Dr. Mary Neal found herself pinned underwater after her kayak went over a waterfall. As her body was dying, she found herself experiencing the meaning of her life with great clarity and love that she brought back to her understanding of this world.
Powerfully inspiring are the many voices of those who have died and come back to life to share their compelling "journeys." Discover what they learned during their afterlife experiences. Included also are conversations with researchers who have investigated this fascinating phenomenon.
Life After Life Book By Raymond Moody Pdf Download
This rare video series features Raymond Moody interviewing cutting-edge researchers at the frontiers of science and spirituality who convinced Moody that consciousness survives. Enjoy compelling conversations, book excerpts, and activities for your exploration of the afterlife.
2. *The Dark Tunnel *Out of the Body *Meeting Others *The Beingof Light *The Review *The Border or Limit *Coming Back *TellingOthers *Effects on Lives *New Views of Death *Corroboration 3.Parallels *The Bible *Plato *The Tibetan Book of the Dead *EmanuelSwedenborg 4. - Questions 5. - Explanations 6. - Impressions====================================== What Is It Like To Die? 3.(Front Cover Insert) "All pain vanished." "I went through thisdark, black vacuum at super speed." "There was a feeling of utterpeace and quiet, no fear at all." "I was in a very dark, very deepvalley. Later I thought, `Well, now I know what the Bible means bythe valley of the shadow of death because I've been there.'" "AfterI came back, I cried off and on for about a week because I had tolive in this world after seeing that one." "It opened up a wholenew world for me . . . I kept thinking, `There's so much that I'vegot to find out."' "I heard a voice telling me what I had to do--goback-and I felt no fear." ======================================Acknowledgments There have been very many people who have given meassistance and encouragement during my research and writing, and Icould not have completed this project without them. It was my goodfriend John Ouzts who 4. talked me into giving my first public talkon this subject. John Egle of Mockingbird Books first encouraged meto commit my findings to writing, and has provided support andencouragement throughout. Leonard, Mae, Becky, and Scott Brooksprovided room, board, and taxi service for me on many occasionswhen I needed them. Kathy Tabakian accompanied me on severalinterviews, and I benefited from long discussions of them with her.Russ Moores, Richard Martin, and Ed McCranie, all of the MedicalCollege of Georgia, offered valuable suggestions and referred me tomuch relevant literature. My wife spent long hours editing themanuscript and typescript. Finally, I should like most of all tothank all those who told me of their encounters with death. I canonly hope that this book is worthy of all the confidence thateveryone mentioned above has placed in me.====================================== Foreword I have had theprivilege of reading the pre-publication copy of Dr. Moody's LifeAfter Life, and I am delighted that this young scholar has thecourage to put his findings together and make this new type ofresearch available to the general public. Since I have worked withterminally ill patients over the last two decades, I have becomemore and more preoccupied with looking into the phenomena of deathitself. We have learned a lot about the process of dying, but westill have many questions with regard to the moment of death and tothe experience our patients have when they are pronounced medicallydead. 5. It is research such as Dr. Moody presents in his book thatwill enlighten many and will confirm what we have been taught fortwo thousand years- that there is life after death. Though he doesnot claim to have studied death itself, it is evident from hisfindings that the dying patient continues to have a consciousawareness of his environment after being pronounced clinicallydead. This very much coincides with my own research, which has usedthe accounts of patients who have died and made a comeback, totallyagainst our expectations and often to the surprise of some highlysophisticated, well- known and certainly accomplished physicians.All of these patients have experienced a floating out of theirphysical bodies, associated with a great sense of peace andwholeness. Most were aware of another person who helped them intheir transition to another plane of existence. Most were greetedby loved ones who had died before them, or by a religious figurewho was significant in their life and who coincided, naturally,with their own religious beliefs. It is enlightening to read Dr.Moody's book at the time when I am ready to put my own researchfindings on paper. Dr. Moody will have to be prepared for a lot ofcriticism, mainly from two areas. There will be members of theclergy who will be upset by anyone who dares to do research in anarea which is supposed to be taboo. Some religious representativesof a denominational church have already expressed their criticismof studies like this. One priest referred to it as "selling cheapgrace." Others simply felt that the question of life after deathshould remain an issue of blind faith and should not be questionedby anyone. The second 6. group of people that Dr. Moody can expectto respond to his book with concern are scientists and physicianswho regard this kind of study as "unscientific." I think we havereached an era of transition in our society. We have to have thecourage to open new doors and admit that our present-day scientifictools are inadequate for many of these new investigations. I thinkthat this book will open these new doors for people who can have anopen mind, and it will give them hope and courage to evaluate newareas of research. They will know that this account of Dr. Moody'sfindings is true, because it is written by a genuine and honestinvestigator. It is also corroborated by my own research and by thefindings of other very serious-minded scientists, scholars andmembers of the clergy who have had the courage to investigate inthis new field of research in the hope of helping those who need toknow, rather than to believe. I recommend this book to anyone withan open mind, and I congratulate Dr. Moody for the courage to puthis findings into print. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D. Flossmoor,Illinois ====================================== Introduction Thisbook, written as it is by a human being, naturally reflects thebackground, opinions and prejudices of its author. So, although Ihave tried 7. to be as objective and straightforward as I can,certain facts about me might be useful in evaluating some of theextraordinary claims which are made in what follows. First of all,I have never been close to death myself, so I am not giving afirsthand account of experiences which I have had myself. At thesame time I cannot claim total objectivity on that basis, since myemotions have become involved in this project. In hearing so manypeople relate the fascinating experiences with which this volumedeals, I have come to feel almost as though I have lived throughthem myself. I can only hope that this attitude has not compromisedthe rationality and balance of my approach. Secondly, I write as aperson who is not broadly familiar with the vast literature onparanormal and occult phenomena. I do not say this to disparage it,and I feel confident that a wider acquaintance with it might haveincreased my understanding of the events I have studied. In fact, Iintend now to look more closely at some of these writings to see towhat extent the investigations of others are borne out by myfindings. Thirdly, my religious upbringing deserves some ' comment.My family attended the Presbyterian Church, yet my parents nevertried to impose their religious beliefs or concepts upon theirchildren. They generally tried, as I was growing up, to encouragewhatever interests I developed on my own and provided theopportunity for me to pursue them. So, I have grown up having a"religion" not as a set of fixed doctrines, but rather as a concernwith spiritual and religious doctrines, teachings, and questions. Ibelieve that all the great religions of man have many truths totell us, and I believe that 8. no one of us has all the answers tothe deep and fundamental truths with which religion deals. Inorganizational terms, I am a member of the Methodist Church.Fourthly, my academic and professional background is somewhatdiverse- some would say fractured. I attended graduate school inphilosophy at the University of Virginia and received my Ph.D. inthat subject in 1969. My areas of special interest in philosophyare ethics, logic, and the philosophy of language. After teachingphilosophy for three years at a university in eastern NorthCarolina, I decided to go to medical school, and I intend to becomea psychiatrist and to teach the philosophy of medicine in a medicalschool. All these interests and experiences necessarily helpedshape the approach I have taken in this study. My hope for thisbook is that it will draw attention to a phenomenon which is atonce very widespread and very well-hidden, and, at the same time,help create a more receptive public attitude toward it. For it ismy firm conviction that this phenomenon has great significance, notonly for many academic and practical fields-especially psychology,psychiatry, medicine, philosophy, theology, and the ministry-butalso for the way in which we lead our daily lives. Let me say atthe very beginning that, on grounds which I will explain muchlater, I am not trying to prove that there is life after death. Nordo I think that a "proof" of this is presently possible. Partly forthis reason, I have avoided the use of actual names and havedisguised certain identifying details in the stories, while leavingtheir contents unchanged. This has been necessary, 9. both toprotect the privacy of the individuals concerned and, in manycases, to be granted permission to publish the experience relatedto me in the first place. There will be many who will find theclaims made in this book incredible and whose first reaction willbe to dismiss them out of hand. I have no room whatsoever to blameanyone who finds himself in this category; I would have hadprecisely the same reaction only a few years ago. I am not askingthat anyone accept and believe the contents of this volume on myauthority alone. Indeed, as a logician who disavows that road tobelief which proceeds through invalid appeals to authority, Ispecifically ask that no one do so. All I ask is for,, anyone whodisbelieves what he reads here to poke around a bit for himself. Ihave issued this challenge repeatedly for some time. Of those whohave accepted it, there have been very many who, skeptical atfirst, have come to share my bafflement over these events. On theother hand, there no doubt will be many who read this and find init a great relief, for they will discover that they are not alonein having had such an experience. To them-especially if, like most,they have concealed their story from all but a few trustedpersons-I can only say this: It is my hope that this volume mayencourage you to speak a little more freely, so that a mostintriguing facet of the human soul may be more clearly elucidated.====================================== 1 - The Phenomenon Of Death10. What is it like to die? That is a question which humanity hasbeen asking itself ever since there have been humans. Over ,he pastfew years, I have had the opportunity to raise this question beforea sizable number of audiences. These groups have ranged fromclasses in psychology, philosophy, and sociology through churchorganizations, television audiences, and civic clubs toprofessional societies of medicine. On the basis of this exposure,I can safely say that this topic excites the most powerful offeelings from people of many emotional types and walks of life.Yet, despite all this interest it remains true that it as verydifficult for most of us to talk about death. There are at leasttwo reasons for this. One of them is primarily psychological andcultural: The subject of death is taboo. We feel, perhaps onlysubconsciously, that to be in contact with death in any way, evenindirectly, somehow confronts us with the prospect of our owndeaths, draws our own deaths closer and makes them more real andthinkable. For example, most medical students, myself included,have found that even the remote encounter with death which occursupon one's first visit to the anatomical laboratories when enteringmedical school can evoke strong feelings of uneasiness. In my owncase, the reason for this response now seems quite obvious. It hasoccurred to me in retrospect that it wasn't entirely concern forthe person whose remains I saw there, although that feelingcertainly figured, too. What I was seeing on that table was asymbol of my own mortality. In some way, if only pre-consciously,the thought must have been in my mind, "That will happen to me,too." 11. Likewise, talking about death can be seen on thepsychological level as another way of approaching it indirectly. Nodoubt many people have the feeling that to talk about death at allis in effect to conjure it up mentally, to bring it closer in sucha way that one has to face up to the inevitability of one's owneventual demise. So, to spare ourselves this psychological trauma,we decide just to try to avoid the topic as much as possible. Thesecond reason it is difficult to discuss death is more complicated,as it is rooted in the very nature of language itself. For the mostpart, the words of human language allude to things of which we haveexperience through our own physical senses. Death, though, issomething which lies beyond the conscious experience of most of usbecause most of us have never been through it. if we are to talkabout death at all, then, we must avoid both social taboos and thedeep-seated linguistic dilemmas which derive from our owninexperience. What we often end up doing is talking in euphemisticanalogies. We compare death or dying with more pleasant things inour experience, things with which we are familiar. Perhaps the mostcommon analogy of this type is the comparison between death andsleep. Dying, we tell ourselves, is like going to sleep. Thisfigure of speech occurs very commonly in everyday thought andlanguage, as well as in the literature of many cultures and manyages. It was apparently quite common even in the time of theancient Greeks. In The Iliad, for example, Homer calls sleep"death's sister," and Plato, in his dialogue The Apology, 12. putthe following words into the mouth of his teacher, Socrates, whohas just been sentenced to death by an Athenian jury. [Now, ifdeath is only a dreamless sleep,] it must be a marvelous gain. Isuppose that if anyone were told to pick out the night on which heslept so soundly as not even to dream, and then to compare it withall the other nights and days of his life, and then were told tosay, after due consideration, how many better and happier days andnights than this he had spent in the course of his life-well, Ithink that . . . [anyone] would find these days and nights easy tocount in comparison with the rest. If death is like this, then, Icall it gain, because the whole of time, if you look at it in thisway, can be regarded as no more than one single night. (1) Thissame analogy is embedded in our own contemporary language. Considerthe phrase "to put to sleep." If you present your dog to aveterinarian with the instruction to put him to sleep, you wouldnormally mean something very different than you would upon takingyour wife or husband to an anesthesiologist with the same words.Others prefer a different, but related analogy. Dying, they say, islike forgetting. When one dies, one forgets all one's woes; allone's painful and troubling memories are obliterated. As old and aswidespread as they may be, however, both the "sleeping" and the"forgetting" analogies are ultimately inadequate in so far ascomforting us is concerned. Each is a different way of making thesame assertion. Even though they tell us so in a somewhat morepalatable way, both say, in effect, that death is simply theannihilation of conscious experience, forever. If this 13. is so,then death really doesn't have any of the desirable features ofsleeping and forgetting. Sleeping is a positive, desirableexperience in life because waking follows it. A restful night'ssleep makes the waking hours following it more pleasant andproductive. If waking did not follow it, the benefits of sleepwould not be possible. Similarly, annihilation of all consciousexperience implies not only the obliteration of all painfulmemories; but of all pleasant ones, too. So upon analysis, neitheranalogy is close enough to give us any real comfort or hope infacing death. There is another view, however, which disavows notionthat death is annihilation of consciousness. According to thisother, perhaps more ancient tradition, some aspect of the humanbeing survives even after the physical body ceases to function andis ultimately destroyed. This persistent aspect has been called bymany names, among them psyche, soul, mind, spirit, self, being, andconsciousness. 3y whatever name it is called, the notion that onepasses into another realm of existence upon physical death is amongthe most venerable of human beliefs. There is a graveyard in Turkeywhich was used by Neanderthal men approximately 100,000 years ago.There, fossilized imprints have enabled archaeologists to discoverthat these ancient men buried their dead in biers of flowers,indicating that they perhaps saw death as an occasion ofcelebration-as a transition of the dead from this world to thenext. Indeed, graves from very early sites all over the earth giveevidence of the belief in human survival of bodily death. In short,we are faced with two contrasting answers to our original questionabout the nature of Death, both of ancient derivation, yet bothwidely held even today. Some say that death is annihilation ofconsciousness; others say 14. with equal confidence at death is thepassage of the soul or mind into another dimension of reality. Inwhat follows I do not wish in any way to dismiss either answer. Isimply wish to give a report on a search which I have personallyundertaken. During the past few years I have encountered largenumber of persons who were involved in what I shall call"near-death experiences." I have met these persons in many ways. Atfirst it was by coincidence. In 1965, when I was an undergraduatestudent studying philosophy at the University of Virginia, I met aman who was a clinical professor of psychiatry in the School ofMedicine. I was struck from the beginning with his warmth,kindliness and humor. It came as a great surprise when I laterlearned a very interesting fact about him, namely, that he had beendead-not just once but on two occasions, about ten minutesapart-and that he had given a most fantastic account of whathappened to him while he was "dead." I later hear.:. him relate hisstory to a small group of interested students. At the time, I wasmost impressed, but since I had little background from which tojudge; such experiences, I "filed it away," both in my mind and inthe form of a tape recording of his talk. Some years later, after Ihad received my Ph.D. in philosophy, I was teaching in a universityin eastern North Carolina.. In one course I had m y students readPlato's Phaedo, a work in which immortality is among the subjectsdiscussed. In my lectures I had been emphasizing the otherdoctrines which Plato presents there and had not focused upon thediscussion of life after death. After class one day a studentstopped by to see me. He asked whether we might discuss the subjectof immortality. He had an 15. interest in the subject because hisgrandmother had "died" during an operation and had recounted a veryamazing experience. I asked him to tell me about it, and much to mysurprise, he related almost the same series of events which I hadheard the psychiatry professor describe some years before. At thistime my search for cases became a bit more active, and I began toinclude readings on the subject of human survival of biologicaldeath in my philosophy courses. However, I was careful not tomention the two death experiences in my courses. I adopted, ineffect, a wait-and-see attitude. If such reports were fairlycommon, I thought, I would probably hear of more if I just broughtup the general topic of survival in philosophical discussions,expressed a sympathetic attitude toward the question, and waited.To my amazement, I found that in almost every class of thirty or sostudents, at least one student would come to me afterwards andrelate a personal near- death experience. What has amazed me sincethe beginning of my interest are the great similarities in thereports, despite the fact that they come from people of highlyvaried religious, social, and educational backgrounds. By the timeI entered medical school in 1972, I had collected a sizable numberof these experiences and I began mentioning the informal study Ihad been doing to some of my medical acquaintances. Eventually, afriend of mine talked me into giving a report to a medical society,and other public talks followed. Again, I found that after everytalk someone would come up to tell me of an experience of his own.16. As I became more widely known for this interest, doctors beganto refer to me persons whom they had resuscitated and who reportedunusual experiences. Still others have written to me with reportsafter newspaper articles about my studies appeared. At the presenttime, I know of approximately 150 cases of this phenomenon. Theexperiences which I have studied fall into three distinctcategories: *(1) The experiences of persons who were resuscitatedafter having been thought, adjudged, or pronounced clinically deadby their doctors. *(2) The experiences of persons who, in thecourse of accidents or severe injury or illness, came very close tophysical death. *(3) The experiences of persons who, as they died,told them to other people who were present. Later, these otherpeople reported the content of the death experience to me. From thevast amount of material that could be derived from 150 cases,selection obviously has occurred. Some of it has been purposeful.For example, although I have found reports of the third type tocomplement and to agree very well with experiences of the first twotypes, I have for the most part dropped them from consideration fortwo reasons. First, it helps to reduce the number of cases studiedto a more manageable level, and second, it enables me to stick asclose as possible to firsthand reports. Thus, I have interviewed ingreat detail some fifty persons upon whose experiences I am able toreport. Of these, the cases of the first type (those in which anapparent clinical death actually occurs) are certainly moredramatic than those of the second type (in which only a close brushwith death occurs). 17. Indeed, whenever I have given public talkson this phenomenon, the "death" episodes have invariably drawn mostof the interest. Accounts in the press have sometimes been writtenso as to suggest they are the only type of case with which I havedealt. However, in selecting the cases to be presented in thisbook, I have avoided the temptation to dwell only on those cases inwhich a "death" event took place. For, as will become obvious,cases of the second type are not different from, but rather form acontinuum with, cases of the first type. Also, though thenear-death experiences themselves are remarkably similar, both thecircumstances surrounding them and the persons describing them varywidely. Accordingly, I have tried to give a sample of experienceswhich adequately reflects this variation. With these qualificationsin mind, let us now turn to a consideration of what ma happen, asfar as I have been able to discover, during the experience ofdying. -------------- Notes: (1) Plato, The Last Days o f Socrates,trans. Hugh Tredennick (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1959), p. 75.-------------- ====================================== 18. 2 - TheExperience Of Dying Despite the wide variation in the circumstancessurrounding close calls with death and in the types of personsundergoing them, it remains true that there is a strikingsimilarity among the accounts of the experiences themselves. Infact, the similarities among various reports are so great that onecan easily pick out about fifteen separate elements which recuragain and again in the mass of narratives that I have collected. Onthe basis of these points of likeness, let me now construct abrief, theoretically "ideal" or "complete" experience whichembodies all of the common elements, in the order in which it istypical for them to occur. A man is dying and, as he reaches thepoint of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounceddead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, aloud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself movingvery rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenlyfinds himself outside o f his own physical body, but still in theimmediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from adistance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitationattempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state ofemotional upheaval. After a while, he collects himself and becomesmore accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still hasa "body," but one o f a very different nature and with verydifferent powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soonother things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him.He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have alreadydied, and a loving, warm spirit o f a kind he has never encounteredbefore-a being 19. of light-appears before him. This being asks hima question, nonverbally, to wake him evaluate his life and helpshim along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of themajor events of his life. At some point he finds himselfapproaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representingthe limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he findsthat he must go, back to the earth, that the time for his death hasnot yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken upwith his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return.He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love, and peace.Despite. his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with hisphysical body and lives. Later he tries to tell others, but he hastrouble doing so. In the first place, he can find no human wordsadequate- to describe these unearthly episodes. He also finds thatothers scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still, theexperience affects his life profoundly, especially his views aboutdeath and its relationship to life. It is important to bear in mindthat the above narrative is not meant to be a representation of anyone person's experience. Rather, it is a "model," a composite ofthe common elements found in very many stories. I introduce it hereonly to give a preliminary general idea, of what a person who isgyring may experience. Since it is an abstraction rather than anactual account, in the present chapter I will discuss in detaileach common element, found in very many examples. 20. Before doingthat, however, a few facts need to be set out in order to put theremainder of my exposition of the experience of dying into theproper framework. (1) Despite the striking similarities amongvarious accounts, no two of them are precisely identical (though afew come remarkably close to it). (2) I have found no one personwho reports every single component of the composite experience Verymany have reported most of them -hat is, eight or more of thefifteen or so) and a ' :;v have reported up to twelve. (3) There isno one element of the composite experience which every singleperson has reported to me, which crops up in every narrative.Nonetheless, a few of these elements come fairly close to beinguniversal. (4) There is not one component of my abstract modelwhich has appeared in only one account. Each element has shown upin many separate stories. (5) The order in which a dying persongoes through the various stages briefly delineated above may varyfrom that given in my "theoretical model." To give one example,various persons have reported seeing the "being of light" before,or at the same time, they left their physical bodies, and not as inthe "model," some time afterward. However, the order in which thestages occur in the model is a very typical order, and widevariations are unusual. 21. (6) How far into the hypotheticalcomplete experience a dying person gets seems to depend on whetheror not the person actually underwent an, apparent clinical death,and if so, on how long he was in this state. In general, personswho were "dead" seem to report more florid, complete experiencesthan those who only came close to death, and those who were "dead"for a longer period go deeper than those who were "dead" for ashorter time. (7) I have talked to a few people who were pronounceddead, resuscitated, and came back reporting none of these commonelements. Indeed, they say that they don't remember anything at allabout their "deaths." Interestingly enough, I have talked withseveral persons who were actually adjudged clinically dead onseparate occasions years apart, and reported experiencing nothingon one of the occasions, but having had quite involved experienceson the other. (8) It must be emphasized that I am writing primarilyabout reports, accounts, or narratives, which other persons havegiven to me verbally during interviews. Thus, when I remark that agiven element of the abstract, "complete" experience does not occurin a given account, I do not mean necessarily to imply that it didnot happen to the person involved. I only mean that this person didnot tell me that it did occur, or that it does not definitely comeout in his account that he experienced it. Within this framework,then, let us look at some of the common stages and events of theexperiences of dying. ------------- 22. Ineffability The generalunderstanding we have of language depends upon the existence of abroad community of common experience in which almost all of usparticipate. This fact creates an important difficulty whichcomplicates all of the discussion which is to follow. The eventswhich those who have come near death have lived through lie outsideour community of experience, so one might well expect that theywould have some linguistic difficulties in expressing what happenedto them. In fact, this is precisely the case. The persons involveduniformly characterize their experiences as ineffable, that is,"inexpressible." Many people have made remarks to the effect that,"There are just no words to express what I. am trying to say," or"They just don't make adjectives and superlatives to describethis." One woman put this to me very succinctly when she said:"Now, there is a real problem for me as I'm trying to tell youthis, because all the words I know are three-dimensional. As I wasgoing through this, I kept thinking, "Well, when I was takinggeometry, they always told me there were only three dimensions, andI always just accepted that. But they were wrong. There are more."And, of course, our world-the one we're living in now isthree-dimensional, but the next one definitely isn't. And that'swhy it's so hard to tell you this. I have to describe it to you inwords that are three-dimensional. That's as close as I can get toit, but it's not really adequate. I can't really give you acomplete picture." 23. ------------- Hearing The News Numerouspeople have told of hearing their doctors or other spectators ineffect pronounce them dead. One woman related to me that, "I was inthe hospital, but they didn't know :hat was wrong with me. So Dr.James, my doctor, sent me downstairs to the radiologist for liverscan so they could find out. First, they tested this drug they weregoing to use on my arm, since I had a lot of drug allergies. Butthere ..-as no reaction, so they went ahead. When they used it thistime, I arrested on them. I heard the radiologist who was workingon me go over to the telephone, and I heard very clearly as hedialed it. I heard him say, "Dr. James, I've killed your patient,Mrs. Martin." And I knew I wasn't dead. I tried to move or to letthem know, but I couldn't. When they were trying to resuscitate me,I could hear them telling how many c.c.'s of something to give me,but I didn't feel the needles going in. I felt nothing at all whenthey touched me." In another case, a woman who had previously hadseveral episodes of heart trouble was seized with a heart attack,during which she nearly lost her life. She says, Suddenly, I wasgripped by squeezing chest pains, just as though an iron band hadbeen clamped quickly around the middle part of my chest andtightened. My husband and a friend of ours heard me fall and camerunning 24. in to help me. I found myself in a deep blackness, andthrough it I heard my husband, as if he were at a great distance,saying, "This is it, this time!" And my thoughts were, "Yes, itis." A young man who was thought dead following an automobileaccident says, "I heard a woman who was there say, `Is he dead?'and someone else said, `Yeah, he's dead'." Reports of this typeaccord quite well with what the doctors and others presentremember. For example, one doctor told me, A woman patient of minehad a cardiac arrest just before another surgeon and I were tooperate on her. I was right there, and I saw her pupils dilate. Wetried for some time to resuscitate her, but weren't having anysuccess, so I thought she was gone. I told the other doctor who wasworking with me, "Let's try one more time and then we'll give up."This time, we got her heart beating, and she came around. Later Iasked her what she remembered of her "death." She said she didn'tremember much about it, except that she did hear me say, "Let's tryone more time and then we'll give up." ------------- Feelings ofPeace and Quiet Many people describe extremely pleasant feelingsand sensations during the early stages of their experiences. Aftera severe head injury, one man's vital signs were undetectable. Ashe says, 25. At the point of injury there was a momentary flash ofpain, but then all the pain vanished. I had the feeling of floatingin a dark space. The day was bitterly cold, yet while I was in thanblackness all I felt was warmth and the most extreme comfort I haveever experienced . . . 1 remember thinking, "I must be dead." Awoman who was resuscitated after a heart attack remarks, I began toexperience the most wonderful feelings. I couldn't feel a thing inthe world except peace, comfort, ease-just quietness. I felt thatall my troubles were gone, and I thought to myself, "Well how quietand peaceful, and I don't hurt at all." Another man recalls, I justhad a nice, great feeling of solitude and peace . . . . It wasbeautiful, and I was at such peace in my mind. A man who "died"after wounds suffered in Vietnam says that as he was hit he felt Agreat attitude of relief. There was no pain, and I've never felt sorelaxed. I was at ease and it was all good. ------------- The Noise26. In many cases, various unusual auditory sensations are reportedto occur at or near death. Sometimes these are extremelyunpleasant. A man who "died" for twenty minutes during an abdominaloperation describes "a really bad buzzing noise coming from insidemy head. It made me very uncomfortable .... I'll never forget thatnoise." Another woman tells how as she lost consciousness she heard"a loud ringing. It could be described as a buzzing. And I was in asort of whirling state." I have also heard this annoying sensationdescribe as a loud click, a roaring, a banging, and as a "whistlingsound, like the wind." In other cases the auditory effects seem totake more pleasant musical form. For example, a man who was revivedafter having been pronounce dead on arrival at the hospitalrecounts that during his death experience, I would hear what seemedto be bells tingling, a long way off, as if drifting through thewind. They sounded like Japanese wind bells .... That was the onlysound I could hear at times. A young woman who nearly died frominternal bleeding associated with a blood clotting disorder saysthat at the moment she collapsed, "I began to hear music of somesort, a majestic, really beautiful sort of music." -------------The Dark Tunnel 27. Often concurrently with the occurrence of thenoise, people have the sensation of being pulled very rapidlythrough a dark space of some kin Many different words are used todescribe t space. I have heard this space described as a cave, awell, a trough, an enclosure, a tunnel, a funnel, a vacuum, a void,a sewer, a valley, and a cylinder. Although people use differentterminology here, it is clear that. they are all trying to expresssome one idea. Let us look at two accounts in which the tunnel"figures prominently. This happened to me when I was a little boy ofnine years old. That was twenty-seven years ago, but it was sostriking that I have never forgotten it. One afternoon I becamevery sick, and they rushed me to the nearest hospital. When Iarrived they decided they were going to have to put me to sleep,but why I don't know, because I was too young. Back in those daysthey used ether. They gave it to me by putting a cloth over mynose, and when they did, I was told afterwards, my heart stoppedbeating. I didn't know at that time that that was exactly whathappened to me, but anyway when this happened I had an experience.Well, the first thing that happened now I am going to describe itjust the way I felt-was that I had this ringing noisebrrrrrnnnnng-brrrrrnnnnng-brrrrmnnnng, very rhythmic. Then I wasmoving through this-you're going to think this is weird-throughthis long dark place. It seemed like a sewer or something. I justcan't describe it to you. I was moving, beating all the time withthis noise, this ringing noise. Another informant states: 28. I hada very bad allergic reaction to a local anesthetic, and I just quitbreathing - I had a respiratory arrest. The first thing thathappened - it was real quick - was that I went through this dark,black vacuum at super speed. You could compare it to a tunnel, Iguess. I felt like I was riding on a roller coaster train at anamusement park, going through this tunnel at a tremendous speed.During a severe illness, a man came so near death that his pupilsdilated and his body was growing cold. He says, I was in an utterlyblack, dark void. It is very difficult to explain, but I felt as ifI were moving in a vacuum, just through blackness. Yet, I was quiteconscious. It was like being in a cylinder which had no air in it.It was a feeling of limbo; of being half-way here, and half-waysomewhere else. A man who "died" several times after severe burnsand fall injuries says, I stayed in shock for about a week, andduring that time all of a sudden I just escaped into this darkvoid. It seemed that I stayed there for a long time just floatingand tumbling through space .... I was so taken up with this voidthat I just didn't think of anything else. Before the time of hisexperience, which took place when he was a child, one man had had afear of the dark. Yet, when his heart stopped beating from internalinjuries incurred in a bicycle accident, I had the feeling that Iwas moving through a deep, very dark valley. The darkness was sodeep and 29. impenetrable that I could see absolutely nothing butthis was the most wonderful, worry free experience you can imagine.In another case, a woman had had peritonitis, and relates, Mydoctor had already called my brother and sister in to see me forthe last time. The nurse gave me a shot to help me die more easily.The things around me in the hospital began to get further andfurther away. As they receded, I entered head first into a narrowand very, very dark passageway. I seemed to just fit inside of it.I began to slide down, down, down. One woman, who was near deathfollowing a traffic accident, drew a parallel from a televisionshow. There was a feeling of utter peace and quiet, no fear at all,and I found myself in a tunnel-a tunnel of concentric circles.Shortly after that, I saw a T.V. program called The Time Tunnel,where people go back in time through this spiraling tunnel. Well,that's the closest thing to it that I can think of. A man who camevery near death drew a somewhat different parallel, one from hisreligious background. He says, Suddenly, I was in a very dark, verydeep valley. It was as though there was a pathway, almost a road,through the valley, and I was going down the path .... Later, afterI was well, the thought came to me, "Well, now I know what 30. theBible means by `the valley of the shadow of death,' because I'vebeen there." ------------- Out Of The Body It is a truism that mostof us, most of the time, identify ourselves with our physicalbodies. We grant, of course, that we have "minds," too. But to mostpeople our "minds" seem much more ephemeral than our bodies. The"mind," after all, might be no more than the effect of theelectrical and chemical activity which takes place in the'' brain,which is a part of the physical body. For many people it is animpossible task even to conceive of what it would be like to existin any other way than in the physical body to which they areaccustomed. Prior to their experiences, the persons I have:interviewed were not, as a group, any different from the averageperson with respect to this attitude. That is why, after his rapidpassage through the dark tunnel, a dying person often has such anoverwhelming surprise. For, at this point he may find himselflooking upon his own physical body from a point outside of it, asthough he were "a spectator" or "a third person in the room" orwatching figures and events "onstage in a play" or "in a movie."Let us look now at portions of some accounts in which these uncannyout-of-the-body epodes are described. 31. I was seventeen years oldand my brother and I were working at an amusement park. Oneafternoon, we decided to go swimming, and there were quite a few ofthe other young people who went in with us. Someone said, "Let'sswim across the lake." I had done that on numerous occasions, butthat day for some reason, I went down, almost in the middle of thelake .... I kept bobbling up and down, and all of a sudden, it feltas though I were away from my body, away from everybody, in spaceby myself. Although I was stable, staying at the same level, I sawmy body in the water about three or four feet away, bobbling up anddown. I viewed my body from the back and slightly to the rightside. I still felt as though I had an entire body form, even whileI was outside my body. I had an airy feeling that's almostindescribable. I felt like a feather. A woman recalls, About a yearago, I was admitted to the hospital with heart trouble, and thenext morning, lying in the hospital bed, I began to have a verysevere pain in my chest. I pushed the button beside the bed to callfor the nurses, and they came in and started working on me. I wasquite uncomfortable lying on my back so I turned over, and as I didI quit breathing and my heart stopped beating. Just then, I heardthe nurses shout, "Code pink! Code pink!" As they were saying this,I could feel myself moving out of my body and sliding down betweenthe mattress and the rail on the side of the bed -actually itseemed as if I went through the rail-on down to the floor. Then, Istarted rising upward, slowly. On my way up, I saw more nurses comerunning into the room-there must have been a dozen of them. Mydoctor happened to be making his rounds in the hospital so theycalled him and I saw him come in, 32. too. I thought, "I wonderwhat he's doing here." I drifted on up past the light fixture - Isaw it from the side and very distinctly - and then I stopped,floating right below the ceiling, looking down. I felt almost asthough I were a piece of paper that someone had blown up to theceiling. I watched them reviving me from up there! My body waslying down there stretched out on e bed, in plain view, and theywere all standing around it. I heard one nurse say, "Oh, my God!She's gone!", while another one leaned down o give memouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I was looking at the back of her headwhile she did this. I'll never forget the way her hair looked; itwas cut kind of short. Just then, I saw them roll this machine inthere, and they put the she a on my chest. When they did, I saw mywhole body just jump right up off the bed, and I he I every bone inmy body crack and pop. It was the most awful thing! As I saw thembelow beating on my chest a rubbing my arms and legs, I thought,"Why are they going to so much trouble? I'm just fine now." A younginformant states, It was about two years ago, and I had just turnednineteen. I was driving a friend of mine home in my car, and as Igot to this particular intersection downtown, I stopped and lookedboth ways, but I didn't see a thing coming. I walked on out intothe intersection and as I did heard my friend yell at the top ofhis voice. When I looked I saw a blinding light, the headlights ofa car that was speeding towards us. I heard this awful sound-theside of the car being crushed in-and there was just an instantduring-which I seemed to be 33. going through a darkness, anenclosed space. It was very quick. Then, I was sort of floatingabout five feet above the street, about five yards away from thecar, I'd say, and I heard the echo of the crash dying away. I sawpeople come running up and crowding around the car, and I saw myfriend get out of the car, obviously in shock. I could see my ownbody in the wreckage among all those people, and could see themtrying to get it out. My legs were all twisted and there was bloodall over the place. As one might well imagine, some unparalleledthoughts and feelings run through the minds of persons who findthemselves in this predicament. :Many people find the notion ofbeing out of their bodies so unthinkable that, even as they areexperiencing it, they feel conceptually quite confused about thewhole thing and do not link it with death for a considerable time.They wonder what is happening to them; why can they sudden; ethemselves from a distance, as though a spectator: Emotionalresponses to this strange state vary widely. Most people report, atfirst, a desperate desire to get back into their bodies but they donot have the faintest idea about how to proceed. Others recall thatthey were very afraid, almost panicky. Some, however, report morepositive reaction:: o their plight, as in this account: I becamevery seriously ill, and the doctor put me in the hospital. This onemorning a solid gray mist gathered around me, and I left my body. Ihad a floating sensation as I felt myself get out of my body, and -I looked back and could see myself on the bed below and there wasno fear. It was quiet - very peaceful and serene I was not in theleast bit upset or frightened. was 34. just a tranquil feeling, andit was some thing which I didn't dread. I felt that maybe I wasdying, and I felt that if I did not get back to my body, I would bedead, gone. Just as strikingly variable are the attitudes whichdifferent persons take to the bodies which they have left behind.It is common for a person to port feelings of concern for his body.One young woman, who was a nursing student at the time of herexperience, expresses an understandable fear. This is sort offunny, I know, but in nursing school they had tried to drill itinto us that we ought to donate our bodies to science. Well, allthrough this, as I watched them trying to start my breathing again,I kept thinking, "I don't want them to use that body as a cadaver."I have heard two other persons express exactly this same concernwhen they found themselves out of their bodies. Interestinglyenough, both of them were also in the medical profession - one aphysician, the other a nurse. In another case, this concern tookthe form of regret. A man's heart stopped beating following a fallin which his body was badly mangled, and he recalls, At onetime-now, I know I was lying on the bed there - but I couldactually see the bed and the doctor working on me. I couldn'tunderstand it, but I looked at my own body lying there on the bed.And I felt real bad when I looked at my body and saw how badly itwas messed up. 35. Several persons have told me of having feelingsof unfamiliarity toward their bodies, as in this rather strikingpassage. Boy, I sure didn't realize that I looked like that! Youknow, I'm only used to seeing myself in pictures or from the frontin a mirror, and both Of those look flat. But all of a sudden thereI-or any body-was and I could see it. I could definitely see it,full view, from about five feet away. It took me a few moments torecognize myself. In one account, this feeling of unfamiliaritytook a rather extreme and humorous form. One man, a physician,tells how during his clinical "death" he was beside the bed lookingat his own cadaver, which by then had turned the ash gray colorconsumed by bodies after death. Desperate and confused, he wastrying to decide what to do. He tentatively decided just to goaway, as he was feeling very uneasy. As a youngster he had beenghost stories by his grandfather and, paradoxically, he "didn'tlike being around this thing that looked like a dead body-even ifit was me!" At the other extreme, some have told me that they hadno particular feelings at all toward their bodies. One woman, forexample, had a heart attack and felt certain she was dying. Shefelt herself being pulled through darkness out of her body movingrapidly away. She says, I didn't look back at my body at all. Oh, Iknew it was there, all right, and I could've seen it had I looked.But I didn't want to look, not in the least, because I knew that Ihad done my best in my life, and I was turning my 36. attention nowto this other realm of things. I felt that to look back at my bodywould be to look back at the past, and I was determined not to dothat. Similarly, a girl whose out-of-body experience took placeafter a wreck in which she sustained severe injuries says, I couldsee my own body all tangled up in the car amongst all the peoplewho had gathered around, but, you know, I had no feelings for itwhatsoever. It was like it was a completely different human, ormaybe even just an object .... I knew it was my body but I had nofeelings for it. Despite the eeriness of the disembodied state, thesituation has been thrust upon the dying person so suddenly that itmay take some time before the significance of what he isexperiencing dawns upon him. He may be out of his body for sometime, desperately trying to sort out all the things that arehappening to him and that are racing through his mind, before herealizes that he is dying, or even dead. When this realizationcomes, it may arrive with powerful emotional force, and provokestartling thoughts. One woman remembers thinking, "Oh, I'm dead!How lovely!" A man states that the thought came to him, "This mustbe what they call 'death'." Even when this realization comes, itmay be accompanied by bafflement and even a certain refusal toaccept one's state. One man, for example, remembers reflecting uponthe Biblical promise of "three score and 37. ten" years, andprotesting that he had had just barely one score." A young womangave a very impressive account of such feelings when she told methat, I thought I was dead, and I wasn't sorry that I was dead, butI just couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go. My thoughtand my consciousness were just like they are in life, but I justcouldn't figure all this out. I kept thinking, "Where am I going togo? What am I going to do?" and "My God, I'm dead! I can't believeit!" Because you never really believe, I don't think, fully thatyou're going to die. It's always something that's going to happento the other person, and although you know it you really neverbelieve it deep down .... And so I decided I was just going to waituntil all the excitement died down and they carried my body away,and try to see if I could figure out where to go from there. In oneor two cases I have studied, dying persons whose souls, minds,consciousnesses (or whatever'' you want to label them) werereleased from their bodies say that they didn't feel that, afterrelease they were in any kind of "body" at all. They felt as thoughthey were "pure" consciousness. One man relates that during hisexperience he felt as though he were "able to see everything aroundme -including my whole body as it lay on the bed without occupyingany space," that is, as if he were a point of consciousness. A fewothers say that they can't really remember whether or not they werein any kind of "body" after getting out of their physical one,because they were so taken u with the events around them. 38. Farand away the majority of my subjects, how ever, report that theydid find themselves in an other body upon release from the physicalone. Immediately, though, we are into an area with which it isextremely difficult to deal. This "new body" is one of the two orthree aspects of death experiences in which the inadequacy of humanlanguage presents the greatest obstacles. Almost everyone who hastold me of this "body" has at some point become frustrated andsaid, "I can't describe it," or made some remark to the sameeffect. Nonetheless, the accounts of this body bear a strongresemblance to one another. Thus, although different individualsuse different words and draw different analogies, these varyingmodes of expression do seem to fall very much within the samearena. The various reports are also in very decided agreement aboutthe general properties and characteristics of the new body. So, toadopt a term for it which will sum up its properties fairly well,and which has been used by a couple of my subjects, I shallhenceforth call it the "spiritual body." Dying persons are likelyfirst to become aware of their spiritual bodies in the guise oftheir limitations. They find, when out of their physical bodies,that although they may try desperately to tell others of theirplight, no one seems to hear them. This is illustrated very well inthis excerpt from the story of a woman who suffered a respiratoryarrest and was carried to the emergency room, where a resuscitationattempt was made. I saw them resuscitating me. It was reallystrange. I wasn't very high; it was almost like I was on apedestal, but not above them to any great extent, just 39. maybelooking over them. I tried talking to them but nobody could hearme, nobody would listen to me. To complicate the fact that he isapparently inaudible to people around him, the person in aspiritual body soon finds that he is also invisible to others. Themedical personnel or others congregating around his physical bodymay look straight towards where he is, in his spiritual body,without giving the slightest sign of ever seeing him. His spiritualbody also lacks solidity; physical objects in the environmentappear to move through it with ease, and he is unable to get a gripon any object or person he tries to touch. The doctors and nurseswere pounding on my body to try to get IV's started and to get meback, and I kept trying to tell them, "Leave me alone. All I wantis to be left alone. Quit pounding on me." But they didn't hear me.So I tried to move their hands to keep them from beating on mybody, but nothing would happen. I couldn't get anywhere. It waslike-I don't really know what happened, but I couldn't move theirhands. It looked like I was touching their hands and I tried tomove them-yet when I would give it the stroke, their hands werestill there. I don't know whether my hand was going through it,around it, or what. I didn't feel any pressure against their handswhen I was trying to move them. Or, people were walking up from alldirections to get to the wreck. I could see them, and I was inmiddle of a very narrow walkway. Anyway, as they came by theywouldn't seem to notice me. They would just keep walking with 40.their eyes straight ahead. As they came real close, I would try toturn around, to get out of their way, but they would just walkthrough me. Further, it is invariably reported that this spiritualbody is also weightless. Most first notice this when, as in some ofthe excerpts given above, they find themselves floating right up tothe ceiling of the room, or into the air. Many describe a "floatingsensation," "a feeling of weightlessness," or a "drifting feeling"in association with their new bodies. Normally, while in ourphysical bodies we have many modes of perception which tell uswhere our bodies and their various parts are in space at any givenmoment and whether they are moving. Vision and the sense ofequilibrium are important in this respect, of course, but there isanother related sense. Kinesthesia is our sense of motion ortension in our tendons, joints, and muscles. We are not usuallyaware of the sensations coming to us through our kinesthetic sensebecause our perception of it has become dulled through almostconstant use. I suspect, however, that if it were suddenly to becut off, one would immediately notice its absence. And, in fact,quite a few persons have commented to me that they were aware ofthe lack of the physical sensations of body weight, movement, andposition sense while in their spiritual bodies. Thesecharacteristics of the spiritual body which at first seem to belimitations can, with equal validity, be looked upon as the absenceof limitations. Think of it this way: A person in the spiritualbody is in a privileged position in relation to the other personsaround him. He can see and hear them, but they can't see or hearhim. (Many a spy would consider 41. this an enviable condition.)Likewise, though the doorknob seems to go through his hand when hetouches it, it really doesn't matter anyway, because he soon findsthat he can just go through the door. Travel, once one gets thehang of it, is apparently exceptionally easy in this state.Physical objects present no barrier, and moment from one place toanother can be extremely rapid, almost instantaneous. Furthermore,despite its lack of perceptibility people in physical bodies, allwho have experienced it are in agreement that the spiritual body isnonetheless something, impossible to describe though it may be. Itis agreed that the spiritual body has a form or shape (sometimes aglobular or an amorphous cloud, but also sometimes essentially thesame shape as the physical body) and even parts (projections orsurfaces analogous to arms, legs, a head, etc.). Even when itsshape is reported as being generally roundish in configuration, itis often said to have ends, a definite top and bottom, and even the"parts" just mentioned. I have heard this new body described inmany different terms, but one may readily see that much the sameidea is being formulated in each case. Words and phrases which havebeen used by various subjects include a mist, a cloud, smoke-like,a vapor, transparent, a cloud of colors, wispy, an energy patternand others which express similar meanings. Finally, almost everyoneremarks upon the timelessness of this out-of-body state. Many saythat although they must describe their interlude in the spiritualbody in temporal terms (since human language is temporal), time wasnot really an element of their experience as it is in physicallife. Here 42. are passages from five interviews in which some ofthese fantastic aspects of existence in the spiritual body arereported first-hand. (1) I lost control of my car on a curve, andthe car left the road and went into the air, and I remember seeingthe blue sky and saw that the car was going down into a ditch. Atthe time the car left the road, I said to myself "I'm in anaccident." At that point, I kind of lost my sense of time, and Ilost my physical reality as far as my body is concerned-I losttouch with my body. My being or my self or my spirit, or whateveryou would like to label it-I could sort of feel it rise out of me,out through my head. And it wasn't anything that hurt, it was justsort of like a lifting and it being above me . . . . [My "being"]felt as if it had a density to it, almost, but not a physicaldensity-kind of like, I don't know, waves or something, I guess:Nothing really physical, almost as if it were charged, if you'dlike to call it that. But it felt as if it had something to it . .. . It was small, and it felt as if it were sort of circular, withno rigid outlines to it. You could liken it to a cloud . . . . Italmost seemed as if it were in its own encasement .... As it wentout of my body, it seemed that a large end left first, and thesmall end last .... It was a very light feeling-very. There was nostrain on my [physical] body; the feeling was totally separate. Mybody had no weight .... The most striking point of the wholeexperience was the moment when my being was suspended above thefront part of my head. It was almost like it was trying to decidewhether it wanted to leave or to stay. It seemed then as. thoughtime were standing still. At the first and the last of theaccident, 43. everything moved so fast, but at this one particulartime, sort of in between, as my being was suspended above me andthe car was going over the embankment, it seemed that it took thecar a long time to get there, and in that time I really wasn't tooinvolved with the car or the accident or my own body-only with mymind .... My being had no physical characteristics, but I have todescribe it with physical terms. I could describe it in so manyways, in so many words, but none of them would be exactly right.It's so hard to describe. Finally, the car did hit the ground andit rolled or, but my only injuries were a sprained neck A bruisedfoot. (2) [When I came out of the physical body] it s like I didcome out of my body and go into something else. I didn't think Iwas just nothing. was another body . . . but not another regularman body. It's a little bit different. It was not exactly like ahuman body, but it wasn't any big glob of matter, either. It hadform to it, but no colors. And I know I still had something youcould call hands. I can't describe it. I was more fascinated witheverything around me-seeing my own body there, and all-so I didn'tthink about the type body I was in. And all this seemed to go soquickly. Time wasn't really an element-and yet it was. Things seemto go faster after you get out of your body. (3) I remember beingwheeled into the operating room and the next few hours were thecritical period. During that time, I kept getting and out of my 44.physical body, and I could see from directly above. But, while Idid, I was still in a body-not a physical body, but something I canbest describe as an energy pattern. If I had to put it into words,I would say that it was transparent, a spiritual as opposed to amaterial being. Yet, it definitely had different parts. (4) When myheart stopped beating . . . I felt like I was a round ball andalmost maybe like I might have been a little sphere-like a BB-onthe inside of this round ball. I just can't describe it to you. (5)I was out of my body looking at it from about ten yards away, but Iwas still thinking, just like in physical life. And where I wasthinking was about at my normal bodily height. I wasn't in a body,as such. I could feel something, some kind of a-like a capsule, orsomething, like a clear form. I couldn't really see it; it was likeit was transparent, but not really. It was like I was just there-anenergy, maybe, sort of like just a little ball of energy. And Ireally wasn't aware of any bodily sensation-temperature, oranything like that. In their accounts, others have brieflymentioned the likeness of shape between their physical bodies; andtheir new ones. One woman told me that while' out of her body, "Istill felt an entire body form,` legs, arms, everything-even whileI was weight less." A lady who watched the resuscitation attempt onher body from a point just below the ceiling says, "I was still ina body. I was stretched out and looking down. I moved my legs andnoticed that one of them felt warmer than the other, one." 45. Justas movement is unimpeded in this spiritual ` state, so, somerecall, is thought. Over and over, I' have been told that once theybecame accustomed to their new situation, people undergoing thisexperience began to think more lucidly and rapidly than in physicalexistence. For example, one man told me that while he was "dead,"Things that are not possible now, are then. Your mind is so clear.It's so nice. My mind just took everything down and workedeverything out for me the first time, without having to go throughit more than once. After a while everything I was experiencing gotto where it meant something to me in some way. Perception in thenew body is both like and unlike perception in the physical body.In some ways, the spiritual form is more limited. As we saw,kinesthesia, as such, is absent. In a couple of instances, personshave reported that they had no sensation of temperature, while inmost cases feelings of comfortable "warmth" are reported. No oneamong all of my cases has reported any odors or tastes while out oftheir physical bodies. On the other hand, senses which correspondto the physical senses of vision and of hearing are very definitelyintact in the spiritual body, and seem actually heightened and moreperfect than they are in physical life. One man says that while hewas "dead" his vision seemed incredibly more powerful and, in hiswords, "I just can't understand how I could see so far." A. womanwho recalled this experience notes, "It seemed as if this spiritualsense had no limitations, as if I could look anywhere andeverywhere." This 46. phenomenon is described very graphically inthis portion of an interview with a woman who was out of her bodyfollowing an accident. There was a lot of action going on, andpeople running around the ambulance. And whenever I would look at aperson to wonder what they were thinking, it was like a zoom-up,exactly like through a zoom lens, and I was there. But it seemedthat part of me-I'll call it my mind-was still where I had been,several yards away from my body. When I wanted to see someone at adistance, it seemed like part of me, kind of like a tracer, wouldgo to that person. And it seemed to me at the time that ifsomething happened anyplace in the world that I could just bethere. "Hearing" in the spiritual state can apparently be called soonly by analogy, and most say that they do not really hear physicalvoices or sounds. Rather, they seem to pick up the thoughts ofpersons around them, and, as we shall see later, this same kind ofdirect transfer of thoughts can play an important role in the latestages of death experiences. As one lady put it, I could see peopleall around, and I could understand what they were saying. I didn'thear them, audibly, like I'm hearing you. It was more like knowingwhat they were thinking, exactly what they were thinking, but onlyin my mind, not in their actual vocabulary. I would catch it thesecond before they opened their mouths to speak. 47. Finally, onthe basis of one unique and very interesting report, it wouldappear that even severe damage to the physical body in no wayadversely affects the spiritual one. In this case, a man lost thebetter part of his leg in the accident that resulted in hisclinical death. He knew this, because he saw his damaged bodyclearly, from a distance, as the doctor worked on it. Yet, while hewas out of his body, I could feel my body, and it was whole. I knowthat. I felt whole, and I felt that all of me was there, though itwasn't. In this disembodied state, then, a person is cut off fromothers. He can see other people and understand their thoughtscompletely, but they are able neither to see nor to hear him.Communication with other human beings is effectively cut off, eventhrough the sense of touch, since his spiritual body lackssolidity. Thus, it is not surprising that after a time in thisstate profound feelings of isolation and loneliness set in. As oneman put it, he could see everything around him in the hospital -allthe doctors, nurses, and other personnel going about their tasks.Yet, he could not communicate with them in any way, so "I wasdesperately alone." Many others have described to me the intensefeelings of loneliness which overcome them at this point. Myexperience, all the things that I was going through, were sobeautiful, but just indescribable. I wanted others to be there withme to see it, too, and I had the feeling that I would never be ableto describe to anyone what I was seeing. I had the feeling of beinglonesome because I wanted somebody to 48. be there to experience itwith me. But I knew nobody else could be there. I felt that I wasin a private world at that time. I really felt a fit of depressionthen. Or, I was unable to touch anything, unable to communicatewith any of the people around. It is an awesome, lonely feeling, afeeling of complete isolation. I knew that I was completely alone,by myself. And again, I was just amazed. I couldn't believe that itwas happening. I wasn't really concerned or worried like "Oh, no,I'm dead and my parents are left behind and they'll be sad and I'llnever see them again." Nothing like that ever entered my mind. Iwas aware the whole time of being alone, though, very alone-almostlike I was a visitor from someplace else. It was like all relationswere cut. I know- it was like there was no love or anything.Everything was just so-technical. I don't understand, really. Thedying person's feelings of loneliness are soon dispelled, however,as he gets deeper into his near death experience. For, at somepoint, others come to him to give him aid in the transition he isundergoing. These may take the form of other spirits, often thoseof deceased relatives or friends the individual had known while hewas alive. In a greater number of instances, 49. among those Iinterviewed, a spiritual being of a much different characterappears. In the next few sections we will look at such encounters.------------- Meeting Others Quite a few have told me that at somepoint while they were dying- sometimes early in the experience,sometimes only after other events had taken place-they became awareof the presence of other spiritual beings in their vicinity, beingswho apparently were there to ease them through their transitioninto death, or, in two cases, to tell them that their time to diehad not yet come and that they must return to their physicalbodies. I had this experience when I was giving birth to a child.The delivery was very difficult, and I lost a lot of blood. Thedoctor gave me up, and told my relatives that I was dying. However,I was quite alert through the whole thing, and even as I heard himsaying this I felt myself coming to. As I did, I realized that allthese people were there, almost in multitudes it seems, hoveringaround the ceiling of the room. They were all people I had known inmy past life, but who had passed on before. I recognized mygrandmother and a girl I had known when I was in school, and manyother relatives and friends. It seems that I mainly saw their facesand felt their presence. They all seemed pleased. It was a veryhappy occasion, and I felt that they had come to protect or toguide me. It was almost as if I were coming home, and they werethere to greet or to welcome me. All this time, I had the feelingof everything light and beautiful. It was a beautiful' and gloriousmoment. 50. One man remembers: Several weeks before I nearly died,a goon friend of mine, Bob, had been killed. Now the moment I gotout of my body I had the feeling that Bob was standing there, rightnext to me. .'s could see him in my mind and felt like he wasthere, but it was strange. I didn't see him as hi: physical body. Icould see things, but not in the physical form, yet just asclearly, his look everything. Does that make sense? He was they;but he didn't have a physical body. It was kind of like a clearbody, and I could sense every part of it-arms, legs, and so on-butI wasn't seeing it physically. I didn't think about it being odd atthe time because I didn't really need to see him with my eyes. Ididn't have eyes, anyway. I kept asking him, "Bob, where do I gonow. What has happened? Am I dead or not?" And he never answeredme, never said a word. But, often, while I was in the hospital, hewould be there, and I would ask him again, "What's going on?", butnever any answer. And then the day the doctors said, "He's going tolive," he left. I didn't see him again and didn't feel his presenceIt was almost as though he were waiting until I passed that finalfrontier and then he would tell me, would give me the details onwhat was going on. In other cases, the spirits people encounter arepersons whom they knew in physical life. One man told of seeingduring her out-of-body experience not only her own transparentspiritual y but also another one, that of another person had diedvery recently. She did not know this person was, but made the veryinteresting remark that "I did not see this person, this spirit, as51. having any particular age, at all. I didn't even have any senseof time myself." In a very few instances, people have come tobelieve that the beings they encountered were their "guardianspirits." One man was told by such a spirit that, "I have helpedyou through this stage of your existence, but now I am going toturn you over to others." A woman told me that as she was leavingher body she detected the presence of two other spiritual beingsthere, and that they identified themselves as her "spiritualhelpers." In two very similar cases, persons told me of hearing avoice which told them that they were not dead yet, but that theymust go back. As one of them tells it, I heard a voice, not a man'svoice, but like a hearing beyond the physical senses, telling mewhat I had to do-go back-and I felt no fear of getting back into myphysical body. Finally, the spiritual beings may take a somewhatmore amorphous form. While I was dead, in this void, I talked topeople-and yet, I really couldn't say that I talked to any bodilypeople. Yet, I had the feeling that there were people around me,and I could feel their presence, and could feel them moving, thoughI could never see anyone. Every now and then, I would talk with oneof them. but I couldn't see them. And whenever I wondered what wasgoing on, I would always get a thought back from one of them, thateverything was all right, that I was dying but would be fine. So,my 52. condition never worried me. I always got an answer back forevery question that , I asked. They didn't leave my mind void.------------- The Being Of Light What is perhaps the mostincredible common element in the accounts I have studied, and iscertainly the element which has the most profound effect upon theindividual, is the encounter with a very bright light. Typically,at its first appearance this light is dim, but it rapidly getsbrighter`.. until it reaches an unearthly brilliance. Yet, eventhough this light (usually said to be white or "clear") is of anindescribable brilliance, many' make the specific point that itdoes not in any ; way hurt their eyes, or dazzle them, or keepthem, from seeing other things around them (perhaps'' because atthis point they don't have physical "eyes" to be dazzled). Despitethe light's unusual manifestation, however, not one person hasexpressed any doubt whatever that it was a being, a being of light.Not y that, it is a personal being. It has a very definitepersonality. The love and the warmth which emanate from this beingto the dying person are early beyond words, and he feels completelysurrounded by it and taken up in it, completely at ease andaccepted in the presence of this being. He senses an irresistiblemagnetic attraction to this light. He is ineluctably drawn to it.Interestingly, while the above description of the being of light isutterly invariable, the identification of the being varies fromindividual to individual and seems to be largely a function of thereligious background, training, or 53. beliefs of the personinvolved. Thus, most of those who are Christians in training orbelief identify the light as Christ and sometimes draw Biblicalparallels in support of their interpretation. A Jewish man andwoman identified the light as an "angel." It was clear, though, inboth cases, that the subjects did not mean to imply that the beinghad wings, played a harp, or even had a human shape or appearance.There was only the light. What each was trying to get across wasthat they took the being to be an emissary, or a guide. A man whohad had no religious beliefs or training at all prior to hisexperience simply identified what he saw as "a being of fight." Thesame label was used by one lady of the Christian faith, whoapparently did not feel any compulsion at all to call the light"Christ." Shortly after its appearance, the being begins tocommunicate with the person who is passing over. Notably, thiscommunication is of the same direct kind which we encounteredearlier in the description of how a person in the spiritual bodymay "pick up the thoughts" of those around him. For, here again,people claim that they did not hear any physical voice or soundscoming from the being, nor did they respond to the being throughaudible sounds. Rather, it is reported that direct, unimpededtransfer of thoughts takes place, and in such a clear way thatthere is no possibility whatsoever, either of misunderstanding orof lying to the light. Furthermore, this unimpeded exchange doesnot even take place in the native language of the person. Yet, heunderstands perfectly and is instantaneously aware. He cannot eventranslate the thoughts and exchanges which took place while he wasnear death into the human language which' he must speak now, afterhis resuscitation. 54. The next step of the experience clearly illtraits the difficulty of translating from this unspoken language.The being almost immediately directs a certain thought to theperson into v Nose" presence it has come so dramatically. Usuallythe persons with whom I have talked try to formulate the thoughtinto a question. Among the translations I have heard are: "Are youprepared to die?" "Are you ready to die?", "What have you do withyour life to show me?", and "What have you, done with your lifethat is sufficient?" The first two formulations which stress"preparation," might at first seem to have a different sense fromthe second pair, which emphasize "accomplishment." However, somesupport for my own feeling that everyone is trying to express thesame thought comes from the narrative of one woman who put it thisway: The first thing he said to me was, that he kind of asked me ifI was ready to die, or what I had done with my life that I wantedto show him. Furthermore, even in the case of more unusual ways ofphrasing the "question," it turns out, upon elucidation, to havemuch the same force. For example, one man told me that during his"death," The voice asked me a question: "Is it worth it?" And whatit meant was, did the kind of life I had been leading up to thatpoint seem worthwhile to me then, knowing what I then knew.Incidentally, all insist that this question, ultimate and profoundas it may be in its emotional impact, is not at all asked incondemnation. The being, all 55. seem to agree, does not direct thequestion to them to accuse or to threaten them, for they still feelthe total love and acceptance coming from the light, no matter whattheir answer may be. Rather, the point of the question seems to beto make them think about their lives, to draw them out. It is, ifyou will, a Socratic question, one asked not to acquire informationbut to help the person who is being asked to proceed along the pathto the truth by himself. Let us look at some firsthand accounts ofthis fantastic being. (1) I heard the doctors say that I was dead,and that's when I began to feel as though I were tumbling, actuallykind of floating, through this blackness, which was some kind ofenclosure. j There are not really words to describe this.Everything was very black, except that, way off from me, I couldsee this light. It was a very, very brilliant light, but not toolarge at first. It grew larger as I came nearer and nearer to it. Iwas trying to get to that light at the end, because I felt that itwas Christ, and I was trying to y reach that point. It was not afrightening experience. It was more or less a pleasant thing. Forimmediately, being a Christian, I had connected the light withChrist, who said, "I am the t light of the world." I said tomyself, "If this is it, if I am to die, then I know who waits forme at the end, there in that light." (2) I got up and walked intothe hall to go get a drink, and it was at that point, as they foundout later, that my appendix ruptured. I became very weak, and Ifell down. I began to feel a sort of drifting, a movement of myreal being in and out of my body, and to hear beautiful music. Ifloated on down the hall and out the door onto the screened-inporch. There, it almost 56. seemed that clouds, a pink mist really,began to gather around me, and then I floated right straight on "through the screen, just as though it weren't there, and up intothis pure crystal clear light, an illuminating white light. It wasbeautiful and so bright, so radiant, but it didn't hurt my eyes.It's not any kind of light you can describe on earth. I didn'tactually see a person in this light, and yet it has a specialidentity, it definitely does. It is a light of perfectunderstanding and perfect love. The thought came to my mind,"Lovest thou me?" This was not exactly in the form of a question,but I guess the connotation of what the light said was, "If you dolove me, go back and complete what you began in your life." And allduring this time, I felt as though I were surrounded by anoverwhelming love and compassion. (3) I knew I was dying and thatthere was nothing I could do about it, because no one could hear me.... I was out of my body, there's no doubt about it, because Icould see my own body there on the operating room table. My soulwas out! All this made me feel very bad at first, but then, thisreally bright light came. It did seem that it was a little dim atfirst, but then it was this huge beam. It was just a tremendousamount of light, nothing like a big bright flashlight, it was justtoo much light. And it gave off heat to me; I felt a warmsensation. It was a bright yellowish white-more white. It wastremendously bright; I just can't describe it. It seemed that itcovered everything, yet it didn't prevent me from seeing everythingaround me-the operating room, the doctors and nurses, everything. Icould see clearly, and it wasn't blinding. 57. At first, when thelight came, I wasn't sure what was happening, but then, it asked,it kind of asked me if I was ready to die. It was like talking to aperson, but a person wasn't there. The light's what was talking tome, but in a voice. Now, I think that the voice that was talking tome actually realized that I wasn't ready to die. You know, it wasjust kind of testing me more than anything else. Yet, from themoment the light spoke to me, I felt really good-secure and loved.The love which came from it is just unimaginable, indescribable. Itwas a fun person to be with! And it had a sense of humor,too-definitely! ------------- The Review The initial appearance ofthe being of light and his probing, non-verbal questions are theprelude to a moment of startling intensity during which; the beingpresents to the person a panoramic review of his life. It is oftenobvious that the being can see the individual's whole lifedisplayed and that he doesn't himself need information. His onlyintention is to provoke reflection. This review can only bedescribed in terms of memory, since that is the closest familiarphenomenon to it, but it has characteristics which set it; apartfrom any normal type of remembering. First of all, it isextraordinarily 58. rapid. The memories, when they are described intemporal terms, are said to follow one another swiftly, inchronological order. Others recall no awareness of temporal orderat all. The remembrance was instantaneous; everything appeared atonce, and they could take it all in with one mental glance. Howeverit is expressed, all seem in agreement that the experience was overin an instant of earthly time. Yet, despite its rapidity, myinformants agree that the review, almost always described as adisplay of visual imagery, is incredibly vivid and real. In somecases, the images are reported to be in vibrant color, three-dimensional, and even moving. And even if they are flickeringrapidly by, each image is perceived and recognized. Even theemotions and feelings associated with the images may bere-experienced as one is viewing them. Some of those I interviewedclaim that, while they cannot adequately explain it, everythingthey had ever done was there in this review-from the mostinsignificant to the most meaningful. Others explain that what theysaw were mainly the highlights of their lives. Some have stated tome that even for a period of time following their experience of thereview they could recall the events of their lives in incredibledetail. Some people characterize this as an educational effort onthe part of the being of light. As they witness the display, thebeing seems to stress the importance of two things in life:Learning to love other people and acquiring knowledge. Let us lookat a representative account of this type. 59. When the lightappeared, the first thing he said to me was "What do you have toshow me that you've done with your life?", or something to thiseffect. And that's when these flashbacks started. I thought, "Gee,what is going on?", because, all of a sudden, I was back early inmy childhood. And from then on, it was like I was walking from thetime of my very early life, on through each year of my life, rightup to the present. It was really strange where it started, too,when I was a little girl, playing down by the creek in ourneighborhood, and there were other scenes from about thattime-experiences I had had with my sister, and things aboutneighborhood people, and actual places I had been. And then I wasin kindergarten, and I remembered the time when I had this one toyI really liked, and I broke it and I cried for a long time. Thiswas a really traumatic experience for me. The images continued onthrough my life and I remembered when I was in Girl Scouts and wentcamping, and remembered many things about all the years of grammarschool. Then, when I was in junior high school, it was a real bighonor to be chosen for the scholastic achievement society, and Iremembered when I was chosen. So, I went on through junior high,and then senior high school, and graduation, and up through myfirst few years of college, up to where I was then. The things thatflashed back came in the order of my life, and they were so vivid.The scenes were just like you walked outside and saw them,completely three-dimensional, and in color. And they moved. Forinstance, when I saw myself breaking the toy, I could see all themovements. It wasn't like I was watching it all from my perspectiveat the time. It was like the little girl I saw was somebody else,in a movie, one little girl among all the 60. other children outthere playing on the playground. Yet, it was me. I saw myself doingthese things, as a child, and they were the exact same things I haddone, because I remember them. Now, I didn't actually see the lightas I was going through the flashbacks. He disappeared as soon as heasked me what I had done, and the flashbacks started, and yet Iknew that he was there with me the whole time, that he carried meback through the flashbacks, because I felt his presence, andbecause he made comments here and there. He was trying to show mesomething in each one of these flashbacks. It's not like he wastrying to see what I had done-he knew already-but he was pickingout these certain flashbacks of my life and putting them in frontof me so that I would have to recall them. All through this, hekept stressing the importance of love. The places where he showedit best involved my sister; I have always been very close to her.He showed me some instances where I had been selfish to my sister,but then just as many times where I had really shown love to herand had shared with her. He pointed out to me that I should try todo things for other people, to try my best. There wasn't anyaccusation in any of this, though. When he came across times when Ihad been selfish, his attitude was only that I had been learningfrom them, too. He seemed very interested in thing 2ff7e9595c
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