Whatever leads you to God

QUESTION

“Howard Storm started out [in his talk about his NDEs], and it’s in his interviews about his book, that he asked Jesus what is the best religion and the answer that he got was ‘the one that brings you closest to God.’  Now, he is sounding more and more like an evangelist. So are others who are telling us that if you aren’t a Christian, that you will go to hell. Betty Eadie [another well-known NDEr] never said that, so I’m wondering what gives.

“A lot of people are getting upset over the drastic differences in the stories that we are being told, including me.  I have been so depressed

over this, even though I consider myself a Christian, but my husband and daughter are not Christians.  I hate to think that they will go to hell.

“There are a lot of these people on YouTube.  I’m not getting it.”

...Linda

ANSWER

My goodness, dear, you’re exposing yourself to a few people, a few ideas and testimonials, but not the larger picture.  Get the book, “Dying to Know You:  Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience."  That book is the people’s book.  I call it that because it is a summary of what almost 5,000 adult and child near-death experiencers said.  Yes, a lot of them still use the term “God” because that is what we are familiar with in this society. You could just as well use “The One” or “Great One” or “That Which Breathes Me.”

The near-death experience has nothing to do with religion (did you get that?), and everything to do with the way the world really is.  There is a Divine Principle (call it what you will), that is behind and in back of everything. Any great visionary anywhere in the world tells us this, and has been telling us this since records were kept.  What you have been reading in the words of those who shared what happened to them. . . is not gospel for everyone. . . even though there is a common thread that runs through all. Betty Eadie’s books and book tours were financed by an organization or people of her Morman faith.  Look again at Howard Storm. “Whatever leads you to God” is his way of saying “religion” makes little difference, doesn’t matter in the broader scheme of things. What really matters is you and how you live your life, what is in your heart.  You cannot decide for your husband or children or friends. Whatever happens to them will be in accord with whatever is right for them.  The spiritual path is a loner. . . we each walk alone. Take what you can learn from NDEs, from visionaries, from great poets and those who were illuminated, and learn from them.  Read Meister Eckhart or Ernest Holmes or St. Theresa of Avila, or Rumi, or Kahlil Gibran.

Near-death experiencers, each in their own way, bring us snippets, capsules, bits of what they experienced on the other side of death.  No one experiencer has all of it or even a slice of it (contrary to what some claim). What they bring back is a “piece” of a truth, a “something,” they cannot fully describe.  It is up to us in the living of our own lives to “fill in the blanks.”

I hope this helps.  Blessings, PMH

NDE's & Religion

QUESTION NUMBER ONE 

“Sorry for my English. I’m Brazilian and I’m using google translate. Reading several reports of NDEs, I came across some statements from the NDErs that after their experiences, when reading sacred scriptures such as the Bible, Koran, and others, they came to have a different understanding. “In your research, did you come across such statements?”....Hilton

ANSWER 

Yes, this is quite common. In fact, I have yet to come across a single near-death experiencer, regardless of age, that didn’t change their thoughts and feelings about religious books and teachings. 

Some come back tossing aside such books, knowing that what is written inside is either incomplete or in error or mistranslated. Some turn away entirely and no longer are interested in any form of organized religion. Still others come back refreshed and excited about religious texts, filled with new ways of looking at the teachings and/or with new interpretations. This brings new vigor into church settings. 

In my original research with adults (3,000), ⅓ remained in their church of choice and invariably brought new life into that church. Two-thirds left any form of church altogether, feeling that the spiritual path - a closer more intimate walk with God/Allah/Deity - was what they wanted. I found it interesting, though, maybe about a decade later, many of those who had left a church environment, came back to one. Their choice tended toward metaphysical churches (like Unity or Centers of Spiritual Living: formerly called “Science of Mind” or “Religious Science”), or, any of the more traditional churches that now had a more modern, uplifting/upbeat worship service. 

You may find my book Dying to Know You: Proof of God in the Near-Death Experience helpful here - in knowing more about what adult and child near-death experiencers tend to believe and know afterward. Many blessings, PMH

QUESTION NUMBER TWO

“I enjoy reading articles on your website. I have a question regarding the soul vs. Buddhist concept of no-self. From reading a lot about NDEs, it seems that we have a soul yet according to Buddhism, we have no-self; no soul. It seems that the Buddha used the methodology of empiricism to look inward, searching for a soul, and concluded there isn’t one. Buddhist believe that our sense of self is nothing more than the composite result of five aggregates; there is no agent, owner or soul existing separate from the aggregates of the body, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. Given impermanence and the doctrine of dependent origination, there is nothing to ground belief in an attachment to a permanent self. I have been reading a lot about Buddhism, and I like it, but this doctrine of no-self is causing me a lot of confusion.

“I hate to think the Buddha was incorrect, but could he have used a methodology that was not suitable to detect a soul? Would he have known what to look for, where, and how?

“Accordingly, they believe that we are a continuous composite of “self” based on a line causal continuity over time. With their belief in rebirth, the one reborn is neither the same or different from the previous life. My questions are: Do we have a soul? What is the nature of the soul? Is the soul permanent or does it change? Are the Buddhists incorrect about no-self? How can I reconcile this Buddhist doctrine with what it appears NDEs are telling us - that we do have a soul despite the reasoning they use to say otherwise. . . . what would experience Nirvana? I know I wrote a lot, asked a lot of questions, but this is very confusing and causing me a little unease. Any amount of feedback you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.”....Gene

ANSWER 

Hah! You don’t want much, do you? What a raft of questions! Not being a Buddhist scholar, I can only share with you some thoughts.

There is no question in near-death research that we have a soul or higher self. Absolutely no question about that. Proof of this turns up time after time - with young and old and all the inbetweens. Sometimes the soul we are, the soul we blend into, is not necessarily what we thought it would be. That means that on occasion and with some people, the soul is not at all like us in the sense of being a duplicate. The soul itself seems to have its own mind and its own goals. Seldom are these the same as our personality self. The soul is unlimited in how it functions, who it inhabits, or how many it inhabits at any one time. I’ve tried to talk about this in FUTURE MEMORY. I suggest that you read the book as it approaches this type of thing from various angles and may be most helpful to you.

From what I have personally seen, felt, confronted in my own life, and seen with countless others, soul habitations can be multiple. For instance, during the year after I died, I encountered my soul in the body of another. Every time I tried to touch him, I’d see my hand go right through his arm. Eerie to say the least. Downright spooky in fact. I also found my soul in another woman, sensed it in a boulder in a volcanic cone outside of Albuquerque, and journeyed by myself up into the high Sierras outside of Big Pine, California, to sit with and meditate with my “self,” my soul, in a dead Bristle Cone Pine Tree. I must say that finding my tree and spending hours with it was one of the most holy, beautiful, and wondrous things I have ever done. In my case, the whole experience was an experience of God being with God. That time remains with me in all its splendor up to this day.

Not sure if I have helped any. I know reading FUTURE MEMORY will make a difference for you. 

Many blessings, PMH

Experiencing an Awakening

QUESTION

            “When I was in my first few years studying as an undergraduate, I had recently broken up with my girlfriend and was searching for some answers about life.  I woke up very early one morning, a little before dawn, and decided that perhaps meditation would help me find some answers.  So I sat and tried to clear my mind of all thought.  Once all the thoughts and clutter in my mind had disappeared, I would then ask a question, and imagined that the question was like a seed that would grow into an answer.  I didn’t receive a ‘response’ in the traditional sense, but simply got up and felt compelled to page through one of the Bibles I had on my bookshelf.

            “I opened the Bible to a random page, and there I found the Parable of the Mustard Seed.  I read through it, not really knowing what it might mean.  I closed the Bible and tried again.  This time the passage was the Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers.  Once more, I opened the Bible and rested my eyes on a passage that discussed how ‘the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.’  I wasn’t a Christian at the time, nor a particularly religious person, so I didn’t think much of it at the time.

            “Again, I felt compelled to go out for a drive to think about things.  The passages kept replaying in my head, somewhat like a catchy pop song that you can’t help but listen to over and over again in your mind.  I wasn’t interpreting them, so much as memorizing them, over and over again.  After about an hour or so of driving, I found myself in a small town I hadn’t been in before and I saw the white cross of a little church and decided to stop by, more because I was sick of driving than anything else.  I’ve never felt particularly comfortable in a church, so it was a somewhat unusual thing for me to attend a service out of the blue.

            “Once I got there, I kept thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’  I didn’t know anyone, and it didn’t seem like the kind of congregation I would be comfortable in, but I sat and waited for something to happen.  After some singing and general announcements, the pastor turned on his projector to display some visual aids for his sermon.  Of course, the three passages he had picked out to assist his sermon were the three I had randomly turned to before I left.  I sat in the pew and tried to compute the odds of ending up at a random church that just happened to be using those passages for a sermon, and I determined that it was nearly impossible for this to be happening.

            “I leaned back in the pew and was overwhelmed by a sense of complete bliss.  I got the impression that what I was experiencing was something like God letting me know He/She/It existed.  I started to cry, and I remember the tears felt icy cold as they came over my cheeks.  What happened next is somewhat difficult to describe, and it is one of those things I wish I had not told anyone about because I know I cannot adequately describe it; however, since I’ve already told a number of people about it, I suppose I can tell it one more time.

            “As I sat back in the pew, and after I had started to cry, I became momentarily blind.  Everything turned into a kind of overexposure, a pure kind of whiteness.  I could still hear everything that was being said, but I was truly blind for a moment.  Then I lost what I would call my ‘normal’ consciousness.  The only way I can describe it is being everything in the entire universe all at once, but being nothing at all at the same time.  All the paradoxes about life, things like life/death, or good/bad, and everything that I doubted or did not understand about the world became perfectly clear, but I also knew that the wisdom I had would only last as long as I was in that state.  Once I went back to my normal self, I knew that I would be unable to describe it in a way that anyone would really understand.  I’m not sure how long I was in this state, but when I finally came back into myself, something wasn’t quite the same.

            “I was still a little dazed at that point, but one thing I noticed was that I could feel everything and everyone in the room.  It should have been overwhelming, but in a strange way, it felt normal to me, like I was just seeing things in a different way or from a greater perspective.  I had similar experiences the entire day.  When I returned to campus, I could hear conversations that should have been impossible for me to hear.  I felt the emotions of other people, of the animals in my environment, even the pilot flying a fighter jet overhead.  As the day ran its course, I eventually felt myself retreating farther and farther into myself until I returned to my everyday, normal self by the end of the day.

            “That is the basic gist of my experience.  I’m not sure this would count as a ‘near-death’ experience, but I suppose I would label it more of a spiritual experience, and I’m still working through what it means to me.”…..Matthew

ANSWER

            What you went through, Matthew, is commonly referred to as “an awakening.”  Awakenings are where all senses heighten and expand, your state of consciousness accelerates to a higher degree, and you suddenly know things, feel things, see things, hear things – beyond the normal range.  I would not call it a near-death experience, but, rather, the beginnings of a threshold experience.  Again, the idea of an awakening:  suddenly accessing more of the electromagnetic spectrum, suddenly expanding into realities you did not think existed, suddenly “not self” but more than self.

            The spiritual/religious worlds of thought and sense are quite real.  Once accessed, they change us – on all levels, even physically.  It might behoove you to follow this new path and see where it leads you.  Seldom does an adherent realize or recognize the onset of spiritual energies and spiritual shift.  Yet these happen “on time” – when you’re ready, you shift.  You did.  And the opportunity to shift again will occur.  Count on it.  By the way, synchronicity is one of the signs of making such a shift in consciousness.

            Awakenings are just that, an opportunity to think and to exist on another wavelength.  Take advantage of the door that has opened for you.  Awakenings strengthen us and give us courage – the courage to grow.

            Many thanks, PMH