What Happens When We Die?

I have been somewhat fixated lately about what happens when we die. I think it was inspired partly by my aunt's recent death and also as an attempt to prove or disprove the beliefs that the LDS church taught. I am having to recreate a belief system for myself one question at a time.

Not wanting to have to wait to find out when I die, I have been reading some accounts of people who actually have died, but came back to life, if even for a few seconds. There is a myriad of stories posted on the internet of people who have experienced this rare gift. They are each unique, yet they have common threads.

Brian Kreb shares what he has found to be the four rules pertaining to Near Death Experiences, taken from studying the accounts of others as well as from his own two personal NDEs.

They are briefly:

Rule One: At any given moment one may choose to return to their bodies.

Rule Two: One may choose where they go, ie: back to their body, into another room or dimention, or possibly get stuck in the "void". The void is also described as ultimate darkness, the blackest of blacks, ultimately it is the absence of love or a form of Hell. One must only think about love in order to leave the void, but msot are stuck and confused and thus remain.

Rule Three: Once past the void, which can be very brief for some or lengthy for others, depending on their issues a person sees a garden or a river or a gate. Once again the person is given the decision to stay or go back. If they decide to go through the gate or over the river, (to the end of the tunnel) there they will meet their creator.

Rule Four: If the person makes it to the end of the tunnel and meets their creator they will feel more love and acceptance and wisdom and knowledge and understanding than you ever have. And you will remember it. And you will not leave it out of your description of your experience. There you are and there is love - overwhelming, pure, beautiful love.

Then the person goes through a life review. IT is done in the light of the love of the Creator. In this love, you see all you have done wrong and right and the effects of it and you are unafraid because the Creator's love is there. There is nothing but the truth. That accomplished, you may (Rule 1) zip back into you body. You may then do whatever you think you need to and those descriptions vary.

Some other smilarities that I have noticed is the absence of time, observing new colors and sounds, there is no verbal communication (it is more like talpathic). In many cases a loved one who has already died will encourage them to go back or inform them that it is not their time.

There were some bizarre cases where a person had been dead for 3 days, even up to 22 days.

In England, after inspecting some coffins that had to be moved to another grave yard, they found that a select few of them had awakened after they had been buried. They could tell because the positioning of the bones was not in the burial position. It's interesting to me that the choice would be given them to come back knowing that they would only be left to die in the confines of the coffin.

I'm thinking cremation sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Certainly ashes in an urn can't contain a rejected spirit.

Here is a site where DaRell D. Thorpe shares a collection of people's either NDEs, Out of Body Experiences and other related stories. I selected a few humorous or particularly intriguing one to share with you here. Or you can read all 118 of them like I did last night from 3-4 am...or this morning, correction it was yesterday.

"I have experienced 'astral projection' several times. I have seen myself several times from a distance. I have gone to Hawaii while my mortal shell has slept. Don't believe me?...I have the postcard to prove it!!!"

Scientologists would love this person. Actually, I haven’t ruled out the possibility of reincarnation.

"I have strange feeling sometimes. I remember some of my previous lives. If I close my eyes and leave myself to be led by mindstorm I usually see uncommon things. I'm sure I fought in the 1st World War, I think I was a German soldier. I know I died in Japan in 1492. I remember my name, my rank, the shiro I should defend and I failed. Before this time I was a Scottish man or woman, I can't remember, but two things are clear: I loved whiskey and the national music. I lived somewhere in Europe in the XIII or XIV century, I was somebody related to the royal household. Maybe I was a musician. Also, I had a very bad life in Greece, sometime before Christ, I was a humiliated woman. I will never go there, because I feel pain still. I lived in France at the Revolution, in 1789. I do remember something, but it was a bad life for me. I know all lives are to improve the soul and prepare for something, I don't know exactly what for. Maybe, I have to live at least one more life, because this one is not perfect, but can be. Finally, I do not use drugs, never drink alcohol... yes, maybe I'm crazy, but what can you say if you know five seconds before the phone rings who will call you and why, and what are you if you can read people's minds like an open book? And what is the conclusion if you can see your light dark aura?"

"When I was approximately 12 years old, I was out on my bicycle on my street jumping curbs. I did this often as a child. I really enjoyed jumping this one curb that was very steep. The last time I jumped that curb my foot slipped off the pedal and I flew off the bike over the handlebars straight into a tree. I saw the tree flying straight at me. At that exact moment, I knew I was dead. The only thing I could say was, no. As I screamed "NO!" I felt a very HOT sensation flow through my body for an instant. I then became unconscious. When I awoke a few moments later, I saw that I was on the other side of the tree. I knew there was no way I could have missed the tree. When I stood up, I realized my entire body was covered in tree sap. I have no explanation on how it happened, but I passed THROUGH the tree unharmed."

"When I was 12 years old (16 years ago) my appendix burst. I was rushed to the hospital, by then I was grey in color. Our family doctor and the emergency medical staff rushed me into the operating room to do an exploratory surgery. As I lay on the table a priest was ushered in to give me my last rites. I was scared. Then they put me under to work on me, I felt cold. It was dark, but suddenly I felt warm. I heard a voice from somewhere talking to me. It was like I jumped into the middle of a conversation. The voice said, "It's not time for you yet... I have big plans for you." My mind flooded with ideas, plans, concepts. Then the voice said, "Time to go back.... Tell them be good to each other... Help them." Then I felt a huge push, back down to where I was laying on the table. I woke up on the operating table in the middle of my surgery. The emergency staff scrambled to get me back to sleep. I was told that the emergency staff had had to DEFIB me back to life, but weren't expecting me to wake up. I am now a college professor at a local university and have been an inventor in the medical field. I hope I am helping."

I like it when they bring back a message with them. Funny thing is I have yet to read about God telling the person that the LDS church is the only true church and that they will need to be baptized and confirmed and pay tithing, and serve in the church, and not drink coffee/tea/alcohol or smoke tobacco in order to return to live with God, whom they had just seen. Not one of them even mentions the need to be sealed to a spouse in the Temple in order to live for eternity with God. I would think that if it were true that all of things are necessary to return to live with God that it would be mentioned as a person returns to Earth, along with any other message.

"In 1995 in the month of February, I believe that's when I remember this incident occurring, I was having a very vivid dream in which I was flying. About one year before I had been in a serious auto accident and had a severe head injury that caused some very vivid dreams and visions. In this particular dream I was flying. I remember being careful not to fly into power lines. The area I was flying in reminded me of central to northern California. At the time of this dream I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the last part of the dream I remember seeing a large electrical power substation. Since I was vary aware I was only in a dream, I was very curious to find out what would happen if I flew into the power lines, so I did. I flew into the lines in the substation. Everything went white. I woke up startled and then remembered I had only been dreaming. I was lying in bed listening to my radio that morning when I heard a report on the news about a large power blackout in northern California that had occurred in the last 45 minutes (the same time as I was having my dream). They believe the phenomena that caused it was at a substation in Fresno. Weird, huh!"

"I had a dream that I was outside in the inner city of L.A. and derailed a train and killed 400 people and I also dreamt that I kidnapped two people and when I woke up there were two missing and a train derailed in L.A."

This one ranks higher on the Creepy factor.

"I was watching TV up in my room with my friends and it was about 11:30pm.We heard a banging noise in the living room down stairs. My friends and I thought it was my big brother pounding on the walls trying to scare us, so we went down to the living room to find a ghost. It was just standing there staring at us with these big red eyes. It started moving toward us saying something in a low voice. We all huddled together as the ghost moved closer. It was finally in arm's reach and grabbed one of my friends, and since we were huddled together we all vanished with the ghost. We were transported down a long narrow hallway into a small black room. We could not escape from this room. We were trapped in this small black room, cold and hungry, when the same ghost we saw earlier came into view. Again we huddled together and again the ghost came closer. We were again transported down the same long narrow hallway and at the end of the hallway was my room. We looked at the clock: it read 11:30pm. My mom heard us yelling in my room and she came running to my room asking us, "Where in the hell have you been ?!" You see it was 11:30 pm, but two days later. We still have no idea where we all went, but ever since that night we have not seen the ghost that took us to the small black room."

"I have found out that I have lived this same exact life about 136 times (give or take a few). I keep having flashes when I realize what happened in one of my previous lives and if I act fast enough I can change the event."

I saved my favorite for last.

"I was having sex one time when I suddenly had a weird sensation (no it wasn't my first orgasm). I was floating over the bed and watching my partner going on as if I were still there. I still felt like I was having sex. Suddenly I was violently dropped back into my partner's body and she was put in my body. Now I have the personality of a man but the body of a woman."

WTF?....(hehehe, I love puns.) Can you imagine? I wonder if they are still together.

I enjoyed reading Kimberly Clark Sharp's simple and clear understanding through her NDE in her book "After the Light."

…The Light was brighter than hundreds of suns, but it did not hurt my eyes. I had never seen anything as luminous or as golden as this Light, and I immediately understood it was entirely composed of love, all directed at me. This wonderful, vibrant love was very personal, as you might describe secular love, but also sacred.
Though I had never seen God, I recognized this light as the Light of God. But even the word God seemed too small to describe the magnificence of that presence. I was with my Creator, in holy communication with that presence. The Light was directed at me and through me; it surrounded me and pierced me. It existed just for me.
The Light gave me knowledge, though I heard no words. We did not communicate in English or in any other language. This was discourse clearer and easier than the clumsy medium of language. It was something like understanding math or music - nonverbal knowledge, but knowledge no less profound. I was learning the answers to the eternal questions of life - questions so old we laugh them off as clichés. "Why are we here?" To learn. "What's the purpose of our life?" To love. I felt as if I was re-remembering things I had once known but somehow forgotten, and it seemed incredible that I had not figured out these things before now…

Freestone is the blog of a man who claims to have had over 100 dream visions, over the years, of being taken by guides and Angels, to visit the afterlife, heaven, worlds. You have to join his Yahoo group in order to read it, but it’s no biggie and it’s free. I’ll be reading from it today. I’ll let you know if I find anything noteworthy.

Home Page of NDEs. There’s dozens more links here to explore.