FEATURES Near Death, or Near Life? By Lee Sumpter
Near Death Experiences are now often in the news in the form of reviews of books by those who have had such experiences and in medical and scientific articles which try to explain what happens. Most of these descrip- tions of Near Death Experiences or NDE’s are just that: descriptions of what the person who was pronounced clinically dead saw or heard while in a state of uncon- sciousness. These descriptions are startling and varied.
What is never considered, however, is how the person who was pronounced clinically dead was able to report seeing things, hear- ing things, feeling the embrace of angels or relatives or experienc- ing other sensations. Nor is there much of a discussion of how the dead patient is able to remember what they saw, heard, etc.; and how they are able to be perfectly aware of the circumstances of their experience. They often relate that they recog- nized that their body was on a hospital bed or in an operating room or emergency room or on the ground in an injured state. So, their body is incapacitated, but the senses associ- ated with the body are not. From this it appears that the soul, which makes the body for its experience of earthly life, has senses similar to what we associate with the body.
To go further in this argument, evidently the soul can see without eyes, hear without ears, feel without skin. How else can we explain what happens with remote viewing experiments or hypnotic regression narratives which fill books and DVD’s? It could be suggested that these senses in the body are simply analogous to those of the soul. We rarely talk about the soul as a sentient rational entity with a memory, but no other conclusion is possible with so much evidence. People who meet departed relatives and pets during their brief visit to heaven remember who these beings are and recog- nize them. When they return to life, they say that they met such and such a person and such and such a pet. Occasionally a child who has such an experience will describe a sibling who died before they were them- selves born. There are many such accounts. All of this consciousness requires a memory, a rational capacity for evaluation of the events that happen and the senses of sight or hearing. Up to now these are known as the exclusive properties of a living human body.
What is also important about NDE descriptions is that 20
they are now talked about openly and written about both by ordinary people and by medical or scientific researchers. There is even a web site,
www.NDE.com. In the past people rarely spoke of such experiences and only under guarded circumstances. This is knowledge about life that is now coming to be accepted as part of everyday life. Since the stories evidently describe the extracorporeal experiences of the soul, we now can be aware of the powers of the soul, real enumerated powers. These powers are everyday knowledge and not some mystical guarded secret. Perhaps, it is no accident that this knowl- edge is available to us now.
Perhaps, these experiences are a window into the true nature of life itself, of the spiritual forces that are behind every- thing that hap- pens in our lives. We talk about such awareness when we say that babies are freshly arrived from heaven. When the elderly members of our family speak of visiting with long
departed relatives and friends, we readily accept this. We have been told that there is a heaven, that there are “many mansions” there and that one day that king- dom will be on the earth too. We just have not arrived at the point where we see all of this as literally part of everyday life. The near death stories that are fortunately available to us in such abundance point out to us the difference between the “quick and the dead.” They show us a glimpse of the eternal life that is behind our daily struggles and joys.
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Oracle 20/20 September 2013
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