“I saw a bright light”

Herewith, I offer two additional passages — reports from actual “experiencers” — that I’ve extracted from J. Steve Miller, Near-Death Experiences As Evidences for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2012):

I saw a bright light, and on my way there I heard beautiful music and I saw colors I’d never seen before.  The light .  . . was of a kind that I’d never seen before and that differs from any other kind such as sunlight.  It was white and extremely bright, and yet you could easily look at it.  It’s the pinnacle of everything there is.  Of energy, of love especially, of warmth, of beauty.  I was immersed in a feeling of total love.  (27-28)

My whole life so far appeared to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic, three-dimensional review, and each event seemed to be accompanied by an awareness of good and evil or by an insight into its cause and effect.  Throughout, I not only saw everything from my own point of view, but also I knew the thoughts of everybody who’d been involved in these events, as if their thoughts were lodged inside me.  It meant that I saw not only what I had done or thought but even how this had affected others, as if I was seeing with all-knowing eyes.  And throughout, the review stressed the importance of love.  I can’t say how long this life review and insight into life lasted; it may have been quite long because it covered every single subject, but at the same time it felt like a split second because I saw everything at once.  It seemed as if time and distance didn’t exist.  (28)

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Of late, I’ve watched some interesting interviews with near-death experiencers and experts on the near-death experience.  Here are a couple of them that I can recommend:

“What happens when you Die • Researching NDE | An Interview with Penny Sartori”

“‪Mary C. Neal: A Near-Death Experience‬”

***

What if you slept?

And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed?

And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven

And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower?

And what if, when you awoke, you had that flower in your hand?

Ah, what then?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)