> My sister was shot while she was walking her dogs in our small town in Alaska. The bullet ricocheted around piercing her bowel in 9 places. Even though we had one of the best Rhode's Scholar docs in the north at our ER and the only flight out of town was miraculously minutes away from takeoff and held up to fly her to Anchorage, she bled out and died on the operating room table. She knows because she vividly remembers everything the surgeons said as she lay dead on the table. What she told me later is remarkable: She recalls drifting up and into a very bright light. She was no longer in pain, and felt compelled to travel into the brilliance. It lead to an amazing river. Seriously, the look on her face when she describes this place helps me realize that radiant, endless joy is not just a possibility but an eventuality. She describes playing in a river that consisted of pure knowledge. Anything she ever wanted to know was at her fingertips. As she played in this amazing river she could sense figures on the distant shore. They were our people, she explained. Our family. Our animals. All waiting patiently for her to finish playing in the river and wade towards them on the shore. Though she was not ready to leave the marvelous river, she knew without being told that they would wait patiently and joyfully. But she never made it to the shore. As she was playing an amazing thing happened. Seriously, people, if you could see the look on her face when she describes this next part you would laugh for pure joy. A being approached her. She did not know what it was except to describe it as pure, unconditional, ebullient LOVE. It radiated love. It pulsed love. And ALL THINGS diminished before the radiance of that love. The next part makes me chuckle a bit even though that seems out of place. She said it spoke to her and said that she had to go back, that it wasn't her time. She said, like a little kid, "But I don't want to." When she recounts this experience she emphasizes that to be in proximity of that being is ALL THERE IS. She describes it as a completion. A peace. A welcoming. To leave was incomprehensible. But to decline was also incomprehensible. She felt infused with a purpose. Very, very, very reluctantly she returned to life. She is amazing. They patched her femoral artery and explained that the graft would eventually give. In all probability she will die within minutes. Living with that sword of Damocles should be terrifying. No. To her it's a promise that she will get to return. Life is what we are here to do, she explains, but after.....sweet, benevolent, all encompassing love. With every single breath my sister is heartbeats from death, and I have never met anyone who is more alive. Fearless.
For those thinking this is too cliché to be true, this has many elements common to near death experience recounts. The bliss, the light, the tunnel or other structure (river in this case) leading to loved ones, an entity explaining the need to go back, the feeling of purpose after.
Not saying that those experiences are real, though. Just that people all over the world have similar near death experiences.
Yes. Read the classic 1975 book "Life After Life" by Raymond Moody who systematically defined these common elements after interviewing thousands of people who had NDEs.
You describe cca my experience with stronger doses of mushrooms. Could be interpreted in a very spiritual sense even by atheist/agnostic like me.
All I took from it is how marvelous our brains are, overload/mess with receptors, maybe tweak chemistry a bit, and suddenly you are in unique paradise of beauty no words can hope to describe adequately. You want to cry with joy anytime you remember it, even 15 years afterwards.
Needless to say those experienes didn't make me religious at all, rather explained to me vividly probable source of many religions. Why need to invent a god when man can be enough.
I don't judge anyone for believing this story, you are better off believing the story to keep up your optimism streak and avoid falling into a pessimism streak called depression, but it is either fake or a dream created by the brain. The creature is speaking English, which is a dead giveaway.
That's not a very effective counterargument - the being in question could have communicated in any way and the conversation would have been recounted in English later, unless it used interpretive dance or something.
These experiences seem to be very common. The question that I take from them is around the nature of "love", and how fundamental it is. Most religions feature infinite love and benevolence as a feature of God, and we know that the feeling of love in human beings has a biochemical basis. But is it an essential quality of the universe (like, for example, the structure of space)? Does it actually transcend the universe? I believe it does, in some form, but that's a position formed from a combination of faith and reason.
It could be that the "infinite love" feeling these religions describe is of a different nature to what we normally know as love, but there is no better word to describe it.
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> My sister was shot while she was walking her dogs in our small town in Alaska. The bullet ricocheted around piercing her bowel in 9 places. Even though we had one of the best Rhode's Scholar docs in the north at our ER and the only flight out of town was miraculously minutes away from takeoff and held up to fly her to Anchorage, she bled out and died on the operating room table. She knows because she vividly remembers everything the surgeons said as she lay dead on the table. What she told me later is remarkable: She recalls drifting up and into a very bright light. She was no longer in pain, and felt compelled to travel into the brilliance. It lead to an amazing river. Seriously, the look on her face when she describes this place helps me realize that radiant, endless joy is not just a possibility but an eventuality. She describes playing in a river that consisted of pure knowledge. Anything she ever wanted to know was at her fingertips. As she played in this amazing river she could sense figures on the distant shore. They were our people, she explained. Our family. Our animals. All waiting patiently for her to finish playing in the river and wade towards them on the shore. Though she was not ready to leave the marvelous river, she knew without being told that they would wait patiently and joyfully. But she never made it to the shore. As she was playing an amazing thing happened. Seriously, people, if you could see the look on her face when she describes this next part you would laugh for pure joy. A being approached her. She did not know what it was except to describe it as pure, unconditional, ebullient LOVE. It radiated love. It pulsed love. And ALL THINGS diminished before the radiance of that love. The next part makes me chuckle a bit even though that seems out of place. She said it spoke to her and said that she had to go back, that it wasn't her time. She said, like a little kid, "But I don't want to." When she recounts this experience she emphasizes that to be in proximity of that being is ALL THERE IS. She describes it as a completion. A peace. A welcoming. To leave was incomprehensible. But to decline was also incomprehensible. She felt infused with a purpose. Very, very, very reluctantly she returned to life. She is amazing. They patched her femoral artery and explained that the graft would eventually give. In all probability she will die within minutes. Living with that sword of Damocles should be terrifying. No. To her it's a promise that she will get to return. Life is what we are here to do, she explains, but after.....sweet, benevolent, all encompassing love. With every single breath my sister is heartbeats from death, and I have never met anyone who is more alive. Fearless.