Excerpts from Chapter Two about Near Death Experiences:

Let me begin by saying again that the near-death experience is truly beyond words. Therefore, each person who has this experience will give his or her own subjective interpretation of it. However, the experience, while being subjective, shares similar features that researchers call “core experiences.” These basic features build a general understanding of the phenomenon.

   In Raymond Moody’s research, he found that the experience usually began with an extremely pleasant feeling at the very early stage of the experience. If a person had been in an accident, the pain would disappear and the person would be taken over by a peaceful sensation. Then some people experience what has been described as going through a tunnel till they find themselves out of their bodies.

   The out-of-body experience takes people outside their physical bodies, allowing them to look down and see themselves. This is described as being “a spectator,” or “a third person” in the room.In most cases from hospitals, the view of the out-of-body state is placed near the ceiling, but in my case, as I was outdoors, I was looking down from a birds-eye view about ten to fifteen yards away. Another account explains leaving the body in a way that is similar to mine: “I was out of my body looking at it from about ten yards away, but I was still thinking, just like in physical life.”

   In this state outside the body, some people describe having a transparent body and Moody calls this having a “spiritual body.” At the same time other people describe this state of being as having no body at all, which is very similar to my own experience:

They didn’t feel that, after the release, they were in any kind of “body” at all. They felt as though they were “pure” consciousness. One man relates that during his experience he felt as though he were “able to see everything around me—including my whole body as it lay on the bed—without occupying any space” that is, as if he were a point of consciousness.

    For me, it was like being space—as if I was pure consciousness—made of the structure of space. I left my body like a breath of air that went out of my body. One moment I was inside my body, the next moment I was outside this container that I was in just before. But there was no border crossing to leave my body, meaning that there was no tunnel I went through. It was more like a strong awakening: Now I am outside my body!

     After having left the body, the most common core experience occurs, which is the encounter with the bright light. Seeing or entering this light is like entering another dimension or realm. In most cases there is a clear border between this world and this other dimension. One person describes: “It was beautiful and so bright, so radiant, but it didn’t hurt my eyes. It’s not any kind of light you can describe on earth. It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love.”

    Some people describe meeting deceased relatives, angels, or religious figures that act as guides for them in the light. Other people, like myself, experience being alone with or in the light. Meetings with religious figures seem to be conditioned by culture and are mostly considered highly subjective. Some researchers, therefore, find that the light itself is experienced as a form of being.  Rather than God being personified, the light seems to be an expression of God in a broad sense—as the structure of existence and the whole the universe.

    However the light is expressed, the meeting with this unearthly dimension is an experience of love beyond human comprehension. Moody explains that the love and warmth that comes from the light is utterly beyond words.Peter Fenwick, tells us the same thing, that, “This is nearly always an intensely emotional experience, so much so that often the experiencer cannot find the words to describe his feelings.”

   In my experience it was like a sensation of an internal explosion, or expansion, of love that was more powerful than the sensation of free falling. With this extreme sensation came also the powerful revelation that the true nature of reality was infinite love, and in this state I had the experience of knowing the truth of the universe. I felt my consciousness expand to the size of the universe with all knowledge of all time.

   Fenwick explains that the predominant quality of the light is that of bliss and universal love, but that it also “contains total knowledge.” This is what before was described as “perfect understanding,” and Moody says that many people describe the experience as “an entry into a higher state of consciousness or being.” With this experience of perfect love and understanding there is also a sensation of completeness or wholeness, as if one returns home to oneself. Many describe this as a “homecoming” or even “escape from jail.”

     This makes the dimension of the light the best candidate for heaven that we have in human experience. Personally, I have no doubt that this experience is what we have been told about in the religions. However, rather than a physical place in the skies, it seems to me more likely that heaven is a state of being.

   For me, this homecoming was the return to my true nature—not the self-centered person of my childhood and youth, conditioned by negative life experiences, but my nature the way I was meant to be: the ultimate state of my being. It was as if the light, the structure of reality, was the essence of my being, and this essence was the true nature of all existence. Another person testifies that, “This radiation of love entered me and instantly I was part of it and it was part of me.”

   In this state there is no concept of time, and most people remark upon the timelessness of this out-of-body state. It is as if the out-of-body experience takes you out the dimension of time and space that we know, and into another dimension—an infinite and boundless dimension—that is beyond our physical reality. All of these out-of-dimension elements make a good explanation why the near-death experience cannot be explained or proven in this world.

   Then, at this point in the experience, some people experience what is called a “life-review.” One account tells us that “The things flashed 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.”

   This is a kind of flashback of one’s life that is described as “a moment of startling intensity” being “incredibly vivid and real.” The experience is so real that emotions and feelings associated to these images can be re-lived as one is seeing them. For some people this is experienced as positive as they are reviewing positive episodes of their lives, while for others it is painful as their life-review display negative events in their lives.

   In my experience, I had a negative life-review, which was very painful. Again, for me, if there is anything that I have experienced that could be a candidate for what we call “hell,” then the negative life-review is it. However, in the near-death experience, the focus of the review does not seem to be to punish, but rather to focus on reflection so that the person can learn how to love.