Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (30 page)

I don’t know for how long or short a time I had “stood” there (and how I could stand there without a body) when I became aware that the light was shot through with another luminescence, emanating from a source somewhere. I was floating along the shore, as it were, and continued to marvel at everything around me, no longer aware that I had no eyes and couldn’t really see anything. Slowly but surely I realized that this luminescence consisted of a kind of infinite river of brilliance, like the brilliance of a setting sun reflected in rippling water with little pinpricks of light like small stars. The brilliance was made up of beautiful little globules of light, extremely bright and quite unlike anything on earth. They looked like nuclei surrounded by a body of light. Not literal bodies, but more like celestial bodies or atoms with clearly visible electrons floating past me, close to the ground. I checked to see where they were coming from and wondered if the dark aperture I saw might be a so-called black hole. The deep black looked more a cave from which the light gushed like a waterfall and thus formed the river in this tranquil field. The “river,” the field, the current, and the black formed a peaceful whole. Brilliant clusters of DNA appeared to be flowing right by my feet (even though I didn’t have any). The particles were linked in complementary pairs, which in turn made up an enormous organic spiral. The spirals formed the clusters in the field. I sensed that I could sail or float along with any pinprick of light (particle, being, consciousness, atom, soul, or whatever). All I had to do was “enter” or join the chain. All communication was wordless (suddenly, I understood the meaning of “soul to soul”). All particles, atoms, lights, or celestial bodies understood one another; they knew everything, they were everything! What one half of the pair knew was reinforced by the other half and vice versa; the same applied to pairs and even to strings. The current appeared to be expanding all the time by emitting pulses. All particles were a fraction of an all-encompassing sympathetic force, love, and consciousness (like the support I had felt during my life review or the process of accountability or awareness, except several degrees stronger). Now I understand why some call this God, Allah, Parinirvana, the happy hunting grounds, the Akasha field, Asgard, or whatever. I don’t know what to call it. Perhaps simply nature.

A sense of happiness and grace washed over me and glowed deep inside me. I felt privileged to be a part of this. Why me? What good had I done to deserve this? I was very eager to join, be together. Be together with these particles in this current; be one with this immense, wise, creative force. Be together with this all-encompassing consciousness. This is where I belonged! This was no longer the dimension of earth or other spheres, this was more! This was the beginning and the end, this was the source. I recognized many particles as belonging to people I had known on earth, including my younger brother, who had died before I was born. However, what I recognized wasn’t the complete individual. These were elements, beautiful elements, conscious elements. I didn’t recognize them by sight because every single particle was the same—the same color, light, vibration, consciousness, and level of maturity. The recognition was purely instinctual, like an animal has an instinct. And these particles seemed to represent only the purest or most profound parts of them. Perhaps this is why they resembled elements of a larger whole. All particles possessed knowledge; everything I might want to know, they knew. There couldn’t be a single question to which they wouldn’t know the answer. And I would know and understand everything as soon as I had become one with this whole. Everything! I hesitated at the prospect of becoming one because I knew that once I decided to do so I would never be in a body again. The force of attraction was incredibly strong, but at the same time I realized that if I connected there would be no way back. I was so eager to know and be like this current of infinite wisdom. The questions I’d had in life resurfaced: the reasons behind sickness, disasters, children’s suffering, the way the earth and the body worked, evolution, the conflict between Jung and Freud, the clash between religions, gravity, birth, incarnation, relativity—in a word,
life.

I wasn’t even aware that I’d had so many questions and that I’d felt excluded from learning, knowledge, and awareness. Physics was the first subject I’d dropped in school, because it was way beyond me, and philosophy had seemed an area I would definitely never get my head around. But here and now I had the opportunity to instantly know everything. I saw that knowledge, conscience, intuition, awareness, thoughts, emotions, and the physicality of everything are all connected.

Time did not exist here, and a loving tranquillity suffused the field, the current, and myself; suddenly, for just one moment, I was a fraction just like they were and completely one with them. I don’t know if I touched them or they touched me. This moment of eternal omniscience is still indescribable to me. The surge of love and the explosion of information were overwhelming.

The answers I received far outnumbered all the questions I’d ever had. In fact, these were no answers but an all-encompassing oneness and convergence of absolute knowledge. My smile felt bigger than ever, and I was complete as well as perfectly happy and in the place where I belonged.

This time I had not just woken up from my body, my ego, and physical life on earth, but from something much, much more profound. I had woken from deep inside my individual consciousness in the source.

It was all so easy, natural, and logical within this completeness, but at the same time I knew that I would never be able to express it in words from an “I,” an ego in a physical body. Yet this is what I wanted; I wanted to share this, try to explain how eternal existence and consciousness looks and feels. Impossible, and yet, even if I could reach only one single person on earth and let him or her feel this tranquillity, my return would be worthwhile. I realized that I couldn’t stand around here much longer, or I wouldn’t be able to return to achieve my goal. I knew everything I needed to know. Even my own “end.” The options of staying and returning were clear to me. Past and future were one, as if all opportunities were shown to me at once. I had to take my leave of this conscious oneness, this source. Nothing that had ever been born or come to maturity or that had died or been destroyed was unfamiliar to me. I made a well-considered choice, and this determined what happened next. A preview, showing me all the opportunities of the life ahead of me, as if it had already been lived, flashed before me. My smile was palpable again, and I was pleased with the life ahead. I was sorry that I couldn’t stay and felt a little guilty, although I knew there was no need, that this was an unnecessary feeling. Naïvely and intensely happy, I began to wave at the particles (without hands): see you later! I knew that I would be back here at the appropriate time, to become a permanent part of this wholeness. The particles paid no attention; everything was fine. As if this current knew that I had to go back because I made this decision. They did know, and all my future decisions would be right. The flashes of moments from this next stretch of life would come to me regardless of the paths I would travel.

And I was ready now; I really wanted to be on this logical and coherent earth, to be aware and live accordingly. Nature is perfect.

With a violent and painful jolt, I returned to an immobile body. It was full of tubes and hooked up to machines that were keeping it alive. Even the oxygen that this body needed was provided by a machine. I heard the regular rhythm of the respiratory pump and thought of the awareness and knowledge I had just come back from: iron! The earth’s nucleus and the absence of a nucleus in the particles of the transport fluid that delivers oxygen to all of the body’s cells. What a wondrous thing, a body! So this was the first thing I had to learn to stay on this earth: breathing! I tried to stay alive by being rational, and literally and figuratively forgot my heart. Passion, dedication, surrender-ness and love, that is, no selfishness or rational beliefs. The loving smile and the tranquillity of where I came from were obviously gone too. Nor was I grateful; what a sluggish, harsh reality this was. I didn’t know how many hours or days I had been lying there, feeling frustrated in the body that I couldn’t get going again, when I decided that it was pointless. I didn’t realize that it was my “I” making this rash decision instead of trusting the experience I’d had within the oneness of that beautiful consciousness. I became angry and felt betrayed. I thought that I had been abandoned by the source I came from and failed to see that I was abandoning this source (and myself) by seeing it as part of where I came from instead of as part of me.

I wanted to return to this heaven and didn’t realize that a single loving thought would let me be part of the whole again. I thought that the only way back was via death, and I began to wonder how I could rid myself of the machinery that kept my body alive. I felt imprisoned in this life and wanted to free myself at all costs. Again I heard the respiratory pump and felt a tube in my mouth, right down my throat. Unlike the rest of my body, my mouth I could move; I tried to swallow and felt the obstruction. There was some—be it minimal—movement. With my jaws and teeth, I bit down as hard as I could until the intubation tube was severed. I tried to swallow it as quickly as possible. The alarm, the oxygen, the nurses—they were gone in a flash. “Good,” it went through me; “that will teach them not to keep me here. I’m off!” But it wasn’t good; it was neither a good thought nor a good deed, not loving toward nature, God, Allah, Jahweh, the Source, toward anyone on earth doing their best for me, and most of all not loving toward myself.

This time I saw nothing: no colors, no warmth. The soft vortex now looked like a hard, cold funnel. I was confused; where was I supposed to go, what was happening? Contact with all earthly things vanished abruptly, and this was by no means a smooth transition. A sense of panic came over me. I didn’t understand what was happening and what had to be done except that this was damn serious and that I was now at a different “layer” in the atmosphere than last time.

In the distance, very far away, I saw a pinprick of light. The end of the darkness? Was I supposed to go there? Did I want to go there? I looked around me; everything was black—black, quiet, cold, and lonely. I was completely alone. Alone with my thoughts and feelings. The expression “godforsaken” made sense to me now, or whatever name you want to give the all-embracing. It wasn’t as if the all-embracing wasn’t there, but I had obstructed it, as it were. I had built a wall between myself and my heart, between myself and trust, between myself and gratitude. And above all between myself and love. The love of the heart that enables a clear consciousness, peace, health—in one word, everything. My wall cast a shadow over me so I couldn’t see the light. Love and the higher consciousness are in the light; they are the light. And in order to see this, I had to break down this wall. Fear—I was full of fear. I think there’s no bigger wall than fear except perhaps anger, which was still there too. How could I escape this misery? Why did nobody help me? I got more anxious and felt nothing but pain, anguish, grief, and loneliness.

The regret intensified, and I understood that I had made a huge mistake. Why had I not had any faith and patience? I felt deeply ashamed before all the light of which I was part of and from which I had isolated myself. I knew that “they” knew, and I also knew that I wasn’t condemned for it. I felt small but no longer naïve or innocent. Humble or unassuming, rather. From then on I knew that humankind is as strong as the weakest link; in fact, not just humankind, but humanity itself. I recognized my weakness and felt that love, trust, and faith were the greatest strengths I needed. Now, but also in the intensive care unit, in the life before this happened, and in the life that might have been.

I was of no use to anything or anyone by isolating myself like this, and I encountered immediate pain. The pain of having chosen the life that might have been and having given up so easily, having abandoned oneness with those clusters. I felt the pain of those who had resuscitated me, of those who had devoted their efforts to me and thought that I was going to pull through. I became angry with myself, but that too was an unhelpful emotion. I wouldn’t reach the “heaven” where I belonged via this road, not via “death,” but would reach it instead via a life filled with faith, trust, love, and gratitude. “Help!” went through me, and I felt like I was breaking.

All of a sudden my father [who had previously died] drifted around the corner, like a huge shadow. He didn’t look up at all. He moved solemnly. I sensed that he knew his way around this darkness. His feet never touched the ground as if he was walking or floating in slow motion, and yet he walked ahead of me at quite a steady pace. I wanted to see him, his face, his eyes. Whatever I tried, he kept moving and never once looked at me. I was so desperate to see, touch, question, almost beg him what to do. Should I join him, go after him, or head in another direction? Somehow I sensed that if we made contact, there would be no going back. Not to my “heaven,” my level, and not to my body and the life I had chosen. There was a reason he didn’t look at me, a reason he didn’t grab hold of me. He had only come to clarify everything for me. It felt like his final duty as a parent before he could proceed to the light. I had to understand everything now. And again, the decision would be mine. If I wanted to, he would accompany me to that pinprick of light, but I knew that this light didn’t have the same intensity as before. To get to the source, I would have to move through yet another “level.” So again (or still) the choice was mine: I could choose life or choose this other light without pain, cold, or lovelessness. It remained to be seen if I would suffer again in a physical body, and deep down I knew the answer.

I could tell from my father’s body language that he didn’t want me to accompany him. I loved him, even here and now, behaving like this. Suddenly I felt what he felt, I knew what he knew. He clarified things instantly, including what I had to do. This wasn’t my “final destination,” this was his world, this was his (and temporarily my) domain, and it was his level and his light over there in the distance. I had to go back, of my own free will. Surely I knew that next time I would end up at my own level and at the source? But I was anxious and kept following him (without legs, of course). I couldn’t for the life of me catch up with him. I tried to scream, cry, beg, but nothing got through to him. I felt the pain in him: the pain of not being able to hug me and help me decide. I tried to stop and scream like a small child in a supermarket, in the hope that he would stop and help me. He continued to the light, which drew closer and closer. I had to make my decision now; the end (or the beginning of his light) was approaching. I could almost touch him. Almost…Right before my eyes he entered the overwhelming light. Such power! Such love! One more step and I’d be with him. With him and with many others. He had arrived; he had finally found peace. Now I knew that part of him, part of his energy that had been with me all those years after his death, was gone. Because of him I could move on, and vice versa.