Kuriakon - Infinity

Children of Light

Near Death Experience

Magic, Miracle, Divine, Mystery

Stairway to Heaven

In 1978 - I crashed my car into a ditch which caused it to flip over.  During the process of the collision - there was a time when I felt my spirit depart my body.   I could recall "standing" outside the car watching the carnage of the aftermath of the wreck fall from the sky.   For a brief time - I had been a ghost and traveled around freely - without the limitations of a physical body.

When I awoke the next morning - it all seemed like a dream.   Part of the problem in the aftermath - was retrograde amnesia which affected episodic memory.   I couldn't remember family or friends.  I could remember the car crash.  

Something or someone had repaired the damage to both my physical body - and the automobile.   It was as if it hadn't happened even though I had a vivid memory of it happening.  

I called upon a friendly acquaintance with the local police  agency in my hometown.  He went to the accident scene and investigated the marks left in the field.  He called in local and state professionals to determine if the evidence supported my memory.   The conclusion from all the experts who investigated the marks left in the field was unanimous.   Something beyond human comprehension had repaired the physical damage to both my body and my automobile. 

There was other evidence to support my claim.  

In the time that I was outside my body -- I had been a ghost.  It happened in the middle of the night.  I traveled to my sisters bedroom and awoke her with a start.   I did what I thought ghosts were supposed to do.   I scared the living daylights out of her.  

She and my Mom could not deny - that during the night - something had awaken my sister and had sent her running out of her bedroom toward my Mother's bedroom in a frenzy.  

In the aftermath of my experience - many mystical insights were given to me.  

In the aftermath - there were profound experiences with the spiritual realm which puzzled many people - and left them with a lack of response for a possible explanation. 

Some felt I had opened up a "door" to the other side - which several "ghostly" spirits were passing through. 

There was a summer full of "ghostly hauntings" at the location of my car collision. 

Many people would travel to the rode to catch sight of the "ghostly" images that appeared there. 

There were insights given of the future. 

There was an ability to tap into the conscious thoughts of other people around me. 

I spent the next 5 years with a strange ability to "depart" my body at night during sleep and revisit the realm I had traveled to during the car collision. 

There were prophetic visions of the future.

In 1988 - I had another "near death experience."   This time - the event was witnessed by 10 people.  In the hospital - mysterious markings were found on a medical image.  They were the scars of the 1978 injuries which caused my "death." 

Once again - I was left with the mystery of my travel into and back from the afterlife realm. 

This section of my web site deals with my own personal stories of the mystical and spiritual relating to my own personal adult near death experiences.   

"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." (Genesis 28:12)

"Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehood schools, and the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." (Plato) 

The phenomenology of the NDE

The phenomenology of an NDE usually includes physiological, psychological and transcendental categories (Parnia, Waller, Yeates & Fenwick, 2001) such as subjective impressions of being outside the physical body (an out-of-body experience), transcendence of ego and spatiotemporal boundaries, and other transcendental experiences (Lukoff, Lu & Turner, 1998; Greyson, 2003).
Typically the experience follows a distinct progression (Mauro, 1992; Morse, Conner & Tyler, 1985; Morse & Perry, 1992; van Lommel et.al, 2001) as summarized in the following points:

• A sense of being dead.
• An out-of-body experience.
• A sensation of floating above one's body and seeing the surrounding area.
• Pleasant feelings, calmness. A sense of overwhelming love and peace.
• A sensation of moving upwards through a tunnel or narrow passageway.
• Meeting deceased relatives or spiritual figures.
• Encountering a being of light, or a light (possibly a religious or divine figure).
• Being given a life review.
• Reaching a border or boundary.
• A feeling of being returned to the body, often accompanied by a reluctance to return.

A 'core' near-death experience reflects — as intensity increases according to the Rasch scale — peace, joy and harmony, followed by insight and mystical or religious experiences (Lange, Greyson & Houran, 2004). The most intense NDEs involve an awareness of things occurring in a different place or time. Among the clinical circumstances that are thought to lead to an NDE we find such factors as: cardiac arrest, shock in postpartum loss of blood or in perioperative complications, septic or anaphylactic shock, electrocution, coma, intracerebral haemorrhage or cerebral infarction, attempted suicide, near-drowning or asphyxia, apnoea, serious depression (van Lommel et al., 2001).

As an afterlife experience

The vast majority of commentators see near death experiences as an afterlife experience. This strongly implies the well-researched view that the NDE cannot be explained by physiological or psychological causes, and that consciousness, in all instances, must function independently of brain activity (Rivas, 2003). A large percentage of NDE-accounts include elements which, according to several theorists, are absolutely explained by an out-of-body consciousness. For example, in one account, a woman accurately described a surgical instrument she had not seen previously, as well as a conversation that occurred while she was understood to be clinically dead (Sabom, 1998). In another account, from a proactive Dutch NDE study [1], a nurse removed the dentures of an unconscious heart attack victim, and was asked by him after his recovery to return them (van Lommel et.al, 2001).
Dr. Michael Sabom reports a case about a woman who underwent surgery for an aneurysm. While blood was drained from her brain and her temperature lowered, the woman nonetheless reported an out-of-body experience despite absence of EEG activity. This would seem to challenge the belief by many that consciousness is situated entirely within the brain (Sabom, 1998).