fundamental, irreducible. An ocean of exquisite sensitivity, of Omni sentience (sensing everywhere at once), turned me inside out to reveal itself at the core. Losing every sense of distinction, I floated as part of this gloriously intelligent web of light. Even the awesome flavors and energies from previous states of consciousness looked trivial compared to this luminous irreducible force, this field of existence. It seemed to be an order of magnitude different from the earlier experiences. This was the force of consciousness itself. There was no ‘I’ left whatsoever, not even the broad perspective from the life review. My boundaries as a human and as a spirit were completely erased. Witnessing from a localized single point, my perspective was simultaneously spread through the multidimensional, nonlocalized perspective of the entire web. There was no end and no beginning, like the lake underneath the forms that dance through our lives. This was beyond bliss, beyond truth, beyond peace and ecstasy and all the searing emotions of the previous stages. It was stillness in the middle, consciousness without form.

In the distance a gentle wave swelled up, moving across the ocean of light toward the point of perspective assigned to me. As it arose I became aware that this wave was the concerns, prayer, and emotions being streamed toward me from hundreds of people I knew in this life and from many others who had only heard about my situation. My point of perspective rose as the wave reached it, and correspondingly I was lifted, just a little, from the pain in my body. It became a little lighter to bear.

I had just viscerally witnessed prayers and intentions became physical, tangible reality. (In using the word ‘prayer’ I mean something an atheist could easily do as well as a theologian û no special form, just focused will propelled by the power of love and concern. ) It was made known to me that this was Consciousness creating Form through Intention. Nothing exists until it rises into form on this field. Every single bit of material in the world — even the computer or paper you’re reading this on, and the stardust that nourishes your marrow, and the paint on the wall, and the dog you love, and each single hair on his loppy ear must have begun there on the sacred field of consciousness, shaped by the impulse of intention. There is no ‘there’ there. Coming back into this human life, this is the single most vision that set my mind back to zero, like a child, as I struggled to understand how to interact in this world again — this world of imaginary objects and entities. For the rest of my life I have watched as the most fleeting and buried intentions — the ones we don’t even think we have — manifest in external situations within our health or circumstances or in others. Undigested impulse and well-suppressed emotion snake out to wreak havoc externally. They create material situations and tangible real-world repercussions. I see that one of the greatest jobs I’m given in this life is to wrestle these very human energies into unified, directed control of a heart- and mind-empowered will.

This is why in our physical and emotional health, healing modalities from the spiritual or energetic level — the level of intentions taking form — are often the most effective approach. Intervention at this higher level stirs change through all the layers of our being at once, and allows us to integrate the power from our health challenge rather than trying to cut it out or suppress it.

Did you have a sense of knowing special knowledge or purpose?

Yes. This sounds nuts but I came back feeling as Krishna/Christ, that I needed to churn and transform energies on behalf of the world, and that we EACH have this within us. It is my job to help other people wake up. Not to mention help myself fully wake up!

What occurred during your experience included:

Content that was both consistent and not consistent with the beliefs you had at the time of your experience There was one point of specific surprise, and that was that my final thoughts when dying mattered tremendously to life itself and to my own continuation. The state of emotions when passing through the needle seems to matter. I was actually surprised by this at the time I realized it. I had always believed that our overall life mattered more than any one second of it but that moment of dying does seem to matter. ( I cover this better in Dance Through It) SO now I always practice turning my thoughts and emotions higher so I can get there in an instant — just in case.

How accurately do you remember the experience in comparison to other life events that occurred around the time of the experience?

I remember the experience more accurately than other life events that occurred around the time of the experience Most of my life events at the time are a blur. I was in a huge state of pain and disability and it’s all a jumble. This stuff I’m writing about today is all more real to me than anything that happened in my life before, during or since.

Discuss any changes that might have occurred in your life after your experience:

I left my marriage as soon as I could walk again. I experienced ongoing mystical states of consciousness to the point of greatly disrupting my life. I began sensing other people’s emotions and physical states. I dropped birth control and influenced my fertility instead through communicating with my unborn children. I experienced major, major neuroendocrine changes, major electrical disruption to the point I had to stop wearing a watch and many holistic medical tests that rely on the electricity of the body do not work on me. Healer after healer in various modalities said they had never seen what they saw was happening in my body (i.e. shaman, clairvoyant, naturopath…). I got stopped on the street more than once to be asked what the light was around my head, or from light healers who just wanted to make contact. I dropped western medicine — despite a shattered pelvis my children were born at home because they made it clear to me ahead of time that’s how it would be safest and healthiest for all of us. My sexuality/libido radically shifted and orgasms began to fill the room around me rather than my body. My family shifted from a middle class normal house to giving our belongings away and living on the road, following intuition rather than society’s shoulds. I discovered I could heal with my hands (and we ALL have that ability). When I began going to professional holistic medical conferences without any previous training, the teachers called me aside for encouragement, praise of my questions (the most insightful in twenty years of teaching) etc. without any previous training — I seemed to know about healing from the inside out. Everything I’ve learned since has seemed to be remembering rather than learning. We have handled *almost* all of our health challenges as a family with plant medicine, or with our hands. (My healthy five year old son has never needed a doctor — we’ve handled all normal emergencies with energy/spirit/plants). I end up running into person after person who is experiencing difficulties with ‘kundalini awakening’ and I like to help them through.

There’s a ton more in the book. Here are a few relevant passages:

From the week of the accident on, I was equipped with a few new unwavering aspects to my perspective: Most of them are common to many people who have had similar experiences. An unraveling belief in any existing paradigm of thought an unrelenting obligation to notice everything within my subconscious space an unquenchable desire to serve the light, to share what I had come to understand within (and the maddening combination of having no way of showing or telling it and the firm conviction that it couldn’t be conveyed to most people most of the time anyway) a sense of peace and trust that the hurdles and difficulties in my life were deliberately and wisely self-chosen for a highly desired purpose. It is hard to express what a gift this awareness was.

So much of our suffering comes from wondering ‘Why?’ and ‘What if?’. Without these poisons recrimination and remorse — I was free to cleanly endure my battle wounds and transform them a sense of higher presence with me that has never left a buoyant sense of wellbeing deep within despite physical and emotional turmoil on the surface. A sense of detachment from the interactions and personal relationships in my life, a sense of pretending to be this person (this came and went for a few years) a sense of having already accomplished and learned whatever the ‘goal’ was in life, while at the very same time being very painfully aware that I had no concept of any of the details that bridge the two ways of knowing. I was unable to manifest even a small part of that kernel of wisdom within, and was an empty and shallow novice in so many things that mattered to living the kind of life I respected. I felt the strangest combination of all-knowing and knowing nothing whatsoever, of having intimate proximity to the ultimate source of power and at the same time having great difficulty getting my hands on top of my head to wash my own hair. The fast food-loving computer programmer from a lumber town had no idea how to work with the clear-eyed, burning-hearted, child-minded devotee that had taken charge within, and the work of rebuilding a broken body and life gave them both something to do while they sorted themselves out.

The Vedics called the sacrum the sacred bone, seat of the soul, where the coiled snake of Kundalini Shakti resides. This energetic force unleashed in my spine when the pelvis was broken open, a force that burns like electricity through my skin and senses and spirit and every decision I make. It has unfolded and intensified in my life ever since, leading inexorably to growth. My antennae — nervous system — is changed forever. My job here is to burn through emotional and energetic burdens, to transform whatever comes up, and there’s no turning away from it. (Plenty of stumbling, but no turning away!) Wherever this leads, I am willfully along for the ride. This path is so much a guiding force that before I could agree to marry my present husband, I had to warn him that I was already essentially married to something I would and could never leave, and that I didn’t know where it would take me. The remarkable man was cool with that.

Almost ten years ago I dropped conventional forms of contraception and began using communication with my unborn children instead. Actively projecting a No in the years we didn’t want a pregnancy, we sensed their desire to join us as if a cosmic window of fertility had opened, and when we were ready emotionally we invited them in. I remember one night silently extending an invitation to my son to join us, as he had been hovering and waiting. Just days later two chatty voices let me overhear “She’s pregnant, you know.” The other said, “Yes, with a strapping boy.” He himself told me he would be born a little early and it should be at home. Without ever taking a pregnancy test or having missed a day of my cycle, we were announcing our son’s upcoming birth to friends and family. And he is indeed strapping, was born a bit early, channels energy beautifully with his hands, and has a knack for communicating with wild medicinal plants. Two talented midwives helped us welcome both my daughter and son in home births because before and throughout pregnancy the babies — and my own inner guide — impressed to me how important it was for them and for my health as well.

(With a pelvis and sacrum that had been shattered, it wasn’t easy. But the natural births left them with radiant health and a gentle energetic entry, and left me with a far healthier pelvis and hips.) Last year we were shocked to witness my daughter at the age of seven doggedly stride off-path in the Sonoran desert, strike spontaneous yoga poses facing the red setting sun, and break down at the moment of sunset in a transcendent experience that left her crying in wonder for hours, staring at her hands as she cried “I’m so happy to be a little girl!, and swearing off birthday parties and ice cream and swimming, as long as I could stay right here forever being part of the rocks and plants. She has found her inner compass.”

My experience directly resulted in:

Large changes in my life.

Did you have any changes in your values or beliefs after the experience that occurred as a result of the experience?

Yes. Just pointed to some of those above.

Do you have any psychic, non-ordinary or other special gifts after your experience that you did not have before the experience?

Yes. Just described some of them above.

Have you ever shared this experience with others?

Yes. 10 years before first speaking of it in any depth and beginning to manifest the healing talents. 15 years before able to give a speech on it, 16 before able to put it onto paper in Dance Through It.

Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience?

Uncertain.

What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened?

Experience was definitely real. More real than everything else — blew it all out of the water leaving me completely confused about how to interact in this world.

What do you believe about the reality of your experience at the current time?

Experience was definitely real . Same — and it has become a useful force now, instead of just a bewildering one.

Have your relationships changed specifically as a result of your experience?

Yes. Love, love, honesty, growth, love.

Some detachment from personal relationships.

Have your religious beliefs/spiritual practices changed specifically as a result of your experience?

Yes. Described above and in the book with more depth.

At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience?

Yes. Ongoing states afterward that were only semi-predictable (could feel them coming and get to a place of privacy before they hit)

Did the questions asked and information that you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?

No. Some were very hard (and dishonest-feeling) to answer given the words you used. But then no words are adequate. The multiple choice ones feel particularly dishonest but I answered as closely as I could. For example, the word ‘God’ is meaningless and culturally loaded. The question “is your life significant” is complicated.

Please offer any suggestions that you may have to improve this questionnaire. Are there any other questions that we could ask to help you communicate your experience?

THANK YOU for this important work!!!!

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Colton Burpo

Colton Burpo was the four-year old son of a small town Nebraska pastor who during emergency surgery slipped from consciousness and claims to have entered heaven. He survives and begins talking about being able to look down and see the doctor operating and his dad praying in the waiting room. The family didn’t know what to believe but soon the evidence was clear. Colton said he met his miscarried sister, whom no one had told him about, and his great grandfather who died 30 years before Colton was born, then shared impossible-to-know details about each. He describes the horse that only Jesus could ride, about how “reaaally big” God and his chair are, and how the Holy Spirit “shoots down power” from heaven to help us. Colton’s message is that heaven is a real place, Jesus really loves children, and be ready, there is a coming last battle.

Websites & Background Information:

• ‘Heaven Is For Real’ Website
• Wikipedia on ‘Heaven Is For Real’
• ‘Heaven Is For Real’ Dominates Best-Seller Lists
• A Little Boy’s Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
• Pulse on Near-Death Experiences

Book:

• Book: Heaven Is For Real

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MEET THE BOY WHO SAYS HE VISITED HEAVEN AND SAW JESUS
By Michael Inbar
Today.com
March 21, 2011

Original Link

After a burst appendix nearly cost 4-year-old Colton Burpo his life in 2003, his parents were thankful just to have him alive and well. But when he opened up about his brush with death a few months later, they were shocked when he described a very vivid trip to heaven, and spoke of matters about which he had no apparent way of knowing.

During an automobile trip, when Sonja Burpo asked him about his memories of being in the hospital, little Colton replied: “Yes, Mommy, I remember — that’s where the angels sang to me.” A sweet answer, to be sure — but then Colton made his parents’ jaws drop when he told them about sitting in Jesus’ lap, watching his parents while he lay seemingly near death, and meeting his great-grandfather.

But most poignantly, Colton described meeting a sibling in heaven — even though he had no way of knowing that his mother had miscarried two years before he was born, since his parents had never told him.

Jesus and John the Baptist

Todd Burpo began telling of his son’s heaven-sent visions from the pulpit of the Crossroads Wesleyan Church in Imperial, Neb., where he serves as pastor. Word of mouth spread, and the family landed a book deal. The book — “Heaven Is for Real,” written by Todd with co-writer Lynn Vincent — has become a best-seller, with some 1.5 million copies in print since its release in November.

Appearing live on TODAY Monday with Sonja and Colton, who’s now 11, Todd told Matt Lauer he understands that naysayers may believe Colton’s story is a little too heavenly to be true — initially, so did he and Sonja. “At first we were surprised; we never anticipated to talk to our son about these things,” Todd told Matt Lauer.

“We didn’t share at first, and then once we started sharing, people were amazed,” Sonja Burpo added. “They were encouraged by what we were sharing with them.”

Colton was stricken with appendicitis shortly before his fourth birthday. Family guilt was heavy — for five days he lay getting sicker and sicker with what the family believed was stomach flu, which had previously hit Colton’s older sister Cassie.

Little Colton nearly didn’t make it: He lay in a hospital bed for 17 days. When he finally rallied, the family rejoiced — but they were floored when, months later, the boy began matter-of-factly describing what he had experienced when he was in between life and death: seeing Jesus dressed in royal purple, meeting John the Baptist, having angels sing to him to ease his anxiety.

The Burpos believed these were things Colton could have gleaned from his Bible studies. But he also told his mother he saw her talking on the phone in another room while he was having surgery, and saw his father praying in a small room, all while he was seated in Jesus’ lap.

“What caught my attention was he could tell me where I was while he was in surgery,” Todd told Lauer. “The surgeon couldn’t tell me that, the nurses couldn’t, my wife couldn’t tell me where I was praying. But he could tell me.”

Shocking revelation

Colton also spoke of meeting a long-departed relative in heaven, telling NBC News: “I was just sitting by the Holy Spirit and then this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Are you Todd’s son?’ I say yes, and he says, ‘Well, I’m his grandfather.’ ”

Colton said that everyone in heaven has wings. On Monday, he described his great-grandfather “Pops” as being “very big, huge wings, curly hair, a big smile, and he was very nice.”

But the real shocker came when Colton told his mother, “Mommy, I have two sisters.” Sonja told her son that he had to be referring to his oldest sister, Cassie, and his cousin Traci, but he responded: “No — I have two sisters. You had a baby die in your tummy, didn’t you?”

Sonja told Lauer the family had never uttered a word about the miscarriage to Colton — and what’s more, they never even learned the sex of their miscarried child. “It was a private hurt that we didn’t even share with our friends,” Sonja said, adding Colton’s revelation was at first “shocking, but then a relief that she’s OK, which we didn’t know she was a she.”

In a subsequent TODAY segment Monday, Sonja filled in Colton’s description of his meeting with his sister: “He told us what she looked like, and she wouldn’t stop hugging him. And she doesn’t have a name.”

“When he told us about his sister in heaven, that we hadn’t told him about, [it was] another one of those ‘holy cow’ moments — OK, he can’t make this stuff up, he can’t invent this; no memory was planted,” Todd told Lauer. “But the peace that came over us, and the healing, like, ‘Wow, I have a daughter in heaven waiting for me’ — I think a lot of people need that type of hope and healing, too. And I think that’s what a lot of people are finding when they hear Colton’s testimony, to know what they have to look forward to.”

When Lauer asked Colton what heaven looked like, the 11-year-old replied, “Well, there’s a lot of color. There are a lot of people and a lot of angels.”

In his second segment later on Monday, Colton gave Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb some additional details — such as the fact that there are no old people in heaven. “Nobody wears glasses, [and] you’re in like your 20s, 30s.”

Todd Burpo told The New York Times that the family is donating much of the money they make from the book sales. As for Colton, he’s mostly happy his story is helping people.

“People are getting blessed, and they’re going to have healing from their hurts,” the boy told the New York Times. “I’m happy for that.”

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EXCERPT FROM ‘HEAVEN IS FOR REAL’

PROLOGUE

Angels at Arby’s

The Fourth of July holiday calls up memories of patriotic parades, the savory scents of smoky barbecue, sweet corn, and night skies bursting with showers of light. But for my family, the July Fourth weekend of 2003 was a big deal for other reasons.

My wife, Sonja, and I had planned to take the kids to visit Sonja’s brother, Steve, and his family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It would be our first chance to meet our nephew, Bennett, born two months earlier. Plus, our kids, Cassie and Colton, had never been to the falls before. (Yes, there really is a Sioux Falls in Sioux Falls.) But the biggest deal of all was this: this trip would be the first time we’d left our hometown of Imperial, Nebraska, since a family trip to Greeley, Colorado, in March had turned into the worst nightmare of our lives.

To put it bluntly, the last time we had taken a family trip, one of our children almost died. Call us crazy, but we were a little apprehensive this time, almost to the point of not wanting to go. Now, as a pastor, I’m not a believer in superstition. Still, some weird, unsettled part of me felt that if we just hunkered down close to home, we’d be safe. Finally, though, reason  – and the lure of meeting little Bennett, whom Steve had told us was the world’s cutest baby — won out. So we packed up a weekend’s worth of paraphernalia in our blue Ford Expedition and got our family ready to head north.

Sonja and I decided the best plan would be to get most of the driving done at night. That way, even though Colton would be strapped into his car seat against his four-year-old, I’m-a-big-kid will, at least he’d sleep for most of the trip. So it was a little after 8 p.m. when I backed the Expedition out of our driveway, steered past Crossroads Wesleyan Church, my pastorate, and hit Highway 61.

The night spread clear and bright across the plains, a half moon white against a velvet sky. Imperial is a small farming town tucked just inside the western border of Nebraska. With only two thousand souls and zero traffic lights, it’s the kind of town with more churches than banks, where farmers stream straight off the fields into the family-owned café at lunchtime, wearing Wolverine work boots, John Deere ball caps, and a pair of pliers for fence-mending hanging off their hips. So Cassie, age six, and Colton were excited to be on the road to the “big city” of Sioux Falls to meet their newborn cousin.

The kids chattered for ninety miles to the city of North Platte, with Colton fighting action-figure superhero battles and saving the world several times on the way. It wasn’t quite 10 p.m. when we pulled into the town of about twenty-four thousand, whose greatest claim to fame is that it was the hometown of the famous Wild West showman, Buffalo Bill Cody. North Platte would be about the last civilized stop — or at least the last open stop — we’d pass that night as we headed northeast across vast stretches of cornfields empty of everything but deer, pheasant, and an occasional farmhouse. We had planned in advance to stop there to top off both the gas tank and our bellies.

After a fill-up at a Sinclair gas station, we pulled out onto Jeffers Street, and I noticed we were passing through the traffic light where, if we turned left, we’d wind up at the Great Plains Regional Medical Center. That was where we’d spent fifteen nightmarish days in March, much of it on our knees, praying for God to spare Colton’s life. God did, but Sonja and I joke that the experience shaved years off our own lives.

Sometimes laughter is the only way to process tough times, so as we passed the turnoff, I decided to rib Colton a little.

“Hey, Colton, if we turn here, we can go back to the hospital,” I said. “Do you wanna go back to the hospital?”

Our preschooler giggled in the dark. “No, Daddy, don’t send me! Send Cassie … Cassie can go to the hospital!”

Sitting next to him, his sister laughed. “Nuh-uh! I don’t wanna go either!”

In the passenger seat, Sonja turned so that she could see our son, whose car seat was parked behind mine. I pictured his blond crew cut and his sky-blue eyes shining in the dark.

“Do you remember the hospital, Colton?” Sonja said.

“Yes, Mommy, I remember,” he said. “That’s where the angels sang to me.”

Inside the Expedition, time froze. Sonja and I looked at each other, passing a silent message: Did he just say what I think he said?

Sonja leaned over and whispered, “Has he talked to you about angels before?”

I shook my head. “You?”

She shook her head.

I spotted an Arby’s, pulled into the parking lot, and switched off the engine. White light from a street lamp filtered into the Expedition. Twisting in my seat, I peered back at Colton. In that moment, I was struck by his smallness, his little boyness. He was really just a little guy who still spoke with an endearing (and sometimes embarrassing) call-it-like-you-see-it innocence. If you’re a parent, you know what I mean: the age where a kid might point to a pregnant woman and ask (very loudly), “Daddy, why is that lady so fat?” Colton was in that narrow window of life where he hadn’t yet learned either tact or guile.

All these thoughts flashed through my mind as I tried to figure how to respond to my four-year-old’s simple proclamation that angels had sung to him. Finally, I plunged in: “Colton, you said that angels sang to you while you were at the hospital?”

He nodded his head vigorously.

“What did they sing to you?”

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Howard Storm

Howard Storm (born October 26, 1946, in Flushing, New York) is a former atheist and art professor and chairman of the art department at the Northern Kentucky University, best known as the author of the book My Descent Into Death about his near-death experience (NDE). According to Nancy Evans Bush, a near-death researcher specializing in “distressing” near-death experiences, Storm’s NDE is the best known of contemporary distressing NDE accounts. Storm’s account has been termed probably the most complete description among NDE accounts of evil spirits in another world. Storm’s NDE has been cited frequently in near-death studies literature both before his book was published and afterward. The book was originally published in 2000 and, after being noticed by author Anne Rice and supported by her, was acquired by Doubleday and re-published as a hardback book in 2005. Storm has told his story to numerous audiences and appeared on NBC’s Today Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, 48 Hours, Discovery Channel and Coast to Coast AM. Storm was affected so deeply by his near-death experience that he resigned from Northern Kentucky University and became a United Church of Christ minister.

Websites & Background Information:

• Wikipedia on Howard Storm
• Howard Storm Website

• Howard Storm’s Story on Near-Death.com:

- Introductory Page
- An Invitation to Hell from Strange Beings
- A Rescue from Hell by Jesus Christ
- The Therapy of Love and Enlightenment
- Learning What Happens After Death

Contact Information:

Contact Form

Book:

• My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life

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One Of The First Public Talks Given By Howard Storm

Edward A. Riess recorded the following talk by Howard Storm which reportedly took place in the fall of 1987. It is one of the first public talks given by Howard in which he describes his now famous near-death experience. Special thanks to Ed for providing this important audio recording.

Howard Storm – Part One (MP3)

Howard Storm – Part Two (MP3)

Howard Storm – Part Three (MP3)

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Former Atheist Howard Storm Shares His Near-Death Experience

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Former atheist Howard Storm shares his near-death experience in more detail. The sound is slightly out of sync with the video in portions of this video.

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Nanci Danison

Nanci L. Danison holds a BS in Biology, with a concentration in Anatomy and Physiology, a BA in Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Jurisprudence. Until 1994, she was living the life of a successful trial lawyer in a large midwestern law firm. She often lectured on a national level and wrote on legal topics for the health care industry. Nanci, at one time, appeared on the news for local TV stations in public service spots for the Bar Association, one of the activities that earned her a Jaycees Ten Outstanding Citizens Award for community service. After a near death experience, Nanci left the security of her big law firm and started a successful solo practice in health law, where she continues to be recognized for her legal abilities. Nanci’s has started a local chapter of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc.; earning a pilot’s license in 2000 and Private Investigator’s license in 2001; and sharing her near-death experience memories publicly. Nanci still practices law and writes books on what she remembers from her experiences in the Light.

Websites & Background Information:

• Nanci Danison Blog
• Backward Books Website
• Nanci Danison describes her NDE on NDERF
• Nanci Danison on YouTube
• Nanci Danison on Facebook
• Nanci Danison on Twitter

Websites & Background Information:

• Contact Page
• Email: nanci@backwardsbooks.com

Books:

• Backwards: Returning to Our Source for Answers (2007)
• Backwards Guidebook (2009)
• Backwards Beliefs: Revealing Eternal Truths Hidden in Religions (2011)

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Nanci D’s NDE
By Nanci Danison
NDERF Website

Original Link

My near-death experience was unlike any I have ever read about. It was far more intellectual: filled with “knowings”, understandings about the “truths” of the universe, and insights. And I delved deeper into life after death than I had thought possible in an NDE, ultimately evolving through higher levels of existence beyond anything I had ever dreamed possible.

My body’s death on March 14, 1994, was occasioned by some type of reaction to a needle-localization procedure designed to show my surgeon where to cut to remove three potentially cancerous lesions in my breast. The procedure had taken much longer than expected, and had to be repeated in order to get the wire marker deep enough into the breast tissue. It was painful, and emotionally traumatic for my body. I was alone when I died, because the radiologist and radiology technician both left me to perform other tasks, including getting their eighth set of mammography films developed.

The early stages of the NDE were fairly standard: I left my body, went into the Light, experienced overwhelming unconditional love, peace, joy, and acceptance, met Beings of Light, and had a life review. What was dramatically different about my NDE was what I learned during these stages, as well as what happened to me during and after the life review.

When I first entered the Light I saw nothing but Light, heard nothing, and smelled nothing. I was alone with my own thoughts. Those thoughts, however, were dramatic revelations. Chief among them was the realization that I am not a human being; that what I had been calling my soul is in fact who I really am. And who I really am is not human, but rather a separately existing spiritual being who only inhabited a human animal’s body. Moreover, the human animal I had inhabited has her own life, thoughts, emotions, and personality, and is perfectly capable of living out the rest of her lifetime without me inside.

Many more “knowings” invaded my mind while I was in the Light, filling me instantly not only with knowledge in the academic sense, but also with the deep understanding that only personal experience can give. I “experienced” these truths as deeply as though I had lived them. One of the topics deposited into my mind was about how time does not exist in the universe at large, but only for beings that mark time, like humans do, by measuring intervals of experience.

At one point I observed my body, still sitting in the chair in the radiology department mammography suite, at a distance below and behind me. I saw it out of the back of where a head would be on a human body (like having eyes in the back of my head). Seeing it, and feeling no attachment whatsoever to it, made me question for the first time whether I had died. To myself I said: “Nah, I can’t be dead. I didn’t go through a tunnel into the Light, and I’m definitely in the Light.” Immediately I was surrounded by an earthen works tunnel in vivid, vibrant color and detail, with the proverbial light at the end. Though the tunnel was just as real as anything I have experienced on Earth, I knew for a fact that I was not in a tunnel. So I wasn’t fooled by its appearance. Upon realizing that I wasn’t “fooled,” a flood of “knowings” about manifesting reality inundated my mind. I realized that we all constantly manifest what we call physical reality just by virtue of our thoughts, and that the only reason we are fooled into believing it is real is because of the limitations of human senses. You can imagine how flabbergasted I was by this information, and why I was not inclined to believe it. So I experimented with consciously manifesting some more to test its truth. I proved to myself that we do indeed have the ability to manifest what humans perceive to be physical reality by focusing our attention and intention on doing so.

After I realized I was dead, I looked outward again for the Light, for at this point I was back to the belief that we must go into the Light to enter the afterlife. I had forgotten that I was already in the Light because the strength of my belief system overpowered my sense of where I was. I then saw five Lights of different hues in the distance. I thought to myself: “Oh this figures, I’m supposed to go into the Light and I get five of them and have to choose the right one.” A voice not my own entered my mind with the words: “Just pick one and follow it.” I instantly understood that they all led to the same destination — the Source of our universe. As I looked again at the Lights, five Beings of Light appeared to have come forward from within them. I recognized these Light Beings as my most cherished and beloved friends and soul mates, and knew for certain that I too am a Being of Light, and that I was HOME. These friends communicated with me by mental telepathy, and primarily in emotions. Their emotions could be interpreted into English as: “Welcome home.” “We ran ahead of the ‘rest of us’ because we couldn’t wait to see you.” “Tell us everything [about human life].” And, of course, they communicated intense unconditional love, joy at seeing me, and acceptance of and curiosity about my adventure into human life. My sense was that they were extremely anxious to observe my life as Nanci. In response, I replayed every single second of Nanci’s life events and sensory input all at once for them, not for myself. These Light Beings actually entered into my life events, as me or others around me, and lived those events as though they were actually me doing it. I thought it odd at the time, but later learned how normal this is at higher evolutionary stages.

While my friends enjoyed my life review, memories of my eternal life filled my mind. They included hundreds of physical lifetimes, in humans and other species, as well as thousands of what we would call years spent living in what I was calling “Light Being society,” and what might also be called “life between lives.” I was astounded that I could possibly have forgotten all of it. “Knowing” informed me that when a Light Being like me enters into a human as its soul, only part of its total Energy does so. The rest of the Being’s Energy stays in the Light and continues to evolve as it observes the soul part’s experiences. The reintegration of my memories as an eternal being with those of my just passed human life completed my transformation back into my natural state as a Being of Light.

Soon, I realized that I had access to all of the knowledge of the universe (what I call Universal Knowledge) just by focusing my attention and intention on what I wanted to know. My thought processing was accelerated so greatly that I was able to absorb phenomenal amounts of information instantly. I wanted to know the answers to all my most pressing spiritual questions. So I searched Universal Knowledge for the answers to: what is Source/God? What am I? How was the universe created? Why? What is the purpose of life? Of life as a human? What does source expect of me while in human form? Where is heaven? Hell? What is the correct religion? The answers fill my first book, Backwards: Returning to Our Source for Answers. Upon receiving “knowing” on all these topics I was very upset that no one had told me before how simple life and death are. I wanted to know why religion had failed me in this regard. In response, a “documentary” of the development of religion among humans over the course of three Earth epochs, the third of which constitutes mankind’s future, played out in my mind. My manuscript entitled Backwards Beliefs sets forth what I remember of this documentary.

After receiving my fill from Universal Knowledge, I realized that I could enter into my Light Being friends and live their eternal lives as they had just done my life as Nanci. So I merged my Energy into theirs as we formed a collective being of six. I could at one and the same time experience myself as the personality I had always known as “myself,” as well as experiencing one of my friend’s lives as though I were my friend. Or I could experience what it was like to be a collective being. I understood at the time that living in this manner was an evolutionary stage beyond that of Light Beings, whose lives we would perceive to be as discrete, individual beings with spiritual bodies. At this stage of awareness there was no “beingness” — only a mental or conscious existence.

Ultimately, my soul mates and I decided as a collective being to rejoin “the rest of us.” I understood this English term to mean the Source of creation, the entity humans call “God.” For the first time during the NDE I experienced movement similar to how we feel it as humans. Up until this point everything seemed to transpire within my own mind. But now our merged entity of six seemed to move forward deeper and deeper into the Light to rejoin Source’s core. As we neared it I understood more and more about the universe and our place within it, as well as my own nature as part of Source. It became excruciatingly clear to me that the whole of our universe transpires exclusively within the mind of Source. There is only one being in our universe — Source. All things that we perceive as physical reality are really thoughts manifested by Source within its own Energy field. And, most importantly, none of it ever leaves the Source. So, I intimately experienced the “knowing” that I am literally part of Source’s thoughts, and the illusion that I am separate from it is a gift from Source to itself in order that Source might fully explore its own personality and creativity.

Sometime during this process I decided that I “could do it better.” I could live Nanci’s life better and give back to the experience more than I had before I died. And, I passionately wanted to share with my fellow Light Beings in soul form the truth of who we really are, and the simplicity of life as part of Source. These emotions apparently impelled my return to the body in a traumatic process of leaving the Light. But as I whirl winded back into human flesh I did my best to remember as much as I could so that I might share it with others in my books.

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Questions & Answers

Was the experience difficult to express in words?

The greatest gift I have been given by this experience is the ability to express much of it in words, often through analogies. I believe one of the reasons I personally had this experience is because I am an attorney, and have used words to communicate difficult concepts and emotions as part of my work.

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life-threatening event?

Yes. I had either a severe vaso-vagal response or an anaphylactic reaction to a local anesthetic.

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness?

I have to answer that in two parts. First, my level of alertness did not change after it expanded dramatically once I was thoroughly infused with the Light. Second, my level of consciousness continued to evolve through higher and more expansive levels until I was about to fully merge into Source/God. At that point, I felt as though I had the same level of consciousness as Source/God, which is the level of awareness/vibration necessary in order to merge directly into it.

How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal every day consciousness and alertness?

My normal alertness level while in the body feels like I’m stuffed into a too-tight wetsuit made of cold, hard, clay, in comparison to that experienced during my NDE. I feel dull of intellect and slow in thinking and responding. As we used to say when I was a kid: “I couldn’t think my way out of a paper bag” with this level of alertness.

My normal level of consciousness while awake, not including meditation states, is one tiny little slice of the consciousness I experienced during the NDE. It feels like I have forgotten who I really am. More importantly, the level of consciousness we experience while in the body operates at such a slow vibration that we actually perceive human life as reality, which I now understand is an illusion.

If your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience was different from your normal every day consciousness and alertness, please explain:

See above answers to 3 and 4.

Did your vision differ in any way from your normal, everyday vision (in any aspect, such as clarity, field of vision, colors, brightness, depth perception of degree of solidness/transparency of objects, etc.)?

When I first entered the Light I did a medical “review of systems” (review of the status of all human physical parameters) to try to diagnose what had happened to me (e.g., did I faint, hallucinate, etc.). At that time I had the sensation that I could “see,” as we do in human form, in a 360-degree field of vision. Later, when I met Beings of Light, I could still perceive colors, brightness, and depth as I did while in human form, but the intensity was dramatically enhanced as compared to human vision. After I completed the transformation into a Being of Light myself, the human perception of sight dissolved. As I understand it, the sensation of vision is part of the human experience, the effects of which wear off once you make the transition to higher levels of consciousness in the Light.

Did your hearing differ in any way from your normal, everyday hearing (in any aspect, such as clarity, ability to recognize source of sound, pitch, loudness, etc.)?

I only experienced “hearing,” in the human sense, once during my NDE. That was when I was consciously manifesting physical Earthly environments. At those times I could hear what I would expect to hear in human form. There were no other audible sounds during the rest of my NDE.

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?

Yes. I was aware of standing right in front of my sitting human body, realizing that I was out-of-body, yet fully conscious, and saying to myself: “Wow, this is so cool!”

What emotions did you feel during the experience?

I experienced the full range of human emotions — except fear. In fact, I was surprised by the fact that I could still feel anger, disappointment, indignation, and other so-called “negative” emotions. I had always assumed they would not be possible in the afterlife.

Did you pass into or through a tunnel or enclosure?

No, not to get into the Light. However, I must have been aware of the tunnel concept before I died, because I actually thought to myself, after I saw my body at some distance away from and below me: “Wait a minute! I can’t be dead ’cause I didn’t go through a tunnel into the Light and I’m definitely in the Light.” That thought alone was sufficient to “manifest” the Earthly environment of a tunnel with me inside it. The tunnel felt as real as anything on Earth, but I was not fooled into believing it was real because I knew for a fact that I was not in a tunnel. “Manifesting” is the word that popped into my mind as the explanation for the phenomenon of creating what humans perceive as physical reality just by thinking it. I subsequently manifested other Earthly environments to test the validity of that “knowing.”

Did you see a light?

Saw it. Felt it. Was completely infused with it and the love, acceptance, joy, and peace that come with it. And, I lived in the Light for a long while as I evolved into higher and higher forms of existence.

Did you meet or see any other beings?

I met five beings that I mentally called Beings of Energy, or Beings of Light, as they are more frequently called. I recognized these Beings of Light as my closest, dearest, most beloved friends — my soul mates. I knew none of them during this human lifetime. They were my eternal closest friends.

Did you experience a review of past events in your life?

I did have a life review of this human lifetime, but it was apparently conducted more for the entertainment of my Being of Light friends than for my own benefit. I also recaptured all my memories of all the hundreds of other physical lifetimes I had enjoyed, as well as life in the Light between physical lives.

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?

Some of the future events I observed have come to pass and have been reported in the newspapers. For example, during my 1994 NDE I saw that humans would discover a “tenth” planet. That discovery was made a few years ago, and has been supplanted by subsequent discoveries of other planet-like bodies.

Did you see or visit any beautiful or otherwise distinctive locations, levels or dimensions?

The only “locations,” in the physical sense, that I visited were those I consciously manifested myself. I did, however, evolve through numerous “levels” of awareness/consciousness/beingness until I was no longer a being at all. Nothing was identified to me as a “dimension.”

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?

Shortly after I entered the Light I was bombarded with “knowings” on all sorts of topics. One of them was about the human concept of time and how it does not actually exist outside the human experience of it. As I understand it, once we resume our natural state as a spiritual being, time and space no longer exist. I did note that huge amounts of what we would call “time” transpired during my NDE — far exceeding the amount of Earth time that I was dead. In other words, the length of time a person is absent from the body has no correlation to how much can happen in the “afterlife.”

Did you have a sense of knowing special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?

All the above. It was my understanding that I had total access to the universal database I call Universal Knowledge. In addition, once I began merging into Source/God, I was imbued with a complete understanding of the universe and the purpose of life. Most of my first book is devoted to this information.

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?

No. I chose to come back in order to tell as many people as will listen the truth about life and death as I understand it. That’s why I wrote my books. It was my understanding during the NDE that it was indeed my time to die. The only boundary I encountered was my own emotional need to return to human life to fulfill my mission.

Did you become aware of future events?

Yes. I was so surprised that my experience was nothing like what my religious training had led me to expect that I accessed Universal Knowledge on the subject. What I got was sort of like a documentary of the development of religion on Earth, which documentary included the future. I only remember a few things about the future because I didn’t care — I wasn’t coming back here! It was later that I decided to return to human life. Then I desperately tried to remember as much of the future as I could while I was being sucked back into the body.

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience you did not have prior to the experience?

Yes. One gift is the ability to write books in words given to me while I sleep (and which I have to type out before I’m awake enough to loose them). There are others as well.

Have you shared this experience with others?

Yes — IANDS groups and at two Universal Light Expos. Also it appears in Part III of my first book, Backwards: Returning to Source for Answers.

Did you have any knowledge of near-death experiences (NDEs) prior to your experience?

No.

How did you view the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened?

I was convinced that it was real — more real than anything I had ever experienced in the body. But my doctors told me I had hallucinated it all. I wrote the first draft of my NDE story in 1994 to show to my doctors to try to get some understanding of what had happened.

Were there one or several parts of the experience especially meaningful or significant to you?

It was all so incredibly significant and meaningful. It literally changed my life, both here on Earth and in my eternal evolution. The part that still makes me cry after 13 years is having been on the verge of total merger back into Source/God, and understanding fully that I do not exist as a being separate and apart from Source, and being allowed to make the decision to stop the process and return to Earth in order to share what I could remember with others, who, like me, have been struggling with understanding life. The depth of Source’s love, and understanding, and willingness to allow me to continue the illusion of separation, astounds me.

How do you currently view the reality of your experience?

It is my understanding that what transpired during my NDE is the “real” reality. Life as a human is more like a dream, role in a play, virtual reality game, character in a drama, etc. though these words fall far short of actual explanation. It is further my understanding that all Beings of Light who are serving as souls to human animals will have some or all of the same experiences I did when the human dies, depending upon the individual’s evolutionary level.

Have your relationships changed specifically as a result of your experience?

Yes. I left my law firm specifically because of the changes in me attributable to the NDE. And, I now have more NDEr friends because they are the only ones who truly understand me and what I have been through.

Have your religious beliefs/practices changed specifically as a result of your experience?

Yes. As a result of viewing the history of religion on Earth, and accessing Universal Knowledge about life and death, I can no longer subscribe to any religion’s tenets.

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?

I have had spontaneous memories of individual events from the NDE, a second life review, two meetings with my council of Light Being advisors, and snippets of memories of other lives. I do not use mind-altering medication or substances. In fact, like many NDErs, I do not tolerate chemicals, especially drugs, very well.

Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the experience?

There is far too much to cover here. I suggest that anyone who is interested in more detail should read my books, the first one of which will be published in October 2007 and the other three over the next 3 years.

Did the questions asked and information you provided so far accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?

No. They barely brushed the surface. But then my NDE delved far deeper into the transformation process after death than NDE researchers have reported on.

Are there any other questions we could ask to help you communicate your experience?

While I understand that the mechanics of an NDE are of interest to scientists, I believe the “knowings” NDErs gain are far more important for a non-scientist. I would hope that in the future you would include questions to elicit what NDErs learned about the purpose of life, who God is, who we are, how the universe was created, etc.

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P.M.H. Atwater

P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D. is one of the original researchers in the field of near-death studies, having begun her work in 1978. She has written nine books on her findings, and is now working on her tenth — the final wrapup of her theory about brain shift/spirit shift, straight talk about transformations of consciousness and the future of the human race. Some of her findings have been verified in clinical studies, among them the prospective study done in Holland and published in “Lancet” medical journal (12-15-01). Her The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences brings the entire field up-to-date, and was featured in an online version of Newsweek Magazine. In 2005, she was awarded the Outstanding Service Award from the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS), and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Transpersonal Hypnotherapists (NATH). She is also an experiencer, having died three times in three months in 1977, and each time experiencing the phenomenon.

Websites & Background Information:

• Wikipedia on P.M.H. Atwater
• Near-Death.com on P.M.H. Atwater
• P.M.H. Atwater Website
• P.M.H. Atwater on Facebook

Contact Information:

Email: atwater@cinemind.com

Books:

• Near-Death Experiences: The Rest of The Story
• I Died Three Times in 1977 – The Complete Story
• The Big Book of Near Death Experiences: The Ultimate Guide to What Happens When We Die
• Coming Back To Life: Examining the After-Effects of the Near-Death Experience
• Beyond the Light: What Isn’t Being Said About Near Death Experience: from Visions of Heaven to Glimpses of Hell
• We Live Forever: The Real Truth About Death
• The New Children and Near-Death Experiences

Books, DVDs, Audio Recordings, & Other Products:

• P.M.H. Atwater Website Bookstore

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Harold A. Widdison’s Criticism Of Atwater’s New Book

Don’t Waste Your Money
By Harold A. Widdison
Amazon.com
April 23, 2011

Original Link

I bought this book from Amazon a week ago. This is the sixth of P.M.H. Atwater’s books that I have read and with each book her claims become more definitive and all inclusive. The subtitle of this book is no exception. It proclaims that this book is the Rest of the Story of the Near-Death Experience and that it will tell the reader what the Near-Death Experience teaches us about living, dying, and our true purpose. Wow! I wish. The author states in the book that it is the result of 43 years of research involving nearly seven thousand adults and children. Later in the book she notes that the primary source for the data she cites in the book comes from 3,000 adults and 277 child experiencers. She seems to feel that large numbers are evidence in and of themselves that sheer numbers will convince the reader to accept what she says. The “fact” that she has in-depth materials from 3,000 adults and 277 children apparently justifies the claims reported in the book. It doesn’t.

I wrote a detailed review of the book she wrote on child ND experiencers (Children of the New Millennium) and discovered that although she claimed to have 277 children in her research population, in fact she only had detailed information on 44 children or 18% of the 277 she claimed. Based on this tiny population she made sweeping claims on how having an NDE as a child altered the child in very significant ways and that these children are forerunners of sweeping changes in the human population. Now that is a startling claim. But I could not see how or why the claim had any validity as she knew nothing about the child before the experience. Furthermore, most were under five years of age at the time of their particular experience. She made all sorts of unsupported claims and the reader was expected to take her claims as valid just because she said that they were true.

As I am a professional researcher I carefully examined her research methodology and statistical analysis and discovered that both what and how she collected and analyzed her data was wrong and inadequate and therefore any conclusions she drew could not and would not be valid. Officers of the International Association of Near Death Studies (IANDS) informed me at the time I submitted my review of the book on children that she will not listen to their insistence that she implement rigor into her books/research and provide some evidence that what she reports has some accuracy.

I have no way of ascertaining how many of the 3,000 adults she has detailed information on but I would suspect that it is about the same as population of children, or about 540 at most and most of these are probably not in depth experiences which are the kind that have the greatest impact on the experiencer. I have been able to observe her interviewing some people who have had NDEs and she must have a phenomenal memory as she did not use a tape recorder or take any notes. She noted that she uses the method of inquiry of her police officer father. But good investigative police officers take copious notes, always having notebooks at hand or a tape recorder that they use to record interviews or take notes. Where she says that she lets the subject talk and only makes a few comments to encourage the subject to elaborate is not what I observed. What I observed was that instead of really listening to a subject, she made frequent interruptions to “explain” what she thought it meant. Police officers that I have observed do less inquiry and more interrogation of their subjects. This is more the process I observed with Ms. Atwater. I know what I am talking about because I have taught courses in state prisons in Arizona and have participated in police and community sensitivity training.

Also it is quite well known in the field of social and psychological research that the interactive effect plagues research. Based on the subjects’ perceptions of what is happening, they will tend to give you information they think you want or need. In other words, subjects will modify their responses based on how they think it could affect them personally or what they think the interviewer wants them to say. The way you sit in your chair, facial expressions, a raised eyebrow, the interviewer leaning forward slightly, etc., will be seen by the interviewee and impact on what he or she will say.

What you will find in this book are Ms. Atwater’s personal perceptions of the world, the NDE experience, and what it all means. The information is mostly from her prior books and her personal world view and does not represent what the vast majority of NDE researchers have discovered. This book is definitely NOT “the rest of the story,” but represents her personal perceptions of the NDE and what she insists the reader accept as to its meaning for all of humanity and society.

If you want to learn about the extent and breadth of the NDE phenomenon, this is not the book that will be of greatest use to you. If you want to know how the NDE impacts persons who have had an NDE, this book will not help you. If you want to know what the NDE is like, that is, what persons experience, see, and do during it, again this is not the book to read. Ms. Atwater has her own perception of the NDE and these perceptions color what she writes and what she cites as evidence. There is no question in my mind that she believes what she writes. But she ignores a vast body of information that does not fit her preconceived perceptions. Most researchers in the field of Near Death Experience do not support her conclusions and what she reports on NDEs. Yet she gives the impression that her work is a summation of the study of Near-Death experiences. In my estimation she ignores more than she includes in her books.

If you are interested in reading quality research, this is not the book to read. In fact, this is not a book that I would recommend to anyone to read. It is filled with misrepresentation, misinformation and false assumptions. Don’t waste your money!

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P.M.H. Atwater’s Response To Harold A. Widdison’s Critical Review

Setting the Record Straight
By P.M.H. Atwater
The Website of PMH Atwater
May 6, 2011

Original Link

If you have read Amazon.com lately, and the page for Near-Death Experiences: The Rest of The Story, you know about the biting criticism I received from Dr. Harold Widdison and comments by others that are misleading. Everyone has the right to say whatever they please. I honor that. Dr. Widdison is a wonderful man, and he is sincere in whatever he does, and this includes his attacks against me. Normally, I do not reply to such comments. This time I feel the need to set the record straight on some of the points that have been made.

0 I practice the police techniques as shown/taught to me by my police officer father. He was not a detective. He was a “gumshoe” who walked the beat or rode around in his squad car for many years, before being promoted. He never used a tape recorder or notepad that I ever saw, although he did fill out extensive reports and quite often. His advice was brief: a person’s body says more than his or her mouth does. He taught me how to observe, catch things quickly, and never, never use a word in advance of the witness. And he taught me how to cross-check everything. On pages 257-258 in my book, is verification of my protocol by one of the finest officers ever to wear a badge or teach police science. His name is Raymond A. Reynolds, and I am humbled by his support of what I have done and how I work. Unfortunately, Officer Reynolds died several years ago. He never lived to see his statement published in my book. I can only hope his family has, and that they are pleased with the recognition of his expertise.

0 I do not base my work on questionnaires. Frankly, I do not like them. Even the most scientific uses words in advance of individuals, and such words, even if cleverly chosen, put ideas in people’s heads. I have used questionnaires, though, three times, to cross-check previous findings and for no other reason. The first was mentioned in my book Coming Back to Life and was used to test first responses; the second on electrical sensitivity I put in the back of Beyond the Light, to show how the intensity of the near-death scenario was the leading factor with the incidence of electrical sensitivity – not length of episode nor exposure to etheric light; and the last to double check the responses of child experiencers – originally published in Children of the New Millennium, later in The New Children and Near-Death Experiences. I only published the findings of the questionnaire because it matched what I had previously established through sessions I had held with child experiencers of near-death states. Where percentages deviated, I said so in the text.

0 There have been, over the years, many complaints about my book Children of the New Millennium and rightfully so. I didn’t like it either. The original manuscript was on my editor’s desk one week before her company was bought out by another publisher and I was assigned another editor. About half my material was edited out, in an effort by the publisher to create a “fluff piece for new millennium fever.” I had no choice in the matter. As might be expected, the book did not sell well, so they returned my world rights to me and cancelled the contract. Some good resulted from the book, but mostly it left people hanging. Dr. Widdison stripped apart most of the book and me with it. The entire situation – who was complimentary and who hated the thing – is published on my website in the Article Section, and with the permission of all parties involved. Nothing is hidden from the public. The replacement book is truly a fine piece, which made up for the problems with the first. Few people know about it, however, thus sales have been low.

0 It is true that several of my peers have asked me to use “proper” protocol, like the rest do, so my work will not be subject to so much attack. I refused. The reason is simple, at least to me: my distrust of questionnaires, and my distrust of the so-called “classical model” that must be used for comparison if you want your work to be accepted. Please remember, I had never heard of Raymond Moody nor his book when I began my work. It was Ken Ring who told me about both after I had been conducting research on my own and for nearly four years. What I found deviates in some major ways from what is now “acceptable.” For instance, I was able to identify four patterns to the original model of scenario types, a pattern of both physiological and psychological aftereffects, four major phases of integration, and so forth. I was the first to uncover numerous things, and since then have had some of my findings verified in clinical studies, including the prospective study done in Holland and published in Lancet Medical Journal. What I have claimed in numbers, stands.

0 Only those who are not that familiar with near-death research would think this book has nothing new in it. Admittedly, I did start out “easy” in the book, carefully going over my previous work and then slowly adding more and more, going deeper and deeper with each chapter, until, in Chapter 16, I let go of “nice.” I did this on purpose to establish that the near-death experience is not some kind of anomaly after all; rather, is part of the larger genre of transformations of consciousness, no matter how caused. The second half of the book “grinds” this in by showing how near-death patterning is present in numerous other traditions, religious and mystical orders, psychological discoveries, and so forth. My call is for near-death studies to move up a notch or two and include the spiritual. Until we do, there will always be “missing” material that is crucial to making sense of the phenomenon. Up until now, researchers have only “tip-toed” around what they thought constituted things spiritual. Perhaps now they will be more brave.

0 My research of near-death is NOT metaphysical, nor is it “new age.” It is objectively done following a strict protocol. And I can say this: I have cross-checked my findings with experiencers and their significant others more than anyone else in the field, and for year after year after year. I did this to ensure that I was not kidding myself, finding only what I wanted to find, allowing my own near-death experiences to overlay what I was seeing in others, or misinterpreting what I was finding. Irrespective of what anyone else thought about what I did, I wanted to be able to live with myself and be honest about my work. I could not do that without this extra effort. I never chose to be a researcher. I became one because of what I was told to do in my third near-death experience. Anyone who actually chooses to do something like I have done, is nuts.

The upshot of this is, if you feel inclined to make a review comment on that page of Amazon.com where my book is described, I will be forever grateful. Say what you feel led to say. Supportive or not, I appreciate the kindness of your time and effort.

Thank you for reading with this “special announcement.”

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Excerpts From PMH Atwater’s 3 NDEs
IANDS

Original Link

Before, During, and After

I had been dying for some time; at least, carbon copies of letters I had written reveal such thoughts, although I honestly do not remember writing any of them.  It was 1975 in Boise, Idaho.  My husband had left on the pretext of looking for work in the state of Washington, but the truth is we were both destroying each other and neither of us knew how to stop.  The period between 1975 and 1977 is like a dark fog.  A family tragedy involving the youngest of our three children facilitated our divorce after twenty years of marriage.  It was the last straw.

Mine had been a disruptive and unhappy childhood, but my husband’s had been protected and steady.  He expected traditional compliance in our marriage, but I had grown in life without such role models.  So, not knowing any different, I “assumed” the role I thought he wanted of me, that lasted until I had a nervous breakdown eleven years later at the age of twenty-nine.

During those eleven years every possible hardship and loss occurred, including farm failures, the birth of a child with a serious deformity, near-bankruptcies, and the forced sale of our home to satisfy tax payments; yet, we all chipped in and made the best of what life offered, calling ourselves “The Happy Huffmans.”  I learned to recycle everything and waste nothing, to raise and can most of our food and to bake everything from scratch.  I came to live by the clock in order to balance heavy workloads with fulltime secretarial employment and dedicated Sunday School teaching at church.

Of interest is the fact that during this time my husband turned an old hobby of flying into a profession.  He excelled as a pilot and came to specialize in crop dusting, flying mostly night jobs.  Because his work was so dangerous, we made it a point to joke about dying and even set a place for “DEATH” at many a supper table with the hope our children would grow up without fear of their father’s familiar consort.  The lives of many a friend ended in fiery crashes or mid-air collisions.

After the nervous breakdown, I began an intense exploration of metaphysics, psychism, Eastern religions, and altered states of consciousness.  The more I learned about levels of mind, the more I learned how to better use my own.  From then on there was no stopping me.  Being practical and insistent upon demonstration, I put everything I learned to work.  In a very short time, I went from being a secretary to employment as a professional writer for the state of Idaho, and won award after award for innovative achievement.  Miracles then came daily and with them, a rediscovery of God as a valid and vital force in my life.  I meditated conscientiously.

My husband left flying after a near-miss, but the reality of personality changes and glandular deterioration from years of exposure to toxic chemicals could no longer be denied.  In an effort to regain self-esteem and self-worth, he tried his hand with insurance sales.  The more successful I was, the less successful he became.  I skyrocketed, while he turned rude and sullen.  When he gave up and left for Washington, I was unable to understand why.  I felt betrayed and cheated.  So did he.

During the dark days that followed after my husband’s exit and our later divorce, the family began to drift apart.  Kelly, my son, borrowed money and left to attend a cruise school aboard a square-rigger in the Atlantic Ocean.  Natalie, my oldest daughter, started college at Boise State while still living at home.  Paulie, the youngest, somewhat numb from her family’s collapse, began junior high.  After a siege of unemployment and living on food stamps that followed the premature demise of my writing career, I found a position as technical manuals writer with a large bank and was later promoted to forms analyst.

I was thirty-nine years old at the time and thought myself and my life a failure.  My search for spirituality seemed more a path of escapism than a way to God, and that bothered me.  My achievements no longer brought satisfaction.  The idea of being single again after a lifetime of marriage terrified me; dating felt somehow obscene.  With a flood of unexpressed emotions locked tightly inside, I became like a “bomb waiting for a place to explode.”  It wouldn’t take much.

Into this cauldron went the decision to attend college and get a degree, but then a man I met while holding weekly public meetings in my home changed everything.  We simply enjoyed each other’s company at first.  He possessed a gentleness I found fascinating.  One night he missed the regular meeting so I went on to bed, exhausted from studying for my first college exam.  After midnight, Natalie shook me awake saying he was here but something was wrong.  Half asleep, I found him more incoherent than I, mumbling something about an accident on the Interstate, totaling his car, police and paper work, no one hurt but the car was a rental.  I did what I could to help, then invited him to spend the night as I had several empty beds.  After I returned to sleep, he chose my bed.

There is no blame, really, in what happened.  Neither of us were thinking clearly.  But I became pregnant and he went half-crazy.  He would stage dramatic shouting matches with himself and demand I have an abortion.  Try as I may, I could not understand his behavior.  I loved children and the idea of having another child, though embarrassing, was rather delightful.  His peculiar tirades continued off and on for nearly two months.  When the business assignment that had brought him to Idaho ended, he flew back to his home in California, pledging to come back when I needed him.  Once he was gone and there was again peace and quiet, I turned to God in prayer, asking that if the baby was not to be born it should leave nature’s way.  Although I would defend any woman’s right to choose abortion, my choice was not to have one.

Three days later on a cold and snowy Sunday morning, January 2, 1977, I was suddenly wracked with pain and began hemorrhaging.  The girls had not yet returned from overnight visits and I was alone.  I made it to the toilet and filled it with blood, passing a very small, somewhat whitish-looking sac.  I stood to have a look, never having miscarried before, and, as I did, a sharp pain squeezed my gut and stabbed my chest.  I screamed.

That scream exploded all around the bathroom like a Gatling gun, bursting out what seems a million centuries and a million different forms of me all screaming and all suddenly seeking to converge as each “voice” added to the reverberation of the other until the very shrill of it pierced the house and clawed the heavens.  My body fell away.  And there was silence.

You don’t always know you are dead when you die.

It can happen so suddenly and unexpectedly that the thought of death simply does not occur to you.  For this reason, I did not recognize death.  I only recognized myself as floating next to the bathroom light bulb with the ceiling scarcely an eyelash away.  There was no darkness or distortion of any kind; if anything, my surroundings were even brighter and more distinct than normal.

As I looked around, distance relationships differed.  It was now a long way down to toilet, sink, and bathtub surfaces.  Although I felt no discomfort, the distance change was disorienting and confusing.  I began to bump into the brightly glowing light bulb like some kind of moth, yet it did not seem hot when I touched it.  Gradually, the confusion cleared and my mind formed lucid questions.  Why was I up here bobbing along the ceiling?  How was this possible?  Why did I keep bumping into the light bulb?  The body on the floor was a mess, so I paid it no attention.  Spatial differences were all that mattered.

With the beginning of thought and question came the appearance of dark gray blobs floating around in the air beside me.  With every new thought, another blob would appear.  No other word seems appropriate.  They were blobs, like ink blots, but fully dimensional, buoyant, and without definitive form.  The more I thought, the more blobs there were, until my peripheral vision was filled with them.  What were they?  Where did they come from?  Why were they here?  They seemed an irritating mystery without solution.  I did not like them.

There was an audible snap, and I was jerked like an overstretched rubber band into the crumpled, bloody mess on the floor, entering my body through the top of the head, that area that was once my “soft spot” when a baby, and feeling the need to shrink or contract to fit back in.

I revived to the reality of blood and pain which I dealt with as best I could, cleaning up my mess, changing clothes, stumbling into bed, propping my legs up with pillows.  Sleep came.  I have always been a heavy sleeper, able to easily sleep through any noise, but I do vaguely remember my daughters shaking me and asking what was wrong.  Illness was feigned and they fixed their own supper.  I remember feeling a sense of relief because of the miscarriage, for now I would not have to tell anyone about the baby.  There would be no embarrassment.  My foolishness would remain my own private affair.  It was a hell of a way to learn about myself and about sex, especially at my age, but it was over and the baby was gone.  I had learned a painful lesson.  Soon enough, sleep returned.

Monday morning I was still bleeding profusely, so my oldest daughter Natalie called where I worked and reported me ill.  Then both girls left for school.  I managed to dress, get in the car, and start it.  Even though our family doctor was only about five blocks away in the same subdivision where we lived, it took me nearly half an hour to drive there.  The road kept “jumping around” in front of me and sounds were different.  Strange geometric figures zigged and zagged before my eyes and the houses on either side of the street kept changing shape.  I was also in a great deal of pain and lacked coordination.  When the office nurse saw me, she shrieked and ushered me right in.  The doctor laughed uproariously when I told him what had happened.  He really chortled about all that pain and blood for just one night of sex that I didn’t even get a chance to enjoy.  To him that was the most hilarious thing he had ever heard of; and I must admit that when I saw myself through his eyes, I did indeed appear to be a stupid, naive fool with a ridiculous story to tell.

But I kept asking him why my legs hurt so much, as there seemed no connection to me between leg pain and a miscarriage.  Neither he nor his office nurse responded.  So I spoke louder, asking again and again.  He never answered my question but instead gave me an injection to my lower right thigh to stop the bleeding and then laughed some more.  Every time he looked at me he laughed.  I stubbornly kept asking about my legs but his answers were unrelated.  No, he did not think I needed hospitalization; yes, he felt the worst was over; and cheer up, the shot should do the trick and I would be fine.  All I needed in his view was to smarten up about sex.  He sent me home.  I never thought to ask why the drive to his office had been so difficult.

Again, it took what seemed forever to drive the distance but I made it back, and within a half hour of arrival all bleeding stopped abruptly, as if a faucet had been turned off.  With cessation of blood, my leg pain increased dramatically, especially in the right leg.  I went straight to bed, propping up my legs with more pillows.  Sleep came quickly and I slept all night, which is not unusual for me.  Pain and discomfort, even the labor of childbirth, had never interfered with my ability to sleep.  When it is time for me to sleep, I sleep.

The next morning Natalie again called the bank to report me ill and left with Paulie for school.  It was now Tuesday, January 4, and my right leg hurt so much I would have hacked it off with a knife had one been available.  In throwing back the covers, I stared in disbelief at what I saw.  Encircling my leg from knee halfway to crotch was a wide band of bright crimson skin, fiery hot to the touch.  Growing out the right side of that band was a huge lump, like a hot burning volcano, angry and bubbling inside.  I had no idea what was wrong.  I only knew I had to get help quickly.  Our only telephone was on the other side of the house on the kitchen wall.  My quest for that phone involved more falling and crawling than walking.  I made it as far as the dining room.

The pain became so great it obliterated any semblance of reason or logic.  There was just me and the pain.  I came to regard that lump as my enemy and instinctively I began to fight back.  The lump was killing me.  At that point, I did the worst possible thing I could do.  I attacked the lump, pushing, hitting, shoving, pounding, and pushing some more.  The only thing I could think of was it had to go.  It was the lump or me.  The lump won.

This time I floated ever so gently out of my prone body, rising straight up while passing through waves of pain that appeared as heat waves on a sidewalk on a hot summer day.  These waves of pain were located outside my body; and, as I floated through them, I could feel piercing, ripping power yet it had no effect.  I floated on past the pain waves and continued upwards until reaching the ceiling.  I stopped floating when I bumped into the light bulb.

That was funny, and in spite of everything, I laughed, appreciating that at least this time it was the dining room light and not the one in the bathroom and it was off instead of on.  My sense of humor was intact.

I hovered around the light bulb for what seemed the passing of many minutes, staring at my body below.  I was waiting. . . watching.  I knew quite well what had happened this time, but I wasn’t certain if my body was fully and completely dead.  I searched and studied for any sign of life, any movement, heave, twitch, or breath.  I waited, and there was silence.  Nothing moved.  I waited longer.  Still nothing moved.  When I was satisfied the body below was truly dead and nothing more could be done for it, I felt an incredible sense of relief.  I felt relief at being freed from the heavy, burdensome mass and weight of that body; I felt a sense of having been released from prison.  My body was not me.  I was me.  A body was something I had once worn, like someone wears a jacket or an old coat.  It was gone and I was free, and in my freedom I shouted, “I’m dead, thank God, I’m dead.”

There was no sorrow, remorse, or even the slightest concern for anyone or anything, including my children’s welfare.  There was no thought of needing to live again, to finish unfinished business, or of anger or pain.  It was completely natural and comfortable not to breathe and I could see everything distinctly, colors and all.  I could hear, feel, move around, think, remember, reason, and experience emotion, only all this was different because I no longer had a physical body to filter and amplify sensations.  I did not need that body any more.

I was free!  I was free!

So great was my joy in my newfound freedom that I danced and whirled around and around the light bulb as if it were a May Pole, and chanted with unbridled glee, “I’m free, I’m free, I’m free.”  Everything was bright and there was no fear.  I was my true self at last.  I was me and nothing else mattered.  All my obligations, responsibilities, and duties were over.  It was all over.

Soon, enough, though, I bored of twirling around and began to ask questions.  Each question was asked “out loud” in the hope of attracting “someone’s” attention.  What happens next?  Isn’t an angel or being of some kind supposed to come and take me somewhere?  What happens now?  Where is everybody?  Am I supposed to do something or say something?  Hey, anybody, somebody, what comes next?  Where do I go?  What do I do?  Hello?  Hello?

As my thought produced questions, blobs began to form around me.  Blobs again, only this time they were more like shimmering pastel bubbles, fully pliable, transparent, and translucent.  This time they were pretty and I liked them.  I finally recognized the blobs to be my thoughts jelled into substance but devoid of specific direction, size, or shape.  This being the case, I decided to experiment with them (experimentation being a favorite hobby of mine).  I wondered what would happen if I could concentrate deeply enough to bring my thoughts together into one single focus and then project that focus forward as if it were a laser beam to a specific spot in front of me.  Could I purposefully solidify substance from thought alone?  Could I create with it?  Would such a creation continue to exist when I was finished or would it simply evaporate?

Excited about this experiment and busy fixing details in my mind, I glimpsed a peculiar shift in my environment.  My dining room below was slowly but surely merging into another kind of space coming down from a source past my ceiling.  These two spaces or dimensions of space were merging into each other, but I was not moving.  I did not change position in any way.  I was where I was, but the world around me was changing and shifting and becoming something else.  My dining room faded from sight as this new space became more visible and more real.  It was like nothing I had ever seen before.  It encompassed me.

The new space was both totally bright and totally dark at the same time yet without shape, form, sound, color, mass, or movement.  It was aglow but there was no light source.  It was dark but there was no darkness.  Somehow within this strange environment was the presence of all shapes, all forms, all sound, all color, all mass, and all movement.  Everything that ever was, is, or will be was there, yet there was nothing there at all.  It was everything and it was nothing, yet within it was a feeling, a pulse, a sensation of energy “winking” off and on – a sparkling potential which “shimmered,” just as Jello does before it responds to touch.  I called it “The Void” for lack of a better term or idea.  It was comfortable enough, so within its crammed nothingness I proceeded with my experiments.

I decided to create and shape a house, a specific kind of house; and I fixed its exact details and size in my mind, clearly seeing each part, noting every proportion, then focusing all that I saw in my mind to hold it steady as I projected it out to a definitive area in front of me.  I remember feeling some pain in doing this, like a throbbing ache, as if I was using muscles long dormant.  The discomfort or strain I felt was like that of a new skier trying out winter slopes for the first time, pulling and stretching muscles not used in that manner before.  I held my focus, though, and before me there formed an image.  It happened fairly quickly and when done, I was aghast.  There it was.  A house.

I moved forward and knocked on a window.  It seemed to be glass.  I then opened and shut all doors and windows, stomped across the green floor of the front porch, fingered the large brass front door knob, inspected foundations, roof, and chimney, and gave a hearty slap to each of three white porch pillars.  This four-square white house with steeply pitched roof was as solid and sound as any house I had ever encountered.  It was a good house.  It seemed very real.

This demonstration only whetted my desire to try again.  The house was inanimate.  I wanted now to try something animate, something alive.  I chose to try a mighty oak tree.  It had to have a huge, thick trunk with large gnarled roots and countless branches in full leaf.  Again, I repeated the same process as before, picturing in my mind each detail of the tree and then projecting that image forward to a particular spot to the right of the house, using my mind as a laser beam.  This time I did not feel the same strain or discomfort as before and my thoughts were easier to gather into one single focus.  Presto, there was the tree complete with textured bark, insect holes, and vividly beautiful leaves.

It happened!  It was possible!  It could be done!  A human like myself could create from scratch.  I could bring together the tiniest of prematter, thought energy itself, and direct it to form specific objects, whether animate or inanimate.  Thoughts really are things.  They are powerful.  All the old stories are true.  Thoughts are prematter itself for they have substance and mass and thus can be shaped into form at will.  It can be done and I did it.  I really did it.

I was so overjoyed I went nuts.

I went on a creation binge, bringing together, creating, forming, and giving life to anything and everything I could imagine.  I made cities, people, dogs, cats, trash cans, alleys, telephone poles, schools, books, pencils, cars, roads, lawns, birds, flowers, shrubbery, rain, suns, clouds, rivers; and everything had life and everything moved of its own and there was breath, noise, language and all manner of activity aside and apart from me.  Everyone and everything had substance and mass and reality, and all went about their own business according to their own pleasure and perception.  It was all so incredibly wonderful that I watched long with fascination, never thinking I was some kind of god, but rather with a feeling of satisfaction that I had engaged in an exercise perfectly normal for me to do and perfectly natural.  I rested.

It came then to my mind to see again those family members and loved ones who had passed on before, and no sooner had I thought the thought than they were there – Mrs. Stinson, Daddy Sogn, and a whole host of people from my past including a grandfather I had never seen as he had died of diabetes when his own children were small.

Everyone who came looked as they had when last I saw them, only they seemed more vibrant and healthier than before, brighter.  The grandfather I did not know bore a striking resemblance to photographs I had once seen of my natural father’s sister in Montana.  Next, I wanted to see Jesus, for I had always wished to thank him for the role he played in history and the example he set for others to follow.  His life and mastery of being had always deeply impressed me and I was in awe of it.  He instantly appeared, without any effort on my part.  When he stood before me, there was no feeling to bow down or worship him; rather, I felt him to be more of an elder brother, long absent, whose return was joyous and a cause for celebration.  We spoke at length and I was able to express my thanks.  There was great love between us and happy chatter.  Then he disappeared as suddenly as he had come and with him all my loved ones disappeared as well, leaving behind only the creations I had made.  These I dissolved by thinking them away.  It felt right that everything should disappear.

I was now alone in this nonplace and there was nothing.

For the first time I looked upon myself to see what possible form or shape I might have, and to my surprise and joy I had no shape or form at all.  I was naught but a sparkle of pure consciousness, the tiniest, most minuscule spark of light imaginable.  And that is all I was.  I was content that way, without ego or identity, pure, whole, and uncomplicated.  Within that nothingness I had become, I simply existed, ecstatic in perfect bliss and peace, like perfection itself and perfect love.  Everywhere around me were sparkles like myself, billions and trillions of them, winking and blinking like on/off lights, pulsating from some unknown source.

I would have existed in that state of bliss forever had an irritation not made itself known, like an old sore deep within me; then energy waves burst forth from that deep old sore, and with them came the life of Phyllis, playing itself out from birth to death.  I remembered hearing stories of past life reviews, a particular feature of dying common to all, where your life passes before you at great speed for final review.  Remembering this, I expected some kind of theatrical showing of my life as Phyllis or perhaps something like a television replay, but such was not the case.  Mine was not a review, it was a reliving.  For me, it was a total reliving of every thought I had ever thought, every word I had ever spoken, and every deed I had ever done; plus the effect of each thought, word, and deed on everyone and anyone who had ever come within my environment or sphere of influence whether I knew them or not (including unknown passersby on the street); plus the effect of each thought, word, and deed on weather, plants, animals, soil, trees, water, and air.

It was a reliving of the total gestalt of me as Phyllis, complete with all the consequences of ever having lived at all.  No detail was left out.  No slip of the tongue or slur was missed.  No mistake nor accident went unaccounted for.  If there is such a thing as hell, as far as I am concerned this was hell.

I had no idea, no idea at all, not even the slightest hint of an idea, that every thought, word, and deed was remembered, accounted for, and went out and had a life of its own once released; nor did I know that the energy of that life directly affected all it touched or came near.  It’s as if we must live in some kind of vast sea or soup of each other’s energy residue and thought waves, and we are each held responsible for our contributions and the quality of “ingredients” we add.

This knowledge overwhelmed me!

The old saying, “No man is an island,” took on graphic proportions.  There wasn’t any heavenly St. Peter in charge.  It was me judging me, and my judgment was most severe.  As when I previously realized my body was not me, I also came to realize Phyllis wasn’t me either.  She was a personality or a facade I had once projected.  She was an extension of me, a part I had played, a role I had acted.  She was a particular development I was engaged in, a particular focus I had become, and that focus had not developed quite as planned.

I was disappointed and saddened at this, but I took interest and satisfaction from one characteristic she had repeatedly displayed, and that was her desire to try and try again.  She always did something, even if unwise.  She was not one to sit back and wait upon others or capricious fate.  She was relentless in her determination to make of herself a better person and to learn everything possible.  She was a doer, willing and able, a person who would reach and stretch.  This pleased me and at last I pronounced her personality good and the life she had lived worth its living.

During this judgment process, “The Void” in which I dwelt began to pull away and separate from my dining room in Boise.  These two worlds separated as they had previously merged, but I was still next to the light bulb, having never at any time altered my location or the space I occupied.  Only my environment had changed, not I.  As I looked down at the body of Phyllis on the floor, I was so filled with love and forgiveness that I floated ever so gently back into her body, moving as I went on a layer of large bright sparklers such as those used on the Fourth of July.  Again, I reentered through the top of the head, feeling the need to shrink and then squeeze back into the tight form Phyllis’s body offered.

When consciousness returned and I was again Phyllis, I was so stunned and shocked I was incapable of relating to anything, even the searing pain in my right leg.  Instead of continuing only four or five more feet to the kitchen phone, I rolled over the other way and crawled back to my bedroom, lifted myself into bed, and remained there for two days lost in a stupor.

I did not know my two daughters.  I did not recognize food nor did I know how to eat, and the bed on which I lay was a foreign object.  Everything around me – clothes, sheets, newspapers, lamps, windows, clocks nothing made any kind of sense nor did I recognize any of it.  I was lost between two worlds, existent in neither, and unable to identify any sign or landmark that might stimulate memory.  Both daughters realized something was wrong but since I had always projected an image of invincibility, they left me alone, figuring I’d call if I needed help.

We are all descended from a long line of independent, individualistic people who pride themselves on being self-sufficient.  Add to that the typical “Code of the West” and you’ll have some idea just how independent we all were.  Once, when our kitchen caught fire and flames licked the ceiling, I saved the children myself, cut off the electricity, doused the fire with salt and then, when everything was under control, called first our insurance agent and then my husband at his job.  It never occurred to me to call the fire department.  I could take care of it myself and I knew it.  So I did.  Many were the emergencies, major and minor, I handled in this manner.  Bearing this in mind, it is understandable why the girls were reluctant to take action.

Typically, however, I finally managed to come out of the stupor myself.  Memories of my job filtered through.  Since it was my only source of income, I had to get back to work.  I had to.  The thought of it became a driving force pushing me out of bed and to the clothes closet.

I have no recollection how I managed to dress and drive my car all the way across town, let alone safely park it.  I only remember trying to walk up those two long flights of stairs in the old building where I worked so I could reach my office on the second floor.  There was no elevator.  My climb up those stairs was more like as ascent up a formidable mountain where I lost more ground than I gained but, at last, I reached the top just as my boss walked by.  She screamed when she saw me and said I looked more dead than alive and insisted a doctor be called.  With her help, a specialist was located who would see me immediately and I was whisked off to his office.

By this time, more memory was returning, at least enough for me to remember my right leg, the band of crimson skin, and the hot lump.  I could neither stand, sit, nor lie without excruciating pain.  After a long and thorough examination, the doctor was puzzled and shook his head.  He could not figure out why I was alive, for I should be dead.  He said I must have had a major thrombosis in the right thigh vein which, when dislodged by my pounding, must have blocked all oxygen to my brain.  The result could only have been death in his view, but since he was not in attendance when it happened, he could only hypothesize.  Phlebitis was evident and severe.  In his judgment, he felt the worst was over and I was no longer in imminent danger so he prescribed a potent drug labeled dangerous and sent me home to heal.  The drug could not be used for more than seven days or it would kill all red blood cells; it was to be taken around the clock.  The pharmacist warned a meal must be eaten before taking each dose or I would sicken.  My stay at home was to be that of an invalid with legs propped up and no walking except to the bathroom.  My boss granted me a leave of absence, so I settled on the living room sofa near the television for a long convalescence.  A few people came to visit and the girls arranged to be home early from school, but other than that, I was alone most of the time.  I never once used the television, though.  I didn’t need to.  Strange things began to happen.

Perhaps it was side-effects from the drug; at least, that seems as good an explanation as any.  All I know is three unusual incidents occurred.

First, I could hear someone’s thoughts at the same degree of tone and pitch as their spoken words.  Try as I might, I could not distinguish between what anyone thought and what was said.  I could hear both.  Since people seldom say what they think, I could not tell how to respond – neither with visitors nor my daughters.  This continued the entire week I was on the drug, creating a dilemma so confusing I finally refused to speak with anyone, including my children, or acknowledge conversation.

Second, while lying on the sofa staring into space, there formed slightly above my chest an elevated “rainbow-type” arch like a misty bridge, and across that arch there began to parade a whole host of tiny people I came to realize were all my past lives parading by for review, ending with my existence as a lizard-like being from a water star which had gone nova in the Sirius System.  This strange refugee to planet Earth eventually died, as did most of its kind, finding the atmosphere and living conditions here not as compatible as originally calculated.  I strongly identified with the lizard being, feeling myself to be every bit the foreigner it was, and just as lost.  This parade of life fascinated me and I studied each character carefully, noting the possible evolution of my own personality traits and how each came to be.  These tiny characters were like fully animated holograms, totally real and alive yet like so much thin air.  This parade also continued for the seven days I took the medication.

Third, I became aware of how the physical trauma was affecting my body and quite by chance, I looked intently at the area of my female organs and right thigh.  Instead of seeing the outer shape of my body parts, I was able to see with seemingly X-ray vision each individual cell and groups of cells deep inside myself.  These cells were upset and they were marshalling together in efforts to fight off any further destruction and to rebuild damaged areas, moving in waves to accomplish this task as if engaged in battle.  It had never entered my mind that microscopic, individual cells had any worth or value other than that of primitive organic functioning; yet, there they were, intelligent beings fully capable of emotion, choice, reason, memory, response.  They were truly intelligent, not mindless nothings.  To say I was surprised is hardly adequate.

I immediately desired to speak with them and apologize for what had been done.  Had I continued trying to get to the phone after regaining consciousness, damage might not have been so severe.  I was truly sorry.  With the desire came the ability, and speak with them I did and they with me.  We had quite a discussion.  That experience had such a profound effect on my appreciation of intelligence that to this day I still work in concert with my body, its cells, and substructure.  We are a team, my body and I, and we perform together for the common good.

My physical progress was deemed satisfactory by the doctor, so when the week was over, the dangerous drug was replaced with aspirin treatment.  Since aspirin makes me very dizzy, my memory of those six weeks of treatment is a blur.  I do remember the man who had impregnated me called many times to see how I was doing.  He refused to fly back and help but he did send money and, between his contributions and my group insurance, I was able to keep up with mounting medical and household bills.  But my morale suffered.

Healers of all sorts came to help once the word was out that I was ill.  I had no idea there were so many different ways to heal and so many different people who channeled or worked with healing energy.  I know these people meant well and, in their own way, they were doing all they could.  But nothing worked – not laying-on-of-hands, not any kind of prayer, not “poison sucking,” not magnetic healing, not burping or high energy, not anything, whether orthodox or unorthodox.  Nothing worked because I no longer cared.  I allowed healers to come because it would have been impolite not to, but, when they left, it was as if they had never been there.  Although I could converse somewhat normally by now and was putting up a good front, nothing made much sense.  I functioned more from habit than reason.

I returned to work in increments of time, first for a few hours, then half-days, three-quarter days and finally full-time.  It was painful to sit in office chairs and I had trouble focusing my mind.  Yet, I did my best and slowly strength returned, but I could not walk properly and wound up dragging my right leg.  It was unable to support weight.

More help came, and the specialist who doctored me was grand.  I was just starting to make real progress when my landlord chose to raise my rent far higher than I could afford to pay, effective immediately.  I panicked.  Friends came to my rescue, another house was found in an older section of Boise, and my daughters and I moved bag and baggage to our next abode.  The house was not as desirable as we had hoped.  My daughters were cramped in a small bedroom and the junior high school Paulie attended proved to be her undoing.  It was enough to watch a once strong and able mother reduced to jelly, to have her father move far away and experience the loss of all her security, but to attend a school she both feared and hated was the final straw.  There were many episodes of skipped classes, drugs, sex, and drinking.  I was frankly puzzled by her behavior and was without any clear idea as to how I might handle the situation.

By now it was March 29.  My son Kelly had returned unexpectedly from his long voyage on the other side of the globe.  He was only home three days when he decided to join the Coast Guard, a move which would enable him to pay off the loans he had borrowed for the cruise school and to pursue further involvement with the sea.  The man from California finally returned to Boise and called to see if he could stop by.  I said yes.  It was evening.  Both girls were gone for overnight visits with friends.  Kelly was at a bar talking over old times with buddies from high school.  When the man came, I was able to briefly state what I had been through and how it had affected me, withholding any emotion and placing no blame.  He listened silently.  I made one request.  I asked that he hold me one more time and just let me cry, let me be a child again without any burdens or fears – if only for a moment.  He jumped up, shouted “NO,” and ran out the door, slamming it behind him.  Almost immediately, he returned, thanked me for meeting with him, and slammed the door again.

He wrote much later to explain his behavior, saying that one of his daughters had been impregnated by a man who promptly deserted her, leaving her destitute.  In coming to his daughter’s aid, he had cursed and damned the man who left.  After storming out of my house that night, he had later realized that throughout my entire ordeal he had in essence deserted me.  He had become the man he had once cursed.  This overwhelming realization drove him to near-suicide before he could get a grip on himself.  He wanted me to know this so perhaps I could find it in my heart to forgive him so he could in turn forgive himself.

I had no way to know any of this, however, when he slammed the door that night.  All I knew was that throughout my life I had never once turned down anyone in need, no matter what sacrifice or inconvenience might be necessary on my part – and now in my hour of need I was denied.

Denied.

The waiting bomb inside me, at the very core of my being, exploded at last.

It was a kind of suicide, for I willed myself dead and my body was too exhausted to argue.  Getting well had proven an arduous task; life had lost its meaning; I could no longer understand my own children; and I had come to dislike my looks and body size intensely, feeling myself to be ugly, old, and fat.  I knew “The Other Side” was better than this so I resolved to return there.  I wanted to die so I did.  I have no way of knowing if I really died or not.  I only know my body dropped away, falling on a large, overstuffed chair.

This time, I moved, not my environment, and I moved rapidly, first moving out through the top of my head, then sailing up through the ceiling, out the roof, and into the night sky with a universe of stars watching.  My speed accelerated until I noticed a wide but thin-edged expanse of bright light ahead, like a “parting” in space or a “lip,” with a brightness so brilliant it was beyond light yet I could look upon it without pain or discomfort.  I had been a meditator and teacher of meditation for nearly a decade and “heavenly” lights, white light, and all manner of etheric light were familiar to me; but this was not like any of those.  It was more intense, more probing, more radiant, more powerful.  It was beyond any frame of reference I had.  The closer I came the larger the parting in space appeared until, when I reached its edge, I was absorbed by it as if engulfed by a force field.  I cannot describe for you how that felt, except to say it was “divine.”

I had succeeded.  I was where I wanted to be.  I was inside bliss.

Further movement on my part ceased because of the shock of what happened next.  Before me there loomed two gigantic, impossibly huge masses spinning at great speed, looking for all the world like cyclones.  One was inverted over the other, forming an hourglass shape, but where the spouts should have touched there was instead incredible rays of power shooting out in all directions.  The top cyclone spun clockwise, the bottom counterclockwise, but their sides were somewhat bulgy rather than being as smooth-sided as might be expected, considering what appeared to be a tremendous rate of spin.

I was floating at a height about mid-way in relation to the cyclones yet far away.  I stared at the spectacle before me in disbelief.  They were so massive.  And seeing them was so unexpected.

Cyclones!

As I stared, I came to recognize my former Phyllis self in the midupperleft of the top cyclone.  Even though only a speck, I could see my Phyllis clearly, and superimposed over her were all her past lives and all her future lives happening at the same time in the same space as her present life.  Everything was happening at once!  Around Phyllis was everyone else she had known and around them many others.  The same thing was happening to all these people as was happening to Phyllis.  The cyclone was crammed full of people and I had the feeling of seeing all life.  The same phenomenon was happening to each and all.  Past, present, and future were not separated but, instead, interpenetrated like a multiple hologram combined with its own reflection.

The only physical movement anyone or anything made was to contract and expand.  There was no up or down, right or left, forward or backward.  There was only in and out, like breathing, like the universe and all creation were breathing – inhale/exhale, contraction/expansion, in/out, off/on.

The lower cyclone mirrored the upper one.  My Phyllis self was there too and so was everyone else, occupying the same general sector of space as above, with the same phenomenon happening in the same manner.  As above, so below.  To be very honest with you I felt as if I were witnessing the wave pattern of a giant echo, and I began to wonder about life and its meaning.  Was existence really just a series of echoes upon itself, spiraling forever outward from some primeval sound or explosion?

Remarkable as the sight was, I soon lost interest for I was tired of life and its struggle, and I was tired of any search for my place in it.  My interest was the middle, where the spouts should have touched but didn’t, where that powerful, explosive energy was, where those shooting rays originated.  The force from that place was so mighty, its radiation so potent and intense, that it was painful to look at it straight on.  What I saw of it came in quick side glances to avoid discomfort.  That’s where I wanted to go regardless of what such a choice might mean.  I had a feeling that place, that space, would somehow lead to God.  I wanted to know God, I wanted to know what God was, so I began to move toward the rays.

Meanwhile, my son was enjoying himself with his friends, drinking and laughing and talking over old times.  He had a mug of beer mid-air when suddenly he put it down, faced his buddies, stood up and said, “My mother needs me.  I have to go help my mother.”  With that, he left, surprising himself as much as everyone else with this unusual outburst.

A year later, when Kelly and I finally spoke of this night, he described for me the bar scene and how surprised everyone was at his behavior, and how it was when he entered the living room and saw my body.  He said it never occurred to him to call for help; rather, after sizing up the situation as best he could, his next impulse was to sit opposite my body in another chair and start talking, not about anything in particular, just talking in a way which would create continuous sound.  That impulse seemed of utmost importance so he complied – talking and talking – out loud.  To understand why Kelly would trust that inner impulse, I feel a need to explain that all three of my children were taught from infancy to trust their own inner guidance, question all authority, and think independently.  No form of dependence was allowed.  As everything turned out later, this impulse of his was “right on” in the sense that hearing is the last physical faculty to leave at death.  Had he spent time calling for help, I probably would have been beyond assistance, too far removed to return.  But because he remained true to what “felt” right and followed that prompting, I was able to “hear” him and respond.

I heard Kelly’s voice just when I was close enough to the central core to feel the piercing intensity of each ray and be almost blinded by the radiance.  His voice caught my attention.  As I turned for better reception, I hesitated.  Although no words could be heard there was something unusual in his sound.  I didn’t hear the voice of a son loving his mother.  I heard instead the voice of one human being freely giving love to another human being because he wanted to, not because he had to or because it was expected of him.  It was the sound of one human being giving full measure, without reservation, without hesitation, without expectation or need, without conditions or strings attached.  There was no pleading.  Just love.  Love so full-bodied and rich, so warm, fresh, and joyful, so generous and all encompassing, that it seemed the greatest of all gifts.  Unconditional love!  I was so delighted to discover such a thing could exist on the earthplane, I moved away from the cyclones, past the edge of this lightworld that had engulfed me, and back through the night sky to my house below, descending rapidly and entering my body, again through the top of the head, squeezing to fit back in.

This time my body did not respond.  I felt slightly cooler than when I left and a little stiff.  I panicked.

Instantly, I assumed the role of both coach and cheerleader, and sped from cell to cell, shouting for all I was worth, apologizing to each for what I had done.  I promised never to be so thoughtless again, that I was back to stay and I would do whatever I could to regain my health and make full amends.  I kept shouting at cells to wake up, wake up now, I was here to stay and we all had a job to do.  The lungs were the hardest to restart.  The bellows wouldn’t expand, so I puffed and puffed and puffed until a whoosh of air entered; and when it did, my consciousness shifted to my head level.  Physically, I blinked for a moment, then tried to stand, just to make certain “everyone” had awakened and all cells were responsive.

Standing was a real struggle.  Kelly being wiser at that moment came to help, but my vocal cords would not work.  I could not speak.  He then put his large arms around me and held me tight.  It was as if a prayer had been answered.  My son supplied what the man from California refused.  Tears came and then a flood.  I cried silently for what seemed hours, then Kelly spoke.  He told of receiving a letter from me mailed around late January, a letter handed to him after a gale had struck and they were forced to port in northern Spain.  It was a dark and dismal time in his life, and he had become uncooperative in class, depressed at discovering this so-called special school was no different than regular high school and did not include oceanography classes, as he had been led to believe.  He was saddled with a tremendous debt for what seemed a waste of time and he was inconsolable.

In that letter, I had described life as being an immense school, where we each study certain subjects in certain grades according to our level of understanding, where there were recesses when we earned them and time out; but essentially, the schooling was relentless as we passed up grade levels to higher and more difficult studies until we graduated.  Nothing was ever wasted, regardless of how it seemed, and we were all, for the most part, headed in the same direction, back to the God from whence we came.  The letter gave him hope and showed him there was purpose in everything, even darkness and despair.

As I stood cuddled in his arms, Kelly returned my words to me, words sent in a letter half-way around the globe, words that helped him in his darkest hour and were now returning to help me in mine.  I saw in my mind a “circle” close and I understood.  I took this gesture to be a confirmation that my choice to live was a good choice.  It was okay to be back.  I really could rebuild my life.

My son put me to bed.  I slept long and soundly.

By morning I could speak so I telephoned William G. Reimer, a naturopathic doctor.  Although major symptoms had been alleviated by traditional medical procedures, I was far from well and still dragging my right leg.  Something was wrong, very wrong, and I intended to find out what.  I had never been a patient of Reimer’s before, but I had once defended him and several other naturopaths when they were unfairly arrested by an overly zealous and ambitious attorney general.  Fair treatment under law had always been an issue with me and I considered their treatment grossly unfair.  The public defense I helped arrange proved the naturopaths innocent of all charges.  They were released and all charges dropped, but the “price” I paid for helping them was high.

In those days, advocacy was not appreciated and naturopaths were considered quacks.

Now my life was on the line.  I wasn’t certain how naturopathy worked but I was certain about Bill Reimer’s ability as a healer.  I did not want symptoms cured, I wanted to get down to the basic cause – and this time it must be nature’s way.  It didn’t matter to me if Reimer could solve the entire problem of cause or not – but I knew he could help me begin, point me in the right direction – and that was what I wanted.  I was through dying.  I wanted now to live.

My choice to explore natural healing and naturopathy as a starting point meant I would need to relearn the definition of what constituted health.  I had always thought of health as the absence of disease, but I discovered health is really a state of balance and harmony existing between our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves.  Anything else is disease (not-at-ease).

Natural healing, I learned, is based on the premise that all parts of the self are involved in any disorder and that all must be addressed to insure recovery.  No single part can be treated out of context from the others.  In natural healing, the patient is considered an active participant and all treatments are geared toward that individual’s own inherent rhythms of self-healing.  Root causes are dealt with rather than symptoms alone and, since disorders are “backed” out of the body the way each entered, the patient usually gets worse before he or she gets better.  It is definitely not the fastest method for healing, but it is more thorough and more complete.

After extensive examination and diagnostic testing, Bill Reimer described several courses of action which could be taken; one of which involved a thorough “house cleaning” going all the way back to birth to readjust anything which might be out of line.  The idea of possibly correcting a lifetime of abuse and misuse was appealing but also frightening.  I was about to pick an easier alternative when I remembered my vow to regain total health, so I consented to the full package.  Monthly payments were arranged as my office insurance did not cover naturopathic care.  What I experienced while “dead” was not discussed except in passing, and briefly at that.  Of primary concern at that point was the condition of my body and my lack of physical coordination.

My health did indeed get worse during the months of treatment which followed but it plummeted farther and faster than Reimer expected.  I seemed locked in a downward spiral which could only be slowed, not stopped.  As Reimer searched diligently for any procedure which would prove more effective, I began to question the wisdom of naturopathic care.  The biggest stumbling block to recovery, as it later turned out, though, was not the type of healing I had selected, nor my purpose in selecting it, but rather my state of mind.  I was convinced I was going crazy.  Yet I confided to no one my fears lest I be made sport of or condemned, for the reaction from the first physician I had seen and his incessant laughter still “burned” across my memory.  It would have made a difference had I been more open but I wasn’t.

I didn’t fully trust Reimer because I didn’t fully trust myself.

I could not believe what had happened to me in dying nor could I forget it.  I tried to tell myself it was all a dream or a vision or a hallucination, but I knew in my heart it was none of these.  What I saw and experienced began to haunt me.  It began to come back, replaying itself over and over again when least expected – the sparkles of pure energy, cyclones, “The Void,” exercise of creation – all of it.

What does it mean?  Why did it happen?  What am I supposed to do about it?  Why won’t it go away and leave me alone?

What I experienced challenged everything I had ever read, seen, or heard, everything I believed.  What I experienced was so powerful, so intense, so shocking, it practically wiped clean the slate of my mind, annihilating my belief systems with it.  I had nothing left solid enough to stand on, no grounding, no foundation on which to rebuild; every step I took wavered, like trying to walk on Jell-O.  Enough habit and memory returned so I appeared relatively normal and could continue limited consulting projects and various other jobs in addition to my employment at the bank – I could help others but I could not help myself.

My major focus kept centering around the experiences I had survived rather than any other issues.  What if they were real?  What if everything really happened exactly as I remembered it?  If so, if real, then that meant there is no such thing as death.  Death does not exist for it was truly just like walking through a doorway or switching states of consciousness.  That was all there was to it.  Death, then, does not end life, it only changes the scenery and turns life’s script around.

If that is right, if my experiences were indeed real, then there really is a single, all-powerful, all pervasive Force in, through, and behind all things.  God!  That means, then, that God is no fairy story, no wishful thinking, no joke, no ancient legend.  It means God is real.  God is.

Such joy, such remarkably good news should be shared.  At least, I decided to tell others what had happened to me and what I had learned from it.  But when I did, they would nod accommodatingly and continue as if nothing had been said and, if I spoke louder and insisted on the importance of my message, they would withdraw altogether as if I were some kind of kook trying to get attention.  I wound up awash in ridicule.  If indeed I had a message to share, I certainly did not know how to share it.  Whatever good news I possessed came without any instructions on what to do with it.

Silence seemed the better virtue.

I rationalized this retreat into silence by telling myself that what had happened was my secret, it was my own private affair, a special tryst between God and me, and spreading such news around would somehow cheapen or lessen its importance.  It belonged to me.  It was mine to keep.  Others weren’t interested anyway so why should I bother.

The deeper into silence I retreated, though, the more I questioned my own sanity and the validity of what I thought true.  To complicate matters further, I could not relate to myself as Phyllis.  Her habits, personality, clothing,, possessions, and lifestyle were foreign and irritating to me; yet, when I looked in the mirror, there she always was, looking back at me, all five foot seven, one hundred ninety pounds of her.  She was shaped like a pudgy balloon with a deep sadness in her eyes and a washed-out face rimmed with short wavy hair.  There was ample proof in her surroundings that she had once been a happy, bouncy, spontaneous woman with a penchant for song and a lust for exploration, be it caves or ghost towns.  And she adored rocks.  Everywhere I turned there were rocks, even in her purse.  Rocks in her head, too, I mused.

What was I going to do about Phyllis?  I was wearing her body and living her life yet I did not know her.  All I knew was – she wasn’t me, and I didn’t fit her pattern.

This schizoid behavior deepened my fear of instability and insanity.

Into this confusion came three people, all strangers and younger than myself – astute, enthusiastic, and voraciously bent on learning all they could of life and the potential of “self.”  These three people offered to help me and together we formed a kind of “extended family” whereby we exchanged keys to each other’s homes, shared our resources, and formed a mutual support pact.  Elizabeth and Terry Macinata were married then and had a young son, Daen (they are now divorced).  The other member of our group was Tom Huber (he has since changed his name to Thomas Shawnodese Wind).  I dubbed us all “cousins” as we began our year-and-a-half journey together, probing the depths of life and its living.

We would hold sessions employing various kinds of confrontive therapy.  Sometimes our sessions were spontaneous and sometimes they were planned in advance, occurring daily or only once in a while.  We tried out any idea that seemed reasonable, including psychological games utilizing symbols for deeper insight.  Sometimes we just went about the business of everyday living, listening carefully to what each said while observing physical mannerisms.  If we detected anything negative or self-defeating, we would challenge that person immediately, forcing him or her to confront the habit, where it came from, why it was there, and what might be done about it.  Often we would verbally battle each other and argue heatedly.  Many of our sessions were painfully unmerciful as nothing was off-limits to debate, and the more painful a session was the more successful it was considered.  Personal issues of every description surfaced.

Meanwhile, my treatments with Dr. Reimer revealed a long list of problems I did not know I had, such as dyslexia (which was later confirmed by a medical physician).  When I was a child, I would often feign play, sneak out to an old “milk house,” and lock the door, prop up an orange crate for a stage, stand upon it, and read comic books and Sunday funnies out loud until I finally trained myself to speak correctly when I read.  These “secret” sessions took three years and I never confided to anyone what I was doing or why.  Dyslexia was unknown then, and there were no special classes for children with learning disabilities.  My need to coordinate eyes, mouth, and brain so I could read correctly was instinctual.  It was something I did because there seemed no other alternative at the time.  The dyslexia condition was just one of many surprises Bill Reimer uncovered.

Since my body had always been quite sensitive, it was no surprise when I learned that many “scars” had collected from a lifetime of reactions to chemical medications.  To help correct a whole host of dexterity and speech difficulties, damage from the death experience and shifts in brain/mind functioning, the doctor and my “cousins” had me do many exercises for the purpose of relearning crawling, standing, walking, climbing, running, identifying left from right, seeing, hearing, and organizing thoughts.  I performed exercise drills by the hour, daily.  I finally reached a point where I could run without falling and my right leg no longer dragged.

By that fall I ventured out and bought a house with a large garden in back.  This move put Paulie back in the part of town she enjoyed most, where her childhood friends lived; but, by then, her world had become rooted in rebellion.  The move made little difference.  She was kicked out of school repeatedly.  Discontented and unhappy Natalie deemed this a good time to leave so she rented an apartment and moved out.  My overall health began deteriorating again.  I suffered three major relapses, the last of which was adrenal failure.  My blood pressure registered sixty over sixty.  Immediate emergency treatment required my “cousins” taking over my household and my life.  When I broke down my new house broke down, too, flooding out the basement bedroom three times and leaking everywhere imaginable including roof and bathtub.  I missed so much work from this second round of health reversals my boss finally sat me down and made it quite clear that either I got well and stayed well or I would be replaced.

My life was out of control and I was helpless to stop it.

Everything turned into a horrible nightmare.  No matter where I turned or what I did, disaster followed.  All the gains previously made were lost.  The only thing I could do that gave me the courage to keep going was chant the words, “GOD IS,” over and over, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud, by the hour.

In early November, my extended family decided a change of scenery might help, so with Reimer’s permission, I was laid snugly in a van and trucked up to Seattle, Washington, to attend the Mind Miraculous Symposium sponsored by the Church of Religious Science in the Opera House of Seattle Center.  This giant auditorium was filled to overflowing with several thousand people and a roster of speakers, all famous and brilliant.  The injection I had been given had taken effect by then and I was both alert and mobile.  None of us knew it, but a miracle was about to happen.

The first speaker, Dr.  William Tiller, physicist from Stanford University, talked about “The Eternal Now.”  He spoke of things like energy, mass, and interpenetration, but I only remember staring at charts and drawings projected on a huge screen behind him.  As his talk ended, he stated it was his belief everything happened at the same time in the same space and, with those words, there flashed on the screen his rendition of what the physical dynamics of that phenomenon might look like.  The diagram which appeared was of two spinning cyclones, inverted over each other, forming an hourglass shape, and where the spouts should have touched there was a powerful force shooting rays out in all directions.

I jumped out of my seat in shock and ran from the auditorium.

In muffled screams I cried out words like: He saw it, too.  He did.  I am not the only one.  He knows what I know.  I’m not crazy.  I am not crazy!  The cyclones are real.  It all really happened.  It wasn’t a dream or a hallucination or a fantasy or a projection from any kind of memory.  It was real.  I am real.  I can be Phyllis because I am Phyllis.  I am me.

My heart practically pounded out of my chest as I slumped into a cross-legged position under a foyer light.  I am not crazy!  I am not crazy!  I am not crazy!

Soon after, a medical doctor happened by, returning from a call he had made to check on a patient.  He was so impressed by the “glow” on my face at that moment that he walked over and sat down beside me, then offered me a job should I ever move to Seattle.  I was thoroughly astonished but said nothing except to thank him and affirm that I would consider his offer.  Much later, after several more trips to Seattle, I turned his offer down, but its timeliness and impact refreshed me and gave me hope.  He was never told the effect his words had on me for it seemed wiser just to savor the promise his offer implied.

He and Dr.  Tiller comprised the miracle I so desperately needed.  The nightmare was over at last.

From that day on my health improved so rapidly everyone was amazed, including me.  The turnaround was dramatic.  I now knew I could trust what had happened to me but I still did not know what to do about it.  Just because I now knew my experiences were real did not mean I would have to accept them or find any place for them in my life.  It was obvious my first step must be a decision.  Would I accept or reject?  Here is what I considered:

Accepting means taking a risk, to accept my experiences and integrate them into my daily life could well mean more ridicule and scorn from others, and facing the issue of insanity again and again.  I could be labeled undesirable or a fake since I had no proof to offer, or I could be accused of trying to be some kind of holy seer or divine prophet.  Acceptance would change my life completely, necessitating that I live what I now knew to be true.  Since my experiences challenged the validity of everything I had previously known, accepting those experiences would mean I would have to relearn and redefine life from scratch, from breathing right on up to thinking and relating.  I had already lost much, but I could lose more; I could lose everything and everyone, but in so losing, I could also gain.  I could gain everything and everyone, and possibly learn how to “live” God.  Rejection would mean denial, not only of the experiences but my own sense of integrity, honesty, and inner truth.  Rejection would mean turning my back on what I knew happened and pretending it away.  But it would also mean I would have to take fewer risks and could retain what security and comfort I still possessed.  Rejection would be sensible and practical, all things considered, allowing more time to concentrate on healing and the continuance of life as usual.  No one would ever know the difference.  There would be no further damage to my reputation or further insult to my family.  My job and lifestyle could be preserved.  But rejection would also mean I would have to deny what might have been a peek at God, the opportunity of experiencing creation and the discovery of divine oneness and truth.  It would mean saying no when deep down inside I wanted to say yes.

It was a case of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t.”

Acceptance was clearly no panacea and rejection offered no escape.  My decision was finally based on peace of mind.  No matter what else happened in life, I still had to live with me.  If I couldn’t be honest with myself, who could I be honest with?  I chose to acknowledge all that happened and totally restructure my life.  What had happened, happened.  Nobody’s belief or disbelief, including mine, could ever change that simple fact.

The Quest to Understand

The near-death experience itself is just an introduction to what comes next.  My choice to acknowledge my experience and pursue a total restructuring of my life led to pathways both magical and frightening.  Some of what I did next completes Chapter Two in Coming Back to Life, and can also be found in Beyond the Light, the section on “Spiritual Emergence/ Emergencies.”  Only in Future Memory (softcover, Hampton Roads Publishing, Charlottesville, VA, ISBN #1-57174-135-6) do I begin to speak of the revelations I received during my three near-death episodes.

My story is scattered as it is because I use aspects of it to illustrate what many near-death survivors go through in coming to terms with their experience and the aftereffects which follow.  And there are after-effects, both psychological and physiological.  In November of 1978, I began my research of the phenomenon, a full-time commitment that continues yet today and is based on interviews of over 3,000 near-death survivors, 700 of them in greater depth.  My books contain my research, much of which has since been verified by other researchers.

I encourage you to join IANDS to keep up with the latest on the news front, to share your own experience if you had one, to learn more about a myriad of topics, and, in general, help us fund the many services we offer.  By becoming a member of IANDS, you help us to help you!  Welcome aboard.

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Yolaine Stout

1982, a suicidal near-death experience taught Yolaine the importance of finding her own purpose and passion in life, and that life was full of guidance, miracles and potential if we would only look, listen and trust. Yolaine is the past President of the International Association for Near-Death Studies and current President of the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences. As an expert on near-death experiences, she has advised numerous TV producers including those for Oprah, Brian Williams, HBO, the Discovery Channel and writers for Newsweek. She has given workshops on near-death experiences throughout the US and has been featured on numerous radio interviews, including Coast-to-Coast AM radio. She is the author of “Your Blueprint to Passion: A Spiritual Solution to Depression” and author of the article “Six Major Challenges Faced by Near-Death Experiencers.” She is also producing and a documentary and a book about people who had near-death experiences. Yolaine’s passion and purpose is to teach the many lessons she learned to others — especially those who are experiencing obstacles to achieving their highest potential, including nonprofits, those suffering from depression and people struggling with the aftermath of a near-death or similar experience.

Websites & Background Information:

• The American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE)
• Stout Potentials
• Yolaine Stout’s Facebook Page
• Wikipedia on Yolaine Stout
• Member of NHNE’s NDE network. Yolaine’s profile page is located here.

Contact Information:

Email: yolaine@spiritualblueprint.com

Book:

• Your Blueprint to Passion: A Spiritual Solution to Depression

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Yolaine Stout On Coast-To-Coast

Yolaine Stout experienced an NDE in 1982. At the time, Yolaine was an atheist. Due to severe depression and a failing marriage, she attempted suicide. Yolaine’s near-death experience changed her beliefs about the purpose and meaning of life to the point that she left a 25 year teaching career to devote herself to promoting NDE research and education. This interview was first broadcast December 23, 2007 on Coast to Coast.

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Mary Jo Rapini

Mary Jo Rapini, MEd, LPC is a psychotherapist specializing in intimacy, sex and relationships. She lives in Houston, Texas.  Mary Jo maintains a private practice and is the Intimacy/Sex Psychotherapist for the Methodist Hospital Pelvic Restorative Center and The Methodist Hospital Weight Management Center.  Additionally, she is a lecturer, author and television personality. Currently you can find Mary Jo on the TLC series Big Medicine, and Wednesday Mornings from 9 to 10am on Fox Houston’s Morning News.  She contributes on-air for CNN’s Prime News, CBS up to the Minute, Fox National Morning News, Montel and various Houston television and radio programs.  Mary Jo is also featured in a Discovery Channel show about Near Death Expreiences (first air date Jan. 4, 2010).

Websites & Background Information:

• Mary Jo Rapini Website

Contact Information:

Email: maryjo@maryjorapini.com

Book:

• Is God Pink?: Dying to Heal

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Mary Jo Rapini Describing Her 2003 Near-Death Experience

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Mary Jo Rapini on the Today Show
January 20, 2010

The article that accompanies this video is located here.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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What If God Has Us Totally Outsmarted?
An Elaboration On Mary Jo Rapini’s Near-Death Experience
By Robert Perry
Circle Course Community Blog / Mustard Seed Venture Network
October 10, 2011

Original Link 1

Original Link 2

I recently wrote a piece that tries to draw out the meaning of the near-death experience of a woman named Mary Jo Rapini. She’s been featured on the Today Show and Nightline. Recently, I found myself thinking about her experience. It kept coming back to me day after day, chiefly because of the masterful way in which God interacted with her. So I wrote a blog post about it, trying to draw out the meaning of her brief interaction with God. I titled it “What if God has us totally outsmarted?”

After writing the post, I decided to see if I could send it to Mary Jo herself. I wanted her to know that her experience was touching others (though I’m sure she already does know that). Also, I had tried hard to honor her experience in teasing out its details and I hoped I got it right.

I found her contact info, and got a lovely response back from her, in which she immediately said “that is it in a nutshell.” Then she asked if she could post it on her site. If you’re interested, the post is [included below].

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Robert Perry Blog Post: What if God Has Us Totally Outsmarted?
By Mary Jo Rapini
Mary Jo Rapini Website
October 10, 2011

Original Link

As many of you know, several years ago I had a near death experience (NDE), and my story has been featured several times lately in the national media. I received an email this morning from a gentlemen, named Robert Perry, who was familiar with my experience and blogged about it today. As I read his blog post, I was instantly struck by his understanding of God’s love for us and how God made me feel during my own personal encounter with Him. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share Mr. Perry’s blog post with my readers…

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What If God Has Us Totally Outsmarted?
By Robert Perry
Circle Course Community Blog
October 6, 2011

Original Link

Last year, I wrote about a woman’s near-death experience (“We can do better“), and in the past few days it keeps coming to mind, as a window onto a certain way of thinking about God. So I thought I better write about it.

I think a (perhaps the) common conception of God is as the president of the company. As the president, he works in the big office many floors above our little cubicle. We rarely, maybe never, have any direct interaction with him. His main influence on us is that he wants us to obey his larger agenda. We accept that — that’s his job — but we also have a very ambivalent relationship with that larger agenda. The fact is that the president is not down in our cubicle. He doesn’t know what it’s like down there. He is not in touch with our needs. He has no real clue what’s actually best for us. He’s just got his big agenda that he’s plastered over all the little cubicles in the company, ours included. Quite obviously, his interest and awareness do not extend all the way down to the details of our particular job.

And so we are having to always do this complicated dance, where we follow his agenda to some degree, but we also look out for our own needs. We see our needs better than anyone else, certainly better than the president of the company. And if we don’t look out for our needs, for our happiness, no one else will.

Can you relate to that picture of God in relation to you? I don’t mean on an intellectual level; rather, on a practical level. Don’t we follow God to some degree, but also make sure we look out for and protect our own needs, because we are in touch with them like no one else is?

The near-death experience I’ve been thinking about provides a different view of God, one worth pondering. It was had by a woman named Mary Jo Rapini, who has talked about it in a Today Show interview and in an episode of Nightline. Here is how she recounted her experience on the Today Show:

“I went into this tunnel, and I came into this room that was just beautiful. God held me, he called me by name, and he told me, ‘Mary Jo, you can’t stay.’ And I wanted to stay. I protested. I said, ‘I can’t stay? Why not?’ And I started talking about all the reasons [why she should be allowed to stay]; I was a good wife, I was a good mother, I did 24-hour care with cancer patients.

“‘And he said, ‘Let me ask you one thing — have you ever loved another the way you’ve been loved here?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s impossible. I’m a human.’ And then he just held me and said, ‘You can do better.’”

It’s a gripping story, one that seems to display the president of the company in classic form. This is not exactly a namby-pamby God. No matter how much Mary Jo protests, He is still sending her back. He’s got His Will and that’s that. It’s almost like a job review: “Well, sir, I’ve produced 1000 widgets a day for the last two years. I deserve some vacation time.” “Sorry, Mrs. Rapini. You can do better.”

But there’s actually more to the story. I’ve seen and read her tell this story a few other times, and in two of those she has drawn out the part right before God says “You can do better.” Here is one of those other versions:

“God held me…I don’t remember if my whole body was in his arms or what…no recognition of that. I knew it was God because he was an omnipotent being. Not like a person…much less limited in form. I did not see God but felt him through my skin. He spoke through all of my senses. He called me by name and told me I could not stay. I protested. I told him all of my services on earth (working 24/7, not much money for my work, a good wife, a good mother) I did not want to leave this place. Then God asked me…He said ‘let me ask you one question.’ ‘Have you ever loved another person the way you have been loved here.’ The love I had received in that time was so overpowering…I had never felt anything like it so I answered God honestly. I said, ‘No…it is impossible…I am just a human, you are God.’ He gave me the illusion of a sweet protective chuckle. He then said, ‘Mary, you can do better.’”

I like the extra information we get in this telling: “I don’t remember if my whole body was in his arms.” “Felt him through my skin.” “The love I had received in that time was so overpowering.” But the main thing I want to direct your attention to is that comment near the end: “He gave me the illusion of a sweet protective chuckle.” Look at that sentence — it is full of paradoxes. God gave her an illusion? An illusion of a chuckle? A chuckle that was sweet (rather than belittling)? A chuckle that was protective? Clearly, she’s trying to describe a very complex thing. Here is another version, where she expands on the chuckle:

“And it [God] kind of chuckled. It wasn’t human, but it was able to relate to me in a very human way that made me feel loved. And it wasn’t laughing at me, but it was a chuckle, like it had a playful edge. And it said, ‘You can do better.’”

I find this expansion on the chuckle so intriguing. It helps us know what she meant by “He gave me an illusion of a…chuckle.” The illusion is that God is not human, so it is not His nature to chuckle. Any chuckling on His part would be an illusion. But He gave this illusion to her to “relate to me in a very human way that made me feel loved.” He got down on her level, in order to make her feel loved. I think that’s why she described the chuckle as “sweet.”

Notice that the chuckle “wasn’t laughing at me.” Rather, it was like God “had a playful edge.” The chuckle, in other words, is lightening the heaviness of the fact that He’s sending her back. It’s spreading a note of playfulness over what could seem like a stern edict. My guess is that this is why she described it as “protective.” It was there to protect her from what could easily look heavy, stern, even judgmental.

What is the actual message of the chuckle? I can only guess. But notice it is sandwiched in between “Of course I can’t love like You do” and “You can do better.” Once you put the chuckle in between those two things, I think you see its message instantly. He’s chuckling at her sense of limitation. His laugh is saying, “Ah, so you really think you can’t love like Me? You really think your love is limited by human limitations?” In light of this playful chuckle, His punch line follows naturally. You can almost hear the smile in His voice as He says, “You can do better.”

And while He’s doing all that, He’s also holding her: “And then he just held me and said…’”

Now we are in a position to see both sides of the equation. Yes, there is the president of the company side. Despite all her pleading, God sends her back. “No vacation time for you.” “But, sir, I’ve made those thousand widgets a day.” “Let me ask you: Have you ever had one day in which you made 10,000 widgets, like our factory robots do.” “No, sir, that’s impossible. I’m only human.” “You can do better. Get back to the factory.”

But then there is a whole other side, which goes far beyond the president of the company paradigm. He calls her by name. (“The president of the company knows my name!”) Imagine God calling you by name. He holds her. She is in His Arms. She feels Him through her skin. He speaks to her through all her senses at once. He loves her with a love that is so overpowering, so utterly beyond the human, that she begs to leave everything behind, including her husband and children, and just be with Him forever.

In response to her pleading, He doesn’t just lay down the law. He asks her a question, a question that allows her to see for herself why she needs to go back. His question — ”Have you ever loved another person the way you have been loved here?” — implies that she is on earth to learn to love, to love like God loves. And then when she says, “I can’t do that; I’m only human (so You might as well let me stay, right?),” He gives her “the illusion of a sweet, protective chuckle.” Not a chuckler by nature, He is getting down on her level. He, the non-human, is relating to her in a human way to make her feel loved. He laughs gently at the thought that her love is penned in by human limitations. Through this same laugh, He protects her from a sense that she is being judged. He is letting her know that it’s a playful matter, not a heavy sentence. It’s a light matter of stretching beyond her quaint belief in limited capacity to love. “And then he just held me and said, ‘You can do better.’” In one brief sentence, he has not only explained why she has to go back, not only conveyed her assignment, He has done it with an undeniable point. How can she really deny that she can do better? We can always do better.

What grabs me about this is that not only is there so much love in it, but that this love is so incredibly intelligent. The combination of the question, the human-style relating, the chuckle, the playfulness, the sweetness, the protection, the holding, the undeniable punch line — it’s an extremely intelligent and sophisticated package. It gives you a sense of a God Who is anything but unaware of what’s going on in our cubicle, anything but distantly aloof in His top-floor office. Rather, He gets it — all of it, and He breaks His news to us in a way that runs circles around us. We are like a two-year-old playing against Bobby Fisher. But God is not trying to defeat us; He is trying to checkmate us with His Love.

Wouldn’t it be weird to think that God has us totally outsmarted? Wouldn’t it be strange to think that He actually sees our needs, and understands them far better than we do? What if, after all this time of protecting our happiness against His agenda, we realized that, all along, our happiness was His agenda?

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