Near-death-experiences are experiences people have when their physical body is dead. While their body is dead, their consciousness detaches from their body and has vivid experiences of other worlds. These worlds are usually heavenly in nature, and all of the people who have NDEs come back completely transformed by what they have experienced.
Some may say these experiences are DMT flooding into the brain, or are just hallucinations. We know they are not hallucinations because some people are able to accurately report specific details about what the doctors were doing in the room at the time they detached from their body. And we know this is not DMT, because Dr. Eben Alexander, a Harvard trained brain neurosurgeon of 25 years, had a vivid NDE while the neocortex of his brain was completely disabled.
His NDE remains the most scientifically credible experience of the afterlife that has ever been recorded. To read more about his experience, click here. But the point of this post is not to convince you that they have real experiences. It is to talk about the implications their experiences have on how we relate to our life on earth.
Here are 3 things NDEs have taught us about life:
1) Life is a test
Life is a schoolhouse where your soul develops and evolves. It is a test of personal growth. Just like tests in school, you can pass, or you can fail. To pass is to act out of love, compassion, and understanding. When you “fail” in life, you will feel dirty inside yourself as if you have done something wrong. This sense of conscience and moral apprehension is your soul attempting to guide you through this life. When you fail in school, you get an “F”. When you fail in life, you learn a new lesson.
As weird as this may sound, an important part of life is making mistakes, because it is only through direct experience that we can be permanently transformed. Life is not a random accident, and your job is not to pay bills until you die. Your primary job is to evolve and mature your consciousness, and this is done by embracing all of life’s experiences.
2) God is real
God is not some man or woman in the sky. God is an all-pervasive, eternal, timeless, formless, loving consciousness. Every single NDE account I have read or researched contains people reporting they feel an incredible sense of communion of something bigger than themselves. They feel the presence of the Creator.
Which God? The Source of all creation, being, intelligence, and moral perfection. Different religions try to interpret the Creator. Some religions come close, and some not so close. To understand God in intellectual terms is impossible for our brains, but simply put, God is Love with creative potential. Dr. Eben Alexander said this about love:
“Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love but the day-to-day kind that everyone knows-the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children, or even our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will ever exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions.”
The experience of God comes not from liturgy and dogma, but from personal depth and the expression of love.
3) You are eternal
You don’t die. Whoever told you that you were born was mistaken. YOU were never born. Your body was born, but you existed eternally in the past in one form or another, and you will continue to after your physical body dies. Everyone who survives a NDE comes back with absolutely no fear of death, because they understand that there is no end to identity. There is only transition.
Your life here is just a flicker in the eye of eternity, and you will soon wake up from this dream and remember that you were only pretending to be a human being. “Human being” is just a mask you soul is wearing right now.
NDEs can teach us a lot about the nature of consciousness and the brain, but they can teach us even more about the nature of life as a whole. When we include the experiences of others as part of our personal databank of information, we can evolve into high understandings much faster. Trust that one day, you too will leave this physical world behind.
Embrace your spiritual nature. You are just a visitor passing through.
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