Episode 208: Near-death Experiences & Lessons Learned from the Light

sharing about the wisdom from near death experiences. And yes, he was the very first to coin the term near death experience. But today I'd like to talk about another pioneer. Many years ago, when I was on my own journey to explore the topic of the afterlife and calm my fears about death, I found a book called Lessons from

the Light written by doctor Kenneth Ring. I was bold, found his email address and wrote to him, And what I didn't expect was an ongoing pen pal friendship with this interesting man so passionate about the afterlife and about

near death experiences. Doctor Kenneth Ring, or Ken as he'd rather be called, has been around since the early days of the near death experience research back in the mid seventies, and he's also the co founder and past president of the International Association for Near Death Studies, also known as

i AMS. Kenneth Ring, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut and an internationally recognized authority on the subject of near death experiences, which he has written many books, in over one hundred articles, and the founding editor of the Journal of Near Death Studies, now in its thirtieth year. Doctor Ring has appeared on many television and radio programs. Some of the titles of his many books include Mindsight, near death, and out of body Experiences.

In the blind, he wrote a light hearted book called Waiting to Die, a Near death Researcher's most humorous reflections on his own end a game. In twenty twenty three, he published a near death researcher's notebook, What I've Learned About Dying, Death and the Afterlife. And just a few months ago he updated and republished his book that was first written almost twenty five years ago, called Lessons from the Light. What near death experiences teach us about living

in the here and now. Can I be one hundred percent honest with you? I found out not too long ago that this great man, who is rapidly approaching the age of ninety, is filled with aches and pains and is having a real tough time. It dawned on me that I never featured him as an expert on this show, and I want to dedicate this episode to him. I'd like to read a bit from his book, Lessons from

the Light. Unfortunately, my friend Ken is not well enough to do interviews, but I found an old, old talk that he did from over twenty five years ago that I think you'll enjoy listening to his research on the near death experiences is just as valid today as it was back then. My goal for today is certainly to share some near death experiences, but so much more than that, to let you know how important your life here on

earth is. That we will have a life review sometime, so we might as well make a good move today. Also the importance of self love, and I don't want doctor Kenneth Ring's work to be lost or forgotten. If you're a book lover like myself, I wholeheartedly recommend that you pick up a copy of his recently reprinted book Lessons from the Light. And secretly I'm hoping enough of us listeners get a copy and that it gets back to Ken that he's appreciated and that his life's work matters.

Let me read to you now. This is from his chapter called Children the Light. He says, several years ago, I received a letter from a mother who wanted to share with me a baffling conversation she had had with her young son. At the time it occurred. She told me that she only had a passing knowledge of an MDes, but what happened to her that day led her to want to know more about the subject. She explained. The incident concerning Stephen occurred when he was two years and

two months old. I was framing a picture of my grandmother and grandfather, who had been dead since before Stephen was born. Stephen was sitting nearby, playing with a toy and asked me what I was doing. I told him, and I explained that it was a picture of his grandma and grandpa, who are now dead. No one had ever discussed death with Stephen before, and all of a sudden I found myself with doing just that with no

prior preparation. I knew he would not drop the subject because he's a talkative, verbally precocious, and very curious child. I began by saying that they were no longer here with us, and they had gone to be with God. I was trying to think of what to say next, to elaborate while Stephen continued playing. But before I could say more, he said, in a very matter of fact way, when you die, it's a tunnel. This caught me totally off guard. I asked him to repeat it, and he did.

I asked him a couple of more questions in a half interested way, although I was intensely interested. I asked if there was anything in the tunnel. He replied that there was light in the tunnel. I asked what color the light was, and he replied white. I asked if when you die you go through the tunnel. He answered affirmatively yes. I asked what you do when you come to the end of the tunnel. He said, you go

to the light. He also volunteered that his grandpa, pointing to the picture, was there with a light on his head. He kept repeating the same information the next day in his father's presence. The mother adds this comment, I don't work outside the home, and Steven spent his entire life only exposed to me and my husband, except for one very rare, occasional babysitter who never discussed that subject. I knew that his reply did not come from a source

outside himself. What are the chances that all of the things he could have made up regarding a subject which he had no experience, he could have come up with going through a tunnel and going to a light. Doctor Ring says of a number of investigators who have pioneered studies of near death experiences in children, by far the

most pre imminent is a pediatrician named Melvin Morse. Morse's involvement with this field of near death studies was not deliberate and had occurred because of a converse he had with a seven year old patient by the name of Crystal. When Morse was a young intern working in Idaho, he found himself having to try to resuscitate a seven year old girl who had nearly drowned in a Ymca pool. The girl, Crystal, was hooked up to an artificial lung machine.

A cat scan showed that she had massive brain swelling, and Morse felt her chances of recovery were nearly zero. He was wrong. Three days later, she made a full recovery. Later on, Moose saw her for a follow up examination. As a physician, he was interested in such matters as brain tumors and childhood leukemia and had no interest whatsoever in near death experiences. I'm not even sure he had heard of them at the time. But Crystal was about

to change all that after Morse introduced himself. But before starting his examination, Crystal turned to her mother and said, that's the one with the beard. First there was this tall doctor who didn't have a beard, and then he came in. Morse thought correct, then she went on spontaneously to describe several other procedures that were performed on her,

including a nasal intubation, all of which statements were again accurate. Morse, who had been there during this time, knew that her eyes had been closed and she had been profoundly comatose during this entire period. He confessed that Crystal's telling him all of this in a matter of fact way amazed him. Intrigued, he asked, what do you remember about being in the swimming pool? You mean when I visited the Heavenly Father,

Crystal replied. Morse encouraged her to say more, but all Christel would say about that day was I met Jesus and the Heavenly Father. Then she got very shy and in and said no more. However, when Morse returned the next week, he tried again, and this time he succeeded in prying out Crystal's full story. Here it is. She remembered nothing of the drowning. However, in her words, I was dead, and then there was a tunnel. It was dark,

and I was scared. I couldn't walk. Then she told Morse that a woman named Elizabeth appeared and that the tunnel became bright. Cristel described Elizabeth as being tall with bright yellow hair. Then, according to Cristel, they entered heaven. Heaven was fun, she said, it was bright and there were lots of flowers. She said there was a border

around heaven that she could not see past. Cristel reported to Morse that she met many people there, including her dead grandparents, her maternal aunt, and Heather and Melissa, two souls waiting to be born. She also met the heavenly Father and Jesus, who asked her if she wanted to return to Earth. She said she wanted to stay with him.

Elizabeth asked her if she wanted to see her mother, and apparently at this time, Cristel then found herself able to see home and observed her mother cooking and her father, who was sitting on the couch, as well as her brothers and sisters playing. According to Morse, when Cristel later described this scene to her parents, they were astonished that she accurately described their clothing, their positions in the house,

and even the food the mother had been cooking. Cristel now felt that she did, after all, want to be with her mother, so she said yes to Elizabeth's question, and the next thing she knew, she awoke in the hospital. There are more stories about children in this chapter, but this one is by a nine year old girl, Nina, and part of her experience. She said, a pretty lady came up to me and help me because she knew I was scared. We went through a tunnel and went

into heaven. There are beautiful flowers there. I was with God and Jesus. They said I had to go back to be with my mother because she was upset. They said I had to finish my life. So I went back and I woke up. The tunnel I went through was long and dark. I went through it really fast. There was a light at the end. When we saw the light, I was very happy. This light was very bright. You know I want to read to you this whole book,

don't you. It's over three hundred and thirty pages. But what's important to me is when we get back from the break, I want you to hear from Ken Ring himself about his passion and about near death experiences, and then we'll see what other stories we have time for, and we will be back. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast a M paranormal podcast Network.

increasing speed. Often people say at the speed of light. Sometimes even faster than the speed of light. They move toward a radiantly beautiful light than when they enter into the aura or the atmosphere of this light. Many other things happen. They're flooded with a sense of universal knowledge, a sense of a complete, absolute, unconditional love. Sometimes they're asked to look at their life as though they have

a panoramic review of their entire life. Sometimes they meet a spiritual entity or the spirit of a deceased look one who tells them that they have to go back, and then they return to their body. Those are some of the staple elements that together define the typical near death experience narrative. We have evidence that I present some in my book Lessons from the Light, where it is very difficult to argue on the basis of this evidence that the experience is anything like an hallucination, a dream,

a fantasy, or something very subjective. And one source of evidence of this kind is when people who have near death experiences and then float out of the body then go on to describe unusual objects and unlikely locations that they could not possibly know by normal means, and then these objects are independently confirmed. In addition to that, and I have a chapter of this, Lessons from the Light.

We've done research on people who are blind, and even those who are blind from birth can report classic near death experiences and sometimes also describe being able to be aware of objects in their physical environment, which can be independently confirmed by external witnesses. So it's data like these, among others, that suggest that whatever this experience it is, it isn't nearly something that people are imagining or dreaming or making up. We don't have any scientific explanation for it,

at least from conventional science. But these facts and these observations are reported over and over again, so that science is going to have to take a lit into account, one way or another. This is another argument in favor of the idea that this is not an hallucination. First of all, hallucinations would probably be a lot more variable than the near death experiences, and they wouldn't be expected

to have these very profound and lifelong changes. And I've done follow up studies of people that have had near death experiences. Many years previously, and a lot of the after effects of the near death experiences are not just evanescent, but they last seemingly for a very long time, if not the entire duration of a person's life, and this has been found in a number of different studies that have been done in at least four different countries in

the world. Are a sense of a greater appreciation for life and for nature, a sense of greater feelings of self worth. One of the most pronounced effects has to do with feelings about other people. There's a much heightened compassion and caring and concern for other people, a greater love for other people. People that have near death experiences become less materialistic. They become less interested in impressing others

or being successful in conventional terms. They're much more spiritually oriented. They're not more religious interestingly enough, but they say that they're much more spiritually oriented. And many of them seem to develop or awaken through this experience unusual psychic gifts that they say either were not present before or have developed much more to a much greater extent than have been the case prior to their near death experience. I think that one of the ways to understand what the

near death experience is. It is a spiritual transformation, and it leads to many of the same kinds of effects, at least in some of our stronger cases, as those who are talked about, for example, in books on cosmic consciousness and very highly developed states of consciousness. It seems that the near death experience is almost like I would say, like a spiritual seed that's implanted in the individual and

then in the individual's life. As that seed is nurtured, it then begins to develop in this particular way, so that individuals do move into higher states of consciousness that are suggestive of well, I'm not saying these persons are enlightened. I would say that they're not, but they move in that direction. There's an unfolding of higher states of consciousness that seems to be potentiated by this experience. They care

more about other people. But in fact, as often happens when death or a near death incident occurs within a family, the strain on human relationships within the family or within the person's primary group is often very pronounced. So people have a difficult time working through these kinds of experiences and coming to terms with them and integrating them into their lives. So I'm not suggesting by any means that the kinds of transformative effects are easy or on the

well being of their relationships with others. It really takes a lot of work, and therapy and other kinds of supportive services are often needed to help people negotiate these rather difficult passages. And that's why with caution against making too it easy. An assumption of seeing the light and being enlightened. No, seeing the light is maybe just like the first step. Then people really awaken when they see the light. But the real work that they have to

do follows the experience. It's not done automatically simply by having it. Obviously, many people know about the light, they know about the auto body experience. But the thing that really is I think important about the near death experience, and in regard to the life review phenomenon, is it isn't just a life review. It's a reliving of your life.

And when people describe this, it's not always done in this way, but when people describe the full experience, it's every single act that you have done, every single book thought that you have thought, every single word that you have spoken. Suddenly all of this is that with you, you are running through it again. You see and you who experience the effects of these acts, these thoughts and other people. Let me just give you one brief example

to illustrate this. I have a friend who, when growing up, was kind of a roughneck. He had a hot temper. He was always getting into scrapes. And one day he was driving in his truck through the suburb in the town where he lived and he almost hit a pedestrian. He got very aggravated in his pedestrian and he was a very big, physical guy still lives, and a fight ensued and he punched this guy out and left him unconscious on the pavement, got back into his truck and

roared off. Fifteen years later, this guy has a near death experience. Oddly enough, it was caused by an accident in regard to his own truck at that time, but in any event, he has a near death experience. And during the near death experience he has a life review, and in his life review, this particular scene of the fight takes place again comes up in his life review and he said that, as many people do, he experienced this from a dual aspect. There was a part of him.

That was almost as if he were high up in a building looking through a window and seeing the fight, but at the same time he was observing the fight like a spectator. He found himself in the fight, except this time he found himself in the role of the other person, and he felt all thirty two blows that he had rained on this person originally fifteen years ago,

now being inflicted upon himself. He felt his teeth cracking, he felt the blood in his teeth, He felt everything that this other person must have felt at that particular time. It was a complete role reversal and empathic that life

review experience. And this is the sort of thing that many people report, and when they report these kinds of experience as they realize that in our life, we are the very people that we hurt, We are the very people that we helped to feel good, and we experience these actions as though done to ourselves in the life review, so that when people start talking about the Golden rule in the context of the near death experience, the Golden rule is not just a precept for moral conduct. It's

the way it works. And you experience this during the life review, and you learn that lesson in a very forcible way as a result of going through this kind

of experience. And that's why when people have envees, they change as much as they do, because if you can even imagine what it must be like to go through your entire life and see everything that you've ever done without judgment but from a kind of almost omnission point of view with regard to the effects of those actions, and see what your actions do to other people, it's a heavy kind of lesson and it's something that stays with you and it informs your conduct for the time

after your near death experience. So it does give us a lot to think about. And that's why I say in my book Lessons from the Light, the near death experience isn't given just to those who have the experience. It's given to all of us to learn from, because all of us can profit by the lessons that near death experience has learned in the course of the life review or other aspects of their experience, and we can grow from these lessons and we can apply these lessons

into our daily life. So one of the things that I've done in some of my classes and some of my workshops is I take about a half a dozen of these stories like the one that I just related about the guy getting into that fight, And I ask people to read these stories very slowly in an almost meditative way, and then to reflect on them. And after they do this for perhaps ten minutes, I ask them to complete the following sentence when I reflect on these

commentaries in relationship to my own life, comma eye. And when people have that stem of the sentence and they have this kind of information, it's a very very powerful exercise. I've seen people weep in terms of some of the realizations that they come to, and I often have people

that discuss the insights that they get. And this is one of the ways that people can put the near death experience to work in their own lives, simply by taking these accounts and buying a sense internalizing them and realizing that, yeah, this is going to be your experience. If we are really going to experience when we die what our entire lives have been about and our effects

on others, it will make us very reflective. And as some of the near death experiencers that I've talked with who have had this experience have told me, they now think ahead of time. They almost like do a little processing. They say, how do I want to see this particular

scene in my life review? They use this information not just in a retrospective sense of how they've actually acted, but as a way to program or rehearse certain kinds of actions, because they can anticipate that they're going to be experiencing this from all sides, not just from their own ego invested side. One of the things that happens in the near death experience is people are not judged. There is no sense of external judgment, and when people

are responded to that way in surprise. First, you have to look at your life. Can you imagine what the life review of Hitler would have been like to have gone through? Because one of the things that people say about the near death experience in regard to the life review is that you become aware of the consequences of your actions, whether you intended them or not, and even

whether you are aware of their repercussions or not. So mean, if you think of all the rambifications of Hitler's decisions about how things are going to be done prior to and during World War two, not just with the Jews, but with all the atrocities, you know that man died over fifty years ago. You wonder whether his life review is over yet. Because people say in the near death experience and when they have a life review that they are outside of time, and yet they can process all

this information. It's like a learning experience. It's meant to show you something. Because Hitler, obviously is the most extreme case that we can use in the normal case. What people say about the near death experience and what they learn from the life review is it shows them something.

It is a teaching It's not something that's meant as a punishment or to scare people, and it's meant to wake people up so that they simply become aware of the consequences in their actions before committing those actions, knowing that they themselves are going to have to be the recipients of them.

the term that some people use. It's almost like we go through life with blinders because we're not fully aware at the time or even afterward, of all the effects of our actions, nor do we think that our thoughts and feelings have effects in their own right. But when we go through the life review experience, we have the full picture. We have an almost omniscient understanding of our actions, of why we do the thing that we do, and how they have particular kinds of consequences in the lives,

not only of ourselves but of other people. It's a revelation, really, it's a revelation. These experiences, on the face of it, are impossible, but they happen. They happen repeatedly, they can be documented. Many people in different countries tell the same stories, and in some cases, especially in the early days of near death experience research, people thought they might be the only ones in the world that we're having these kinds of experiences. But when you collate these accounts, you see

that they form a regular pattern. Now I'm not saying that we can easily explain these experiences. We can, but I think, just to dismiss them as if they don't already happen when they exist in such plenitude, as a kind of ostrich like blindness, it just won't work. People are going to have to begin to pay attention to these experiences in science. They're already paying attention to it

outside of science. The near death experience has been around, at least for the time of Rie and Moody's research, since nineteen seventy five. It's here to stay, and people are going to have to reckon with it. Scientists included. The people that I've talked with who have described themselves as skeptics, as agnostics, or as atheists often have difficulty using religious terms afterward, but they know what they've experienced, and the term, which is almost a code word in

a certain sense for this is the light. They don't have any difficulty talking about the light, but they might have difficulty talking about God or more obviously religious terms.

But if you look at the way they describe the experience, and if you look at the kinds of changes they report in their life and they're opening to spiritual world views, you can see that their previous skepticism or agnosticism or even atheism has been eroded to such an extent that it virtually dissolves and they become very spiritually oriented people too. There's so many things that are associated with this light. It's almost impossible even to give a verbal description of

it that that's in any way adequate. I think even the powers of a Dante Frankly would be insufficient to be able to describe what's in this light. Yes, there is an credible intelligence, there is an energy associated with this light. There is a feeling of love beyond this world, but almost an absolute love. And that when people have the experience of the light, it isn't that they become aware of these dimensions. It become absorbed in them and

they understand that they are made of that light. You know, the light is not something that is other. It's that they merge with the light and that energy and that intelligence, and that love ensueses itself into you. And that's why I think when people come back from this radiant experience, they're almost like beings of light themselves. I mean, to the extent that they can remove their ego draws, then the light that they experience during their own near death

encounter shines through them. I think that's why they are so compassionate, so loving, and why they have this kind of knowledge, because the light is an energy and intelligence which can be absorbed in the near death experience. Even if a person can't consciously understand what has happened to him or her, nevertheless, that absorption takes place and is somehow reflected in their daily conduct and in their consciousness

when they come back from the experience. I remember this particular man, and he had a very unusual experience because when he went into the light, he had a question and he said, what are you really? You know, what is this? What are you? And he said that he was not enabled to enter into the light, but he passed through the light, and when he looked back on the light, he saw it was almost like a constellation of human souls, that it was everybody's higher sell. Again,

that had a tremendous effect on this particular individual. But his experience went deeper than most. And in one chapter I knowed with Lessons from the Light, I present some cases like his, of the most complex near death experiences that I discovered in the course of my research. And in all of these, although I don't have many of them, as with this man. People go into and then through the light, and they seem to go almost as if on a journey through the universe, and they get to

a second light. They get to something that seems to be the primordial light, or the light of creation, or the light of God. I don't even know what terms are adequate to describe it. This man was one of those who had something more like the full near death experience, although obviously he never died, but he penetrated further than most people ever have an opportunity to do. I think what we have here in this world. We have a

sense of division and separation. We are many bodies, but in the light no pun intended of the near death experience, you realize that there's only one being and we are all connected to it. It's as if that primordial light that I was talking about is that's where we really belong, that's where we really are. And so many people say, even when they enter into the experience of the light, I was home. One man said, this is where I always was and always will be, and my life on

earth was just a brief instant. So it's like, in this brief instant that we call life, of course, which seems to expand. It seems to be the totality of it. I mean, that's maybe all that we are aware of. But when we have the near death experience, we realize this life is just a flicker, and where we really are and where we truly have our being is in that priority of light, and there we are truly all one. We are truly all one anyway, but we have the

realization that we are one. We know it. It's not just an intellectual conviction. To me, the near death experience is a type of mystical experience that's brought about by the proximity of death. Its essences no different from a mystical experience. The only thing that's different about it are

the circumstances that bring it into a person's awareness. And it's almost as if we're having an influx of mystical experience these days because of the availability of resuscitation technology that brings many people back from the break of death and enables them to relate these stories to people like myself, to people who are broadcasters of them, so that people understand that the mystical worldview is one that really can be reached from a number of different perspectives or avenues

I could say, which the near death experience has only one, But it teaches the same thing as traditional mystical experiences I've taught us. I think many people who have taken the trouble to study, or to read about, or just inform themselves about near death experiences can see the implications of them are very large, and this is what I try to bring out in my books and in my talks generally. But my attitude towards the near death experience

has always been invitational. I don't think it has any one truth or any one perspective that it ineftively leads to. My approach has always been to invite people to consider the near death experience and come to their own conclusions. But I know that whatever their confusions might be, the exploration of these experiences will be richly rewarding. And it's almost universal that near death experiences say I know that my life has a purpose. I know that life has

a meaning. Purpose. A sense of meaning is so much a part of this experience that it cannot be extracted, it can't be doubted. It's an inextricable part of the near death experience, and people who study it will understand that if those experiences give us a sense of meaning, then even those of us who haven't had the experience can be void up by the fact that there is meaning and purpose to our world.

making a difference. And don't you just love the description of the light, no matter what religion you belonged to, or even if you don't believe at all an all encompassing light of love, It's incredible. Doctor Ring has a whole chapter in his book Lessons from the Light on eyeless vision near death experiences in the blind. He and his team studied over thirty people, many of them blind from birth, and they had something called mindsight during these experiences.

Here's one of them. Vicky was blind from birth. She says, the first thing I was really aware of is that I was up on the ceiling and I heard this doctor talking. It was a male doctor, and I looked down and I saw my body, and at first I wasn't sure that it was my own, but I recognized my hair. It was very long, it was down to my waist, and part of it had to be shaved off. And I remember being so upset about that. I knew too all of the feelings those in the room were having.

From up there on the ceiling, I could tell they were very concerned. I could see them working on this body. I could see that my head was cut open. I could see a lot of blood. I tried to communicate to the doctor and nurse, but of course they could not hear me. Then I went up through the roof, and that was astounding. I felt a sense of upward motion. I was above the hospital looking down. I saw lights and the streets down below. I was very confused about that.

At that point, Vicki began to ascend at a tremendous speed, and she felt as if she was sucked into a tube and propelled toward a light. She heard an enchanting harmony of a wood chime like music, and throughout all of this she reports being able to see. She found herself in an illuminated field covered with flowers, seeing too Chill, long deceased, who had befriended her when they were all

in school for the blind together. They were both profoundly handicapped, but in this state they appeared vital, healthy, and without their earthly handicaps. She felt a welcoming love from them and tried to move toward them. She also saw other people that she had known in her life who had

since died, such as her caretakers and her grandmother. Vicki saw a figure who she thought to be Jesus, who told her it was important to learn the lessons of loving and forgiving, And at that point she found herself back in her body, which she entered almost as if slamming into it, she said, and experienced the heavy, dullness and intense pain of her physical being. It's time for the break, and we will come back with more stories.

From Lessons from the Light by doctor Kenneth Ring. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife, the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network.

to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain and on our episode today, we are featuring words from afterlife pioneer doctor Kenneth Ring and featuring his newly re released book Lessons from the Light. What near death experiences teach us about living in the here and now And a special word to doctor ken on behalf of myself and listeners of Shades of the Afterlife, we will do everything possible to keep your words alive. You've done so much for

the afterlife and Near death experience community. We send you love, prayers and healing, smiles, laughter and joy all that you have given us. On our final segment today, I'd like to read more near death experiences and include some lessons from the Light on self love. I have a sneaky suspicion that you like me and everyone I've ever met. It's easy for us to love others, but how easy is it for us to love ourselves? What if we don't have to go through a near death experience to

have self love in our life? In Craig's NDE, he says, I felt myself moving through a dark void. It felt like it was a tunnel, but so dark. I seemed to be picking up speed and traveling in a perfectly straight line through the void. I felt as if wind was blowing across my face. I could see a small pinpoint of light that seemed to be growing. I somehow knew that this was my destination. I sped along until it became a huge mass of beautiful and brilliant white light.

I stopped short right before reaching it, for I felt I was getting too far away from the earth to find my way back, and I guess I had a feeling that one could equate with homesickness. As I sat there, motionless, it seemed as if the light began to float toward me. It was not long, and it engulfed me, and I felt that I was one with the light. I seemed to have knowledge of everything there is to know, and it accepted me and loved me as part of it.

I felt all knowing, just for a few minutes. Suddenly everything about my life seemed to make sense now. Craig also experienced floating up from his body, looking down, seeing the accident as it took place. He had the life review transported back to his childhood home, feeling that unconditional love, and during his visit, he says, I began to see a figure of a man, partially transparent and old in appearance.

I also noticed five other faces to his left. I realized that these spirits or souls seemed to know me very well and seemed like some sort of blood relatives from my past, but I didn't recognize them. The man then explained to me that it was not too late to return home, and suddenly I saw a thin orange line appear across a black background. It was horizontal and seemed to stretch to infinity, on either side of a small area that was red, thicker than the rest of

the band. The voice said, this red area is your life. Then a vertical black line cut through the red area about a quarter of the way in its length. The voice said, if you die today, this is where your life will end. But if you choose to live, you can see that you have the potential to live another three quarters beyond what you have experienced so far. The entity then showed me scenes of what would happen if I chose to die. I saw my family members in tears.

I saw images of police cars and ambulance and people trying to get a view of what was happening. These images were rather unsettling, and I did not want to put my family and friends through that. Then the voice asked me what I liked about life. I said that I loved music. He asked if I had done everything with my music that I had wanted to. I answered that I hadn't, and told him that I had always

dreamed of being an opening act for someone famous. The voice then said, this place will always be here waiting for you, and if you want to stay now, I will accept you, but I will be disappointed if you do not take this opportunity to go back and explore your life. The choice is yours. All of a sudden, I realized that it was almost going to be a personal insult to this figure if I did not choose

to return to my present life. It was as if he was telling me that an earthly existence could be so wonderful if I looked at it through the right frame of mind. It did not take me long to realize that, deep inside, I really wanted to go back and live my life to the fullest. Even though this place made me feel so good. I felt that I could come back here someday, and that I would. But there was no rush. I said, okay, and before I could get out the words I'm ready, I shot back

into my body like a lightning Bolt. Craig goes on to explain how he came to and how his life was changed. You can read this full story, and of course hundreds others Lessons from the light Chapter eight is titled In the Light of Love, The Lesson of Self Acceptance. Author Ken says, of all the teachings in the world, the greatest is love, and of all the lessons of the near death experiences, none is greater than the importance

of love. Love is our true nature, and yet why do so many of us fail to experience this love in our lives and even come to feel so unlovingly toward ourselves at times. If we accept the truth of the near death experiences chief revelation, it can only be that we have lost touch with the source existentially. We have fallen out of love, like babies thrust from the womb into the cold world. We have forgotten our true home.

But the teachings of the near death experience now come to remind us to reconnect to the source and to restore us into the arms of love. Here are some stories that I hope will shed a little light on how loved we are. In Peggy's near death experience, she says, I was shown how much all people are loved. It was overwhelmingly evident that the Light loved everyone equally and without any conditions. I really want to stress this because it made me so happy to know we didn't have

to believe or do certain things to be loved. We already were and are completely loved no matter what. The Light was extremely concerned and loving toward all people. I can remember looking at people together back on Earth and the Light asking me to love the people. I wanted to cry. I felt so deeply for them. I thought if they could only know how much they're loved, maybe they wouldn't feel so scared or lonely anymore. Experience her Nancy says, Suddenly I became aware of a light. It

completely surrounded me. It was an unearthly kind of light. It had color that is unmatched here on Earth. It was not a beam of sunlight. It was not a glow from a one hundred watt bulb. It was not a roaring fire. It was not a host of candles. It was not a celestial explosion in the midnight sky. It was warm, it was radiant, It was peaceful, It was accepting. It was forgiving it was completely non judgmental, and it gave me a sense of total security, the

likes of which I have never known. I loved it and it loved me. It was perfection. It was total, unconditional love. It was anything and everything you would wish for on earth. It was all there in the light. Moira says, at the time of my experience, I believed I was nothing, that everybody else was far better educated than I. I was a very shy person in those days. I had no skills, and I felt downtrodden and beneath other people. But since then, absolutely my whole life has changed.

It's opened up, and I've become more assertive and more aware of who I am. I now realize I am a perfect human being in my own right, and I don't have to fear anybody else or anything. I'm still the same old me, making the same mistakes, but I'm much more aware of what's going on and I have much more self confidence. Peggy says, it has become my whole life to honor that light ingratitude for coming to me and loving me when I needed it the most. I've got a feeling this is going to be a

lifetime project. The old me is gone, and every day I'm discovering the new me. I don't know what the future will bring, but I'm going to do my best to stay open for growth and change. I'm grateful to the experience, and even though I cannot see the light now, I know it is with me. You know what I really love about this term the light. It fits for all people, whether you're religious or not religious. Some people call it the divine, some people call it God. But

light just seems to cover everything, doesn't it. We know the light of the sun gives us life, recharges our batteries, allows our food to grow. I heard someone say once that religions are like different lamps around the world. And of course there's millions of different lamps around the world, but there's only one light. So I like that the light that loves us, the light that gives us life, the light that feeds us and nurtures us, the light that heals us, the light that runs through us and

all around us, and the light that connects us. All as I'm talking to you, I realize that the light allows me to read from the book Lessons from the Light. The light allows me to see on my computer and record this for you now. The light allows me to see those that I love. It's something we take for granted,

isn't it? Before we leave each other? Today, I want to just share some words that Craig wrote, and I believe he speaks for many near death experiencers and it's something that I hope we can all hang on to. One there is nothing whatsoever to fear about death. Two Dying is peaceful and beautiful. Three. Life does not begin with birth nor end with death. Four Life is precious. Live it to the fullest. Five The body and its senses are tremendous gifts. Appreciate them. Six What matters most

in life is love. Seven. Living a life oriented toward materialistic acquisition is missing the point. Eight Cooperation rather than competition, makes for a better world. Nine being a bit success in life is not all it's cracked up to be. And ten seeking knowledge is important because you take that with you. A reminder we've been reading from the book Lessons from the Light, What near death experiences teach us about living in the here and now by Kenneth Ring, PhD.

And a reminder to come visit me. My home base is We Don't Die dot com. You can join our Facebook group. One of our online spiritual classes, I offer a free Sunday gathering with medium demonstration included. You can listen to past episodes, read from my book We Don't Die, and so much more. All it we Don't Die dot com. This week, remember that light. It runs through you, and most importantly, it loves you for just who you are.

I'm Sandra Champlain. Thank you for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast asked network.