After reading my blog last Thursday, “The young man was alive,” a reader sent me a life after death experience she had a few years ago. She gave me permission to share it with you.
Hi Evan,
I was reading your previous blog about being inspired by Jesus, as he raised the young man from the dead. You mentioned that you had heard reports of life after death. I want to add mine, as I think it is important but not something I would discuss in a testimony meeting.
About three years after I came into Christian Science, my husband was returning home late from a business trip. I had stayed awake to wait for him. I rose to walk down the hall and greet him, and just keeled over. (I had been diagnosed many years earlier with mitral valve prolapse, which has the belief of sudden death.)
Anyway, I remember it as clearly as yesterday, although it was about five years ago. I just took off, fast, no floating for me! I could see cities disappearing below me, and as I went, I felt myriad aches and pains of living just fall away. I still had a body, it was just changed. Then I saw a beloved uncle who had passed on two weeks before. He said, with a huge grin, “Well, look who’s here!!!” Then it all faded and I was aware of a really unpleasant suffocation, I was back in my body trying to breathe, and my husband was calling to me. It was not fun to come back. It wasn’t a conscious choice either. I think in terms of earth time I was gone for about 4 minutes. I did get a treatment from a practitioner for severe bruises on my leg and arm from the collapse, and I recovered fine.
I have been absolutely certain that there is no death ever since this event. The only people who are aware of death are the ones who are watching matter. It was absolutely seamless as far as consciousness is concerned. There was no pain, no fear or excitement, it was natural. Thought you would find this interesting.
Hmmm…
I was just reading a verse from Romans in the Message Bible. It said:
All sin can do is threaten us with death and that’s the end of it (what it can do).
Goes rather nicely with this I think…
I don’t place much if any emphasis or interest in trauma-induced (from accident and/or disease) NDEs. None of them result from CONSCIOUS volition to rise above the belief of life in matter. And just like sleeping dreams, without the consciousness aspect driving the event, you may think because they are so engaging (NDEs and sleeping dreams) that you are rising above finiteness, but all you’ve really done is add more depth and texture to your limited existence. Notice how a common thread amongst NDE recaps involves returning to a ‘painful’ state? So if you can catch a glimpse of something you think is beyond the finite, but it doesn’t immediately transform your experience of the finite, and hence you return back right to where you started from, the painful state, all you likely did was channel surf a bit within the human mind, and stumbled upon an interesting ‘program.’
The only interesting part of the story you relayed Evan is that the person was healed of injury and bruises through prayer. The rest is truly superfluous.
Oh yes, I agree with you about “channel surfing” within the human mind. But to an outside observer who believes life is in a physical body, the subject appears dead, (no life) and they are not dead at all. Thus the self-destruction of the belief that death is real. It is not.
When I was 16, (in the 1940’s) a neighbor who was in her late 80’s shared her mother’s life-after-life experience which was lengthier. Her mother saw her own mother, looking younger, and holding a baby on her lap. The baby was identified to her thought as the older sister, who had passed on before she was born.
I read the books which were published in the ’70’s on the subject, and also find they are in other cultures.
Hi Evan, I read your blog a lot and it certainly helps or I wouldn’t keep reading it. I don’t often respond and this is only the second time I’ve done so. I read the comments on the “Life after Death” went away for a while and was reading the May Journal. Something hit, and I was led to reply. I’m not really trying to debate, but just see if I’m off track.
“Channel Surfing” perhaps. I can certainly see where that conclusion could be reached.
On the other hand, if we were praying and became so conscious of our oneness with God – a sense of joy and happiness and peace that the possibility of any disease, ache, pain etc. could invade God’s creation would be an absolute absurdity, we’d see healing. Sometimes we’re there and we get rudely interrupted and lose it for the moment. Hopefully we’ll get back there ASAP.
So what is the consciousness one has if they are in a NDE? Is it still a human consciousness? I’d say yes, but who is to say that that human consciousness hasn’t been touched by the Christ to see something better only to be rudely interrupted?
Yes, I can see that it could be a trick of the human mind and that the NDE might indeed be seeing an “interesting” program. But I also believe it is just possible that the human consciousness was touched by the Christ and did know something different.
So am I off track?
Hi Charlie,
I think you’re on track. In Truth, there is one consciousness, the divine consciousness which is always spiritual, harmonious, and incorporeal. There is not a human consciousness going in and out of error and truth. To the human mind this seems to be the case, but Christ is here to save thought from that illusion and prove one Mind, God, good. So it would not be fair to say “We are nothing.” We are something! We are children of God with spiritual being. Jesus Christ struggled humanly with the illusion and conquered it through Christ. He left his example for us to follow. As we follow Christ, thought ascends until it gets to where Jesus got–total spiritual consciousness. And I think that’s what you’re talking about… It happens in degrees to the human sense of things.
Evan,
As a student of Christian Science, is it wrong to seek out a Medium? (people who comunocate with people who have passed on?) I think it’s fun
Someone told me Mrs. Eddy was once a Medium. Is this true?
I did have a reading and heard from my mother. It was unreal. Among other things that were said that was things that Mom used to say to me, I had bought some shoes that Ir adored, got them home and couldn’t wear them. I kept trying because they were so cute.
During the reading, the Medium said Mom was holding a shoe and shaking her head “no.”
I’d love to have another some day but would like to know Christian Science position on this.
Hi Hulet,
Interesting questions! No, Mrs. Eddy was never a medium that I know of. She did investigate spiritualism in her earlier years because she wanted to know if it was true or a hoax. She came to the conclusion through her experiences with it, that there was no communication with the dead. The so-called “medium” would read the mind of the one seeking communication and then tell those thoughts back to them, making them believe they were communicating with a loved one passed on, when they were not at all. Mrs. Eddy would say that the medium you used was not communicating with your mother at all, but simply reading your thoughts about her, and then telling them back to you. People can do that. It’s very misleading.
To prove her point, Mrs. Eddy asked a medium one time to tell her about her mother–Eddy’s mother. The medium agreed. The medium described Eddy’s mother as dark, sad, depressed, and unhappy. After the reading was done, Eddy said, “There, see, I’ve proved my point. My mother was exactly the opposite of what you described. I held in my mind the picture of my mother as depressed, sad and unhappy, and that’s what you read and reported back to me.”
So, Christian Science does not believe in spiritualism, that the dead communicate with the living. It’s the belief of passing on, death, that seems to separate the two.
The way out of this, is to find our loved ones in Spirit, where they, and we, have lived all along. Then there are no more seeming barriers. All is one in Mind.