Do You Believe?
Years ago, when I wanted to ask my friend a question…
Me: “May I ask you a question?”
Him, with a big grin: “Sure. Sex after marriage? Life after death?”
It was funny the first 17 times. Not.
And, let’s face it, as a repeat marriage offender, I know the answer to the sex after marriage question.
But life after death, a question to which there may never be an answer, intrigues us all.
There is though, a discipline that may give us hints about the afterlife. Near-death Experiences (NDEs) are experienced by about 20% of people who nearly die.
According to Dr. Raymond A. Moody, MD in his book “Life After Life”, while no two NDEs are the same, there are characteristic features that are commonly observed in NDEs. These characteristics include:
A perception of seeing and hearing apart from the physical body, passing into or through a tunnel
Encountering a mystical light
Intense and generally positive emotions
A review of part or all of their prior life experiences
Encountering deceased loved ones
A choice to return to their earthly life
Often people experiencing an NDE see, what they believe to be, God or Jesus. This has led NDE skeptics to attribute NDE experiences to a particular religion. Not so - this has been proven false, as people from all religions and from all walks of life have experienced NDEs. What differs between them are the names and images of the “higher power” many of them encounter.
NDEs are nothing new; reports of people having "near-death" experiences go back to antiquity, but the oldest recorded medical description of the phenomenon comes from a French physician, Pierre-Jean du Monchaux, a military physician from northern France. Around 1740 Monchaux described a case of near-death experience in his book "Anecdotes de Médecine."
What is new are the advances in resuscitation science that have enabled life to be restored to millions of people after their hearts had stopped. In the not too distant past these people would have died from their heart attacks.
Now, resuscitations are commonplace and folks who have “returned from the dead” have amazing tales to tell.
Vincent Tolman of Las Vegas, Nevada, was just 25 when he went into a coma after taking a super-strength dose of the body-building supplement GHB. While eating at a restaurant in 2003, the drug caused him to violently seizure, vomit and fall to the ground.
His heart stopped beating for several minutes and he was hooked up to life support for three days, during which he said his spirt was being guided through “what we call heaven” where he learned three crucial lessons.
The first one was the power of authenticity, followed by the purpose of life and the importance of loving all beings.
“One of the biggest things I learned is that we've got it all wrong here” he was quoted as saying.
“We've allowed all of our traditions to convince us that all of us are on some kind of trial. But we're not here on some kind of trial. We're here to learn and to grow. That's it, plain and simple.”
In 1959 Sharon Joseph was seven when she drowned and was “dead” for seven minutes. During that time, she was visited by a beautiful woman “like a Greek goddess” who was going to take her somewhere but instead shook her finger “no” and left. It was then that Sharon regained consciousness. Several years later Sharon saw the woman’s face in a family photo album. It was her father’s sister Mary, who had died three years before the drowning.
NDEs can give the blind sight. Psychiatrist Brian Weiss tells the story of a blind, elderly woman:
"She suffered a cardiac arrest…and…was unconscious as the resuscitation team tried to revive her. According to her…she floated out of her body and stood near the window, watching the resuscitation. She observed, without any pain whatsoever, as they thumped on her chest and pumped air into her lungs. During the resuscitation, a pen fell out of her doctor’s pocket and rolled near the same window where her out-of-body spirit was standing and watching. The doctor eventually walked over, picked up the pen, and put it back in his pocket. He then rejoined the frantic effort to save her. They succeeded.
A few days later, she told her doctor that she had observed the resuscitation team at work during her cardiac arrest. 'No,' he soothingly reassured her. 'You were probably hallucinating because of the anoxia [lack of oxygen to the brain]. This can happen when the heart stops beating.'
'But I saw your pen roll over to the window,' she replied. Then she described the pen and other details of the resuscitation. The doctor was shocked. His patient had not only been comatose during the resuscitation, but she had also been blind for many years."
As we saw above, children have NDEs. Colton Burpo was four years old when he suffered cardiac arrest during an emergency appendectomy. During the operation, from above, he saw his parents praying for him. He floated away to heaven where he met his dead grandfather and his unborn sister who died in a miscarriage. A sister he never even knew of. Colton’s experience resulted in the New York Times best seller and movie “Heaven is for Real.”
I could go on.
There is no shortage of books that describe and analyze NDEs. If you’re interested in reading more, at the end of this article I’m providing a list of the most widely cited books that are both entertaining and scholarly.
So, what do you think? Is there life after life? Those who take a spiritual view would say that our spirits live on and, like reincarnation as taught in Buddhism and Hinduism, grows with each life. Or, do you take the view of many scientists who say that the end of our life is like switching off a light bulb – something and then nothing.
I believe in the former. You?
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Life After Life, Raymond Moody. The Bestselling Original Investigation That Revealed "Near-Death Experiences"
Proof of Heaven, Eben Alexander. A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife
Embraced by the Light, Betty J. Eadie
Heaven is for Real, Todd Burpo. A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back
Long for me to read, but it grabbed my attention, as I always wondered and thought about that, And believe it
Good one! Indeed a fascinating question. Conversation to be continued over a bottle of scotch.