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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
The Near-Death Experience
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Fichte: “All death in nature is birth, and in death appears visibly the advancement of life. There is no killing principle in nature, for nature throughout is life; it is not death that kills, but the higher life, which, concealed behind the other, begins to develop itself. Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself to attain a higher form.”
Editor’s Essay: Many NDE accounts feature a percipient meeting a ‘being of light’ or finding oneself immersed in an aura of light or intense love. However, other reports of the afterlife, such as the extensive and numerous direct-voice medium testimonies via Flint or French, or the channeled works by Father Benson or Charlotte Dresser offer a much different picture of the next world, devoid of beings of light or full-immersion into light and love. Why the discrepancy?
Over 20 years ago, my first contact with afterlife evidence was the near-death experience (NDE). While I've discovered even more compelling confirmation since then, the NDE remains a very important area of research.
I'd like to share with you the most intriguing examples.
First, allow me to point out that the most comprehensive source of NDE information, by far, is the website of Kevin Williams.
On Kevin's site you will find hundreds of NDE case-studies, so many of them, worthy of our consideration; but, allow me to highlight a few that, due to external confirmation, cannot be set aside as fraud or wishful thinking:
(1) The NDE of the lady who, during an operation, left her body, floated high above the hospital, and spotted a shoe on a rooftop ledge which could not readily be seen while in the building. Later, the shoe was discovered as per her report.
(2) NDE-experiencers who leave their bodies and explore other areas of the hospital, or even travel to their own homes, and listen to conversations of others, topics of which are later confirmed.
(3) One of my very favorite: the "shared NDE," concerning people who die at the same time - for example, as it has happened, firefighters - experience the environment of the NDE together, and even hold conversation during their time out of the body - which they recall and confirm for each other upon returning.
(4) The NDEs of little children experiencing people and ideas in the invisible dimensions whom they'd not met and about which they'd not been taught.
(5) The NDEs of the blind, who, when out of the body, now recipient of expanded abilities, see the world, sometimes, for the first time.
You'll want to spend several hours exploring Kevin's site.
Is the NDE an hallucination spawned by an oxygen-starved brain fighting for equilibrium?
The above five examples cannot be explained by hallucination.
Further, when materialistic-skeptics make their "oxygen-deprivation" claim, they do so without knowledge.
Dr. Pim van Lommel, Dutch cardiologist...
has made a study of his NDE heart-patients. He will tell you that the brain couldn't possibly manufacture an hullucination as his patients typically had "flat-lined" during the NDE, were clinically dead, with no brain activity at all.
See Dr. Lommel's book...
and his many Youtube lectures.
a Brain Surgeon has an NDE
An extremely important work in the area of NDE research is brought to us by neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander.
"We must reject the materialist position. These empirical data refute the production model, which states that the brain produces consciousness out of physical matter." Dr. Eben Alexander
He scoffs at the notion of an "oxygen-starved brain" inducing the NDE.
See his Youtube lectures and also his official website wherein you'll find the following:
Dr. Alexander, a renowned academic neurosurgeon, spent over three decades honing his scientific worldview. He thought he knew how the brain, mind and consciousness worked. A transcendental near-death experience (NDE), in which he was driven to the brink of death and spent a week deep in coma from an inexplicable brain infection, changed all of that–completely.
He was shocked to find the hyper-reality of that spiritual realm, which many had reported in NDEs. He has spent the last five years reconciling his rich spiritual experience with contemporary physics and cosmology. His spiritual experience is totally consistent with the leading edges of scientific understanding today.
Together, science and spirituality will thrive in a symbiosis offering the most profound insight into fundamental Truth, yielding unimaginable power. The keystone is in global progression of individual conscious awakening.
Many in both the scientific and religious (or spiritual) realms must denounce their addiction to prejudiced, divisive, dogmatic beliefs, in order to open our awareness to this synthesis of understanding Truth. By probing deeply into our own consciousness, we transcend the limitations of the human brain, and of the physical-material realm.
The spiritual realm is real. Seamless blending of science and spirituality will occur.
- See Victor Zammit's article, 15 reasons why Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) are not hallucinations or the effects of a dying brain. CLICK HERE
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Michael Tymn:
Dr. George Rodonaia’s 1976 near-death experience...
Apparently, the KGB decided to eliminate Rodonaia, a Russian neuropathologist who had dissident views, and ran him down as he crossed the street. His death was confirmed at the hospital and his corpse was placed in cold storage. When the autopsy began three days later, Rodonaia regained consciousness. He first went out of body and saw his physical body lying in the morgue. On top of that, however, he was able to “see” the thoughts and emotions of his wife, Nino, and of those who killed him.
After being revived physically and when able to speak again, he told his wife how he saw her picking out a gravesite for him. But he also read her mind and saw that she was thinking about three different men as her next husband. She even made a list of their qualities, pro and con. When Rodonaia told Nino, who later confirmed it as accurate, of “seeing” all this, even reciting the list to her, she was totally shocked and kept her distance from him for a year as she felt she no longer had the privacy of her own mind.
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an ancient near-death experience (or something close to it)
The following information, two accounts, is reported by afterlife researcher Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove in his award-winning writing submitted to the Bigelow Institute For Consciousness Studies:
Forty percent of near-death reports include encounters with a deceased loved-one. Scoffers typically attribute such visions to wishful thinking. However, when the vision involves an individual [or information concerning whom] not known to be dead, this hypothesis carries little weight.
An ancient example. Accounts of this go back to ancient times. Pliny the Elder wrote about it over 2,000 years ago.
… a nobleman named Corfidius… was pronounced dead by a physician when he stopped breathing. His will was opened, naming his younger brother as his executor and heir. The younger brother then hired an undertaker to arrange the funeral. Corfidius, however, stunned the undertaker by sitting up on the embalming table… He then announced that he had just come from the home of his younger brother. He said that his brother told him that the funeral arrangements he’d made for Corfidius should now be used for him instead… As Corfidius was relating his story to the astonished undertaker, his younger brother’s servant burst in with the news that his master had just unexpectedly died.
A young nurse’s surprising death. ... researcher Bruce Greyson describes a man in South Africa hospitalized with a respiratory disease. He had become friendly with a young nurse. One day, she told him she was taking a long weekend off. The next day he had a respiratory arrest, and had to be resuscitated, during which he had a near-death experience.
He saw himself in a pastoral scene when the nurse, Anita, came walking toward him. He asked her why she was there. She replied, saying, “I’m here now, but you cannot stay. You need to go back. I want you to tell my parents I love them and I’m very sorry I wrecked the MGB.” Then she turned and walked away.
It turned out, for her 21st birthday, her parents had given her a red MGB. She was so excited she hopped in the car, took off, lost control, crashed into a telephone pole, and died instantly – shortly before the hospitalized man had the near-death experience.
Nobody in the hospital knew the young woman was killed. Greyson cannot interpret this event as anything other than an after-death communication!
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Editor's last word:
As I mentioned, the NDE was the start of it all for me; what I didn't know then was that there was much more to come. Victor Zammit informs us that there are 20 or more separate strands of evidence for the afterlife, with the NDE as but one.
Proving, to oneself, that the afterlife exists is a necessary first step. But, after that, we'll have many questions:
What is life like over there? Is it "religious"? Do we marry and enjoy romance? Do we have our own work? Can we eat, drink, sleep, travel, enjoy sports and recreation, study and become more?
I intend to speak on these topics elsewhere; but, for the moment, allow me to comment on some spin-off benefits of the NDE information. While offering evidence for the survival of human consciousness, certain seminal NDEs tell us much more.
Above I referred to the "shared NDE." During one of these - you'll find it on Kevin's site, I forget where - two friends suffer the tragedy, as I recall, of accidentally falling into electrical wires and died together. Finding themselves suddenly out of their bodies, they were met by an iconic religious figure.
But here's where it gets really interesting: These two friends were of different faiths; each had been brought up with different religious views. I don't recall definitively their religions - one may have been Catholic, the other Buddhist; it doesn't really matter as the following principle will hold true for any belief-system - however, the important point: though only one iconic religious figure appeared, each of the friends witnessed this august-person differently! The Catholic might recognize the visiting apparition as "The Blessed Virgin" while the other would see the "Buddha"!
Before commenting on this anomaly, I will direct you to one of the more dramatic NDEs by Mellon-Thomas Benedict. I haven't read it in years, but I still remember what struck me as very important: During his NDE he was being led by spirit-helpers to the next world. In the midst of this train of events, Benedict told his handlers to stop! He didn't want to go anywhere until he had more information. They stopped! - and the whole procession shut-down! - until he gave permission to move forward!
your own choices direct your progression on the other side
Benedict shows us that, in a sense, we are in charge - certainly, of our own lives and destiny. No one will force us to accept anything, or go anywhere, or perform any action or work, unless we agree to it. The sacred dignity of each human being is on bold display here.
Now, concerning our two friends who died together: In their situation - a precept confirmed by thousands of afterlife reports - we find their invisible Spirit-guides "pulling strings" and coaxing them back to a sense of normalcy after a jolting and shattering departure from mortal life. Each of them interpreted divine help in terms of childhood indoctrination. Like all good teachers, the Guides build on what we know, or think we know, and help us to move on from there.
Much wonder and marvel lies in store upon our crossing over, but, for newcomers, that can wait. The first order of business, for so many who've been traumatised in this world of oppression, will be to convince people that there is no "angry God," no need to live in "fear and guilt," no burning hellfire, and the like. As we'll discover these are fables designed to keep the masses tethered to a power-grasping elite.
And the shared NDE, featuring the differently-viewed religious figure, is part of a process of employing comforting, familiar images to gradually lead people away from what many assume will be the terror of death and judgment. We can thank the Nice Young Man at Church for this terror.
an analogy from Star Trek
In Future Imperfect (Episode 82, Nov. 12, 1990) Riker experiences, what I would term, several levels of reality. At one point, it appears that he's a captive of the Romulans; then it seems that many years have passed, and he's back on the Enterprise, now as Captain;
but finally, he's confronted by a frightened boy - in truth, an alien-being - who, for his own protection, has engineered these various simulations of reality.
At the end, Riker becomes like Mellon-Thomas Benedict. Suspecting that what he's seeing is not the full picture, he commands whoever is in charge of the charade to "stop"! And, at his command, this version of reality crumbles and fades away! Still unsatisfied, and realizing that this new scene, too, is fabrication, he again commands it to end - now revealing the bedrock "things as they are."
I have come to understand, from my years of looking at the research, that the typical NDE - while there are exceptions - allows its participants to see an orchestrated, "paste-up" version of reality - just one foot into the "vestibule" of the good stuff to come. It's whatever you feel comfortable with, whatever you're ready to see. Your Guides will not force you to accept more, they won't rush you into a blazing joy you're not ready for. It's up to you, and ever shall be.
You may be wondering, what's wrong with staying with these "lower level" simulations? Summerland sounds pretty nice.This is a question that many ask over there. If you recall, I spoke of the 500 Leslie Flint tapes, the many testimonies from the other side from those who were "satisfied" with what they had and "didn't want to rock the boat" with questioning their good fortune, or learning anything new. And you can do that. You can sit in a rocking-chair, or under a plum tree, or lollygag on a beach, for 100 or a 1000 years, and no one will get in your way or say you're wrong.
But, here's the problem with it:
There's nothing wrong with lollygagging on a white-sand beach in the celestial realms; but... there's more to come; a lot more, and we won't want to miss the best of it.
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