The View from Beyond

NOMI FREEMAN

Rachel Noam, a young engineering student, was walking past a construction site when an eighteen-foot steel beam fell from the fifth floor onto her head. Rachel was astonished to find herself floating fifteen feet above her body. She could not understand how she could see and hear everything when her eyes and ears were in her body that lay on the sidewalk beneath her. The events on the street began to fade into darkness. Then she perceived a glimmer of light. As the radiance came closer, it grew in intensity.

In Rachel’s words: “The magnificent stream of light was accompanied by a flow of sublime love, the kind of love I had never before experienced... No words can describe the enchantment, the infinite goodness. I discerned in it qualities of compassion, spiritual pleasure, happiness... all in infinite profusion.” She said, “I felt a powerful bond with this marvelous presence. This was... a Higher Power, a Being of infinite might.”(1)

NDEs (near-death experiences) are extraordinary events in which clinically dead individuals leave their bodies and later return through medical intervention or by a spontaneous reconnection. I’ve interviewed over 150 people who reported such experiences, and have poured over thousands of personal accounts.

Dr. Bruce Greyson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia and co-founder of IANDS,(2) states that 5% of the world’s population – a staggering 400 million people – have had a near-death experience. Pioneering researchers such as psychiatrist-physician Raymond Moody,(3) cardiologists Pim Van Lommel and Michael Sabon, and Sam Parnia, an expert in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, have presented volumes of convincing evidence for the survival of the self after clinical death. Many people who have experienced NDEs recall with startling accuracy details of events and conversations that occurred when brain activity was nil or negligible.

Near-death experiences often begin with floating sensations, moving through a tunnel toward an alluring light. Then experiences diversify. Some reunite with loved ones, some encounter beings of light, and many undergo a “life review.” In this playback of their entire life, they experience every emotion they ever caused another person.

NDE experiencers return profoundly changed, with a newfound focus on lovingkindness and a decreased attachment to material possessions. One man described his post-NDE state as being “on fire with love (for humanity).”

A young man described his meeting with the Light to me: “I found myself in front of this Entity of Light. I understood it to be God. If you want to know what it feels like to be with this Presence, imagine all the happiness you experienced in your entire life. Make a package of all that happiness. Now multiply it by a million. That was my experience.”

Some people relate that while in front of the Living Loving Light, they were asked a powerful question: “What did you do with the life I gave you?”

I often wonder how I will answer.