Dying To Be Me Essay
Reaching Heaven from Earth It is yet another typical day here in my room and just like what I usually do in order to let the time pass, I think of random stuff. This time, the thought of me, dying and how I will die, comes to my mind. I imagine myself not waking up from a bad dream or my really old self dying in a hospital bed due to illness or very old age. Questions like ‘How am I going to die? What would it be like? How does it feel? Where do I actually go, wait, do I really go somewhere?’ suddenly pop in my head. Among those questions, one really stood out –what does it feel like to die? The thought of persons having near death experiences (NDEs) come to my mind and the memory of my younger sister came with it. Upon arriving at the Philippine Children’s Medical Center for
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her check-up, my sister passed out and she was rushed to the emergency room. My parents were frightened while her doctor was reviving her. Gladly, she was revived but along with it, she had an unexpected story. After she passed out, she said that she was walking in a long road where she was surrounded by light. At the end of the road, she reached a big and tall podium which she described as the tall table that our mother used whenever she was the master of ceremony in school activities. What’s bizarre is that behind the podium, my sister said that she saw our pets—dogs, hamsters, and fishes, which already died and behind them were our deceased relatives smiling to her. Surprisingly, the clothes that she described to our parents matched the clothes that our dead relatives were wearing during their wake. As she walked towards them, a being that she believed to be God talked to her. She described it as a person without a face and she said that it radiated a bright white light that didn’t seem to hurt her eyes. It said, “Kailangan mong bumalik. Kailangan mong… (You have to go back. You have to…)” and she was revived by her doctor without hearing the last sentence. Upon remembering this, a whole lot of new questions about NDEs and those who experienced it bothered me like, ‘Did they really see God? What made them see their dead relatives? Does it actually feel good or bad? How can they actually go back to life after dying?’ So in order to feed my curiosity, I opened my laptop and did some research. According to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online, a Near Death Experience is an experience described by people who have been close to death, in which the person feels as if they have left their body and are watching themselves from above. It is also described by people who were either clinically dead or in a situation where death is likely or expected. The man who focused public attention to the concept of NDEs and actually coined the term was Dr. Raymond Moody (Williams, “Dr. Raymond Moody”). After being intrigued by a case study about a psychiatrist who ‘died’ and recovered after being pronounced dead to his family, Moody made a study and talked about it in his book “Life after Life” which was published in 1975 ( qtd. in Studymode, “Near Death Experience”). In his work, he recorded and compared the experiences of 150 persons who died and recovered and from this he outlined the nine elements that usually occur during a near death experience. The nine elements that Moody talks about is, hearing a strange sound which is a buzzing or ringing noise while having the sense of being dead. It is then followed by a feeling of painlessness as soon as he leaves the body and it is usually accompanied by experiencing peace. The third element is the out-of-body experience where a person describes himself hovering above his body and actually seeing what the medical team is doing to it during an operation. He may also see his relatives by the time that he is dying. The person also experiences being in a spiritual body that appears to be a sort of living energy field. The next is the tunnel experience which is like going through a dark path in high speed and then reaching a golden-white light. Sometimes, instead of the tunnel experience, people report of rising rapidly into the heavens and seeing the Earth just like astronauts in space. By either going through a tunnel or rising rapidly into the heavens, the person meets people glowing with an inner light. In most circumstances, these people are the relatives or friends who had already died and are there to greet him. Then, a Being of Light comes into the scene which is often referred to as God, Jesus, or other religious figures. People who have encountered this Being of Light report of a very strong white light that doesn’t seem to hurt their eyes at all. This is the part where the two of them take a walk in the ‘heavens’ and the being of light shows a view of everything that the dying did. They relive every act that he had done to every person and at the end, the person feels being loved and that love is the most important thing. The last element is the offer of the Being of Light for the dying person to return and sometimes, the dying person is given a choice to stay or to go back. In either case, the person is reluctant to return and those who chose to return do so only because of the loved ones that they don’t want to leave behind (qtd. in Williams, “Dr. Raymond Moody”). Near death experiences are not the same with what Moody explained. There are also NDEs that depict a fiery landscape or hellish purgatory that is very much different with the heavens from Moody’s study. As a matter of fact, there are four types of near death experiences identified by P. M. H. Atwater, L. H. D., Ph.D. who herself, survived three death events and produced three different near death experiences in 1977. These types were also discussed in her book “Beyond the Light”. The first type that Atwater discussed is the Initial Experience or sometimes called as the “nonexperience” which involves elements such as a loving nothingness, the living dark, or a brief out of body episode. According to her, it occurs to 76% of childhood death experiences. The second type is the Unpleasant or Hell-like Experience or the Inner Cleansing and Self-confrontation. This type of NDE is an encounter with a threatening void, being in a place more like hell, or even experiencing “hauntings” from one’s own past. According to Atwater, it is usually experienced by those who seem to have restrained guilt, fears and angers and/or those who expect some kind of punishment or discomfort after death. The third one is the Pleasant or Heaven-like Experience or Reassurance and Self Validation. This type is the one that Moody was referring to and according to Atwater, this type is 47% of the experiences of adults. The last type is the Transcendent Experience or the Expansive Revelations/ Alternate Realities. It is defined as the exposure to other worldly dimensions and scenes beyond the individual’s frame of reference and it sometimes includes revelations of greater truths but seldom personal in content. Atwater also said that all four types can occur in one NDE, can exist in varying combinations, or can occur as a series of episodes for a particular individual (Williams, “Dr. P.M.H. Atwater”). Accounts of near death experiences are not new. People have reported them even decades before the time Moody conducted his research. According to near-death.com, the earliest recorded near death experience came from the Greek philosopher, Plato, who describes an event in the tenth book of his book, Republic. It is about the story of Er, who was a soldier that came to life during his funeral pyre and described the afterlife. What’s interesting in this record is that Er mentioned three elements of the NDE as discussed by Moody. Plato described it as “the departure of his soul from the cave of shadows to see the light of truth, the flight of the soul to a vision of pure celestial being and its subsequent recollection of the vision of light,” (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences Have Been Recorded Throughout History”). This is an account of near death experience which was reported by Anita Moorjani. She wrote her experience in a book entitled, Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing. After four years of battling cancer, Anita Moorjani “died” on February 2, 2006. In the prologue of her book, she said:
Oh my God, I feel incredible! I’m so free and light! How come I’m not feeling any more pain in my body? Where has it all gone? Hey, why does it seem like my surroundings are moving away from me? But I’m not scared! Why am I not scared? Where has my fear gone? Oh wow, I can’t find the fear anymore! (Moorjani 3) It was the followed by her description of how the world around her started to appear dreamlike and that she could see herself slipping away from consciousness. Although she was in a state of coma at that time, she was aware of everything that was happening around her, including what her family members felt. She began speaking words aloud to tell her husband and her mother that she was fine and that she felt really great but then, no words came out. By that time, she became puzzled about how weird everyone was acting because inside her, she felt pure joy, joy that was caused by being free of pain, being free of cancer but then, everyone around her seemed to feel the opposite. Still, she tried her best to tell everyone that she was fine, ignoring the fact that her doctor was explaining the circumstances to her husband. She began saying that she didn’t understand what was happening because she started to feel what everyone was going through. She said, “I could actually feel their fear, anxiety, helplessness, and despair. It was as though their emotions were mine. It was as though I became them” (Moorjani 5). After that incident, she realized that she was dying. She felt that love surrounded her and she went to a different place where she was asked to choose to come back or to stay. She chose to stay. Days after waking up, she was totally healed from her disease and tests conducted to her all had positive results. As human beings, we tend to look for answers to questions. There’s this hunger for knowing the reasons behind things. For near death experiences, there’s the clash between religion and science. Since these experiences are commonly associated with love, light, review of life, and choices between life and death, it is not hard to anchor the main idea to religion or the existence of God, heaven, and even hell. It is true, according to research, that these things are experienced by people who are not limited by race, gender, or social class (Williams, “Dr. Kenneth Ring”). However, being divided by religion causes different perspectives as to how people view the reason of the near death experience and the experience itself. According to Near-death.com, the biblical support for the NDEs lies in the New Testament verses containing love. The Being of Light being described by the people who experienced NDE is further supported by the verses 1 John 1:5 stating that “God is light,” and 1 Timothy 6:16 where the apostle Paul stated that God “…lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.” Meanwhile, the verse 1 John 4:16 says that “God is love, whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him,” is attributed to the person feeling unconditional love by the time that the Being of Light is with them. The whole act of dying and returning from the dead is further supported by the verse Matthew 27:52-53 that states that “The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people,” (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences are Biblical”). Other religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Southern Asian religions portray the process of samsara or the cycle of death and rebirth as unhappy and as a cycle of reincarnation. Because of their law of karma, they believe that what a person becomes after being reincarnated or being brought back to life after dying is dictated by the good and bad deeds that they have done in their previous life. This is very different from the Western concept which tends to make the idea of near death experience desirable (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences of Hindus”). The notions of resurrection, heaven, and hell have already been part of Islam since the time of Mohammed. He had a journey to heaven which was in accordance to the Islamic legend “Miraj”. Here, Mohammed is said to have visited the seven heavens in the company of Archangel Gabriel where Allah ordained fifty prayers to be said by all believers daily. On the way back, Mohammed met Moses on the sixth heaven and it was Moses who asked him to go back to the seventh heaven and ask for a smaller quota. The fifty prayers were reduced to ten and then to five, which is now known as Salat (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences of Muslims”). Not all people believe in the reasons stated, that’s why there are people who still look for concrete proof on how the mystery of the NDEs happens. One evidence is that the many aspects of NDEs are physiological and psychological in nature. Scientists have found out that drugs such as ketamine and phencyclidine can create sensations in users that are nearly identical to NDEs. They concluded that these drugs affect how the brain process sensory information and so, it becomes strange experiences (Grabianowski, “How Near-Death Experiences Work”). Just recently, scientists released an idea as to how NDEs really occur. Their answer? It’s just an activity of the human brain. The team lead by Jimo Borjigin, Ph. D., Associate Professor of physiology and neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School, said that “the hyperactive brain may create near death visions. In their study, they analyzed and recorded electroencephalograms (EEGs) of the brain activity of rats during a cardiac arrest and they discovered that seconds after the heart stopped beating, there was a final burst of brain activity characteristic of conscious perception,” (qtd. in Cole, “Hyperactive Brain may Create ‘Near-Death’ Visions”). She also stated that the activity of the brain after the heart stops functioning exceeds levels found during the conscious walking state. In order to fully prove that this is accountable for the NDEs, Borjigin stated that the visual cortex of the rats had to be highly activated and that was exactly what they found out. However, the team still didn’t have an explanation about the dying person’s meeting with his dead relatives though Borjigin speculates that it is triggered at the moment of crisis. The team also concluded that the last burst of brain activity is the system’s last effort to save itself, just like how the system saves a person during an illness (Cole, “Hyperactive Brain may Create ‘Near-Death’ Visions”). After reading all the articles, I closed my laptop and returned to ponder on my thoughts and think about all that I have read. It’s interesting that what I suddenly thought of a few minutes ago has been actually happening thousands of years ago. It’s surprising that all near death experiences actually have similarities and sometimes follow a series of events where various elements are present. They don’t just support the idea of a heaven but also the concept of hell and a higher being that governs everything around us, seen and not. Just like some phenomena, a near death experience is universal in a way that it breaks the barrier of races, abilities, social class, and even religion but the reason behind it remains a debate. It may either be caused by a supernatural presence or might just be a product of the human brain, no one knows. My sister died just a few weeks after the incident due to a cardiac arrest. Up to this day, I still don’t know the answers to my questions. I don’t know why she had a near death experience. I don’t know what “mission” she was given before she was revived. I don’t know why she had to die and leave when my family and I were not prepared. I guess that’s just how things are. It’s a way of preparing people for the unexpected or a way for people to find answers to things that they don’t know. That’s exactly why I made this paper. Making this paper is not just a way of understanding things that I never knew. It is a way of coping up with the loss of my sister, pretty much like understanding death and its consequences.
Works Cited
Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Web. 27 August 2013.
Cole, Diane. “Hyperactive Brain may Create ‘Near-Death’ Visions.” National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 1996. Web. 25 August 2013.
Grabianowski, Ed.
“How Near-Death Experiences Work.” How Stuff Works. Discovery Communications, 1998. Web. 2 September 2013.
Moorjani, Anita. Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer to Near Death to True Healing. New York City: Hay House, Inc., 2012. Print.
Studymode. “Near Death Experiences.” Studymode. October 1999. Web. 25 August 2013.
Williams, Kevin. “Dr. Kenneth Ring.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Dr. P.M.H. Atwater.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Dr. Raymond Moody.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 25 August 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences are Biblical.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences Have Been Recorded Throughout History.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences of Hindus.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences of Muslims: The Way of the Heart.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
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her check-up, my sister passed out and she was rushed to the emergency room. My parents were frightened while her doctor was reviving her. Gladly, she was revived but along with it, she had an unexpected story. After she passed out, she said that she was walking in a long road where she was surrounded by light. At the end of the road, she reached a big and tall podium which she described as the tall table that our mother used whenever she was the master of ceremony in school activities. What’s bizarre is that behind the podium, my sister said that she saw our pets—dogs, hamsters, and fishes, which already died and behind them were our deceased relatives smiling to her. Surprisingly, the clothes that she described to our parents matched the clothes that our dead relatives were wearing during their wake. As she walked towards them, a being that she believed to be God talked to her. She described it as a person without a face and she said that it radiated a bright white light that didn’t seem to hurt her eyes. It said, “Kailangan mong bumalik. Kailangan mong… (You have to go back. You have to…)” and she was revived by her doctor without hearing the last sentence. Upon remembering this, a whole lot of new questions about NDEs and those who experienced it bothered me like, ‘Did they really see God? What made them see their dead relatives? Does it actually feel good or bad? How can they actually go back to life after dying?’ So in order to feed my curiosity, I opened my laptop and did some research. According to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online, a Near Death Experience is an experience described by people who have been close to death, in which the person feels as if they have left their body and are watching themselves from above. It is also described by people who were either clinically dead or in a situation where death is likely or expected. The man who focused public attention to the concept of NDEs and actually coined the term was Dr. Raymond Moody (Williams, “Dr. Raymond Moody”). After being intrigued by a case study about a psychiatrist who ‘died’ and recovered after being pronounced dead to his family, Moody made a study and talked about it in his book “Life after Life” which was published in 1975 ( qtd. in Studymode, “Near Death Experience”). In his work, he recorded and compared the experiences of 150 persons who died and recovered and from this he outlined the nine elements that usually occur during a near death experience. The nine elements that Moody talks about is, hearing a strange sound which is a buzzing or ringing noise while having the sense of being dead. It is then followed by a feeling of painlessness as soon as he leaves the body and it is usually accompanied by experiencing peace. The third element is the out-of-body experience where a person describes himself hovering above his body and actually seeing what the medical team is doing to it during an operation. He may also see his relatives by the time that he is dying. The person also experiences being in a spiritual body that appears to be a sort of living energy field. The next is the tunnel experience which is like going through a dark path in high speed and then reaching a golden-white light. Sometimes, instead of the tunnel experience, people report of rising rapidly into the heavens and seeing the Earth just like astronauts in space. By either going through a tunnel or rising rapidly into the heavens, the person meets people glowing with an inner light. In most circumstances, these people are the relatives or friends who had already died and are there to greet him. Then, a Being of Light comes into the scene which is often referred to as God, Jesus, or other religious figures. People who have encountered this Being of Light report of a very strong white light that doesn’t seem to hurt their eyes at all. This is the part where the two of them take a walk in the ‘heavens’ and the being of light shows a view of everything that the dying did. They relive every act that he had done to every person and at the end, the person feels being loved and that love is the most important thing. The last element is the offer of the Being of Light for the dying person to return and sometimes, the dying person is given a choice to stay or to go back. In either case, the person is reluctant to return and those who chose to return do so only because of the loved ones that they don’t want to leave behind (qtd. in Williams, “Dr. Raymond Moody”). Near death experiences are not the same with what Moody explained. There are also NDEs that depict a fiery landscape or hellish purgatory that is very much different with the heavens from Moody’s study. As a matter of fact, there are four types of near death experiences identified by P. M. H. Atwater, L. H. D., Ph.D. who herself, survived three death events and produced three different near death experiences in 1977. These types were also discussed in her book “Beyond the Light”. The first type that Atwater discussed is the Initial Experience or sometimes called as the “nonexperience” which involves elements such as a loving nothingness, the living dark, or a brief out of body episode. According to her, it occurs to 76% of childhood death experiences. The second type is the Unpleasant or Hell-like Experience or the Inner Cleansing and Self-confrontation. This type of NDE is an encounter with a threatening void, being in a place more like hell, or even experiencing “hauntings” from one’s own past. According to Atwater, it is usually experienced by those who seem to have restrained guilt, fears and angers and/or those who expect some kind of punishment or discomfort after death. The third one is the Pleasant or Heaven-like Experience or Reassurance and Self Validation. This type is the one that Moody was referring to and according to Atwater, this type is 47% of the experiences of adults. The last type is the Transcendent Experience or the Expansive Revelations/ Alternate Realities. It is defined as the exposure to other worldly dimensions and scenes beyond the individual’s frame of reference and it sometimes includes revelations of greater truths but seldom personal in content. Atwater also said that all four types can occur in one NDE, can exist in varying combinations, or can occur as a series of episodes for a particular individual (Williams, “Dr. P.M.H. Atwater”). Accounts of near death experiences are not new. People have reported them even decades before the time Moody conducted his research. According to near-death.com, the earliest recorded near death experience came from the Greek philosopher, Plato, who describes an event in the tenth book of his book, Republic. It is about the story of Er, who was a soldier that came to life during his funeral pyre and described the afterlife. What’s interesting in this record is that Er mentioned three elements of the NDE as discussed by Moody. Plato described it as “the departure of his soul from the cave of shadows to see the light of truth, the flight of the soul to a vision of pure celestial being and its subsequent recollection of the vision of light,” (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences Have Been Recorded Throughout History”). This is an account of near death experience which was reported by Anita Moorjani. She wrote her experience in a book entitled, Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing. After four years of battling cancer, Anita Moorjani “died” on February 2, 2006. In the prologue of her book, she said:
Oh my God, I feel incredible! I’m so free and light! How come I’m not feeling any more pain in my body? Where has it all gone? Hey, why does it seem like my surroundings are moving away from me? But I’m not scared! Why am I not scared? Where has my fear gone? Oh wow, I can’t find the fear anymore! (Moorjani 3) It was the followed by her description of how the world around her started to appear dreamlike and that she could see herself slipping away from consciousness. Although she was in a state of coma at that time, she was aware of everything that was happening around her, including what her family members felt. She began speaking words aloud to tell her husband and her mother that she was fine and that she felt really great but then, no words came out. By that time, she became puzzled about how weird everyone was acting because inside her, she felt pure joy, joy that was caused by being free of pain, being free of cancer but then, everyone around her seemed to feel the opposite. Still, she tried her best to tell everyone that she was fine, ignoring the fact that her doctor was explaining the circumstances to her husband. She began saying that she didn’t understand what was happening because she started to feel what everyone was going through. She said, “I could actually feel their fear, anxiety, helplessness, and despair. It was as though their emotions were mine. It was as though I became them” (Moorjani 5). After that incident, she realized that she was dying. She felt that love surrounded her and she went to a different place where she was asked to choose to come back or to stay. She chose to stay. Days after waking up, she was totally healed from her disease and tests conducted to her all had positive results. As human beings, we tend to look for answers to questions. There’s this hunger for knowing the reasons behind things. For near death experiences, there’s the clash between religion and science. Since these experiences are commonly associated with love, light, review of life, and choices between life and death, it is not hard to anchor the main idea to religion or the existence of God, heaven, and even hell. It is true, according to research, that these things are experienced by people who are not limited by race, gender, or social class (Williams, “Dr. Kenneth Ring”). However, being divided by religion causes different perspectives as to how people view the reason of the near death experience and the experience itself. According to Near-death.com, the biblical support for the NDEs lies in the New Testament verses containing love. The Being of Light being described by the people who experienced NDE is further supported by the verses 1 John 1:5 stating that “God is light,” and 1 Timothy 6:16 where the apostle Paul stated that God “…lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.” Meanwhile, the verse 1 John 4:16 says that “God is love, whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him,” is attributed to the person feeling unconditional love by the time that the Being of Light is with them. The whole act of dying and returning from the dead is further supported by the verse Matthew 27:52-53 that states that “The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus’ resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people,” (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences are Biblical”). Other religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Southern Asian religions portray the process of samsara or the cycle of death and rebirth as unhappy and as a cycle of reincarnation. Because of their law of karma, they believe that what a person becomes after being reincarnated or being brought back to life after dying is dictated by the good and bad deeds that they have done in their previous life. This is very different from the Western concept which tends to make the idea of near death experience desirable (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences of Hindus”). The notions of resurrection, heaven, and hell have already been part of Islam since the time of Mohammed. He had a journey to heaven which was in accordance to the Islamic legend “Miraj”. Here, Mohammed is said to have visited the seven heavens in the company of Archangel Gabriel where Allah ordained fifty prayers to be said by all believers daily. On the way back, Mohammed met Moses on the sixth heaven and it was Moses who asked him to go back to the seventh heaven and ask for a smaller quota. The fifty prayers were reduced to ten and then to five, which is now known as Salat (Williams, “Near-Death Experiences of Muslims”). Not all people believe in the reasons stated, that’s why there are people who still look for concrete proof on how the mystery of the NDEs happens. One evidence is that the many aspects of NDEs are physiological and psychological in nature. Scientists have found out that drugs such as ketamine and phencyclidine can create sensations in users that are nearly identical to NDEs. They concluded that these drugs affect how the brain process sensory information and so, it becomes strange experiences (Grabianowski, “How Near-Death Experiences Work”). Just recently, scientists released an idea as to how NDEs really occur. Their answer? It’s just an activity of the human brain. The team lead by Jimo Borjigin, Ph. D., Associate Professor of physiology and neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School, said that “the hyperactive brain may create near death visions. In their study, they analyzed and recorded electroencephalograms (EEGs) of the brain activity of rats during a cardiac arrest and they discovered that seconds after the heart stopped beating, there was a final burst of brain activity characteristic of conscious perception,” (qtd. in Cole, “Hyperactive Brain may Create ‘Near-Death’ Visions”). She also stated that the activity of the brain after the heart stops functioning exceeds levels found during the conscious walking state. In order to fully prove that this is accountable for the NDEs, Borjigin stated that the visual cortex of the rats had to be highly activated and that was exactly what they found out. However, the team still didn’t have an explanation about the dying person’s meeting with his dead relatives though Borjigin speculates that it is triggered at the moment of crisis. The team also concluded that the last burst of brain activity is the system’s last effort to save itself, just like how the system saves a person during an illness (Cole, “Hyperactive Brain may Create ‘Near-Death’ Visions”). After reading all the articles, I closed my laptop and returned to ponder on my thoughts and think about all that I have read. It’s interesting that what I suddenly thought of a few minutes ago has been actually happening thousands of years ago. It’s surprising that all near death experiences actually have similarities and sometimes follow a series of events where various elements are present. They don’t just support the idea of a heaven but also the concept of hell and a higher being that governs everything around us, seen and not. Just like some phenomena, a near death experience is universal in a way that it breaks the barrier of races, abilities, social class, and even religion but the reason behind it remains a debate. It may either be caused by a supernatural presence or might just be a product of the human brain, no one knows. My sister died just a few weeks after the incident due to a cardiac arrest. Up to this day, I still don’t know the answers to my questions. I don’t know why she had a near death experience. I don’t know what “mission” she was given before she was revived. I don’t know why she had to die and leave when my family and I were not prepared. I guess that’s just how things are. It’s a way of preparing people for the unexpected or a way for people to find answers to things that they don’t know. That’s exactly why I made this paper. Making this paper is not just a way of understanding things that I never knew. It is a way of coping up with the loss of my sister, pretty much like understanding death and its consequences.
Works Cited
Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Web. 27 August 2013.
Cole, Diane. “Hyperactive Brain may Create ‘Near-Death’ Visions.” National Geographic. National Geographic Society, 1996. Web. 25 August 2013.
Grabianowski, Ed.
“How Near-Death Experiences Work.” How Stuff Works. Discovery Communications, 1998. Web. 2 September 2013.
Moorjani, Anita. Dying to be Me: My Journey from Cancer to Near Death to True Healing. New York City: Hay House, Inc., 2012. Print.
Studymode. “Near Death Experiences.” Studymode. October 1999. Web. 25 August 2013.
Williams, Kevin. “Dr. Kenneth Ring.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Dr. P.M.H. Atwater.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Dr. Raymond Moody.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 25 August 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences are Biblical.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences Have Been Recorded Throughout History.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences of Hindus.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
---. “Near-Death Experiences of Muslims: The Way of the Heart.” Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife. n.p., n.d. Web. 2 September 2013.
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