Books |
Near Death in the ICU: Stories from Patients Near Death and Why We Should Listen to Them
Laurin Bellg, M.D.
By
Published: Oct 01, 2018
Category:
Spirituality
My 101-year-old mother recently hurt her ankle and was, to her annoyance, bedridden. A few days of this, and she fell into a swoon and had a vision — she was visiting her long-dead relatives. There was much pleasant conversation. Everyone was beaming. Then someone said, “It’s not time yet. You have to go back.”
My mother was both consoled and confused by this experience. I was consoled — I sensed this vision predicted a smooth passage for her — but not confused, because, by a stroke of luck or fate, I had been reading about near-death visions.
A week later, I was in California to attend Yom Kippur services with my brother and mother. There could have been no better time to read to her from “Near Death in the ICU: Stories from Patients Near Death and Why We Should Listen to Them,” by Laurin Bellg, a critical care physician. (More about her here.)
The first story I read to my mother was about an Army doctor in World War II whose Jeep was hit by mortar fire. He sustained extensive abdominal trauma and was rushed to the Army hospital where he worked. His next conscious memory was of floating above his body in the operating room, watching his colleagues work on him. Like this:
“I can’t find the damn bleeder!” he heard the surgeon say in frustration.
“Keep the blood coming. If you can’t get it fast enough, then I want plasma! Now!” The surgeon’s panic was only barely veiled by his intense determination not to lose this battle.
Dr. John heard it all; he saw it all. He was astonished at how aware he was as he looked on. Then a sound distracted him and his attention was drawn to the slowing of his heartbeat on the monitor near his head. At the same time, he felt himself drifting farther away from the drama of his surgery. The last thing he recalled of that scene was the surgeon cursing and yelling out that they were losing him and his own solitary thought, “I must be dying.”
His next awareness found him completely and peacefully enveloped in what he could only describe as a soft shroud of mist with tiny points of light blinking in and out quickly as they moved all around him. He felt completely weightless and peaceful, void of any fear. The feeling of love was immense, almost unbearable, and recalling it now, Dr. John’s voice became fragile as he paused to fight back tears.
Regaining his composure, after a few moments he continued. He described floating in such a beautiful and bright place of total peace that he lost all thoughts and concerns related to anything connected to his physical existence. He was aware of nothing except how good it felt to be there where he was — wherever that was. How long he lingered in this space, he could not say because time had immediately lost meaning for him.
Suddenly, though, he heard a very distinct voice say gently but firmly, “You can’t stay, John. It’s not your time to die.” Whether the voice was male or female, he couldn’t determine, but it was commanding and he did not protest its directive. Instinctively, he knew it would be pointless to argue.
Still feeling peaceful and detached, he felt himself descending and slowly his body came back into view as the mist surrounding him dissipated and he could once more hear the clamor and tension of the operating room. Hovering above the scene, he watched the weak representation of his pulse on the monitor slowly gain strength as the resuscitation efforts of the surgical team reclaimed their hold on Dr. John’s physical body.
There are many more stories like that, including the author’s account of being dangerously ill in the hospital and seeing a nine-year-old girl in her room. Her husband didn’t see her. Nor did the nurses. She saw the girl several more times, and suddenly realized she looked very much like a childhood version of her dearest dead friend.
In each story, there is one common element: a bright light, generally blue, often in the shape of a ball. I recalled that Swami Muktananda referred to the blue pearl as “the light that illuminates the mind, that illuminates everything.” I mentioned this to my mother, whose name is Pearl. A peaceful silence followed. I commend this book. [To buy the paperback of “Near Death in the ICU” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
It’s no surprise that there are many books about life after death — for most of us, knowing that The End is not the end is great comfort. I was pleased to come upon “Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for An Afterlife,” because Leslie Kean really is a journalist. She doesn’t just catalogue beyond-belief stories, she talks to experts, and she takes a skeptical step back. [For Leslie Kean’s website, click here. To buy the paperback of “Surviving Death,” click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
What’s her take on consciousness that outlives the body? This:
While exploring the evidence for an afterlife, I witnessed some unbelievable things that are not supposed to be possible in our material world. Yet they were unavoidably and undeniably real. Despite my initial doubt, I came to realize that there are still aspects of Nature that are neither understood nor accepted, even though their reality has profound implications for understanding the true breadth of the human psyche and its possible continuity after death.
I was directly exposed to people capable of perception that seemed to transcend the limitations of the physical brain; unexplainable forces, acting with apparent intelligence, able to move objects; and the delivery of obscure and accurate details by possible discarnate beings communicating through people unknown to them. I also studied numerous published papers, including those by medical doctors, describing clinically dead patients with no brain function who reported journeys to a sublime afterlife dimension.
As documented within the scientific literature for over a hundred years, these and other manifestations have one aspect in common: they suggest that consciousness—or some aspect of ourselves—may survive physical death.
And then there’s a book that “spent more than 40 weeks at the number 1 position on the NYT Bestseller list, was on that list for almost two years, and has been published in over 30 foreign countries.” You may have heard of “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife” and its author, Eben Alexander, M.D. The general idea is this:
For seven days he lay in a coma. Then, as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.
While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.
I’m not going to give you the Amazon links. Instead I’m going to refer you to the doctor’s Wikipedia entry and encourage you to scroll down to “criticism and reaction,” where you’ll learn he was “terminated or suspended from multiple hospital positions, and had been the subject of several malpractice lawsuits, including at least two involving the alteration of medical records to cover up a medical error. He settled five malpractice suits in Virginia within a period of ten years.” And then I’m going to encourage you to read the Esquire profile of Dr. Alexander, especially the end, where he finds himself onstage with the Dalai Lama. Hilarious fun. I feel bad for the suckers who paid good money for this “proof” of Heaven. I feel much more confident of my mother’s account.
