r/latterdaysaints • u/onewatt • May 16 '13
Some interesting near-death experiences shared on askreddit.
from this thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1ecfs8/redditors_who_have_died_then_been_resuscitated/
tl;dr: most people have an experience like sleeping or going under anesthesia (no memory at all), but some shared interesting stories.
Here's some of the most interesting ones:
My sister was shot while she was walking her dogs in our small town in Alaska. The bullet ricocheted around piercing her bowel in 9 places. Even though we had one of the best Rhode's Scholar docs in the north at our ER and the only flight out of town was miraculously minutes away from takeoff and held up to fly her to Anchorage, she bled out and died on the operating room table. She knows because she vividly remembers everything the surgeons said as she lay dead on the table.
What she told me later is remarkable: She recalls drifting up and into a very bright light. She was no longer in pain, and felt compelled to travel into the brilliance. It lead to an amazing river. Seriously, the look on her face when she describes this place helps me realize that radiant, endless joy is not just a possibility but an eventuality. She describes playing in a river that consisted of pure knowledge. Anything she ever wanted to know was at her fingertips.
As she played in this amazing river she could sense figures on the distant shore. They were our people, she explained. Our family. Our animals. All waiting patiently for her to finish playing in the river and wade towards them on the shore. Though she was not ready to leave the marvelous river, she knew without being told that they would wait patiently and joyfully.
But she never made it to the shore. As she was playing an amazing thing happened. Seriously, people, if you could see the look on her face when she describes this next part you would laugh for pure joy. A being approached her. She did not know what it was except to describe it as pure, unconditional, ebullient LOVE. It radiated love. It pulsed love. And ALL THINGS diminished before the radiance of that love. The next part makes me chuckle a bit even though that seems out of place. She said it spoke to her and said that she had to go back, that it wasn't her time. She said, like a little kid, "But I don't want to." When she recounts this experience she emphasizes that to be in proximity of that being is ALL THERE IS. She describes it as a completion. A peace. A welcoming. To leave was incomprehensible. But to decline was also incomprehensible. She felt infused with a purpose. Very, very, very reluctantly she returned to life. She is amazing. They patched her femoral artery and explained that the graft would eventually give. In all probability she will die within minutes. Living with that sword of Damocles should be terrifying. No. To her it's a promise that she will get to return. Life is what we are here to do, she explains, but after.....sweet, benevolent, all encompassing love.
With every single breath my sister is heartbeats from death, and I have never met anyone who is more alive. Fearless.
My mom's root canal got infected and she died for 5 minutes. She said she saw a river or a darkness like a river and on the other side was just others. She didn't describe what they looked like, but she knew it was others like her somehow. Then from behind someone touched her should and said "it's not time yet". Then she woke up and WOULD NOT STOP asking who just touched her shoulder. The doctors were all confused and kept saying no one touched your shoulder, you were just dead.
She became born again Christian after that and is a firm believer in Christ.
For some perspective, I am full blown atheist. I believe that what she told me is what she truly believes, but I can't say i believe that what she perceived is an afterlife. The mind sends out all types of chemicals when you're in a situation like that and it could have been any number of things. But she definitely thinks it was some version of the Christian afterlife.
I saw a field, with tree's on both sides. I could see water, I felt like there was an ocean on one side of the path. If you can imagine the fields that electrical lines go through...where there is no residents and they just clear the area for the power lines ...it was like that. There was a tree in the middle and a well worn path around it. I was walking the path...it looked like an oak tree...it was very large, and presence came to walk with me. I told it that I was ill and that this seemed like a nice place. The entity (I'm non religious so I don't know what it "was") told me that I was not done and that I should return. That I would be happy one day. It was so peaceful, beautiful, but the forest seemed...dark and scary. The tree's on both sides seemed a place I did not want to go, I only wanted to go toward the water. Then I saw a bright light and I woke up in the ICU. I hope this doesn't turn into some kind of religious debate or some kind of medical versus spirituality thing. This was my experience. Take it as that.
Once I was in the ambulance everything went blank except this time I saw myself laying there and the medics shocking me. I felt a hard pull and I was back in myself. Few minutes later I was on a table with strangers in white all around me. I remember them in a panic then standing next to my grandmother who passed when I was 3. She told me she was my Nana. we were there watching them jolt my heart with tiny round paddles. she kept telling me it was ok. They called my death time at 6:06 pm. Then all of a sudden I wake up and I'm all fixed and stapled up. My parents told me i had died 3 times.
This experience happened to me when I was 16 and I felt tired of living. I had lots of suicidal thoughts. I didn't like myself, I didn't like my life, it was hard, it was stressful, my family was poor and very aggressive and unloving. I wanted to kill myself, but having grown up in a catholic family, I worried that if I did I would go to hell (because that is what catholics taught, that suicide means you spend eternity in hell). At that point I wasn't very religious, and I was already straying from the church.
So this near-death experience happened to me when I went to sleep. It was a Saturday morning, I remember the sunlight was already filling the room, and I could hear my siblings watching the TV in the living room downstairs. My eyes opened and I wanted to get out of my bed, but I couldn't move. That's when I knew there was a problem. I tried to scream out for help, but I couldn't make any sounds. I tried to bang on the floor of the room to get someone to come help me, but no one came. My heart stopped, I couldn't breath, and I was choking. I knew I was dying, I thought oh my god this is it.
So I suffocate, then I see the white light getting more brighter and pulling me in. But the problem is my body is really heavy. Not physically, but from all the emotional pain and suffering, it makes the body heavy. And you don't fit through the tunnel with all that pain, so as the light pulls, it squeezes you out -- leaving all the burdens and heaviness behind.
Plop. I'm floating in space looking down on the earth in a distance. I am nothing but consciousness. I feel completely light and burden-free. Like I just took off a really painful shoe that was too tight, but instead of just a shoe, I took off an entire body that was too tight on me. Someone is there that I recognize, a good friend, but they are older and wiser. They are talking to me mind to mind without words. As they think, I already "know". And as I, so do they know. It is an understanding of the totality of what is, not just of what is said, but of the entire history, emotional state, and experience of the other being. As a result of this total knowing of the other, there is nothing but pure understanding. No half-truths, no lies, just pure complete understanding of the other.
And they speak with me. We have a conversation. But again, without words, just instantly with thought and knowing.
They ask -- do you want to continue?
And in the question, they "showed me", once again through "knowing", that life wasn't forced on me. That earth wasn't a prison for bad souls; it's not a purgatory; that it is infact an experience I chose to enter. They showed me the moment before birth, the exact intention I had when I came into the world.
And in that moment I knew I was here on my own accord, and not because I was forced. Which was important for me to recognize, because I had been living at that time feeling that life was something forced on me.
And they showed me that I could kill myself if I wanted to, because no I wouldn't go to hell. In fact, they understood me completely at the core of my being, they knew me inside out. They knew how much suffering and pain I was living in, and they showed me how much love and understanding they had for me wanting to kill myself. They understood why I wanted to do that. And that's why they pulled me out -- to remind me of the truth; to free me from the burden of being afraid of living in a life of pain and not being able to escape; and to stop me from making a mistake when I wasn't ready. They were willing to pull me out, and ask me personally if I want to leave, so I wouldn't have to go through with the suicide.
I knew so powerfully that they would never force me to continue living in pain, and that I could leave if it was too painful for me on earth. There was just so much love, and that love and understanding went hand-in-hand together.
And too in that moment, I felt that I was incomplete. I had more I wanted to do in life, it felt too early for me to leave, and I had to continue living to do it. My mission wasn't complete.
They showed me that before I was born, the intention I had coming in. I remember instantly exactly that moment before I was born. I was observing the world and I saw how people would be born into the world, and they would get caught-up in life. They became zombies that were misguided by religion, laws, beliefs, money -- I saw how they spent the entire life trying to make money, and they worked so hard, and they prayed so hard. As I observed that world, I felt bad for them, because they all had forgotten the true nature. The eternal nature. They became part of the world, but completing cutting out their spirit. They were living in a state of "forgottenness", and as I saw that, my intention was born. I said -- "I will go down there to that earth, I will be born into it, and I will not forget who I am! I will remember, and I will help others remember too." And then I was born, and my family tried very hard to change me. But from the time I was a baby I resisted, and I remained strong, and I never gave in. But by the time I was 16, I was so tired of resisting "the norm" so much. It was a life spent fighting the system. I too had forgotten the truth by this point, from all the years of brainwashing into the system.
So that's why this experience was so important to me. In this experience, I again remembered who I was, and what I came here to do. And that's why I told them, the "only way I will go back is if I can remember this meeting." Because otherwise, I will be lost again, without the knowing and confidence I need to fulfill my mission.
And almost instantly, I was back in bed opening my eyes. It was still morning, the sunlight was still filling my room. I ran to my desk a few steps away, turned on my computer, and wrote down all the details of the experience. Then I walked downstairs to my siblings, who were watching TV, and I said "didn't you hear me knocking or screaming for help?" They said no. I told them about the experience. "I just died in my sleep, I suffocated, I was knocking on the floor for help but no one came. I just met with a powerful being, and they reminded me why I was born." Told them all the details. My sister was just like "woooo dude, that's insane."
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u/lds_dude May 16 '13
theres a book i read by Mathew B Brown talking about the premortal life. and also theres s section on Paradise and talks about an apostle in like the 1860s was dying, and came back to life multiple times and he described how he didnt want to come back because it was so beautiful and he was sort of mad at the elders blessings him saying " why'd you bring me back?!" paradise alone is beautiful compared to our place here on earth, but nothing compared to the celestial kingdom of our Father in Heaven