7 - Transformation

It has been eight years now since I first met Katie. The little girl who was so close to death from drowning that the pupils of her eyes didn't respond to bright light is now a lovely teenager who seems normal in every way.

I have stayed in close contact with Katie and her family. Her parents think that she is as charming and bright as a teenage girl can be. But Katie's parents have six children, and they think all of them are model kids. Which isn't to say that Katie's experience hasn't had a profound effect upon her life. It did. Katie and her parents feel that her NDE made her a different person in many ways.

Katie feels that God sent her back to be a help to her mother. She has been just that. She is an extraordinarily mature fifteen-year-old who helps her mother run a large household. She has a part-time job, gets good grades, excels in ballet, and has never taken drugs. "Why would I need drugs?" she asks, wrinkling her nose in disbelief at the question.

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He who would teach men to die, would teach them to live.

—Montaigne

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These effects on Katie intrigued me. I began to wonder about adults who'd had NDEs during childhood? Did they embellish their experiences as they became adults until they were more fiction than fact? And what about the effects of those NDEs on their lives? Do they feel "chosen" or "special"? Do they think they have greater insights because of their spiritual experiences?

"Before And After" - Case Study

I searched my files for cases of people who had had near-death experiences as children and again as adults to see if there were differences in the NDEs.

Since I have discussed this topic on several television and radio programs, many people have contacted me. At first I was puzzled by this. Why were they calling me when they had already told their stories dozens of times? Then I realized that they wanted a sympathetic ear from the medical community. For the most part, they had been ignored by their doctors when they told of their marvelous journeys—sometimes they were even ridiculed or diagnosed as temporarily insane. They came to me for acceptance from a physician.

Rather than treat these patients as though something were wrong with them, I listen willingly, jotting notes while they tell me their intriguing stories. Later I consult with their physicians or check their medical records to make sure they didn't have histories of mental problems.

I found in my files two patients who each had two NDEs, one as a child and the other as an adult. The first case concerns a woman who, at the age of two, had an NDE while suffering from pneumonia and, at the age of sixty-nine, her second after a cardiac arrest. Here, in her own words, are both of the experiences:

"When I was two, I had measles and then came down with pneumonia as a result. That was in the days before antibiotics, and the doctor said that there was nothing he could do for me. I don't remember hearing him say that, especially since I was only two. But it's amazing what I do remember.

"My mother was making a poultice for my chest when I suddenly 'died.' The doctor was there and he began shaking me. It turned dark all around me, and then I saw a bright light that I knew was from God. I had the deepest possible experience from being in the Light. I felt love and comfort. I wasn't frightened. I only wondered, 'Oh my, how will I get back in my body?' Then suddenly I was back in, looking up at my mother and the doctor.

"When I got older, I could still see sparkles from that light whenever I was in a dark room. It kept me from being afraid."

Sixty-two years later this woman had another NDE. Here is her vivid description of that experience.

"I was over at the garage getting my car fixed when suddenly— boom—I was out of my body. It happened so fast. The mechanic just stared at me. I have never been able to get him to talk about what he saw in me that day. Whenever I bring it up he always says "no problem, no problem" and sort of backs away.

"This was the beginning of all my heart problems. But it really wasn't such a bad way to begin. I was part in and part out of my body. I then had the most marvelous time bouncing in and out of my body. And then, all of a sudden, I was in a velvety black place. But I wasn't frightened, since I was always there with, well, God. And I wasn't dreaming. I was in a black void and I knew I was dead but I wasn't frightened.

"Then suddenly there came a fog, and right in the center was my beautiful amber light. I was filled with complete knowledge and wonderment. I felt as though I was skating and that if I could just go out there and skate a pattern that it would be the most beautiful pattern of all.

"I could only imagine that God was with me and that he controlled everything I saw and thought. It was so glorious to be up there with him. There was an amber light and above it a huge angel—I think it was my guardian angel.

"To the right of the light was a huge plank, a giant four-by-four, which stretched beside me. It was covered with a horrible green paint I didn't want to touch it because it was my barrier. God told me that if you are meant to go back, they put up a barrier. Sometimes it's a cliff, sometimes it's a waterfall. Mine was a green plank like you see in a trick or treat place.

"Then he took me into the Light. Light was pouring through me. My cheeks were bulging out It was most delicious, a wonderful experience of that light passing through me.

"And then the plank came in front of me, and God was laughing behind me. He took my hand and put it on the plank. I looked down into a round opening in the black void in which people were walking around in white robes. Some people remained in the void, especially if they had committed suicide. He said, 'You can't go down there.'

"I then knew that I was going to return to my body. I knew I was so sick that I would never make it, but I was given no chance. I came back to the world."

The second case study of a patient who had an NDE as a child and again as an adult is a woman I'll call Paula. She wrote to me to report her childhood experience after a lecture I gave in Seattle.

"I had an NDE as a child that was extremely simple. When I was nine years old, I was put under anesthesia to have teeth, removed. I had a cardiac arrest as a result of an allergic reaction to the anesthetic. I saw myself rolled into a very tight ball of light. I saw myself being hurled at a very great speed through a conical-shaped space. The ball was rotating at a very high speed and glowing with a warm, bright light. Sticking out from the ball were a hand and foot. That is all I can remember."

I spoke with her later to hear about her adult experience, which happened sixteen years later when she was twenty-five. She had just had a child and had been hospitalized for severe high blood pressure associated with pregnancy. At three A.M. on the second day of her stay, Paula awoke with the sense that the air in the hospital room was very heavy. She struggled to the door, opened it, and then fell backward. Hospital records show that she had a cardiac arrest due to a heart attack.

Paula says that there was no pain associated with the heart attack. She first went into a black void and then felt as though she had left her body and was able to watch everything from a position near the ceiling. She tells the rest:

"I was looking down at nurses who gathered around my body. There were three. One began taking my pulse and then yelled to the other two, 'Call a doctor, call her husband.' A doctor showed up almost immediately and after a brief examination said, 'She's dying.' I was able to go out into the hallway and see my aunt She was a nurse in the same hospital and was standing outside my room talking to some patients from other rooms. 'What a shame,' she said. 'She was such a good little mother.' I was puzzled by the fact that they were talking about me in the past tense. I tried to talk to them, to tell them I was there, but I couldn't communicate with them.

"I was even able to go into the next room, where another patient was complaining about all the noise. The nurse there was saying, 'Well, Paula is seriously ill next door.' I then went back to my body in time to see my husband, who had just arrived. He was watching the doctor and saying, 'What am I going to tell the children?'

"I then thought that I might be dead. My' next thought was not fear, but the feeling that this might be a neat experience. I wanted to tell them that I was there, that I could listen to them and watch them, but I couldn't talk to them or communicate in any way. It was frustrating.

"As I watched them work on my body, the room became very light. Then a canopy of color grew above me, like the canopy that is over the front door of a nightclub. It was made of blue and silver rain, and there was a very bright light in the middle of it. The air sparkled around this light, and I knew that the Light was where I wanted to go.

"From this light came other people. There was no 'God' or spiritual guide with them, only these ordinary people like myself who were people of light.

"I could go toward the Light yet come back to my body at the same time. It was literally like having one foot in eternity or being able to drift back and forth through the looking glass like the little girl in Alice in Wonderland.

"Finally, I came back to look down at my body, and I saw a doctor shaking my shoulder saying, 'Paula, Paula, come back.' That was when I came back into my body and awoke."

These experiences illustrate the flavor of childhood experiences as compared to those of adults. Research done by Nancy Evans Bush at the International Association for Near-Death Studies has shown that childhood NDEs are very similar to those of adults in that they contain the core experience of leaving the body, being in a void, and then being encompassed by the Light. The striking difference was the lack of a life review. In the seventeen childhood NDEs Bush examined, not one had a life review. Yet the other events were every bit as powerful as any found in the adult literature.

For instance, a ten-year-old boy who was sick for several weeks with an unidentified illness (the patient didn't know exactly what he had) experienced an NDE shortly after the doctors had "given up." Here is how he described it years later.

"I don't remember the entrance, but in a little while I was in a dark tunnel. There was absolutely no sound, and all was black. I couldn't see to make my way through the tunnel, but I was being wafted along as a speck of dust, pitch black, but as I went along with neither sight nor sound, I felt at ease. It seemed as though I was discovering a new cave.

"After a while the tunnel became square and seemed very long. I became annoyed and thought to myself that the journey was pointless and fruitless and I was wasting valuable time. Just when I was about to turn back in disgust (I was completely alone) I saw a tiny speck of light ahead. I went on, and as I did the speck grew larger, and I thought it was well I hadn't turned back because I was going to discover something at last.

"At about 150 yards from the end, I saw plainly that there was brilliant white light out there beyond the square end of the tunnel. It interested me and I went on. All was yet quiet, and I went blissfully on, enjoying the journey at last.

"When I was about twenty-five yards from the end, the light became the most brilliant I have ever seen, yet it did not hurt my eyes. I began to wonder about that light because all I could see was light: no landscape, no people, nothing but a bright sea. And not a single ray entered the tunnel. The tunnel was black right to the end, and there was the sea of light.

"I went closer, cautious now because it seemed that the end of the tunnel was pretty high up on the side of a cliff, and since I couldn't see through the light, I didn't know how far the drop might be if I left the tunnel. When I was near the end, I took a good look around at the sea of light I was urged to jump into it and assured that I would not fall to the ground. No voice said this: it just came to me from a kind of presence. I thought it might be fun to try, but in an instant, I knew that if I left the end of the tunnel I'd never find it again and hence never get back home.

"I turned around and started back through the tunnel, and that is the last I remember."

In another case used by Bush, a nine-year-old girl had slipped off the high board at summer camp and had plunged into the ocean, where she stayed on the bottom for ten minutes before being rescued by a lifeguard.

"The next thing I remember is floating only an inch or two from the ocean's sandy bottom in the midst of a great light. The light wasn't the bright glaring sort of light that makes you blink. Instead it was incandescent, almost ethereal. I could see every indentation and curvature in the sand and minute details in the seaweed. If there were fish or shells, I don't remember them. I felt absolutely nothing. Not the water, nor the sand, nothing. I was surrounded by silence, but I wasn't afraid. I wanted to stay there forever. I have never since experienced such a feeling of peace."

As you can see, these experiences contain the same elements as adult NDEs. In Bush's analysis of the data, she found that children's experiences are the same as adults except they don't have a life review. In none of the childhood experiences that she examined was a life review present, where it is a feature of twenty-five percent of adult NDEs.

Why was there no life review present? Bush doesn't attempt to answer this question in her study. However, I believe that the reason children don't have a life review is simply that they don't yet have much of a life. After all, how much life does a seven-year-old child have to review?

A Study Of Stories

I decided to research the stories of adults who had had NDEs as children. This type of research is known as anecdotal and is simply the analysis of stories gathered in a methodical fashion. That isn't to say that this type of research isn't valuable in a scientific sense. Many scientific advances have been made by anecdotal research. Virtually all of our infant-feeding practices, for instance, have been developed through anecdotal research. This type of research is often an important step that precedes larger controlled studies.

Another scientific advance inspired by anecdotal research has been the fluoridation of water to prevent tooth decay. This revolutionary advance in preventive dentistry was initiated by reports of children in Texas who mysteriously had few cavities. When a local dentist speculated that it was related to the concentration of minerals in the drinking water, he was widely ridiculed. Decades later, his anecdotal research is recognized as heralding one of the great medical advances of our time.

In addition, the use of aspirin to prevent heart attacks is the result of anecdotal research. This widely acclaimed preventive measure was first discovered by a general practitioner who noticed that patients being treated for arthritis with aspirin had fewer heart attacks than the general population. That anecdotal information has now been scientifically confirmed many times and has saved tens of thousands of lives.

Aware of the validity of anecdotal research, I devised a study to interview self-referred patients about their childhood NDEs. The people with whom I spoke were from such various professions as a scientist, an insurance claims adjuster, and a graphic artist. Some had only completed eleventh grade, some were high school graduates, and others had graduated from college. Although most had been raised as Christians, none was particularly religious. They all described themselves as being "typically middle class." All of them, of course, had to have suffered a near-fatal event that could be verified by hospital records. None could be mentally ill or drug users.

It was reassuring to see that our patients came from all walks of life. That way we could be certain that we were getting a good representation of what childhood NDEs are like, without the patients as a whole being biased by one particular life-style.

We were also careful not to bias the patients by the questions we asked. The interviews were completely open-ended and non-directed. Typical of the questions were these:

• What do you remember about your experience?
• Tell me about it
• What happened next?

Such sparse questioning would prevent the patient from being "led by the nose" (as a colleague put it) toward some experience that might not have happened.

As a further control, I had the help of Kim Clark, a clinical instructor at the University of Washington and teacher of a course on death and dying. Although we used the same basic questionnaire, we worked separately. This enabled me to compare the types of anecdotes that Kim Clark collected with the type that I collected so that we could check our methods of questioning patients. If our results were significantly different, then we would know that one of us was doing our job wrong.

Despite differences in training, sex, personality, and even very different opinions as to the meanings of NDEs, our results were very similar.

I would like to present some of the fascinating stories from these patients, with my conclusions.

The Throne Of God

Tom is a scientist of international reputation in his forties who nearly drowned at the age of five. He was pulled from a swimming pool and resuscitated by a relative. When the family finally got him to the hospital, doctors in the emergency room said he was dead. Shortly thereafter, he spontaneously revived.

"When I went underwater, the next thing I remembered was passing down a long tunnel. The light went from being very harsh to so bright that I could feel it. Then I saw God on a throne. People— maybe angels—were below looking up at the throne.

"I sat on the lap of God, and he told me that I had to go back. 'It's not your time,I he said. I wanted to stay but I came back."

Tom credits this experience with "sorting out" his life. From that point on, he was driven to acquire knowledge. He decided to study science and engineering, subjects that could help him discover "the natural order of things."
His reputation shows that he has been successful in that endeavor.

The Hand Of God

Kathleen is a bright forty-three-year-old who graduated from high school and has worked for the municipality where she has lived for twenty years. She has dabbled in a number of faiths but believes only in a vague conception of God.

When she was nine years old, she was walking on a log in shallow water. Suddenly, the log turned, and she slipped underneath it into the cold water. The log pressed her into the soft mud of the river-bank and held her head underwater for a long period of time. This is how she describes the experience:

"Suddenly, I felt very warm. Although I was facedown in cold water, I was suddenly under a cloudless, baby blue sky with a large fluffy circle glowing in it. From inside the circle came a hand. It was reaching for me, and the voice behind it was that of a woman. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but I knew she was anxious for me to come into the next world.

"I withdrew my hand because I didn't want to go. I was lucky to have been brought back to life."

It is amazing how much change can come to a person's life even after such a fragmentary experience. The reason Katheleen has dabbled in so many religions is that the God she sensed in the Light was not the God perceived by the many religions with which she has been involved. "The rules of religion are put there by people," she said. "From my brief encounter, I got the idea that being one with God is something that can be done without rules."

"Not Your Time"

Bill is a fifty-year-old who had his near-death experience at the age of nine while working on his family farm. He was siphoning gas out of a tractor when he accidentally inhaled it. Inhaled gasoline can cause rapid, or fulminating, pneumonia, which, in this case, cut off his oxygen. As his brother began screaming for help, Bill fell to the ground and quickly blacked out. He recalled:

"All of a sudden I couldn't move. I found myself floating into a dark tunnel. I saw light and the closer I floated to it, the more I liked it. When I got to the portal opening to the Light and was just ready to step through, I felt a combination of relief, joy, and pleasure. I just wanted to be inside the Light

"Suddenly, a hand reached out and grabbed me. 'He's a feisty rascal, isn't he,' said a voice. 'Well, Bill, it's not your time this time. You have a job to do.'

"Suddenly, I was above my body. I saw my brother below me. I saw my father rush to him and I heard him say, 'My God, my God.' I felt okay. I wasn't afraid. Then I saw my other brother racing across the fields. I saw my dad shaking me, and I was spitting out gasoline and gagging and choking and then I came to."

When I asked Bill what this experience has meant to him over the years, he quickly pointed out that he has never been afraid to die. "I know that where we are going is a beautiful place," he said. "Because of that I have never carried that burden of fear with me that many people have about death."

Did he think he was being saved for something special? Bill shook his head. "I've been married thirty years, raised five children, and built my own company to the success it is today. To me that seems special."

Madness Or Clarity?

Victor is a fifty-five-year-old engineer who is married and has two children. He is a veteran of World War II, during which he was diagnosed by Army psychologists as being schizophrenic and received a medical discharge. He has held a job and worked since that time. He has never been hospitalized for the condition, nor has he taken drugs for it. I include him here because I really doubt that diagnosis. I think he was labeled a schizophrenic because of his NDE. Here is Victor's story:

"When I was five, I had very bad pneumonia. It became so bad that my heart stopped. Suddenly, I floated out of my body! 'I didn't know you could do that.' I said. I saw my own body and people around me. Then I found myself traveling down a tunnel and headed for a light! Then I saw him, the Messiah!

"I can't really describe him or explain, but I just knew it was the Messiah. He said, 'We will meet again,' and I came back to my body."

As a direct result of this experience, Victor became very religious. He has a deep longing to "see God" again. The mistake he made was to tell Army psychiatrists about this deep longing after the war, when he was sent to them for battle fatigue. On the basis of that "confession" he was diagnosed as schizophrenic, someone who has had an acute break with reality.

Based upon his life-style over the last forty years, I am willing to say that he isn't mentally ill. He isn't medicated. He is happily married. He raised a family. He has held the same job for many years. He has never had another vision of God (nor anything else) since that brief yet powerful experience when he was five.

It is a pity that someone knowledgeable about NDEs wasn't able to counsel him. He was glad to talk to me because I didn't think he was mentally ill. He said that, although he never felt abnormal, the diagnosis left him feeling very peculiar about himself.

This man's story reminds me of a Tibetan tale of spiritual enlightenment that I have heard many times. A man ventured into the forest to live the life of a simple holy man. He craved enlightenment and sought the meaning of life by studying books and consulting with the wise men of Tibet. Still he felt that he was no closer to achieving his goal of true understanding.

One day his mentor died. After the funeral, he was filled with grief and sank into deep despair. In this grief, his soul left his body and soared above his head. He saw his entire life and how foolish it was. He saw how he had wasted precious years studying books instead of living life.

He floated throughout the land and saw the world from the eyes of a bird. He realized how small everyone was from so high up. He realized how unimportant his fears and preoccupations were when compared to the whole of humanity.

When he returned to his body and told of his spiritual journey, he was revered as a wise man.

"I Watched My Operation"

Anne-Marie, a thirty-three-year-old housewife, is a substitute teacher in an elementary school in a small town in upstate New York. Her husband is a clinical psychologist for a large national insurance company. When she was seven years old, she was hospitalized to have a tonsillectomy and to have an equalization tube placement to relieve an ear infection. During surgery, she was accidentally given too much general anesthesia by her anesthesiologist. She suddenly found herself out of the deep sleep of surgery and hovering above her own body on the operating table.

"I didn't know what was happening. I looked down on the operating table and saw five versions of myself as doctors tried to revive me. Three of the figures were real and two were negative images of myself. I tried to talk to the doctors, but no one was listening. They were just trying to get that body working again.

"Then the doctors settled down again when they got the heart started. I suddenly found my vision fading. When I awoke, I was back in my own body."

Anne-Marie's experience remains so vivid it seems as though it happened only yesterday. Whenever she lies down, the experience comes back to her. "Sometimes I have to jiggle myself to stay in my body," she says.

Oddly enough, these occasional out-of-body experiences help her gain perspective on difficult problems in her life. "They help me see the world from a different angle," she says, no pun intended.

"There Was A Continuous Rhythm"

Jim is a fifty-year-old supervisor at an aircraft manufacturing plant in Seattle, Washington. He has been married for thirty years and has two children. When he was six years old, he had a bout with scarlet fever that left him critically ill.

One night, as he labored for breath in his room, he felt as though he was slipping away from this life.
"Suddenly, I found myself in a long dark tube, with some strange and different music. There was a continuous rhythm that reminds me of sound you can hear when you place your ear against the mouth of a long pipe.

"I was just flying down this tunnel toward a light. There was something at the end of this tunnel, but I can't really say what it was. I could see my body zooming toward the Light so I know I was out of my body. I was convinced that I was dead, and I really wanted to get to the end of the tunnel to see what the next life held. But I never reached it, and I don't know why."

The experience had a profound effect upon Jim's life. He feels that it caused him to have a better relationship with both man and God. As he put it: "Even as a wild young man, I always had a strong desire to help others. The experience caused me to have compassion for others, especially those who face death. I have no fear of death, and it is my responsibility to help others who have that fear."

He feels that the experience brought him to God, even though he insists that this wasn't a religious experience for him. "I just know that there is something greater out there than us because I have experienced it. I realize that others have seen God when they have these experiences. I didn't. I only saw the Light, but that was enough for me."

"I Was Filled With Curiosity"

Here is another case of someone facing their maker as the result of a gas-siphoning accident. This sixty-four-year-old man's name is Bob, and his experience happened when he was six years old. He was siphoning gasoline out of a barrel at his family farm in Texas when he inhaled and swallowed a large amount. As he describes it, things happened fast:

"Suddenly, I was in a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel was something that looked like a portal, a doorway with a round top. It didn't feel as though I lost consciousness. In fact, I felt almost super-alive.

"I reached the end of the tunnel, and a hand reached out and pushed me away. It was my dead aunt. She smiled at me and said: 'No, Bobby, it's not your time.' The next thing I knew, I was floating about fifty feet above my body. I felt under my butt to see what I was sitting on and realized that I was sitting on nothing. I was truly floating!

"I watched a neighbor run up the road. All the way he was shouting 'Oh my God' until he reached my body. Then he began pushing on my chest until gasoline came out of my nose. Then—whoosh—I was back in my body."

This story has an interesting twist. Bob feels that this near-fatal event damaged his ability to concentrate and learn about a given subject. He felt that way until a couple of years ago when he turned thirty-seven. Then he "woke up," as he puts it, and when his supervisor gave him a set of blueprints to read as a joke, he discovered that he had the ability to read complex blueprints. Although Bob had only a seventh-grade education, had difficulty reading and was working as a laborer, he was able to read the blueprints as easily as an engineer.

Bob feels that his "awakening" was due to the near-death experience. Even though it happened more than thirty years before, the long-term effects of the NDE improved his mind.

I have trouble believing that such a distant event could suddenly give him newfound talent. There are a few examples of people who have demonstrated increased knowledge in mathematics and physics shortly after their experiences. For example, one adult with a high school education suddenly developed the ability to interpret the complex equations of nuclear physicists.

Even children demonstrate profound wisdom. Perhaps this wisdom or "great knowingness," as one child called it, comes from such an intense exposure to the Being of Light. I say that because the message from the Light is almost always one that encourages knowledge.

"I Stepped Back Across"

Warren is a fifty-five-year-old construction worker with a wife and two children. When he was ten, he almost died from an allergic reaction to penicillin. As doctors began resuscitation, Warren lost consciousness. Then as he describes it:

"Black clouds swirled all around me like I was in a heavy fog. Then suddenly, a point of light appeared. It moved closer and closer to me until the clouds suddenly cleared, and I was standing next to a narrow stream. I began to walk next to the stream until it got so narrow that I could step over it.

"The other side of the stream was extremely peaceful. There were hills on the peaceful side that were lighted from behind and looked beautiful.

"As I walked, I was approached by an old man with a, beard. I don't know for sure who he was, but I have the feeling he was one of my grandfathers. He stopped me and told me to go back across the stream. 'It's not your time.' he said.

"I turned and looked at the stream. It was quite wide at this point, but soon it narrowed. Then I stepped across and simply passed right into my body."

"There Seemed To Be A Border"

Rick is twenty-five-years-old now, an age he almost didn't see thanks to meningitis, a bacterial infection of the brain. When he was five he became severely ill at home after surgery to remove a fungus from his head. His parents called an ambulance, but by the time it arrived, Rick was running a high temperature and was barely holding onto life. This is how he describes what happened to him:

"I remember leaving my physical body and seeing the transport team carrying me out of the house! I was following above them as they loaded my body into the ambulance.

"I didn't go with it. Instead I briefly went into my sister's head and saw the world through her eyes. Then I saw my father weeping as he got into the car to take the family to the hospital. He was sure I was going to die, and I felt sorry that my possible death was causing him this kind of pain.

"I went ahead to the hospital to see what kind of room I was going to get. I saw a girl who was about twelve years old in the room that I was supposed to go into. Since I was so sick, they decided to move her and give me the room alone.

"I then left the earth and traveled down a long tunnel. I came to a bright opening and passed through it. Out in the brightness I was engulfed by fog. There seemed to be a border, something like a water-line on the beach that separated me from the true Light. I knew that if I entered the Light, I would not return to my body. The Light was all love, all knowing, and the sky was warm and friendly. I was trying to decide whether I should go into the Light or not when I just returned to my body."

This experience has colored much of Warren's life. When union layoffs have left him without a job, for instance, the peace he felt on the other side of that stream returns to him. "Very little in life is worth getting upset about," he says.

This experience amazed Rick's family because of the rich details it provided about events going on around him. Since Rick's body was in the ambulance speeding toward the hospital, an out-of-body experience would have been necessary for him to see his father crying in the family car behind him. Leaving his body and traveling ahead of the ambulance would have been necessary for him to see the twelve-year-old girl being transferred from his room before he arrived at the hospital. The fact that he was comatose before leaving for the hospital and for several days thereafter makes his experience even more baffling.

Rick's NDE left him with two strong beliefs. One is that life is precious, but death is nothing to be feared. The other is that we are all born with the knowledge we need to solve life's problems. "The answers are all inside," he says. "If we can just climb over our egos."

"There Were Things I Had To Do Before Entering The Light"

At the age of ten, Paul ran into his kitchen and slipped on a wet floor. He landed on his stomach so hard that he ruptured his spleen. According to his medical records, he swelled with fluids and went into shock from internal bleeding. His parents rushed him to the hospital, where his heart stopped. This is what he experienced:

"I left my body, although I still felt like I was connected to it by a string. I floated up to a corner of the room and watched as three doctors worked frantically to rescue me. I was sure I was going to die, and I have to admit that I found their efforts to save me kind of funny.

"I then went down a long tunnel and approached a warm light At the other end of the tunnel, I was met by a being who talked to me. I thought of him as a greeter then, and that is what I still call him. He was a greeter.

"The greeter was not in a physical form. Rather, he was more a feeling or an awareness. He told me that I could not stay in the tunnel, that I had to either go back or continue on. If I continued, there would be no return.

"I didn't make an actual decision to return, but I did get an idea from the greeter that there was purpose to my life.

"While I was thinking about whether to stay or return, I felt myself enter my body. I was about the size of a BB when I went into my body. Then I expanded and filled up all the space.

"For a while I longed for that light. Then I realized that someday I would see it again. In the meantime, I had things to do."

The feeling that there is a purpose to life is one of the results of many childhood NDEs. Much as the near-death experience itself, that purpose may have meaning only to the person who receives the message.
Rick's purpose was family. He believes that he was made to live because he was to have a loving relationship with his family, especially his autistic son.

"For some reason, someone thought that it was important that I have a family and nourish it," says Rick. "I am sure that is the reason I was left here on earth."

"I Was Traveling At A Tremendous Speed"

When Ed was only five years old, he released the emergency brake on the family car and became trapped in the car door as it rolled down their steep driveway and into the road. His father dug him out from under the left rear tire and began giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. His mother ran down the hill with the car keys and the parents began a frantic race to the hospital to save their son. Ed describes what happened next:

"I saw myself sitting between my parents as though I was outside the front window and looking in. I could see everything. My parents had panic on their faces and both of them were crying. My face was bruised and battered, and it looked as though every single blood vessel had burst.

"How long I was outside the car I don't know. But suddenly, I began to float up and then everything became dark. Then I felt like I was speeding up. Soon I was traveling at a tremendous speed in total darkness. It was like I imagine space travel to be.

"Suddenly I felt like I was standing on a loading dock with a very powerful and bright light hanging over my head. This light was very bright and filled with love and knowledge. I was there with a man, but I couldn't see him clearly because of the bright light. Thoughts were coming into my mind from the bright light. I felt a loving God and love for people in general. There were also beautiful music and vocals like a choir that I couldn't quite understand."

It became clear from Ed's first few days out of the hospital that the experience had transformed him. The first sign came at church, when the preacher was talking about a "fearful and terrible God." This disturbed Ed. He told his mother that he didn't want to attend church anymore.

In grade school, he spoke frequently about the need to love one another. When pressed, he would tell teachers and classmates about the time he saw God. This led to problems in class, and eventually, he was sent to school psychologists, who told him that he had too vivid an imagination.

In college, he studied philosophy of religion and learned techniques for meditation. Sometimes, when deep in meditation, he can see the Light again. Those moments are bliss, says Ed, because he can re-experience the event that led to his faith.

Over the years, Ed has been the target of a great deal of ridicule for talking openly about his near-death experience and the philosophy of life it gave him. For years, he was hurt by the callous reactions of people. Now after hearing about the experiences of others who have had NDEs, he realizes that most people ridicule him because they have never had such a powerful and transformative experience.

"It's a relief to finally come to that conclusion," he told me. "I feel lucky to have had the experience. Unfortunately, so many of us require many years just to incorporate the experience into our lives. I used to feel hurt when people made fun of me for seeing 'a light.' Now I'm understanding. After all, if they haven't had such an experience, how can I expect them to understand what I am talking about?"

"I Begged God To Let Me Die"

Sam is a sixty-year-old insurance company executive with a wife and two children. At the age of seventeen, he had a near-death experience on a battlefield in the Pacific. As he describes it, he was shot several times while lying in a foxhole. Several soldiers around him were killed, and he was bleeding profusely from his wounds. "I was in a great amount of pain," he told me. "Several times I begged God to let me die." Instead, something else happened. Sam describes it:

"I must have passed out from blood loss. I remember just staring at the sky and hearing bullets and the other sounds of combat when everything went black, and there was no sound. I don't know how long I was in this blacked-out state, but I began to rise out of my body. I felt no pain as I just seemed to stand up right there on the battlefield. Ahead of me was a beautiful light that took away my pain. It was shining and beautiful, and I could just stand there on this horrible battlefield and be safe with it."

Medics came and took Sam to surgery. He was then shipped back to the States.

Sam says that a taste of the experience comes back to him occasionally. When he is in periods of severe stress or pain, he feels the presence of the Light and is able to feel peace.

At one time, Sam was so curious about his experience that he went to a psychotherapist to try and relive it through hypnosis. He was unable to do so, breaking out of the trance before seeing the Light. "The experience happens when I need it, not when I want it," says Sam.

"I Wanted To Tell Him I Was All Right"

At the age of fifteen, Cindy became very ill with mononucleosis. When the disease began to affect her heart, Cindy was hospitalized. While there, she experienced what might have been a cardiac arrest. She tells what happened next:

"Suddenly, I was floating over my body, and I saw my father holding my hand down below. He was very concerned as the doctors and nurses worked on me. I wanted to tell him I was all right and that I was very warm and comfortable where I was. It was very dark around me, and my body was illuminated by the Light

"I saw the concern on my father's face and decided that I had to return to my body."

Cindy is now forty-four. She feels that her near-death experience made her more tolerant of other people's beliefs. She also believes in reincarnation, but not in God. "For me this experience proved that there is life immediately after death," said Cindy. "My experience didn't show me a God, so I can't really believe in one."

Transformed After Attempted Suicide - Two Case Studies

Case Study # 1: "Care for Yourself" Beverly is a happily married, forty-seven-year-old woman who is quick to say that she is glad to be alive. She seems so happy to me now that it is hard to believe that as a child she almost succeeded in killing herself.

She was raised in Philadelphia by parents who were so abusive that she is still unable to discuss the specifics of her childhood. How she attempted to commit suicide makes me believe that life for her was indeed horrific.

At the age of seven, she towed her sled to the top of a very steep hill and aimed it at a cement bench by the street. Her plan was to slide headfirst into the bench. Without hesitating, she lay down and took what was to be her last ride.

She successfully hit the bench and immediately found herself floating above her body. She saw children surrounding her, but no one went for help. Instead, they examined the wound and went back to their play. This heartless reaction didn't surprise her because she lived in a tough, inner-city neighborhood.

She floated higher and higher to the rooftops of the buildings, where she had never been before. She also saw that the apartments had fake Tudor fronts. Things then changed:

"I went up and up and faded into a deep silver-blue surrounding. Then came something that looked like a big umbrella without a stick. This umbrella seemed to fold around me, and everything became very dark. Then, suddenly, I was in a very intense, bright light. I felt warm and loved in a way that I had never felt before.

"Then I heard a voice from the Light: 'You have made a mistake. Your life is not yours to take. You must go back.' I argued with the voice. 'No one cares about me.' The answer I got back was shocking. 'You're right No one on this planet cares about you, including your parents. It is your job to care, for yourself.'"

Beverly was suddenly returned to her body, which at this point wasn't a pleasant place to be. She was in intense pain. Her mouth had been imbedded in a wooden railing around the bench. Her neck was broken. She tried to move her head and lost many of her teeth and a piece of her tongue.

Beverly remembers thinking that as soon as she could she would go back to the top of the snowy hill and try to kill herself again. As soon as that thought came to mind, Beverly was engulfed by the umbrella and taken out of her body again.

Warm in this "bubble of love and life," she was treated to an awesome vision. The warm bubble melted the snow and ice from a nearby tree on which she often played. The bubble showed her that, although the tree was encased in snow and ice now, it would have green leaves on it in the summertime. She saw herself sitting beneath the tree, eating a sweet apple from its branches, and feeling pleasure and joy. Suddenly, she understood what was being shown to her.

"I saw that the winter tree with the snow on it and the summer tree with the apples were two parts of a whole. I saw that my life now was like the winter tree. And when I realized that summer was ahead, I was willing to go back into my body."

Life was not easy for this woman, who had a long recovery process. She spent many months in a coma and still has some paralysis in her fingers. As she says, "It wasn't as tough to get out of my body as it has been to get back in."

The experience immediately transformed her. After her coma, she spoke up more for her rights, becoming a self-advocate instead of a dispirited victim of child abuse.

She has spent her life establishing a family of love, the type that she never had herself. She is happily married with three children. She wears an umbrella on a charm necklace to always remember what the experience taught her: "When you hurt yourself, everything is hurt."

Case Study #2: "You'll Have to Stick Around" At the age of eleven, James swallowed handfuls of Darvon, codeine, Tylenol, and aspirin and walked into a wooded park to die. Fortunately, a couple of young lovers followed his path about an hour later and found his comatose body. They called an ambulance. James was rescued with almost no time to spare.

When he was revived, he told of an experience of light, the same experience he told me about nearly twenty years after it happened.

"Everything went dark when I died, just as I thought it would. Then suddenly my world was filled with light. It seemed to fill in all the dark spots in my life, namely, those feelings of emptiness that I had from being an abused child.

"A spirit in the Light asked me why I tried to kill myself. So I told him about how bad my life and world were. He was kind but not very sympathetic. He said, 'Well, you'll just have to stick around and see what you can do with your life.'"

James has done wonderful things with his life. Although his conversation with the Light made him think he was insane for years afterward, he now realizes that he gained new purpose through his experience.

At the age of twenty-five, James works in the nation's only summer camp for children with AIDS. He now considers himself lucky. "My near-death experience taught me that I had to create my own possibilities. I never would have found that out on my own."

Didn't Know He Had Died

I feel honored to have heard these transformative NDEs from two survivors of childhood suicide attempts. Childhood suicide is rare and usually predicts a lifetime of mental instability. Yet here are two successful adults who have conquered their childhood traumas and now live extraordinary lives.

Usually, the adult describing a childhood NDE is similar to a child telling the experience themselves. The patients are fairly casual, and the actual telling is very brief. The childhood experience remains pure and simple, a vivid memory that persists and influences the rest of a person's life. These experiencers are calm about death and animated about life. As one man told me: "It left me with an open mind but no other real effects."

This is a very important finding. The mind does not alter the childhood NDE over time, nor does the experiencer change or embellish the story after years of retelling the event.

It is interesting to note that adults presenting their childhood NDEs sometimes don't think they had an NDE. They often start by saying, "Gee, I guess this wasn't really a near-death experience, but here's what happened to me." Later, when we review their cases, their medical records confirm that they have indeed had such an experience.

After giving a talk on NDEs to the staff at my local hospital, one of the emergency room physicians claimed that these experiences weren't spiritual, but drug related.

"I've never really had a near-fatal experience, but I know for a fact that anesthetic agents can cause exactly the kind of experience you are describing. These NDEs aren't unusual at all and are certainly caused by drugs."

I had carefully examined the effects of commonly used anesthetic agents in my own work and had found that they didn't cause NDEs. I asked him about his proof.

"I had such an experience when I was a child," he said. "I had a routine tonsillectomy at the age of six, and I floated out of my body. I saw the doctors working on me, and I saw a bright light. I felt like I was with God and I felt his love. Then I was sucked back into my body."

I was curious. I asked him to research his medical records to see what anesthetic agents had been used. To his great surprise, he found that his heart had stopped briefly during surgery. There was also a notation that his parents had not been informed because his heart had stopped for such a brief period of time.

He did not recognize it for what it was.

Came Back For A Purpose—love

Experiencing the Light has given people new purpose in life. By that, I don't mean that they were saved by God to invent a cure for cancer or to save the world from nuclear destruction. Nothing that grandiose.

Their purpose is quite simple and can be easily summed up: revere life and see the intricate connections throughout the universe.

Even many years after their NDEs, these special people believe that the Light gave them the power to transform their lives. In many ways, NDEers have become so transformed that they have given up some involvement with their own egos. This process has enabled some to become much more sensitive to others.

One woman, for instance, told me that her NDE gave her the "power to read minds." By that, she didn't mean that she could read them like a book. "I have just become very intuitive and can understand how others think. This has helped me in my job as a nurse." Many children and adults have said that NDEs make them more sensitive to people around them.
The messages given to these children of the Light are not new or controversial. They are as old as mankind itself and have served as the primary fuel of our great religions:

"Love your neighbor and cherish life."
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
"Clean up your own mess."
"Be the best that you can be."
"Contribute to society."
"Be nice, kind, and loving."
These messages have a special urgency for those who have had near-death experiences. Why? Perhaps since the messages came to them at the point of death, they must be important.