PSI Annual Journal 1998

What happens when we die? Over the past ten years, new and provocative approaches to the age-old mysteries surrounding life after death have been compiled. The greatest collection of material comes from those people who have had a Near Death Experience. These undeniable and startling occurrences have generated keen interest about a previously unexplored world, long held as a sacred, protected domain, restricted to obtuse theology and arcane church doctrines. Life After Life, and Reflections, and Heading Towards Omega, have helped to explain and corroborate the mysteries and the life-transforming events that people who approach death have experienced.

What is a NDE? Precisely that. An experience of near finality, usually coming from a trauma or crisis and the accompanying change of consciousness that some people experience during the natural process of dying, or while they are awaiting resuscitation. It is a time when the person is more dead than alive and could be said to be beginning their “cross over” or transition between human life as we know it, and an existence of another plane or dimension. They are the typical stages or steps most widely agreed on by those who have lived it:

In the initial stage, people recollect or perceive a separation from their physical bodies, a sensation of floating, a physical self-transcendence. It is this rising above, and floating beyond the confines of the physical self, that frees the person from the limits of the physical self, and the so-called normal state of awareness.

In this elevated state, a new perspective is literally achieved, the unique outlook that is attained allows for clear and concise observation of people, looking down at one’s surroundings and events, but without the ability to interact with anyone or anything. This state of detachment or complete aloofness begins the stages of self-witnessing. The person floats above their own death scene, seeing, hearing and understanding, but there is a definite and invisible barrier between the near-dead and the worldly consciousness of others below. In this, and advancing states, the mortal concerns for time and space, kinesthesia and gravity, do not apply or exist. Matter doesn’t matter. These near-dead people function as apparitions of themselves. They are a suspended psyche or soul in a now-perfect spiritual body.

Then, if the person is not quickly resuscitated, the next agreed upon stage in the progression is some clattering sound; a noise that seems to signal an entrance into a newer and deeper level of death. Here, reports speak of entering a tunnel or a tube, a valley or a corridor, that moves them towards its far end. At this distant end, there is an area of brilliant golden or white light. The person feels compelled or drawn towards this ethereal glow. Once inside this illumined area, the person will feel a particular sense of warmth, not really a bodily warmth and light fills their experience with floodtides of positive inspiration and loving feelings. This state of being bathed in warmth and light is sometimes accompanied by glimpses into eternal wisdom that their human knowledge or awareness on the earthly plane could not have previously perceived or achieved. This new comprehension and warmth then seems to prepare them for the next phase, an encounter with the Holy.

As an accessory or as a preliminary to this meeting, some people report that they are contacted by some deceased family members, friends, or entities that some would refer to as “spirit guides”. These significant contacts serve as ushers, with their guidance, or assurance they should move to a location where they begin to feel an intense or complete sense of peace, a heavenly serenity that seems to radiate from a Being or a presence that would later be called by these people, God, the Christ, or the Unity. With this meeting, the next phase begins, that of life assessment, a review of one’s life story.

Then and there would be a screening-room experience, a psycho-spiritual record-keeping where the events and decisions of one’s life are vividly recounted or displayed. The newsreel of motives, values and life events, may also include a life preview, one that looks at how your life would end, if you continued on your same course (Scrooge’s ghosts).

Before the deeper stages of transition are experienced, when death becomes more complete, there comes a time of cosmic reckoning, for the threshold or the non-reversible step looms ahead. Here the person is reminded or told that there is a reason and a pattern for their life. Now, with greater understanding, the person then has to choose to return because their earthly lifespan is not yet complete. The design or purpose of their life is not yet finished, and they willingly need to accept a return to their earthly existence. With this realization, they come back, to the physical body, to become “alive” again.

Children seem to experience episodes of near death more easily than do adults or their parents. The reason for this appears simple: they have less attachment to this earthly life, less karma, fewer times or episodes to regret or relive. Because they have far fewer ego or esteem needs and less emotional charge, and less connection to all the people, ideas, and events that comprise human history and identity, their experience of near death allows for a quick more objective and less frightening effect.

Whether you have experienced a NDE or know someone who has, the fact is that the NDE event affects all of us. It is a transformative occurrence because death is the one event everyone has to face, accept, and more mystically speaking, the event that everyone has to benefit from, for the next time around.

While it is true that there is a distractive, scientific element of controversy surrounding the NDE, it does not hold up. Skeptical scientific researchers are busily trying to “explain away” these experiences as temporal lobe epilepsy, oxygen starvation, delirium, adverse drug reaction or endorphins. They are no more complete or correct than the frightened “holy roller” who claims that NDE is a demon possession and Satan “out to get your soul”. Psychiatrists like Ray Moody counter these attempts through years of comparative work with psychosis, with organic and functional brain disorders or drug-induced states, and they conclude that the NDE is quite dissimilar, actually categorically distinct and different.

Dr. Bruce Grayson, current director of the Institute for Near Death Studies at the University of Connecticut, with Dr. Kenneth Ring, offers these guidelines towards greater empathy and understanding.

First if you had had a NDE, you have joined an estimated eight million other Americans who have shared your experience, with many more to come, thanks to the latest life-sustaining technology.

Second, if you never had one but know people who have, listen. All to often, these individuals feel alarmed or isolated, constantly feeling the pain or the pressure of judgement. They might even suffer from self-induced panic or skepticism. They need your confidentiality, your respect, trust and compassion.

Lastly, accept their reality. Do not try to stifle or deny its validity for them, even if it upsets your belief structure. Don’t delude yourself or try to patronize them. The event is real.

Over all, most NDE’s lead to a greater sense of meaning, purpose, and mission within the individual’s life. No longer content to live by previous social and religious expectations, they choose to live and look more deeply, sincerely.

From their experiences, almost all NDE’s create within the person a more persuasive belief in the Higher Reality, called God, widely defined as Love and Light. As former religious answers and assumptions are lost or transformed, new personal and spiritual depths are explored. The data on these survivors clearly points to an increase in spirituality and also recorded a decrease in religiosity which was accompanied by a loss of identification with any orthodoxy or formal church affiliation, its practice or observance of rituals and rules. In its place, came a more mystical perception and appreciation, an affirmation of life through a more universalistic religion, one that finds its center and source in a universal loving God, removed from the narrowness of interpretation or institutionalization. This is quite similar to an enlightened universalism that our liberal faith tries to espouse.

These more radical and progressive changes can create values, conflict and relationship turmoil. Divorces and career changes are somewhat common events as these persons have undergone some deep personality changes. In general, they desire to assimilate and use their experiences and insights more directly in their lives. These new spiritual priorities reject many socially approved-of norms.

Money and material possessions lose or lessen their attractiveness. Loving and supportive relationships are far more prominent. There are additional reports that these individuals become dramatically less judgmental, less aggressive, violent and competitive, often reworking themselves or transforming themselves completely from who they were, their interests, occupations, approaches to life. They might also report some psychic ability that was previously unknown or even disparaged.

All this is somewhat miraculous, yet the note of caution is also appropriate. Those who have had a NDE have been given an extraordinary glimpse into higher states of reality and consciousness, but it was only a glimpse and as transformative and revealing as it was, they are not all of a sudden gurus and lamas, saints, and especially ordained ones. Often, they need to work the rest of their lives to attain a fuller and more complete comprehension of these insights and discoveries.

The NDE experience can happen to anyone. It is not dependent on your piety like a beatific vision. One’s level or understanding of spirit versus secularity is not a deciding factor. We know that one’s religious beliefs do not prepare one for some grand reward. The value of spiritual convictions and training are for the balancing of one’s life, as a way of enabling and validating choices that support your desire to live more harmoniously, objectively, and compassionately. The question of a Life after Life, or between lives and its assessment which can be called, Purgatory or the Bardo, is far more dependent on how you live daily and act on your spiritual values and imperatives, than on how stringently you follow your church’s rules or even how secure you are in your religious beliefs. To learn from NDE’s can positively influence and effect us all. That we need not fear death or what the grave “holds for us”, “If you are or have been, you will always be.” Jesus recommended that “we should not fear what can harm the body, but fear that which can harm the soul...(Matt. 10:28, Luke 12:4)

Death is a transition, no more, no less. It is a change of reality or consciousness that leaves the human or earthly awareness behind. Death need not be excessively mourned nor overly exaggerated. It is a blessed release, a movement either to a higher level of existence, a new plane or dimension. We can grieve our loss, but we need not hold on to fear. Remembering the apostle’s advice, “Perfect love casteth out all fear.”

We are here, each of us, for a supreme purpose, to learn to love more completely God and one another, plain and simple. No elaborate theology or theory. It is taught by all the great faiths of humankind. It is tragic that it can take the fear of death to get many people to realize this.

PSI Symposium Annual Journal 1998