NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

In a recent DAILY MAIL I was intrigued to read about Amanda Cable’s near-death experience when her heart stopped during surgery some years ago. It was also interesting to know that scientists have now come up with this theory to explain the phenomenon:

They tell us that these experiences happen when the quantum substances forming the soul ‘leave’ the nervous system and enter the universe. According to the feature ‘Dr Stuart Hameroff, of the University of Arizona, claims the essence of our souls are contained in microtubules within brain cells. These somehow dissipate into the universe if the heart stops – and return if the patient is resuscitated.’

Apparently over 660 readers of the Mail Online commented on Dr Hameroff’s research. Amanda says that as the pragmatic daughter of a surgeon she is not religious and had never believed in an afterlife – always before following her father’s belief that life ends with death. So she never imagined anything as extraordinary or inexplicable as a near-death experience happening to her. 

In agonising pain one day, she was rushed to hospital and found to be suffering an ectopic pregnancy. At the time her daughter, Ruby, and twin sons were enjoying the last day of their summer holiday at a play-camp. 

During a terrible night on morphine for the pain and haemorrhaging internally, Amanda was acutely conscious of tomorrow being Ruby’s first day at her new school. So, sick though she was, she sent her husband home begging him to be there for Ruby.

She next remembers a doctor slapping her face hard and saying “Wake up, stay with me!”  Then another doctor felt the pulse in her neck and said: “She’s tachycardic.” Shortly afterwards, her pulse stopped. 

Amanda thought of her three children, back home asleep, unaware that their Mummy was dying. She describes feeling her entire body being sucked up into a white light above and remembers a wonderful sense of calm, along with a tranquil and warm acceptance of death.

But someone was standing a few feet from her. Expecting to see her grandmother, who had died a few years earlier, she instead saw Ruby – wearing her new school uniform and with her hair tied neatly in bunches.

Amanda had never seen Ruby in her uniform, nor with her hair in bunches. “Come with me, Mummy,” implored the little girl, taking Amanda’s hand and leading her back down the white tunnel. “Hurry!”

There was a gate at the end of the tunnel. Ruby insisted: “Mummy, step through the gate NOW!” As Amanda stepped through, Ruby slammed it shut behind her.

Amanda says that the shock jolted her body – and that she’s sure it was at this moment that the defibrillator pads being used by the medics shocked her heart back into a rhythm.

Waking up in intensive care, she saw a masked doctor leaning over her saying: “You’ve been very sick and are not out of the woods yet. We need your next of kin at your bedside.”

Thinking of little Ruby and her first day at school, Amanda waved him away knowing she’d be OK. Hours later, Ray arrived and brought with him a photo of Ruby he had taken outside the school gates.

Smiling, with her new uniform and shiny shoes on, she had allowed her father to put her hair in bunches for the very first time. Ruby looked exactly as Amanda had seen her in the white tunnel!

Have you ever had a near-death experience? Do share it, if you have!

HEAVEN IS REAL

A few posts ago I wrote about Harvard neurosurgeon Eben Alexander's brilliant book PROOF OF HEAVEN detailing his experience during a seven-day coma. Now, under the heading HEAVEN IS REAL I've read this interesting (and ultimately amusing!) feature by the Daily Mail's Peter McKay:

'Top-selling non-fiction title in the U.S. is PROOF OF HEAVEN: A Doctor's Experience With The Afterlife. Dr Alexander nearly died during a seven-day coma and says it gave him a scientific reason to believe in the continuity of consciousness after death.

Dr Alexander also experienced the love of a God 'who cares for us even more deeply and fiercely than any parent ever loved their child.' I read somewhere that we typically think about our death 40 times a day, including what might happen afterwards. There have been many books on the subject, usually by religious types, but none previously - so far as I am aware - from a neurosurgeon.

Shortly after I came to Fleet Street many moons ago, I remember a London Evening Standard series - commissioned, I think, by its pious, fearful-about-the-hereafter then owner, Lord Beaverbrook - on the question of whether there was life after death.

I can't remember the answer. Just the question, splashed on huge posters attached to the paper's delivery vans: IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? READ MONDAY'S EVENING STANDARD.'

P.S. If you'd like to read it, PROOF OF HEAVEN is available in My Spiritual Store - by clicking the live link!

UNDERWATER WORLD

We speak of the Underworld, but what about the underwater world? Do you sometimes wonder, like I do, about the world beneath the sea and about its secrets? This world is mostly hidden from us - especially the vast areas that are incalculable fathoms deep.

Yet between the ocean's bed and its surface countless kinds of life not only exist, but thrive.Yes, whether we're talking of plants that grow or creatures that swim, marine life has its own unique universe concealed by and large from our eyes.

But, despite our blindness, we know it is there. Isn't this somewhat similar to our knowledge of an afterlife? Or, if 'knowledge' is too strong a word for you, then maybe 'suspicion' would be closer to your truth. We suspect that there's a heaven though our eyes aren't enabled to see it until after we die.

With limited vision we need either learn to trust or to contain our curiosity until we reach the other side. Meanwhile the existence of the hidden underwater world can perhaps act as an analogy for the after-world that awaits us!

HALLOWEEN - What Does It Mean?

All Hallows Eve (or Halloween, as it is more commonly known) is - according to Bel Mooney, writing in Saturday's Daily Mail - 'about death, mourning, darkness and remembrance. And that, Bel says, 'is why the festival speaks to our innermost selves, even if we don't realize it.'

She continues: 'Even in a secular age, the subconscious mind tunes into the spiritual at this time of year. Children dressed as witches and skeletons and parents laboriously carving out pumpkin lanterns are connecting to our ancestors and enacting the deeper meaning of October 31.

It is not hard to see how the idea of the dying of the light prompts thoughts of death. The Celts believed that on October 31 the border between our world and the 'other' world is especially thin. As plants died away, they believed that revered ancestors reached back through the veil separating them from the living.'

Whatever your beliefs, I wish you a Halloween that's as spooky (or not) as you want it to be!

PROOF OF HEAVEN

Can there be proof of heaven? I think there can, having recently read a very interesting story about a Harvard-educated neurosurgeon – Eben Alexander – who, in common with lots of scientists, used to be a non-believer.

But that was before contracting a rare form of bacterial meningitis, when he fell into a coma lasting seven days. After confounding the doctors who became increasingly convinced that he would never recover, Dr Alexander now claims he was somehow transported to a ‘place of clouds’.

He tells of a beautiful blue-eyed woman answering his unspoken thoughts, of ‘transparent shimmering beings’ gliding over an idyllic landscape – and of an all-powerful divine presence flooding him with intense, unconditional love.

He describes being a ‘speck on a butterfly wing’ along with millions of other butterflies in a swirling ‘river of life and colour’. They fluttered among trees and flowers that exploded into bloom as they passed.

He saw, below him, waterfalls, pools and ‘indescribable colours’, while above him were clouds – ‘big, puffy, pink-white ones showing up sharply against the deep blue-black sky’.

Dr Alexander goes on to describe flocks of ‘transparent, shimmering beings’ making arcs of gold and silver across the sky and incredible hymns and chants reaching him from these beings – ‘higher forms of life’ which he could only conclude were angels.

Throughout, he was acutely conscious of being loved and cherished forever and now remembers being ‘flooded with a vast and crazy sensation of relief.’

There is much, much more to his story, which he has written about in Newsweek and also in his book Proof Of Heaven, to be published next week. I really recommend reading it!

DOG'S GRAVESIDE VIGIL

I recently read an amazing story of a dog's graveside vigil that has lasted (so far) for six years!

It seems that German Shepherd Capitan ran away from home after his master died in 2006. A week after the death, when the dead man's family went to pay their respects, they found Capitan howling by the grave.

The fact that they had never taken the dog to the cemetery made his presence there all the more extraordinary.

Graveyard staff are feeding Capitan and said: "He turned up and started wandering around until he found the tomb. During the day he sometimes has a walk, but at 6 pm sharp he lies on the grave and stays there all night."

Can there be any devotion more potent?

P.S. Incidentally, THE FOREIGNER is due to be FREE on Amazon later today (see right-hand column)!

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH

Where do the reflections in this picture begin and end? Even though I took the photo, I can't answer that question with any degree of certainty. And it seems to me that there are some parallels here to life and death. When life in one dimension ends it begins again in another. We haven't gone anywhere except beyond limited human vision.

We've just shed a skin that has outlived its usefulness. How liberating this must be - especially if that skin had become irrevocably diseased or for some other reason a burden to us! Imagine the freedom of being bodiless and having the ability to be anywhere we want to be, at will - instantly! And we can watch over our loved ones, protecting them and 'telling' them that they haven't lost us. If we tell them often enough, they'll hear us in the end.

Yes, my reflections on death suggest that there's fun ahead!