Releasing the butterfly
“Many people say: Of course, Doctor Ross has seen too many dying patients. Now she starts getting a bit funny.”
These were the opening lines of On Life After Death, a little book containing transcripts of three lectures given by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross between 1977 and 1982.
Dr. Ross received international recognition and acclaim for her first book, On Death and Dying (1969) and it remained on the US non-fiction bestseller list for over a decade. It is still regarded world-wide as the classic work in its field of thanatology.
In one of her lectures, Dr. Ross explained that when she sat at the bedside of a dying child, she would explain to the child that the human body is like a cocoon, and that it is only a house to live in for a while.
“As soon as the house is in an irreparable condition,” she would say, “it will release the butterfly.”
To Dr. Ross, this was no fairy tale. Throughout the 1960’s, she had interviewed over five hundred terminally ill patients, sat beside countless numbers who were going through the dying process, and listened intently to the stories of many who had died and been resuscitated.
One case was particularly intriguing. A twelve-year-old girl confessed to her father that she had an experience she’d never told to anyone. A few years earlier, when she had been deathly ill, she had left her body and had not wanted to return. As she explained to her father: “I don’t want to tell my mummy that there is a nicer home than ours.”
The girl told her father that she had traveled to the “other side” where she had been lovingly held by her brother. But this caused her confusion, because she didn’t have a brother. Her father was shocked. Her brother had died only a few months before she was born, and neither of her parents had ever mentioned him to her.
In the 1960’s Dr. Ross instigated a course at the University of Chicago and began weekly seminars on the treatment of terminally ill patients. During one of these seminars, she did something so controversial, it almost destroyed her reputation!
She brought a woman to the stage who had been declared dead but had been resuscitated.
Mrs. Schwartz related how she had floated out of her body and watched as the nurse rushed out of the room to summon help.
Now, keep in mind that this occurred about a decade before the publication of Dr. Moody’s ground-breaking book, Life After Life, brought the concept of near-death experiences to the attention of the world!
Mrs Schwartz explained that she had observed the doctors frantically working on her from her vantage point above the bed, and she was later able to report which members of the team had wanted to give up. She was even able to repeat a joke one attendant had told in an effort to relieve the tension.
While this was nothing new to Dr. Ross, the reaction of students at the seminar surprised her. She later wrote: “They all leaped on me because I refused to label the woman’s story as hallucination. They all wanted me to give this woman’s experience a convenient psychiatric label so they could forget it.” (There Is Life After Death by Kenneth L. Woodward, article in McCall’s August 1976, page 134)
The cynical reaction by the medical students prompted Dr. Ross to begin an in-depth study of experiences reported by patients who had been resuscitated after having been declared dead.
Together with hospital co-worker Reverend Gaines, she began collecting accounts of near-death experiences from around the world. To be certain the results contained no religious or cultural bias, they collected data from a variety of cultures including Eskimos, Hawaiians and Australian Aboriginals, and from people with various belief systems such as Hindus, Buddhists, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, agnostics and atheists.
Both Ross and Gaines were astounded by the results. The similarities to those they had heard from their own patients could not be ignored.
In a 1977 lecture, she shared the results of her world-wide study:
- “They are all fully aware of shedding their physical body, and death, as we understand it in scientific language, does not really exist.”
- “There is no time or distance. If we are separated from a loved one [as we are dying] we have only to think of them and we will be wherever they are in an instant.
- We may try to communicate with those we leave behind, but soon realize they can neither see nor hear us.”
- “We become aware that departed loved ones are awaiting us on the other side.”
- “We may travel through a tunnel, pass through a gate, cross a bridge, or travel through something else familiar to us.
- At the end of this journey, we will be embraced by an indescribably loving light.”
- “If we are meant to return, we are permitted to see this light only briefly. If this is the end of our earthly journey, however, we will experience understanding without judgement as we stand in the light, and will come to understand that life on earth was nothing more than a school.”
- “We will be shown our life from the first to last day and will re-experience every thought we had, every deed we did, and every word we spoke. In the light of unconditional love and non-judgement, we will come to understand the consequences resulting from those thoughts, words and deeds, and recognize how many opportunities we missed to grow.
- “…many of our patients …are not always grateful when their butterfly is squashed back into the cocoon.”
- “Not one of the patients who has had an out-of-body experience was ever again afraid to die.”
Dr. Ross was honored with twenty doctorates for her work with the dying. By 1982 more than 100,000 students had attended her classes on death and dying in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions.
In 1999 she was named by Time Magazine as one of the hundred greatest thinkers of the 20th century. Not bad for someone who was believed by some to be “getting a bit funny”!
Kubler Ross departed this world in 2004. She was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007.
SandyC
Feathered Messengers
“Call the mobile vet! NOW!!” I shouted.
Nikki, our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, had been a cherished family member for just six years, but the cancerous lump on her side had grown rapidly in recent weeks.
She never complained, but on this particular afternoon she staggered into the kitchen, collapsed on the floor and yelped loudly. I fell to my knees and stroked her head, assuring her that everything would be ok. I knew her time had come.
The vet arrived thirty minutes later. While he prepared the injection, I grabbed her bag of canine chocolate drops. I had always restricted her to just a few at a time, but for this greedy little princess, a few had never been enough.
I knelt beside her and held the treat close to her nose. She raised her head slowly and gobbled it up, her enormous brown eyes shining with excitement. At any other time she would have leapt to her feet and wagged her tail. Now, lifting her head was the best she could do.
The vet joined us on the floor at Nikki’s tail-end. I turned my back on him, focusing on her beautiful face, placing chocolate drops in her mouth one at a time and watching her gobble them up with delight. Her eyes never left my face, nor mine hers.
For a brief moment, it occurred to me that I had already given her far too many! Then I remembered what was happening behind me and kept popping them into her mouth, talking softly to her as I did.
As she stretched her sweet head forward to reach for the tenth treat, she slowly closed her eyes. I cradled her head and gently lowered it to the floor.
Then I cried for a long time.
Barry buried her in the back yard, and I agonized over whether I had made the right decision. I knew she could not have recovered, but was it the right time? I had learnt that people had “a time”, but did these same rules apply to dogs? I didn’t know. I only knew she had been in pain and I couldn’t let her suffer.
Three days later, I crouched next to her grave and began to weed around it in preparation for a small headstone. Suddenly, a small bird swooped down and collided with my head.
“Strange,” I thought. We regularly fed magpies and butcher birds in our yard, and other birds rarely trespassed. They certainly didn’t dive-bomb us! Even magpies – known for their aggressive behaviour –took food gently from our hands.
I continued weeding when another bird did the same, and I wondered if I was too close to a nest. I looked around. There were no trees nearby where nests might be.
I took the hint and moved away, sitting on a step nearby to watch and wait.
The birds remained on Nikki’s grave for ten or fifteen minutes. They didn’t chirp. They didn’t scratch around looking for worms. They stood, silent and still, staring at me as I stared back at them. I was instinctively aware that something unusual was happening, but at the time I had no idea what it might be
Birds have long been considered “messengers of death”. There are numerous superstitions surrounding this partnership. My Irish grandmother always shivered if she heard a bird sing after dark. “Aaach, someone just died!” she’d announce. Many times she was right, but of course, someone probably died every minute of every day.
My grandmother also accepted, without question, that a bird tapping on the window brought news to the household and often predicted the death of a loved one.
The Irish do love their superstitions!
However, the Irish were not the only ones with supernatural notions about birds. Even the eminent psychiatrist Carl Jung recognized them as encapsulating the archetype of transcendence and rebirth, and Jung was certainly not Irish!
A wide range of cultures throughout history believed birds were symbolically connected with death. In Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Nordic and American Indian mythologies, birds were said to serve as spirit guides, messengers who were able to fly between the worlds of the living and the dead and assist the departed on their journey.
Even today, many cultures view birds as psychopomps – a Greek word meaning a creature that escorts newly-deceased souls from earth to the afterlife. (Psycho=soul, Pompos=escort)
But psychopomps are not restricted to escorting the deceased to the spiritual realms. Historically, birds were also credited with helping to bring newborn souls into this world. The legend of the stork delivering the baby no doubt grew out of this ancient belief.
Psychopomps are also believed to act as messengers between worlds. Renowned American naturalist and explorer Ernest Ingersoll wrote in his 1923 book, Birds in Legend and Folklore: “the belief in the supernatural wisdom and prophetic gift in birds is … based on the almost universal belief that they are often the visible spirits of the dead.”
Is this why the bereaved often notice birds – especially those that have special meaning for the departed – acting in a surprising or unusual way?
This occurred to me shortly after my mother’s passing. She had often voiced regret that the kookaburras we heard laughing merrily in the distance never came close enough to be fed.
One morning, shortly after her passing, our first kookaburra appeared on the railing around our deck and waited patiently to receive a tasty morsel. Since then, his entire family regularly come to take food from our hands. Is that a coincidence?
While birds are universally recognized as psychopomps, they’re not alone. The veil between worlds is thinner for most creatures than it is for us. Wolves, dragonflies, cats and dolphins are among many that have earned reputations as messengers from the spirit world.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this as I sat on the step, waiting for these annoying feathered creatures to move away. I had never heard the word ‘psychopomp’. I just wanted to get on with my weeding.
I was almost ready to give up when the two feathered guards flew away. Somehow, I knew they wouldn’t bother me again. I was right.
Perhaps, three days after the lethal injection, it had finally been Nikki’s “time”, and her escorts had been waiting to take her on her final journey.
At least, I like to think so.
Have you ever encountered a psychopomp? Has one appeared to escort a dying loved one or come to comfort you after their passing? If you have a psychopomp story, I’d love to hear about it.
Cheers, SandyC
Heavenly Tantrums
Hands up those who would rather be alive than dead.
Everyone!
But wait. There are a few in the back row who didn’t raise their hands. Why not?
Ah! That’s because they’ve already been there! Let’s indulge in a little time-travel so we can talk to them.
First, we’ll head back to the 1950’s and bring Dorothy to the stage. Dorothy contracted polio as a child and spent most of her life in an iron lung.
“As I died,” Dorothy begins, “my attention was drawn to a bright light … I found myself in a new world … everything was joyful. I could walk again! My muscles could do what I wanted them to do, and I felt completely happy, no pain, no restrictions, all light and gay. I was so pleased to leave my worn-out shell behind me and be free.”
Then she adds: “A voice – the sweetest I have ever heard – spoke from the light and said: ‘No, Dorothy, I am sorry but it is not time yet. You have more to do.’”
A low murmur fills the hall. Everyone questions what a woman confined to an iron lung could possibly do. Alas, Dorothy can’t share this secret with us, because the nurse rushes to her bedside and successfully resuscitates her.
Hoping to find answers, we travel further back in time to hear from geologist Arthur E. Yensen, who died in an automobile accident in 1932. A skeptical mine geologist, Arthur was amazed to find himself back in what felt like was his “real home”.
“I met a group of loving beings on the other side,” he tells us, “and I confessed to them that on earth I felt like a visitor, a misfit and a homesick stranger.”
But then, one of Arthur’s new friends dropped a bombshell: “You have more important work to do on earth, and you must go back and do it.”
“Like a kid having a tantrum, I kicked and screamed and begged.” Yensen confesses. “Oh no, not back to that horrible place! Let me stay, let me stay.”
“One of my new friends explained that earthly life is not supposed to be happy: ‘We call it a miserable preliminary,’ he told me, adding that ‘if you find any joy in it you are just that much ahead.’”
“All my protesting did no good.” Arthur adds sadly. “I would have stayed, but someone bigger than I was running the universe.”
Now, Arthur has also departed and we still don’t know why we’re here. Will we ever understand?
Let’s try Mrs. Conant, who died of an overdose of medication prescribed by a doctor who was “… at the time, unfortunately, under the influence of stimulants”.
Fasten your seatbelts, because we’ll need to travel all the way back to 1873.
“I met my deceased mother!” Mrs. Conant announces with delight, “When she told me I had to return, I wept and begged to be allowed to stay. Mother gently but firmly told me that I had yet a mission to perform.”
A mission? This was starting to sound serious! Sadly – or happily, depending on your point of view – Mrs. Conant was also revived before she could provide an answer.
Since we’re already in the 19th century, why not call on Dr. Wiltse. He died of typhoid fever in 1889. Perhaps he can shed some light on this mystery.
Dr. Wiltse took an unusual route to heaven. He walked along a road!
“Eventually,” he recalls, “I came upon three large rocks blocking my way, and I paused to consider what I should do. Instantly, a large cloud moved into position over my head and I became aware of an awesome presence within it.”
The cloud told him: “If your work was to write the things that have been taught you, waiting for mere chance to publish them, if your work was to talk to private individuals in the privacy of friendship – if this was all, it is done, and you may pass beyond the rocks.”
“I was relieved,” he admits, “and I moved to pass beyond the rocks, but the cloud continued: ‘If however, upon consideration, you conclude that it shall be to publish as well as to write what you are taught, if it shall be to call together the multitudes and teach them, it is not done and you can return into the body.’”
Finally, a clue! Or is it?
Having already died once, Dr. Wiltse reasoned that “if I go back, soon or late, I must die again. If I stay, someone else will do my work and so the end will be as well and as surely accomplished. Again I began to step past the large rock, but … a smaller cloud appeared in front of me and I instantly knew I was going to be stopped. I found myself growing weak and unable to move. Then I lost consciousness.”
Surely we’re not all meant to write books or teach the multitudes!
Dr. Bruce Greyson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioural Sciences of the University of Virginia, has conducted numerous studies over four decades on the near-death experience.
He states: “The realization that we each have a mission or purpose was a common theme among survivors. While acknowledging that each person’s mission may not be earth-shattering or news-worthy, experiencers understood that it was crucial for each of us to complete our allotted tasks.”
Allotted tasks sounds far less daunting than missions!
Writing a book or teaching the multitudes may be the ‘allotted task’ for a few, but our purpose is likely to be something far more challenging, like learning patience, humility or forgiveness, or offering light to help someone find their way through a dark world.
“On earth I felt like a visitor, a misfit and a homesick stranger.” Arthur E. Yensen reminds us. Many feel that way.
A few months after the publication of Life After Life, Dr. Moody suddenly realized with horror that his book may have been responsible for a spate of suicides. After all, the accounts he quoted had painted the ‘other side’ as a place full of love and understanding, and where those like polio sufferer Dorothy could run and jump without restriction.
He need not have worried. Research has since revealed that most people who experience an NDE following attempted suicide rarely make another attempt. They return with the understanding that we’re here for a specific time and purpose and recognize that if we don’t honor that purpose, we’ll have to do it all over again.
“If I stay,” Dr. Wiltse considered in 1889, “someone else will do my work and so the end will be as well and as surely accomplished.”
He was wrong. As Arthur E. Yensen reminded us after the failure of his own heavenly tantrum: “Someone bigger than I was running the universe.”
Cheers, SandyC
The Indifference of Dying
One evening in 1987, my mother went to bed. She didn’t get up again for a year.
Convinced she was dying, I became desperate to know if there was any truth to the existence of the afterlife. I also needed to know what it felt like to die.
This took more courage than I thought I possessed. Like most people, I didn’t want to think about death. Heck, I couldn’t even look at the page in the newspaper where names of people who had died were listed!
Ah, but once I took my first step on this journey, I discovered that dying appeared to be nowhere near as confronting as I had feared. Comments by near-death experiencers in Moody’s Life After Life included:
“There was no pain, and I’ve never felt so relaxed.”
“… a momentary flash of pain, but then the pain vanished.”
“I couldn’t feel a thing in the world except peace, comfort, ease – just quietness.”
“… the most extreme comfort I have ever experienced.”
Comforted by these, I bravely moved on to other books on the subject and found eerily similar statements.
As a young naval cadet in the early nineteenth century, Francis Beaufort almost drowned. Here is how he described his experience in his autobiography:
“… a calm feeling of the most perfect tranquillity superseded the most tumultuous sensations … I no longer thought of being rescued, nor was I in any bodily pain. On the contrary, my sensations were now of a rather pleasurable cast, partaking of that dull but contented sort of feeling which precedes the sleep produced by fatigue.”
It has been said that drowning is not an unpleasant experience, but what about other causes of death?
Well, did you know that Dr. David Livingstone (of the “I presume” fame) was almost devoured by a lion?
Seriously, that could hardly have been pleasant.
In Adventures and Discoveries in the Interior of Africa (Hubbard Bros, 1872) Livingstone wrote: “…… he caught my shoulder as he sprang and we both came to the ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier does a rat.”
Can you imagine anything more terrifying, or more painful, than being eaten alive by a lion? Then you may be surprised by Livingstone’s next words: “It caused a sort of dreaminess in which there was no sense of pain, nor feeling of terror, though [I was] quite conscious of all that was happening.
Livingstone added that “this shake annihilated fear and allowed no sense of horror in looking round at the beast.” His only emotion was that of intense curiosity as to which part of his body the lion would have next.
Good heavens!
Livingstone concluded: “the peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by carnivore; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death.”
Another not-so-fun way to die would be falling from a great height! Nineteenth-century Swiss geologist and mountaineer, Albert Heim, survived such a fall, and reported that “everything was beautiful without grief or anxiety, and without pain.” He added that “elevated and harmonious thoughts dominated and united the individual images, and like magnificent music, a divine calm swept through my soul.”
As a result of his experience, Heim conducted what was perhaps the first in-depth research into near death experiences. He published his results in the year book of the Swiss Alpine Club in 1892 as ‘The Experience of Dying From Falls’ and described his own encounter, along with thirty other first-hand accounts of near-fatal falls by mountain-climbers and workers who fell of scaffolding.
Heim learnt that “no grief was felt, nor any paralysing fright. There was no anxiety, no trace of despair, nor pain, but rather calm seriousness, profound acceptance and a dominant mental quickness.”
His research also revealed that “consciousness was painlessly extinguished, usually at the moment of impact, which was at the most heard but never painfully felt.”
I sincerely doubted my mother was going to fall off a mountain, drown at sea or be attacked by a man-eating lion, so – and with considerable trepidation – I moved on to reading about people who were dying permanently.
This was a major leap for me, but in the process I discovered the dying had even more to tell us than the almost-died.
Karlis Osis, Ph.D researched extensively in this area in the late 1950’s. His findings were published as Deathbed Observations by Physicians and Nurses in 1961 – an academic masterpiece designed to bring tears of joy to any scientist!
Osis discovered that fear was “not the dominant emotion in dying patients.” Indifference, he noted, had been indicated far more frequently.
Indifference? Seriously?
One doctor commented that “there is such a resigned, peaceful, almost happy expression which comes over the patient, it is hard to explain but it leaves me with the feeling that I would not be afraid to die.”
Many even experienced elation or exaltation shortly before their death. “Their moods were so heightened,” Osis observed, “that the patient preferred to die into this kind of experience rather than to continue living without it.”
In his classic book, The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale related the story of his friend, Mr. Clarke, a construction engineer who died briefly during a serious illness. Peale described Clarke as a “quiet, restrained, factual, unemotional type of man with a scientific turn of mind.”
“I must be dying! Clarke recalled thinking when he found himself outside his body.
Then it occurred to him that perhaps he had already died! “… I almost laughed out loud,” he later told Peale, “and I asked myself: why have I been afraid of death all my life? There is nothing to be afraid of in this!”
My mother and I survived our ‘year from hell’. It was a year that taught me about the pain of watching a loved one suffer. I also discovered something else that year: nothing is as fearful as it might initially seem to be, especially when it is viewed in the light of knowledge.
I thank you, Mum, for giving me that precious gift.
Cheers, SandyC
Who looks through your eyes?
“That’s the one with the beard,” Katie told her mother.
Katie was only 7 when she drowned in a swimming pool in 1982. No-one knew how long she had been underwater, but she was no longer breathing when she was eventually noticed and rushed to a nearby hospital.
Based on the report by ambulance personnel, she had been clinically dead for at least fifteen minutes. Probably more.
Fifteen minutes! Clinically dead!
A CAT scan revealed massive swelling to Katie’s brain. With no gag reflex and an artificial lung machine to breathe for her, no-one expected her to survive, least of all the young paediatrician who attended her, Dr. Melvin Morse.
Remarkably, Katie made a full recovery within three days. Even more remarkably, she was able to recall a number of events that had occurred throughout the period of her ‘death’.
On meeting Dr. Morse for the first time, she told her mother: “That’s the one with the beard. First there was this tall doctor who didn’t have a beard, and then he came in.”
Morse confirmed this, and agreed that subsequent statements made by Katie were also uncannily accurate.
How is this possible?
We all look at the world through our physical eyes. We take this for granted, but evidential accounts like Katie’s – and there are thousands – suggest that our eyes are merely a camera lens, a tool we use to view this dimension.
Neuroscience tells us that our brain interprets what we see with our eyes. But if the brain dies with the body – and we know it does – how do those who have NDEs interpret what they see through eyes they no longer have, by a brain that is physically dead?
Who or what is looking out through our eyes?
The strange experiences of New York radio broadcasting president, Robert Monroe, may provide some clues.
In 1958, Monroe developed a strange malady. Whenever he tried to sleep, his body began to shake and vibrate for about five minutes. He subjected himself to a series of medical tests, all of which proved he was perfectly healthy.
Confused but relieved, he took his doctor’s advice to “stop trying to resist it and see what happens.”
These vibrations continued intermittently for several months until one night, while waiting for them to pass, he tried to distract himself by thinking about his hobby. An avid glider, Monroe was looking forward to an upcoming gliding trip and imagined himself soaring through the skies.
Lost in these thoughts, he felt something pressing against his shoulder. He reached behind and felt a smooth surface. Had he fallen out of bed? Looking around, he noticed there was no furniture surrounding him.
It wasn’t the floor!
Monroe looked down (which he initially thought was up!) and saw his bed. He was bouncing gently against the ceiling! To his horror, he noticed another man in bed with his wife! He willed himself to zoom in and take a closer look.
The ‘other man’ was himself!
Monroe insisted on a second series of tests, but again these revealed nothing abnormal. He sought the advice of a psychologist friend, Dr. Bradshaw, who suggested he repeat the experiment if possible.
Shocked, Monroe declared that he wasn’t ready to die.
“Oh, I don’t think you’ll do that,” Bradshaw stated calmly. “Some of the fellows who practice yoga and those Eastern religions claim they can do it whenever they want to.”
Monroe wondered why anyone would voluntarily choose to have such terrifying experiences. He asked his friend what “it” was.
“Get out of the physical body for a while.” Bradshaw explained. “They claim they can go all over the place. You ought to try it.”
Still concerned he may have a mental illness, Monroe searched libraries and bookshops for information. The only books he could find on the subject were religious. These advised him to “pray, meditate, fast, go to church, and absolve sins.”
This merely added to his confusion. Did he qualify for sainthood, or was this the work of the devil?
The next time it happened, Monroe later wrote: “I smoothly floated up over the bed, and when I willed myself to stop, I did, floating in mid-air. After a few seconds I thought myself downward, and a moment later found myself in bed again.”
Finding he had some control, Monroe began experimenting, and took notes after each experience. His book (see below) became a multi-reprinted best-seller and is now considered a classic. It contains numerous verified examples of his travels, along with his efforts – usually successful – to validate each experience.
Monroe (and many more like him) did not have to die to experience this phenomenon, but Burris Jenkins did. Following an explosion on his cruiser in 1957, Jenkins was rushed to hospital. He promptly left his body, looked back at the person occupying his bed, and was most indignant that “the patient tried to identify himself as me!”
“I shuddered away from the thought and ignored it.” He later stated.
This is a common reaction by NDErs when viewing the body from beyond it. An accident victim told Dr. Moody: “I could see my own body all tangled up in the car … I knew it was my body but I had no feelings for it.” (Life After Life)
When Dr. Wiltse died of typhoid fever in 1889, his doctor declared him to have been clinically dead for half an hour and was “as fully as I ever supposed anyone to be dead.”
Remarkably, Wiltse recovered and later recalled that during his ‘time-out’: “the body and I no longer had any interests in common.”
As a medical doctor himself, Wiltse paid close attention to the process of leaving his body, and I’ll be including many of his insights in my upcoming book, Heaven Knows.
The experiences of Dr. Wiltse and others again prompts the question: if we are not our bodies, then who are we?
In an effort to find answers, Robert Monroe collaborated with consciousness researchers including Stanislov Grof, Edgar Mitchell (the 6th man to walk on the moon) and Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and in the early 1970’s employed professionally qualified scientific and engineering people to help him conduct research acceptable to other scientists.
As a result, the Monroe Institute was established as a non-profit education and research organization. During its first thirty years, over 20,000 people attended its residential program. These included a group that one might not immediately equate with consciousness research – the US military!
The former director of the Intelligence and Security Command of the US Army confirmed in the Wall Street Journal in 1994 that they had sent officers to the Monroe Institute in 1978 and 1983 for out-of-body experience training
The purpose of this would later become known as Remote Viewing – a form of distant surveillance.
Today, the Monroe Institute comprises several buildings in Virginia (US) where it continues to research non-physical realities, out-of-body experiences, and human consciousness.
Perhaps one day we will all recognize that we are not our bodies, but that we merely occupy them in the same way a deep sea diver occupies a diving suit.
Have you had a validated out-of-body experience? If so, I would love to hear about it.
Cheers, SandyC
References:
Closer to the Light, Melvin Morse, 1990
Journeys Out of the Body, Robert A. Monroe, 1971
Halfway between two worlds
Oh Arline, it’s so strange here.” Arline’s mother commented as she lay dying. “I’m in a never-never land. I’m halfway between two worlds.”
What are we to make of this? Could a dying brain provide Arline’s mother with hallucinations simply to ease her fears? If so, what clever brains we all must have!
Near-death experiences have been the ‘flavor of the month’ for 40 years, yet deathbed visions, which also provide strong veridical evidence, are rarely discussed.
Could it be that dying for real is more threatening for most than the prospect of spending a few minutes checking out heaven during an NDE?
It wasn’t too long ago that family members were shunted out of hospital rooms when their loved ones began making their transition. While I understand the reasoning for this – it was considered far too confronting to witness the dying process of a loved one – such enforced separation not only robbed them of some sense of closure, it also deprived many of the opportunity to share profound insights.
In the nineteenth century and earlier, people appear to have been more aware of the significance of this mystical moment. In those days, most died at home surrounded by loved ones, and their dying words were often written in diaries or bibles and shared with family members who were not present at the time.
When ten-year old Daisy was dying of scarlet fever in 1864, her mother wrote down every word her daughter uttered and published it as a book in 1894.
In Daisy Dryden: A Memoir, we learn that Daisy often spoke of (and to) her deceased brother, Allie:
I do wish you could see Allie,” Daisy said to her mother on one occasion. “He is standing beside you. He says you cannot see him because your spirit-eyes are closed, but that I can, because my body only holds my spirit … by a thread of life.”
Such deathbed statements are not unusual. One of the first books on this subject – appropriately called Death Bed Visions – was a collection of historical accounts gathered by Sir William Barrett, a scientist who was appalled by the Spiritualism craze sweeping the world at that time.
In everyone’s life, however, there comes that moment when beliefs and attitudes are put to the test. Barrett’s moment came when his wife – a distinguished surgeon and gynaecologist – attended Doris, who successfully gave birth but owing to a serious heart condition, could not be saved.
Lady Barrett later related Doris’ final words to Sir Barrett:
“Oh lovely, lovely.” Doris had said, looking up at the ceiling and smiling. When asked what was lovely, she replied: “Lovely brightness, wonderful beings ….”
Doris’ baby was brought to her and she questioned whether she should stay for the baby’s sake, then quickly added “I can’t – I can’t stay. If you could see what I do, you would know I can’t stay.”
While this is typical of death-bed visions and proves nothing, Lady Barrett related one further comment by Doris:
Why, it’s Father!” she announced. “Oh, he’s so glad I’m coming. He is so near!” Then, with a puzzled expression, she added: “he has Vida with him.”
Doris’ mother later confirmed that Doris’ sister Vida had recently died, but the family had agreed not to tell her due to her weakened condition.
This intrigued her skeptical husband and he spent the last two years of his life collecting other accounts from around the world. His book was posthumously published in 1926.
Many assume these visions are merely hallucinations caused by a dying brain, but Karlis Osis,Ph.D, would not agree. Osis conducted research in the late 1950’s and found that when healthy people hallucinated people, they saw living ones, while the visions of the dying were of those who had previously passed. (Deathbed Observations by Physicians and Nurses, 1961)
The highly esteemed psychiatrist and thanatologist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, made a similar observation. She asked hospitalized children aged five to seven who they would most love to have with them if they could choose, and not surprisingly, 99% replied that it would be their mothers or fathers.
If deathbed visions are merely the mind’s way of providing comfort in the dying hours, then one would expect that these children would hallucinate visions of their parents.
Ah, but then Dr. Ross dropped her bombshell: “In all the many years that we have collected this kind of data,” she wrote in On Death and Dying (1969), “we have never met a child who, in the imminence of their own death, mentioned a person in their family that had not preceded them in death, even if only by a few minutes.”
Ross provided many outstanding examples to illustrate this. One poignant account was of a young girl involved in a tragic car accident with her parents and siblings. The girl suffered life-threatening injuries and Dr. Ross sat beside her to provide comfort as she died.
Suddenly, the girl announced that “everything is all right now. Mummy and Peter are already waiting for me.”
Prior to this, Dr. Ross had neither the courage nor the opportunity to tell the dying girl her mother had been killed in the accident. As the girl’s brother, Peter, had been taken to another hospital, Ross had no information about his condition.
A short time later, Dr. Ross received a call from the other hospital. Peter had died ten minutes before his sister passed.
This experience of being greeted by someone thought to be still alive but later found to have died is so common that it has it’s own label. It is known as a ‘Peak in Darien’ experience. But that’s another story, probably for another blog.
I have collected so many veridical accounts over the years, I could write a book.
Oh, wait a minute, I AM writing a book!
But I can’t resist including just one more intriguing account. This one concerns the second president of the United States, John Adams, who, with life-long friend and occasional adversary, Thomas Jefferson, drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1779.
Once retired, Jefferson lived in Virginia while Adams resided in Massachusetts, but the two men kept in regular contact through letters.
It is sufficiently remarkable that John Adams died on July 4th, 1826 – on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration he had drafted with Jefferson.
But wait, there’s more!
Moments before taking his last breath, Adams’ eyes opened wide. He stared intently at the foot of his bed, and in the presence of those gathered around he announced:
“Thomas Jefferson …. survives!”
It was not known until later that Jefferson had chosen that same auspicious day to depart this world, beating Adams into the afterlife by just a few minutes.
Had John Adams’ old friend been at his bedside to welcome him over?
What do you think?
You are welcome to leave a comment. The comment link is at the top of this post, just below the title.
Cheers,
SandyC
Sorry skeptics, he didn’t invent nde’s
“Those who report nde’s are just parroting what they’ve already read or heard.”
WAIT!!! Before you jump through my computer screen, that’s not what I believe!
But it was. Once.
Near-death experiences became such a familiar concept after Life After Life was published in 1975, that these days, phrases like heavenly tunnels, life reviews and beings of light roll of most tongues with ease. It’s tempting to agree with the skeptics and assume that those who say they had an ‘nde’ were already familiar with the concept.
OK, but what about before 1975? Did people have near-death experiences before these accounts were gathered, labelled, catalogued, examined, and subsequently published as a best-selling book?
You betchya! Sorry, skeptics, but we can’t credit Dr. Raymond Moody with inventing near-death experiences!
Ah yes, you say, but were accounts prior to 1975 similar to modern-day accounts?
Absolutely! Throughout history, survivors have described whizzing through tunnels, seeing a bright light and being prevented from entering it. Some were told to “go back, it’s not your time!”
Let’s take a moment to think about this. How likely is it that people who were separated by thousands of miles could make up eerily similar stories? There were no google searches, few if any telephones, and not a lot of local bookshops where they could buy paperback books on the subject!
To satisfy my own curiosity that modern-day nde’s are not merely copycat accounts, I have spent half a lifetime gathering pre-Moody near death experiences, and I am currently writing a book about them. Following are just a few examples I found – can you put names to any of them?
- A world-renowned psychiatrist who died of a heart attack in 1944. In his 1965 memoir, he recalled finding himself high in space and described how the earth looked from his vantage point. Thirty years after his experience, astronauts described identical views. (hint: his name is very youthful – with an accent)
- A high profile American author who was hit by numerous pieces of shrapnel during the first world war. In a letter reproduced in a 1962 biography about him, he described how he felt like “a pocket handkerchief” as he left his body. The incident so deeply affected him that he later had a character in one of his most famous novels have the same experience. (hint: his way was to be a determined writer!)
- A famous admiral and intrepid explorer who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the 1920’s. He struggled to climb over a wall in a desperate attempt to gain access into heaven. His account was featured in his autobiography, published in 1938. (hint: he made many feathered friends during his shivery journeys)
- A nineteenth century admiral whose nde occurred as a result of almost drowning, and included a detailed life review. His experience was carefully documented by the personal physician to King George IV and was later included in an 1847 memoir by a knighted naval administrator. (hint: the wind scale he invented was named after him, and it is still in use today)
Perhaps the most exciting references to pre-Moody ‘nde’s’ came to my attention when I thought I had exhausted all possibilities. These actually made news around the world this century!
In 2004, Dr. Phillippe Charlier was browsing in a Paris bookshop and came across an old medical book. Published in 1740, ‘Anecdotes de Medecine’ had been written by French military physician Pierre-Jean du Monchaux.
Dr. Charlier purchased it for the equivalent of one dollar.
This battered old book had held its secrets for almost three centuries. One was an account by a man the author referred to as M.L.C and who was described as “one of the most famous apothecaries of Paris.” (Perhaps, like many nder’s today, M.L.C’s fame prompted him to request anonymity for fear of ridicule.)
“M.L.C. had a bad fever in Italy” Monchaux wrote, and he was “cured by French doctors and surgeons using bleedings. After the last bleeding, which was very abundant, he remained unconscious for such a long time that the doctors were worried.”
The patient later declared that “after losing all external sensations, he saw a light that was so pure and strong, he thought he was in paradise. He perfectly remembers this sensation, the most pleasant and beautiful he ever felt in his life.”
Almost 300 years ago, the author compared accounts he collected with those reported by others who had similar experiences, and stated: “Many people of all ages and gender claim to have felt a similar sensation in the same conditions.”
The book’s purchaser, Dr. Charlier, was intrigued. A medical doctor himself, he followed Monchaux’s example and compared these accounts to modern-day reports. Like the original author, Charlier discovered many similarities – indescribable peace, a light so pure and strong it seemed like paradise, pleasant and beautiful sensations, and a clear recall of the event.
Charlier published his findings in the peer-reviewed Journal of Resuscitation.
Were all these people, including M.L.C., merely parroting what they’d heard or read?
If you know of other accounts of near-death experiences published before 1975, I’d be delighted to hear about them – the comment tab is at the top of this blog, under the title.
Cheers, SandyC
The Father of the Near Death Experience
“Would you have a copy of Life After Life by Dr. Raymond Moody?” I asked the young man at the local bookshop. I was doubtful. More than a decade had passed since it was first published.
“Certainly!” he smiled and pointed to a shelf at the far side of the shop. “You’ll find it in the ‘new age’ section.
Uh oh. The New Age section hardly inspired confidence. It would be somewhere among books about chakra balancing, reincarnation, aura cleansing and channelled messages from Atlanteans!
“Oh, I thought the author was a doctor.” I said dismissively.
“Raymond Moody? He is a doctor. Now. When he wrote Life After Life he was still just a struggling medical student.”
The bookseller was correct. Raymond Moody had, indeed, been a medical student when he wrote his first best-selling book. But he was hardly a struggling one.
He began life as a gifted child, and took his overwhelming thirst for knowledge into adulthood, gaining two doctoral degrees before the age of thirty. His first led to a career as a Professor of Philosophy. He later switched to psychiatry, and on graduation from medical school became a forensic psychiatrist which included dealing with the criminally insane
Eventually, Moody became a prolific author and world-famous lecturer, and came to be affectionately known as ‘The Father of the Near-Death Experience’.
When it came to the existence of an afterlife, Raymond Moody was a skeptic in the truest sense. The word ‘skeptic’ is of Greek origin and means one who suspends judgement while questioning the truth – a far cry from those who label themselves as such today! Moody did not discount the possibility of an afterlife, but he was doubtful.
In 1965, however, his life changed dramatically.
As an undergraduate student of philosophy at the University of Virginia, he was intrigued when one of his professors mentioned psychiatrist and colleague, George Ritchie, who had been admitted to hospital with pneumonia during world war 2. The professor related that Ritchie had been declared dead for 9 minutes, and during that time, he had an ‘interesting experience’.
Shortly afterwards, Ritchie addressed a group of students about his experience, and Moody was in the audience. He found the lecture fascinating and had no doubt Ritchie was an honest person who genuinely believed he had visited the ‘other side’. Nonetheless, he felt certain it must have been hallucinatory.
In a lecture he gave 26 years later, Moody confessed:
“I grew up assuming that death was just an elimination of consciousness. I believed that when you died, it was like the lights go out and you go into an impenetrable blackness and it was like turning off your consciousness, which was very threatening to me because I really do enjoy thinking. I’m a thinking and information junkie to a severe degree.”
Four years later, Moody was teaching philosophy at a university in East Carolina when a student approached him and asked if they could discuss life after death in one of his classes.
“Why would you want to talk about that?” he asked, slightly bemused.
The student explained that he had a bad accident a year earlier, and had died. Then he added: “I had an experience that totally changed my life, and I haven’t had anybody to talk about it with.”
Moody listened with growing excitement for over an hour. The student’s experiences were almost identical to those Dr. Ritchie had described. Was it possible both men had truly taken a glimpse of the other side?
In his autobiography (Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife, 2013) he recalled thinking: “What are the chances that Raymond Moody would hear the only two cases that exist in the world?”
On the other hand, he considered, was it possible there were others?
Have you ever experienced a moment when a random thought, a chance meeting, a rash decision or a simple change of mind took your life in an entirely different direction to the one you had planned?
For Raymond Moody, that one thought was his moment.
He let it be known he was open to hearing about other heavenly experiences, doubting there would be any response. Imagine his surprise when around one hundred and fifty people – students, parents of students, teachers and friends of teachers – came forward to tell him their stories, all in strictest confidence. Most admitted they had never told anyone for fear of being considered crazy. The few who had tried to discuss it had quickly clammed up after receiving negative responses.
Moody chose fifty of these people for in-depth interviews, and was amazed to hear more commonalities. Many told him they …
- felt peace and serenity at the point of death
- viewed their bodies from above
- traveled rapidly through a tunnel towards a bright light
- experienced a panoramic life review
- were greeted by deceased loved ones, and
- were told they must return, or chose to return
A meticulous researcher and self-confessed “information junkie”, he began to categorize the various stages of what he termed the “near death experience”, or “nde”. When he considered the implications of the information he had gathered, he knew it was time to put his findings on paper.
Years earlier, my bookseller had dismissed Moody as “just a struggling medical student”, leading me to believe it was a sensationalized book written merely to make a quick buck. The truth was very different.
The first publisher Moody approached demanded it be re-written as fiction to make it more sensational.
“That’s not going to happen!” Moody stated emphatically, and took it to a small publisher. The owner of Mockingbird Press happily accepted it, certain it was going to be a big seller. “I’ll bet it sells as many as ten thousand copies!” he told Moody excitedly.
Moody later wrote in his autobiography ‘Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife‘: “I had stars in my eyes at the thought of ten thousand people reading my book!”
This “innocuous little paperback” hit the bookshelves in late 1975. To everyone’s surprise, the printers could not keep up with the overwhelming demand for copies.
- The Mockingbird Press edition of Life After Life was reprinted four times in six months.
- The Bantam edition followed in 1976 and required no less than thirteen reprints within four months of publication.
- The book was translated into multiple languages.
- It rapidly climbed onto every bestseller list in the world, remaining there for over 3 years.
Since its initial publication, Life After Life has sold in excess of thirteen million copies.
Moody later wrote:
“Why this took place can be answered in one word: vacuum. Up to this point, the subject had been considered one that belonged to the world of religion and therefore it had received little if any examination by medical science.” (Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife)
Moody began this work as a skeptic. In his book’s introduction he wrote: “I am not trying to prove that there is life after death. Nor do I think that a proof of this is presently possible.”
He was still of that opinion 16 years later when, in a 1991 lecture, he added:
“I think the reasons for that are derived just as much from limitations of the scientific method as they do from limitations of these experiences.”
Dr. Moody finished this lecture with the following words:
“Having now interviewed over two thousand five hundred people, personally I am convinced. I have no doubt whatsoever in my heart that these folks do get a glimpse of the beyond.”
“Was it possible there were others?” he had paused to ask himself in 1969.
From that brief moment, his life would be forever changed.
Cheers, SandyC
An Innocuous Little Paperback
In 1976, an innocuous little paperback created quite a stir when it hit bookshop shelves around the world. Everywhere I looked, people were reading it, or intended to read it, or had recently finished reading it, or were recommending that everyone else read it. People who had already read it would stop strangers who were reading it while travelling on trains or eating lunch in cafes and would enter into animated conversations about it.
This phenomenon had also occurred a few years earlier with a book called Chariots of the Gods by Eric Von Daniken. I was 20 when ‘Chariots’ shot to the bestseller list, and because I didn’t want to be the only person in the world who hadn’t read it, I purchased a copy.
I tried to read it. Whenever I removed the little paperback from my handbag in a public place, gushing strangers would rush up to me and make comments like: “Isn’t it wonderful? It never occurred to me until I read it that instead of apes, our ancestors might have been aliens!” Or they would ask me questions like “Now tell me, honestly, has it or has it not changed all your ideas about religion?”
Frankly, I didn’t have any ideas about religion. I didn’t even think about religion. Neither had I seriously considered the possibility that I’d descended from apes, so switching to aliens was hardly a giant leap. Besides, I felt a little intimidated by these people’s profound interpretations of Von Daniken’s findings. Unlike them, I hadn’t “oohed and aahed” my way through the book, pausing occasionally to think “well, well, little green men must really be our ancestors, and doesn’t that now throw a whole new light on our bible’s teachings!”
Frankly, I thought I’d been reading a book about recent archaeological findings!
Seven years passed, and the Von Daniken scenario happened all over again. This time, it wasn’t about Martian ancestors. This time, it was a book about life after death by Dr. Raymond Moody. Dilemma. Should I purchase a copy so I could enter into deep and meaningful conversations with total strangers in public places, or was I now far too mature to need peer-group approval?
The title – Life After Life – suggested another life awaited us after this one. This smacked of reincarnation, and I knew (didn’t everyone?) that reincarnation was total nonsense. Coming back to life as a sacred cow in India did not excite me.
However, it had recently occurred to me that one day – sooner or later, one way or another – I was going to die! It may seem strange that the inevitability of death could have escaped my attention for 27 years, but it had. As the only child of a mother who was also an only child, and of a father who had deserted us two decades earlier, I wasn’t blessed with an array of elderly aunts and uncles or even aging second cousins who might have been inclined to demonstrate their mortality for me.
The shocking realization that I was mortal threw me into deep depression. I spent the next few days hugging my knees on the back doorstep, staring into space and demanding answers from the universe. What was the purpose of life? Why did we do anything? Why did we learn, love, talk, laugh or cry? What did any of it matter? Why did we accumulate possessions, change jobs, make friends, cook meals, make plans, read books and clean out cupboards? If we were all going to be snuffed out like a candle one day, wasn’t life pointless?
The universe chose to ignore my pleas, so I tried to discuss it with friends and workmates. They left me in no doubt they’d rather be anywhere else, talking to anyone else, about anything else. Some became aggressive and accused me of being morbid. Others pointed out that it was a subject polite people didn’t discuss. A few shuddered and uttered phrases like “ooooh, I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t even want to think about it!” Most simply avoided me.
In 1976, death was a taboo subject, except for those few who quoted biblical references and insisted that the afterlife was reserved for those who had been saved by embracing the one true religion – theirs! When I encountered this reaction, I was the one who politely excused myself.
Desperate for answers, I purchased a copy of Life After Life, took it home, placed it on my bookshelf. Twelve years later, I finally got around to reading it and wondered what all the fuss had been about. This innocuous little paperback was nothing more than a collection of anecdotes about anonymous people who purportedly told Dr. Moody they had died and had been resuscitated, and that during their “time out” they had travelled through tunnels, encountered bright lights and enjoyed reunions with deceased loved ones.
How wonderful would it be if all this was true, but how could I believe accounts from nameless, faceless people? It was far more likely, I decided, that the accounts were all so similar because they had been written by the same person – the author himself. He even stated in his book: “I am fully aware that what I have done here does not constitute a scientific study.”
I spent the next 27 years trying to disprove Dr. Moody’s research. I failed miserably!
Since 1975, Life After Life has sold more than 13 million copies around the world. Have you read it? If so, did you embrace it enthusiastically, or dismiss it as nonsense? Did it change your life, or did you use it as a harmless missile one night to silence at a howling cat?
I hope you’ll join me in the coming months as I document my challenge to the universe to “show me the evidence!”
Cheers, SandyC
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