Experiences of the Nearly Dead, Part 1
Stories from the hereafter
The idea of nearly dead people temporarily visiting an afterlife is fascinating and a fun one to explore. To get a feel for this subject, I watched three videos of people describing near-death experiences (NDEs).
I believe that all three of them are fairly well-known in NDE circles. They all wrote books. You’ll find links to each video in case you want to see them. Warning: they each run for 70–80 minutes and move at a glacial pace.
Nanci Danison
The first interview I watched was with Nanci Danison, who says she had her near-death experience in 1994. She wrote her first book about it 13 years later. Today you can visit her online store and buy five books full of wisdom learned on the “other side.”
You can also purchase audio recordings, DVDs, recorded webinars, coaching sessions, and interactive workshops. Examples include a webinar, Aliens Seen in the Afterlife, and a video, Angels, Guides, Ghosts, Demons, and Other Spiritual Beings.
Danison says she was in a hospital for medical imaging when she died from anaphylactic shock due to an allergic reaction to medication. She was sitting in a chair while medical staff were engaged elsewhere. The hospital workers didn’t notice that she was dead, and when she “woke up,” she didn’t tell anyone at the hospital that she’d been temporarily deceased.
Subjectively, Danison had what we might call a classic NDE. She describes the now-familiar story of seeing light, feeling love and bliss, reviewing her life, meeting familiar faces, and not wanting to go back to her body. She also met with celestial beings to discuss her purpose in life.
Danison says she “died” yet again a couple months later. When asked how she died the second time, she says, “I don’t know,” but explained that her health was quite poor at the time. In the second death experience, she met with a council of beings and they told her to get on with her life’s mission of telling everyone what she had learned.
Vincent Tolman
The death experience of Vincent Tolman came in 2003. He published a book about it 19 years later. In addition to buying his book, you can go on spiritual retreats with him at a Utah ranch. An extended seven-day retreat, limited to five people, is $4,444. You can also purchase one-on-one video mentoring sessions for an introductory price of $299 (regularly $500).
In his interview, Tolman described how he accidentally overdosed on a body-building supplement. He ended up passing out in a fast food restaurant’s restroom. EMTs arrived 30 minutes later, tried to revive him, and ultimately put him in a body bag. While driving back to the hospital in an ambulance, one medic had a feeling that Tolman wasn’t dead yet, so he unzipped the body bag and managed to bring him back to life with a defibrillator.
His story has many of the familiar NDE tropes: floating over his body, life review, feelings of love, not wanting to go back, and meeting a saintly telepathic spirit being. He saw that heaven is a glowing planet realm with flowers and grass. He learned 10 principles of living to share with mankind.
Betty Eadie
Betty Eadie “died” in 1971. Like Tolman, it was 19 years later when she published her first book about it. Today she has a website featuring animated flowing clouds, and this is where she promotes her four books and other activities.
In her interview, Eadie explained that she’d had surgery in 1971 and spent the night in a hospital afterwards. That night she began to hemorrhage blood and died. She separated from her body and floated over it. Then three men in brown robes and golden belts appeared. Then there was darkness, a tunnel, a light, and a meeting with Jesus.
Eadie also met with a council of special beings that told her she had a mission to fulfill, to spread the word about her experience. A current project is to raise enough money to have a film made of her first book.
The many types of afterlives
Watching the videos was a tough slog. If you’ve ever listened to someone describe a dream they had in lengthy detail, that’s what watching them is like. “And then the angels came, and I flew into the air, and there was a great golden light …” Soon the listener also wants to nod off into dreamland.
There are many more afterlife details beyond the little I’ve written here, of course. It surprising how much they remember given the long interval between “dying” and writing their books.
I didn’t realize until now there’s an entire industry revolving around claims of being previously dead. There are dozens of people recording videos, writing websites, and offering wisdom based what they learned in the great beyond. There’s an entire genre of books sometimes called “Heaven Tourism.”
I took a brief tour through some of these. Many (like Danison and Tolman) describe a reincarnation scheme for the afterlife. Some, like Eadie, do not. Others go with a strictly Christian Bible version of heaven, and some offer a mash-up of various spiritual tropes.
Revelations from Heaven by Randy Kay describes how he almost died, went to heaven and learned, among other things, that Jesus literally collects our tears in a bottle when we cry. The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven tells the story of Alex Malarkey, who “died” in an auto accident at age six and saw the gates of heaven and the beings within. He later confessed to making up his entire afterlife story for attention.
I think we can safely say there’s no consensus regarding the post-death world, so you can choose to believe the person whose story most appeals to you.
Are you dead or is it in your head?
My next article will look into what qualifies as dead, why NDEs may be similar from person to person, and related topics.
By the way, I’ve heard that heaven is a place on earth.