Sansego made a comment yesterday, asking for a post on near death experiences – NDEs. We thought we had posted something on NDEs last year, but couldn’t find it. So here is one of the best we’ve ever read, which we included in 7 Secrets. We hope Gypsy doesn’t mind our posting it here.
Before we get to that, here’s an odd little synchro. When I went to Sansego’s blog to link it to this post, I discover the title of his current post: Near Death Experiences.
++
In the summer of 1966, Jenean Gilstrap was a 23-year-old mother with a newborn daughter. One night she woke up, unable to breathe, and her husband rushed her to the hospital. By the time a battery of tests had been performed, she was breathing normally, but the final diagnosis was that a large gallstone had slipped out of a duct and obstructed a breathing pathway.
Shortly afterward, she went into the hospital for surgery. She remembers talking to her surgeon before she was put under, then nothing until she felt an excruciating pain in her stomach. “I remember thinking my surgeons had lied to me about the procedure. This felt as if my stomach had literally been ripped apart and a ball of fire shoved down inside it. I felt extreme coldness on the outside of my right hand, but I wasn’t able to move or speak. Then I heard someone frantically say, ‘She’s going down! I can’t get her up!”’
Jenean started rising out of her body from the top of her head, and was able to “see” everyone in the room, including herself, her body. “As I continued to move upward toward the ceiling, I remember looking down at myself and feeling as if the ‘me of me’ were being pulled away like a soft glove being slipped off.” She continued to watch all the activity from her spot in the upper right corner of the operating room.
At first, Jenean was frightened. She knew she was dying and didn’t want to be dead. “I was young and had just begun my life with my children. As I continued to have this mental dialogue with myself, I became more aware of my new surroundings and self. I focused less on my body, where the doctors were still scrambling and shouting orders. I felt surrounded by a white softness that became an all-encompassing, purely unadulterated whiteness of light.”
The light called to her. She could see a silver-gray cord that connected her soul to her body. But the farther she moved from it, the greater her realization “that the thing called “death” was not the end of anything. It was the beginning. There was nothing to fear.”
She heard voices around her, relatives who had been dead for years, some of whom she had never met in the physical world. “But in this world, I knew who they each were.”
At the moment of complete surrender to the light, a voice asked who would raise her children. That’s when she returned to her body. She was angry at the doctors for bringing her back and catapulted out again.
Jenean remembers following her body out of OR and down a hallway, where her family could see her one last time. “I could hear them plainly and was infuriated that they were making plans and arrangements for me. “In that moment, I knew I was going back, that no one was going to raise my children but me.”
When Jenean regained consciousness, both surgeons came to see her and told her they’d “almost lost her.” She replied that they had lost her and related what she’d heard in the OR. They confirmed her experiences and said that they’d heard of such things, but she was the first patient to ever talk about it.
Some months later, Jenean woke one morning with the warmth of the sun coming through her windows, birds singing in a nearby tree. “I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and realized that, at the age of 23, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt the warmth of the sun or heard birds singing. I knew I had to leave my unhappy marriage and take my children away from the unhappiness and into the warm sunshine and singing birds. I turned from the mirror, went to my closet, packed one suitcase and a diaper bag and walked out of that house, never looking back.”
nancy – do you remember the book title/author from the 20's?
oh, and i was lucky enough to attend one of kubler-ross' workshops in houston back in the late 70's – cannot even describe how fantastic!
wv= extultri = exult
Very interesting! I nearly died 7 years ago, no bells and whistles though, just pulmonary embolisms that took my breath away and then hospital for a month. After that I thought, why didnt I get an NDE? Darnit! But I HAVE had out of body experiences since I was a child. Mostly, people look at me like I am a freak if I say this, so I dont tell many people.
Where do i start…Hmmmm…..
Firstly, I am sure Jenean's wonderful story has been posted here before. I know I have read it at least twice before – it's a pearler!
Secondly, It is really interesting to read everyone else's equally marvelous accounts and comments.
This blog sure is a landing pad. Perhaps we are all from the same soul group, or at least neighbouring soul groups. I feel really familiar and comfortable here.
I have done a lot of reading on NDE's and I love every single one I have read, even though I especially appreciate the way Dr Jeffrey Long has tried to prove them to others in a logical way.
NDE accounts have made me realise just how important the gift of mediumship is, in spreading the knowledge of our true selves – Souls hanging out in gift wrap.
Mediumship allows communication with those who are in the Light,and the NDE's give us an insight into their activities there, as Connie said. 🙂
wv = ameti
Hey Vicki. What a mind-boggling NDE you had! Drowning! Uh! It's my conviction that because we incarnate repeatedly into so many times and places, our souls experience everything there is to experience. Sometimes we are male, sometimes female. Sometimes red, yellow, black, white, murderers, thieves, physicians, ministers, teachers, the gamut of all. I think as we grow and learn and evolve through each experience, God expands exponentially. But, that's just a simplification of my own personal spiritual concepts, and because of this, I tend to accept that each of us is exactly where we need to be, have chosen to be, at any given time and place. That brings me great comfort when the challenges become difficult to handle! cj
So much to read. what great discussions.
Connie – I just rewatched Close Encounters… And am not surprised to see it mentioned here and by you!
Gypsy-your description was beautiful.
Sansego- Glad you will accept other responses.
I drowned at 16, but only drifted up and saw myself lying on the beach as they administered CPR. Someone was behind me and kept asking me different questions. I remember feeling so peaceful and warm until the voice behind me told me to look closer at the girl on the beach and I slowly realized she looked like me, and then BAM!
I was on the beach looking up at the sky, water was coming out of everywhere including my eyes and ears and they were clamping an oxygen mask on me and I was in so much pain and gasping for breath.
One reason why I personally feel it was real and not a hallucinatio is that I still remember it like it just happened and this was 36 years ago.
One last thing, years ago in deep meditation I asked about what happens to people who claim to hate god or are atheists etc. And also I had wondered about all of the different faiths. I was told that at the time of death the god energy simply asks," So what was it like to live your life not believing in me?( not loving me, as a Jew etc. )
I was told that we are all here to learn and try new things.
From that moment on I no longer worry about peoples different viewpoints or what they think of mine because it is all good.
This sometimes frustrates people because they try to get me into argumentative discussions but I just smile and enjoy learning about their viewpoint and the fact that so often once they see my peace that they begin wanting more info. On what I believe.
Oh, I got the book " Travels" by Chricton and loved it especially the chapter about the cactus.Thanks for rec. It.
Wv: enting… Ending?
After my Dad died…most of you know he died of cancer at age 42 when I was 18…and we were in the enormous funeral home chapel because there was standing room only at his service. The family was secluded over to one side of the pulpit and there was a purple velvet drape separating us from the congregation. They couldn't see us, but we could see them. Daddy's casket was open in front of the pulpit, which was just in front of us. Anyway, the fragrance of the thousands of flowers were overwhelming. I remember gazing through my tears past the velvet drape towards the black of the big chapel, and my Dad was standing there behind everyone. I saw him so clearly. It wasn't my imagination. he looked wonderful. He was wearing his "everyday" casual clothes and he appeared in perfect health. His eyes caught mine and held them, and my tears vanished. I knew, I KNEW, Daddy was alive and well and with us. I saw him, felt him, smelled his Old Spice Cologne that for a few moments obliterated the fragrance of the flowers. From that moment, I knew we go on living. We never die. cj
gee – so much to which i want to respond and so many distractions here and i'm online only a few minutes at a time these days – sorry, didn't mean to bore – in any event, rob, you expressed the jesus prayers so well – took the words out of my mouth – and dear cj – but of course, i remember the johnny incident – how could i not? 😉 and then, all the other connections – absolutely astounding – and i've no doubt when we meet "in person" this go round that there will be similar physical characteristics/mannerisms as well – that we will recognize each in the other – i'm glad you brought up the point of the term "near-death" because even for me, once i "surrendered" – in that flicking mini-second, i was no longer of the physical world at all – it was in the instant of "surrender" when i was no longer wondering where i was, no longer cared where "it" was because i knew "i" lived on – was still living – more vitally than i had ever physically lived – and when i "let go" in that instantaneous micro-second "i" was on that other side – anyway, the point is that your point is very well taken and more than valid – in the early to mid-80's i was contacted by kenneth ring who also has done a lot of research in this area and has a number of books out that are great reads to anyone interested – he was involved in another research project when he contacted me and while i did not choose to participate then, i continued to follow his work – anyway, check him out, as well –
oh, and one more thing lest i forget – when cj mentioned "watching" the medical staff attempt to revive her, same thing here – but what i think is really important is that according to my surgeons, my eyes had pads taped over them during the surgery – and even without that impairment to physical vision, the sterile field of the surgery totally obstructed my physical view of them and/or my body [according to them] – in terms of "hearing" – i did hear everything that was said from the moment i began to "leave" and even was totally cognizant of the conversation and people walking my stretcher from the OR to the room where my H's family and their minister were waiting for their "good-byes" to me – i remember to this day exactly where each person was sitting and/or standing as they pushed the stretcher through the doorway – the minister was standing in the doorway and moved to his right and backward when the stretcher approached – once through the doorway, i saw my ex-MIL sitting in the first chair by the door and my two surgeons followed the stretcher in and stood over to the left of my body – and you're so right about the MU trish – and its location – also, there can be no doubt, i think, of the nature of those of us who gather here at the MU land site of trish and rob – ok, over and out, boys and girls!
wv= vionares – which i saw as "visionaries" ? 😉
I make it a habit to listen to the religious rants of other folks, as I am surrounded by born-again Baptists in my husband's entire family. I listen, but make no comments. One of them is a Baptist pastor. I was flabbergasted one day when they were all discussing the "vengeful wrath of God". Had to bite my tongue. D, surely your baby girl was an "angel unaware"!
The anguish of losing a child is unfathomable, yet she was such a blessing in her brief journey here.
And you have the certain comfort of knowing she'll be right there waiting when you step across. Still, no words can express the grief…..cj
Trish & Rob- others have said the same thing about Laryssa, including people who knew her.
Sansego– I was shocked to discover something about the motive behind the "hibernation" of human bodies preach about by Christianity. This idea created a need for cemeteries. Cemeteries required the need for large pieces of property. Back in the early days of Catholicism and through the Crusades, land = power. This ideology (which had nothing to do w/ the teachings of Jesus) earned the church land, power & $$$. example: In the late 1980's the Catholic church was the largest land owner in the USA. (source Robert Anton Wilson)
One evangelical lady told me that she believes that when we die, we go to "sleep" until "the Resurrection" at the coming millennium (after the apocalypse and all that doomsday stuff). She said all those people claiming NDEs are delusional because there's no way to transcend death until Jesus comes to resurrect all the bodies!
To me, that idea never made any sense. Why would God want people to be in hibernation for thousands of years after the body dies? The body is not important. Its just what's set up for the physical earth. Apparently, a lot of evangelical Christians claim to believe that, but I don't think they really thought that deeply about what they claim to believe…because it simply does not make logical sense.
Thanks for answering my questions, Connie! Your explanation makes sense to me. Next time some strict scientist/atheist/materialist tries to dismiss NDEs, I'll be able to ask better questions to see what kind of ridiculous answers I'll get. 🙂
wv: ditapi (die tapi? die happy?)
We're delighted there are so many people who enjoy discussing the same stuff that fascinates us!
Debra -the more I learn about Laryssa, the more convinced I am that she was an enlightened being.
A very powerful experience! And a great discussion, too. I'm also thankful that this blog is place for people to talk about experiences that superstitious people are afraid to discuss.
I've also had a near death experience. When I am physically stronger, I'll share it.
When my almost 2 yr old daughter died, I was holding her. There was this radiant illumination in the room, and a feeling of peace… something I didn't expect.
May I share a story with you? My older sister is a Mensa..IQ off the charts, with a Masters in nursing. She's a fundamental evangelical Christian. (Go figure!) While visiting her in MO one day, she informed me adamantly that she believes in The Rapture. (I make it a point to never get into spiritual discussions with her, but she told me she's "worried about my soul".) I said, "Sis, may I ask you a question?" Reply, "Yes". I asked her, "What do you believe is going to happen to you when you die?" She instantly replied, "I'm going to Heaven!" I said, "OK. Your body is dead, you're going to heaven. In what form?" My soul" she answered. I said, "OK. Your body is dead and cremated, and your soul is in Heaven. Then what?" She looked at me as if I were crazy. "What do you mean?" she asked me. "Are you going to grow wings, float on clouds playing a harp, walk on golden streets, sit on the right hand of God, WHAT?" I wasn't being sarcastic or facetitious. I truly wanted to know what she believes will happen once she is in her Christian heaven. She was quiet, then she said, "I don't know". I gently said, "Sis, that's the difference beyween you and me. I have the conviction of what will happen to me when I die and my soul leaves my body." She would go no farther with the discussion.
Enuf said. cj
There's no convincing the dwellers of non-mystical overground of any non-physical reality.
The mystical underground, it seems, is located somewhere between the realms of the self-righteous religious and the no-nonsense scientific short-sighters.
Just a footnote: when my death occurred in 1966 from massive hemorrhage, the bleeding ceased when I flatlined. This is normal.
That's when they started pumping transfusions in and injecting my heart with epinephrine. I watched all this without emotion from above my body. I wasn't feeling anything at all from that body anymore. I was detached. Unlike Gyps, I didn't see the cord. I simply was completely separated emotionally and physically from the body on the bed, and I gradually moved away from it after watching them frantically trying to bring me back. Later I was able to tell them what they had said, verbatim, while my brain was dead. They can't explain that in any clinical terms. We are not bodies housing souls. We are souls animating bodies. cj
Sansego, I'm really happy you're going to allow "anonymous" comments on your blog! Please trust that my reasons for not obtaining a google name/account is a very legitimate reason connected to a specific area of my work, and that I never try to be cowardly or hide behind anonymity. I will always initial my comments. Regarding the death experiences…I refuse to call them Near-Death, you are right on. When a patient flatlines and there is no heartbeat for six minutes, that brain is not functioning on any of its levels. Period. I did ER Trauma nursing for a long time, including respiratory therapy on accident and/or cardiac patients, etc., and I can assure you when they're dead, they're dead. The brain does not continue to send neural pathway signals when it has died, any more than a body will bleed once the BP is gone. And, the nay-sayers can never explain how the patient has an awareness of everything that was being said and done when the brain and heart were in the dead zone. cj
Thanks for posting this! I love reading about NDEs! I've read a few of Dannion Brinkley's but not the last one that came out. His case is very compelling because of the change in his character. Reminds me of Saul/Paul in the Bible…and he saw a blinding white light, too!
I loved reading about your NDE, Connie. Wow…I can't believe you experienced it three times. It frustrates me when my scientific-minded, atheist friends dismiss such experiences as a chemical reaction in the brain because its seems like one would be able to tell the difference between a real experience and a dream or dreamlike / drug-like mental "trip." Some people just won't believe that life exists outside of our fleshy body.
Also, I thought about the request and will allow anonymous comments on my blog. My blog is diverse, and not specific to one topic. A reflection of me: very diverse in interests. I'm not perfect, either, and the blog reflects this. But, I appreciate honest dialogue and understanding others and sharing personal experiences in an attempt to become a better person.
Love that this blog is focused on synchronicities, though, and features comments by many of the same people, as it feels more and more like a community now. Definitely interested in reading more about what people think of NDEs and the belief by some that its just the delusions of an oxygen deprived brain. How does a person who experienced it know that it really happened? I'd say that evidence by doctors that the brain activity flatlined is all the evidence we need, but skeptics still find a way to argue that there's another possibility other than the most obvious one: life transcends death.
wv: egati
Good point, Connie, about being a bit 'different' here. Get out into the world and talk about synchronicity and there are a lot of blank stares.
One person, a librarian, told Trish that it was a silly concept. A lot of people don't get it. They'll pray their hearts out to Jesus, but tell them they can connect thru synchronicity to a greater reality that exists outside of cause and effect, linear time, and 3D space–and they freak. One born-again neighbor told Trish the other day not to talk about such things in his house. Yikes!!
Nancy…do you remember the name of the book on NDEs from the '20s?
– R
"psi mentor"….wow, how significant is THAT! I have a theory, Trish and Rob, that this little community of souls that gathers here on this synchronicity blog, if we were to get together in a physical group and share our life stories, I sense that each of us has had very unusual, extraordinary experiences. I'm not meaning that we are "special", etc., only that I think we are "different" from the mainstream, and that we come here as sisters and brothers in spirit who have had peculiar lives. It reminds me of the movie I mentioned recently, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND,in which people from many places were "called" to the landing site.
I think this blog is our "landing site",for lack of a more apt description, and we are here for reasons unknown. Isn't it simply magnificent? I'm so grateful to know everyone here, and to listen to all the experiences, thoughts, ideas, philosophies. It never ceases to bring wonder and amazement. cj
I mean to add in the post that Jung had a near-death experience after a heart attack in 1944. He believed the experience was real – not imagined. In his autobiography, he described it:
"…I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which past, present, and future are one. Everything that happened in time had been brought together into a concrete whole. Nothing was disturbed over time, nothing could be measured by temporal concepts."
the wv for this comment is a riot: psymentr – psi mentor? That would describe what Jung is for me.
A powerful story – there were children to raise – so still a lot to do here.
Jenean, I honestly sense that we HAVE met in our out-of-body excursions somewhere along the way! If not during the erroneously-labeled NDEs, then during our sleep visits to OtherWhere. I've never met another individual in my life whose experiences mirror my own, and within the identical timelines and often with other people in our lives who have the same names. (Remember our "Johnny'?? And the timing?? Inexplicable.) We shall surely re-join our same soul family unit when we're finished here! cj
I remember reading the story in your book. It is very much like so many other NDEs that I've studied over the years. So much has been written on the subject – starting with Kubler-Ross and Brian Weiss, but the most interesting book I read had been written in the 1920's by a husband/wife doctor team. They had noticed patients "going back and forth" between life and death and wrote about it.
Fascinating subject.
and one can't forget robert monroe in terms of pioneers in this area –
😉
you know, the thing is that i remember all the feelings of this experience still – as if it had just happened moments ago – the physical sensations and all the others – clearly – i remember the cold on my hand, the pit of fire in my stomach, the indescribable unadulterated pure peace – PURE – the fighting "going" and then the surrender to the purity – and the resolve to come back for my children – that was so many many years ago – my children are all grown and their children are grown with children of their own – so i continue to have many many things here to do now – would that everyone could experience this but once, even – then they would "know" –
and dear cousin! speechless is just an understatement with still another parallel! i'm so surprised we've not literally run into each other around one of these physical and/or non-physical corners! and i too am so so happy that we have found each other here in the land of synchronicity/MU – 🙂
hmmmmm…..wv=fadeu = fade you???
I need to post-script that I did indeed go on to have two more little boys. The "Voice" was right! I had told my new OB at the diagnosis of pregnancy #2 that it was a boy, (no ultrasounds then), and told him there would be a third one as well. It happened.
Sansego, (my new friend, after such a rocky beginning! We're both hard-headed Capricorns who met butting horns!), if you want to read more about NDEs, Dannion Brinkley's books are incredibly insightful and inspiring. He was a really bad person, was stuck by lightning, died, came back with profound healing abilities and psychic powers, a totally new person. cj
OMG! Oh my God! Jenean, you and I have never spoken of this. I wish we had, because it underscores even more of our "parallel life" experiences! I'm sitting here shivering. In March of 1966 (YES! 1966!!!) I gave birth to our first baby, a son. I had carried him not for nine months but for ten, before the quack who was my OB at the time decided to induce labor. The baby was fine, just huge. But three days after he was born, I hemorrhaged literally to death. I bled out, and as the code team frantically tried to give me more blood and shoot epinephrine directly into my heart, blood came out of me faster than they could get it in. My body was dead. My heart ceased to beat. My brain flatlined. I don't recall how I moved out of my body, but I vividly recall hovering near the ceiling and watching the doctors and nurses in their panic. I had been in terrible pain from full-blown peritonitis, with a fever of 105, but as I hovered at the edge of that hospital room, I felt…..relieved. There was no awareness of my physical distress, and it was pure bliss. I stopped looking at what was happening below me and felt myself gliding away from that room, farther and farther. I didn't pass through a tunnel, exactly. It was more as if I stepped through a "door" or a "gate" onto a kind of brightly-lit path or beam that seemed to be tugging me towards the most brilliant spectrum of colors, indescribable..and I was so eager to reach those colors. But a voice, coming from someone I didn't see, very clearly said to me, "Connie, you can't stay here. You have a new little boy to raise, and two more little boys coming. You have to go back." I did not want to come back. I was filled with such comfort and peace and joy and felt angry that something seemed to be relentlessly pulling me back. I looked down and was in the room again, then very suddenly, with a severe jolt that seemed like an electrical shock, I was back in that ravaged body. The code team was ecstatic, but I wasn't. I spent 31 days in what was then an ICU unit. It was written in my chart that for six minutes I had flatlined, with no cerebrall activity and no pulse. I was dead, not "nearly dead", as the so-called experts call it. There are no words in any lanuguage that can adequately describe the experience of being "dead". There's no such thing. And the love and comfort and peace? Dear Cousin, I'm stunned. Here we are again, you and I, having had almost identical experiences, and at the same time!
I subsequently had two more so-called NDEs. All three resulted from hemorrhaging to death. My third escape" from this prison of flesh in 1987 lasted a little more than four minutes, according to the chart. No one can explain how I continue to have a functional brain. Dear Cousin Jenean, I send you love and hugs. I am so happy we found each other here in MU, and have no explanation for our parallel lives that we've discussed in private. But these deaths in 1966….no words. cj
Very interesting indeed. It seems that this experience was what she needed to push her finally into a different direction, down a different path of life. It must have been a difficult decision to leave and yet this moment offered clarity and courage. Those moments when you just feel "God's" – "Source" etc. love are powerful and you just feel the security in knowing your decisions are the right ones. Great story, thanks for sharing and good for you Jenean.
This story really is one of the most powerful we've ever read on near death experiences.
Quite an amazing story. She had some more living to do before she could enter that soft white light. I too believe that the transition is not painful and the new place to be a welcoming and good one…when the time comes. Thanks for sharing.
Whale