I HOPE THIS BOOK has helped you strengthen your connection with your immortal soul and enabled you to appreciate everything it has done, and continues to do for you, in this lifetime, as well as the lives you have already lived and the lifetimes you are yet to live. I also hope this book has made you realize that you cannot die. There is life after death. Although I’ve met many people who say they don’t want to come back again, I think most people—believers, agnostics, and atheists alike—secretly hope that death is not the end.
Many near-death experiences occur when the person is clinically dead. The person is no longer breathing and the heart has stopped beating.1 Consequently, these people have experienced death and returned to life. Apart from anything else, the near-death experience shows that consciousness can exist despite the absence of a functioning brain.
Many near-death experiences begin with the person traveling rapidly through a dark tube or tunnel toward an incredibly brilliant white light. Frequently, the person sees people he or she knew while alive, has a life review, and experiences feelings of love, forgiveness, and acceptance. Usually the person wants to stay inside the light, but somehow the person knows it is not yet his or her time, and returns to earthly life.
So many people have described this scene in books, magazine articles, TV shows, and movies that it cannot be considered a rare experience. More than 2,500 accounts of near-death experiences have been recorded on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation website alone (www.nderf.org).
I was disappointed not to have had a near-death experience. Because my heart had stopped and then started again, I thought I’d come close enough to death to experience one. However, it became clear to me, after discussing this with many people, that although my heart had stopped and started again, I was in the hands of experts who did this sort of thing on a regular basis. Consequently, although my heart stopped briefly, I was in no real danger of dying from that particular procedure. My experience was completely different from that of someone who may, for instance, have died by drowning or in a car accident but was resuscitated by the expertise of modern-day medicine.
Incidentally, I spoke to a number of people who had been returned to life after a major accident or illness and did not remember having a near-death experience. I also spoke to a few people who had left their bodies and were able to look down dispassionately at the people who were trying to save their lives. These people didn’t see a brilliant light or experience moving to “the other side.”
I was amazed at the number of people I spoke to who’ve had a near-death experience. I probably shouldn’t have been. In 1992, a Gallup Poll found that five percent of the U.S. population have experienced an NDE. This means approximately fifteen million people in the United States have had one.2
In every case it was a life-changing experience that, without exception, changed their lives for the better. They lost all fear of death, became more patient, compassionate, and loving, and became more interested in spirituality. They all became convinced that death is not the end, and that there is life after death. Until they had their NDE, many of these people had never before considered the concept of reincarnation.
One of these people, a former criminal, told me that his near-death experience was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It enabled him to see, for the first time, what he was doing to himself and the people who loved him. He now counsels and helps at-risk teenagers.
Another person I spoke to was a multimillionaire. He told me that making money had been an obsession, and it had brought him no happiness whatsoever. “I realized I didn’t have a single true friend,” he said. “If I’d died on that operating table, no one would have grieved for me.” Five years after his operation he is happily married, with an eighteen-month-old son. He looks after his investments and is involved with several charitable organizations.
Many of the people I spoke to had become interested in religion and spirituality as a result of their near-death experience. Some of them had had no interest in religion in the past. However, this experience taught them that death was not the end, and they had a strong desire to learn more about the spiritual side of life. “I don’t think anyone would have thought I’d become a believer in reincarnation,” one person told me. “Yet it’s become one of the most important aspects of my life. I now believe in God, and also believe I’ll come back here again and again.”
Not surprisingly, a large number of these people became interested in psychic development, and were exploring areas they considered weird or unusual before their experience. “My husband used to have gut feelings,” one lady told me. “Only now he calls them flashes of intuition. He’s joined a psychic development circle and attends meetings every week. I didn’t think anyone as down-to-earth as my John would ever take the psychic world seriously.”
Almost everyone I spoke to was experiencing more joy and love in their lives than they had before their near-death experience. “As well as feeling more joy, I’ve somehow become much more compassionate,” one lady told me. “I seem to be able to empathize with other people and their problems now. I never did that before.”
Most near-death experiences were fairly similar. Terry, a good friend of mine, told me about what he called his “attempt to get to the other side”:
“I was in the hospital for a hernia operation. It was supposed to be a simple procedure, but something went wrong and I almost died. For a brief moment, I felt I was looking down on the operating table. I could see myself asleep with four people bending over me. Almost as soon as I saw that, I found myself in a long tunnel heading toward an incredibly bright light. It was more powerful than anything I’d seen before, but I could look at it without hurting my eyes. I seemed to be moving at breakneck speed, but I still had time to experience feelings of love, compassion, and forgiveness. I felt totally at peace. I knew I was dying or dead, but it didn’t matter, as I’d never experienced such bliss before. All I wanted was to reach the light. I felt as if I was returning home. I had no regrets. I was full of joy and reaching out to the light. I was almost there when I heard a strong, deep voice from inside the light telling me it wasn’t my time yet. I felt a wave of sadness, and then in the space of a second I was above my body again, and must have returned to it, though I can’t remember any more.” Terry beamed at me. “You know, when I regained consciousness, I was able to tell the doctors and nurses exactly what they were doing at that moment. The surgeon told me that near-death experiences were common, and he was no longer surprised when a patient mentioned it to him. I know now, without a shadow of a doubt, that there is more to life than we think. I’m a happy man. I have a good life. But I always had a fear of death. That’s gone, as I know death is the doorway to a whole new world.”
People experience near-death experiences in different ways. Terry didn’t mention noises or music. He didn’t see any spirits or deceased family members, nor did he experience a review of his life. These are common features in many people’s memories.
Terry felt he was inside a tunnel that led to the light. When people who haven’t had a near-death experience think about what it must be like, they usually imagine some sort of tunnel. However, a 1982 Gallup poll found that only three percent of people who have had a near-death experience reported being in a tunnel.3 However, as others reported a swirling sensation or the feeling of being constantly in motion, three percent is probably on the low side.
Constance, a young woman who’s studying to become an Episcopalian minister, told me that she did not experience a tunnel. “It was a road, a bumpy road with many twists and turns,” she told me. “It was dark, and I was racing along this road. I was knocked and buffeted all the time, but I felt strangely at peace. Ahead, in the distance, I could sense an amazing light, and I knew I was safe and would soon be home.” Although Constance did not experience a tunnel, her experience of traveling at great speed along a road in the dark sounds very much like a tunnel.
Many people who have had a near-death experience do not want to come back to their present lifetime. In her book The Passionate Years, Caresse Crosby wrote about the time she almost drowned when she was seven years old. As she was drowning, she saw her father and brothers realize what had happened and attempt to rescue her. “I saw the efforts to bring me back to life and I tried not to come back,” she wrote. “It was the most perfect state of easeful joy that I ever experienced, then or since … One thing I know, that Nirvana does exist between here and the hereafter—a space of delight, for I have been there.”4
A day or two after telling me about his near-death experience, Terry phoned to tell me that as a result of the experience he now believed in the soul.
“I never gave the soul a moment’s thought before,” he said. “It seemed to me we could function pretty well without one. But what was it that traveled into the light if it wasn’t my soul? It had to be my soul.”
If someone experiences a cardiac arrest, the heart stops circulating blood and the brain ceases to function. At this point, the person’s consciousness and ability to reason or remember anything should cease. However, there are now thousands of well-documented exceptions to this.
In 1991, a woman named Pam Reynolds was diagnosed with a life-threatening, inoperable brain aneurysm. Fortunately, Dr. Robert Spetzler, a neurosurgeon in Phoenix, Arizona, offered to help. However, in order to perform the operation, Pam Reynolds needed to be clinically dead for more than an hour. Her body temperature had to be lowered to sixty degrees to stop all vital functions, including brain activity. Pam was clinically dead, as her heart had stopped, she was no longer breathing, and there was no measurable activity occurring in the brain.
Despite all of this, Pam was able to hear the sound of the surgical saw that cut open her skull. She “popped” out of her body while this was going on, and rose over the operating table where she could watch the procedure taking place. She felt she was metaphorically sitting on the surgeon’s shoulder as he worked. She could also hear the conversation of the nurses in attendance. At some stage, her consciousness was pulled into a tunnel that led her toward a brilliant light. She could hear her dead grandmother calling her. Once she reached the light, she found other deceased friends and relatives waiting for her there. They refused to let her travel further, even though she wanted to continue into the light. After a joyful reunion, her deceased uncle Gene guided her back to her body. She didn’t want to reenter it, but her uncle pushed her back in.
Afterwards, Pam was able to tell the nurses the conversation she had heard, and could describe the surgical saw and other tools that had been used during her operation.
The entire operation was conducted while Pam was officially dead. It is generally assumed that the mind is a function of the brain. Yet even though all three medical tests showed that Pam’s brain was dead, something remained alive to observe and remember every detail of what occurred. Could this have been her soul?5
Throughout history, some people have had the ability to receive messages from people who have died. Mediums and channelers are the best-known examples of people who communicate with “the other side.” The messages these people receive provide comfort to the bereaved relatives who are suffering from their loss. Unfortunately, though, most of the information that comes across does not contain enough factual information to prove that it came from someone who is dead.
However, there are exceptions. One of the most famous examples of this is the remarkable story of James L. Chaffin. Mr. Chaffin was a North Carolina farmer who died in 1921. In his will, dating from 1905, he left his farm and everything he owned to his third son, Marshall. His widow and three other sons received nothing. The family was not surprised, as Marshall had always been his father’s favorite, and they all already knew the contents of the will. Consequently, Marshall took over the farm.
Almost four years later, in June 1925, James, the second son, woke up in the middle of the night with a vivid memory of a dream. In his dream, his father had appeared wearing the long black overcoat that he frequently wore. His father said nothing, but continually pointed to the inside pocket of the overcoat. The apparition appeared in another dream, and this time James’s father spoke: “You will find my will in my overcoat pocket.”
The next morning, James’s mother told him that she’d given the coat to his older brother, John. James immediately went to John’s house, some twenty miles away. John was not in, but his wife found the coat, which was too big for John to wear. They examined the coat and found that the inside pocket had been sewn up. They cut it open and found a roll of paper tied up with string. James recognized his father’s handwriting. He had written: “Read the 27th chapter of Genesis in my daddie’s old Bible.” James and his sister-in-law looked up the passage in her bible. The 27th chapter of Genesis told how Jacob received his father’s blessing and his brother Esau’s birthright.
The bible was a family heirloom and was kept at the old Chaffin farmhouse. James took his daughter and two other witnesses with him to examine the bible. At the 27th chapter, they found a sheet of paper with a message written in James’s father’s handwriting. It read:
After reading the 27th chapter of Genesis, I, James L. Chaffin, do make my last will and testament, and here it is. I want, after giving my body a decent burial, my little property to be equally divided among my four children, if they are living at my death, both personal and real estate divided equal, if not living with share going to their children. And if she is living, you all must take care of your mammy. Now this is my last will and testament. Witness my hand and seal.
James L. Chaffin
This January 16, 1919
Marshall, who had been the sole beneficiary of the 1905 will, was dead by the time the second will was found. His widow recognized her father-in-law’s handwriting and agreed that the second will was valid. However, she and her son contested the will in court. Fortunately for the family, an unwitnessed will was considered valid in North Carolina at that time. One week before the court hearing, James saw his father again in a dream. This time his father asked, “Where is my old will?” James took this as a sign that they’d win the case.
The second will was presented in court, and ten witnesses declared that the handwriting was genuine. The court ordered the first will to be canceled, and the second will was duly probated.6
This is a remarkable story. Where did the information that came to James Chaffin in his dreams come from, if not from the soul of his father? It’s interesting that the son was directed to the overcoat rather than the will. The apparition in the dream told James that the will was in the overcoat. Obviously, the father’s memory was faulty. If anything, this adds credibility to the account. The fact that the father returned one week before the trial shows that he was still concerned about the injustice he had unintentionally caused his family. This must be one of the few occasions in which an apparition caused a court to reverse a previous decision.
The evidence of so many near-death experiences from all around the world strongly indicates that we do not die, but transition to an afterlife. As our physical bodies are discarded and remain, it’s our souls that move on and return temporarily to the realm of spirit before coming back to give birth to our new incarnations. I find this an incredibly exciting thought. If everyone accepted this, no one would fear death, as they’d know that the end of this lifetime is merely a transition into a whole new stage of life.
I hope this book has given you insights into your soul and enabled you to utilize it to enhance every aspect of your life. Learning your soul’s purpose will help you gain a greater appreciation of your particular skills and talents. You’ll be more tolerant of people who are traveling on rays that are different from yours, as you’ll be able to recognize the specific ray qualities they have brought into this incarnation. You’ll also realize that you are a divine being.
What you learn about your past lifetimes will help you understand why you are the specific person you are today. It may reveal and clarify areas of difficulty you have had. Once you understand them, the problems are much easier to deal with, and frequently resolve themselves.
Most importantly, this book will help you to value, appreciate, and nurture your immortal soul. When you do this, you’ll become more accepting and loving, your happiness and self-esteem will grow, and you’ll gain insights into how you may progress further in this incarnation. You’ll also lose all fear of death, as you’ll have complete faith in the process of life.
I wish you all the best as you gain a closer connection with the Divine by exploring the miracle of your eternal soul.