Author, Teacher, Retreat Leader at SilentStay, Napa, California and Assisi, Italy
If the near death experiences being shared by many are really to believed, they are actually true life experiences, because what they are describing is our true life in eternity. The vast love and acceptance they are finding upon leaving the confines of body and personality describe a life experience of coming home, coming to the true life which this earthly experience is only a small part of.
Before proceeding, this article is not meant to be a convincer, e.g., whether to believe in NDEs or not. If the stories of people floating above operating tables describing conversations and events happening while their minds are unconscious, people finding relatives in heaven, which they had no previous earthly knowledge of, and the endless examples of people going through a tunnel of light into a realm so different yet so familiar, a realm of love more real then real does not convince people of life after death, maybe there is no convincing. Sorry: Calling all these deeply-felt, life-changing experiences only a chemical reaction in the mind upon nearing death just does not pass the brain or heart test for me.
One of my favorite stories is of a woman in a Seattle hospital who died and on her way through the hospital ceiling while passing into another realm, noticed on the hospital roof an old shoe. Upon her return from heaven and recovering in her room, investigators checked out her story, and sure enough there is an old shoe exactly where she said on the roof! Are we to believe she somehow had been exploring the hospital roof before her accident and near death experience?