Is there any evidence that the experiences of people during clinical death are not hallucinations, but the experience of God’s presence and afterlife?
Many skeptical physicians, after learning the facts about the experiences of people who went through clinical death and who had then come back to life, have completely changed their minds. Dr. Jeffrey Long examined thousands of people who had had such experiences. His studies bear out the authenticity and scientific credibility of their testimonies. These people, although they were in the state of clinical death from the medical perspective, were able to describe in detail their resuscitation, which they could not see with their eyes.
J. Steve Miller maintains that prior to 2011, over 900 scholarly publications appeared, describing near death experiences, in such prestigious journals as Psychiatry, The Lancet, Critical Care Quarterly, Journal for Near-Death Studies, American Journal of Psychiatry, British Journal of Psychology and Resuscitation and Neurology. The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences mentions 55 scientists who have published 65 reports, having examined 3,500 testimonies on record of people who have had the experience of clinical death.
All these testimonies bear out the fundamental truth: there is God and there is afterlife, too.
In a Seattle hospital, Dr. Morse examined the accounts of 121 children who had gone through clinical death. The study showed that the experiences of the patients coincided in many important aspects. For instance, all the children had an experience of being detached from their bodies, while their consciousness was independent of the body, which was undergoing clinical death. What is more, the patients’ consciousness was heightened and they felt a deep serenity. They passed through a dark tunnel, at the end of which a dazzling light awaited them. They had a chance to see a review of their life and meet their deceased relatives and friends, and people unknown to them. They had an experience of the reality of heaven and hell, only to then return to their bodies.
A flat EEG line in persons undergoing clinical death shows the brain to be dead and that it cannot produce the sensations that these people were able to talk about. Their experiences, therefore, cannot result from hallucinations or be produced by the brain but are a touch of spiritual reality.
Give Me Another Chance!
After a plane crash, a badly injured American man landed in hospital. His injuries were serious: burns and brain damage. Doctors said that his chances for survival were nil. He was in terrible pain. At a certain moment, he found himself in the spiritual world, in other words outside of his body. He was sure that this world was more real than the reality he had come to know with his senses. What surprised him most was the total loss of the awareness of time and the sensation of travelling towards an incredible light radiating from God the Creator. The light, although it was stronger than thousands of suns, did not dazzle him but instead was inviting him to meet it. Besides seeing the Divine light, he also saw the terrifying darkness of hell. When the man looked at it, he immediately realized that it was eternal and irreversibly separated from heaven. He understood then that the darkness was the image of his life until then. The darkness of hell was so repulsive a reality that he would not wish even his greatest enemy to find himself in it. The American came to realize that he was on the edge and a total eternal separation from the Divine light awaited him. However, he also saw that God wished to save him from that boundless darkness. From the depth of his heart, he cried: “I am sorry, give me another chance, I want to live!” At that very moment the darkness receded and the man was flooded with a golden radiation of life and light coming from God. This was the apex of the fullness of life in freedom and love. The man felt the unspeakable love and majesty of God, making him certain that God loved him and would take care of him for the whole of eternity. Then he heard an order to return to life on earth.
All who have gone through clinical death are of one mind that love is most important in man’s life. If we are mature in love, then after we die, an unimaginably beautiful world and love will await us that cannot be expressed with words.
The Blind See
Born blind, Brad Barrows did not receive any images in his brain. Meanwhile, when he had gone into a state of clinical death, he saw everything: not with his body’s eyes but with the mind’s eyes.
Vicky, a 22-year-old woman, also did not have any visual sensations or images since birth. She had only the senses of taste, hearing, touch and smell. In a car crash, she fractured her backbone and skull base. Vicky later remembered how she hovered above the accident scene and for the first time in her life could watch everything that was going on with her body: how she was taken by ambulance to the hospital and how she was operated on. The girl was surprised to see herself hover under the ceiling of the operating theater. She tried to communicate with the doctors but to no avail. So she stopped worrying about her body altogether. Suddenly Vicky passed up through the successive stories of the hospital building and then found herself over its roof. She felt free and joyful. Unexpectedly, she now found herself moving along a dark tunnel towards a distant light. As she was getting closer, she could hear ever more clearly beautiful music and songs glorifying God. Finally, the girl found herself in an incredible place full of light. The people whom she met there were as if woven into it.
Vicky admitted that the light felt like love. Everything emanated love. What’s more, she met her two blind and retarded school friends, who had died at the age of 11 and 6 years. In heaven, they were not children anymore, as when they had been on earth, but were healthy, beautiful and adult persons. She also met her grandma and the couple that took care of her when she was a child. In this new reality, Vicky found answers to all her questions. At a certain moment, next to her, a figure full of light appeared. It was Christ. Jesus hugged her, filling her with love and warmth, while his eyes pierced every particle of her. She was aware that he saw everything and knew everything about her. It was then that Vicky saw her entire life from the moment of birth to the present, and next she heard that she had to return to earth to her body.
A scientist, Kenneth Ring, interviewed 14 people who had been born blind and who had survived clinical death. The conclusions were unambiguous: their experiences were exactly the same as those of people who could see, i.e., they were based on visual perception. Such persons could see everything around them, at the same time – in other words she had a 360-degree vision. Communication with other people was achieved by telepathy or transmitting thoughts. These accounts have been corroborated by external witnesses, which makes for the authenticity of their experience.
“I am the Light of the World”
A common experience for people of various cultures and religions, who found themselves at the threshold of death, was the encounter with the luminous Divine Person of Jesus Christ. They felt his infinite love and acceptance, watched the pictures of their good and bad thoughts, and acts from their entire lives and saw clearly how their conduct affected them and other people. All met Jesus Christ, the true God, who had said about himself: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
Those ho uffered linical death agree that when their bodies were in the state of death, their consciousness deepened and sharpened. It was then that they fully realized that God did exist, as did eternal life, which included heaven, purgatory and hell. Another thing that they understood was the immense importance of the interpersonal relations of love during earthly life.
Professor oward torm f Northern entucky niversity was an atheist. When on vacation, he suffered a duodenal rupture. Upon arriving at the hospital, he lost consciousness. All the activities of his body ceased. Although he was diagnosed as clinically dead, he was aware of being alive. Storm saw his body on a hospital bed and heard a group of people call him to follow them. They surrounded him and led him in an unknown direction until they reached a place where everything was pitch-black. Storm was panic-stricken and refused to go any further. Then, the people surrounding him suddenly became aggressive, started to shove and pull him, using very vulgar language. Their aggression grew to such a degree as to change into pure sadism. The Professor suffered terrible, unimaginable pain and then heard an inner voice who told him to call to God for help. When Storm began to say the words of a prayer, the terrifying creatures that tortured him flew into a rage, crying, “There is no God, nobody will hear you,” whilst blaspheming hideously. However, they eventually withdrew. Meanwhile, the Professor prayed even more fervently. He saw that the words of prayer acted towards the evil spirits like lethal projectiles. Storm understood then how terrifying life without God was. Those evil people who tortured him did this, because – as he himself had done until then – they had rejected God and lived for themselves only, being utterly selfish during their lives on earth.
At this moment, it dawned at him that throughout his life he was driven by selfishness only and now was on the verge of becoming for the whole eternity like these people who had tortured him.
In despair, he started to call out: “Jesus, save me!” Next, he saw light, brighter than the sun, from which hands and arms emerged to touch him. Jesus raised him up and hugged him. This touch of Love saved him and restored him to life. Having been offered unselfish love, the man cried, overwhelmed with emotion and joy because he had discovered the greatest treasure. Howard Storm then miraculously recovered and from then on radically changed his life, completely surrendering himself to the rule of Christ.
The most important thing in our earthly life is maturing into a love which is pure and unselfish. At the time of death, we will be judged by it only.
The testimonies of people who have undergone clinical death invite scientists to study the relationships between the human brain and consciousness. These accounts by patients bear out the fact that the death of the brain does not cause the destruction of the human person and that a human soul continues to exist after the death of its body. Man has an immortal soul, that is, he is provided with a spiritual mind that operates through the material brain. The brain is the organ of the human body through which the spiritual mind comes into contact with the material world, whereas consciousness is the sign of activity of the immaterial mind or the soul.
A near death experience begets a deep conviction that the afterlife is more real than the world discernible by our senses, and the certainty that God loves us very much and wishes to give everyone a share in the eternal joy of heaven.
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