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)
Some of those who have related near-death experiences seem to have returned with just such “flowers.” Here’s one account:
When I was five years old I contracted meningitis and fell into a coma. I “died” and drifted in a safe and black void where I felt no fear and no pain. I felt at home in this place. . . . I saw a little girl of about ten years old. I sensed that she recognized me. We hugged and then she told me, “I’m your sister. I died a month after I was born. I was named after your grandmother. Our parents called me Rietje for short.” She kissed me, and I felt her warmth and love. “You must go now,” she said. . . . In a flash I was back in my body. I opened my eyes and saw the happy and relieved looks on my parents’ faces. When I told them about my experience, they initially dismissed it as a dream. . . . I made a drawing of my angel sister who had welcomed me and repeated everything she’d told me. My parents were so shocked that they panicked. They got up and left the room. After a while they returned. They confirmed that they had indeed lost a daughter called Rietje. She had died of poisoning about a year before I was born. They had decided not to tell me and my brother until we were old enough to understand the meaning of life and death.
The account above comes from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 71-72.
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