“Now I know that the mind and body are separate”

Here are three further notes taken from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010).  The first is a specimen of the panoramic life review reported by many who experience NDEs:

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 I also 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 so even your thoughts are apparently not wiped out.  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.  I was everywhere at once, and sometimes my attention was focused on something and then I was there too.  (36)

The next two are examples of the conscious return to the physical body:

When I came to in my body it was dreadful, so dreadful. . . .  The experience had been so beautiful that I didn’t want to come back.  I had wanted to stay there . . . and yet I came back.  From that moment it was a real struggle to live my life inside my body, with all the limitations I experienced at the time. . . .  But later I realized that this experience was in fact a blessing, for now I know that the mind and body are separate and that there’s life after death.  (40)

Before I get a chance to turn around and dive into that heavenly light, I notice a slender hand on my back, from my right shoulder down to my waist.  This large hand pushes me very firmly yet lovingly back into my body.  For a moment I feel like I’m doing a couple of somersaults in the air.  Then I realize that I’ve landed back in my body.  Back to the pain and to the doctor’s deafening screams and slaps.  I’m furious, incredibly furious!  I don’t know if I actually uttered all the insults that came to mind. . . .  I think I did, because I felt a sense of relief afterward.  I’ve never felt a fury like this rage. . . .  (40-41)