Questions of Faith

Father Wilmer Todd

Near death experiences

What happens when you die (at the moment of death)?

The most honest answer is we really don’t know. No one has come back from heaven and revealed the “step-by-step process” of dying. The Catholic Church teaches that immediately after death our soul separates from our body, and we stand before God for judgement. We then enter heaven, purgatory or hell.

We do have hints from thousands of people who have had Near-DeathExperiences (NDEs) from different cultures and languages. Dr. Jeffrey Long, M.D., a radiation oncologist with the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center in Houma, has written a book entitled, Hidden Beyond the Veil. He has documented the commonality of thousands of near-death stories.

To understand NDEs, we have to rid ourselves of our images that heaven is above the clouds and that hell is somewhere “down there.” The veil that separates time and eternity is in our midst.

Dr. Long and others who have worked with hospice patients (like I have) have experienced a common theme among NDEs: 1) A sensation of leaving the body, sometimes being able to see the physical body while floating above it. Dr. Long says that when the heart stops working the memory also stops working. Our spiritual souls can only experience these reported sensations; 2) The mind functions more clearly and more rapidly than usual; 3) A sensation of being drawn into a tunnel or darkness with a brilliant light sometimes at the end of the tunnel; 4) A sense of overwhelming peace, wellbeing, or absolute, unconditional love; 5) A sense of having access to unlimited knowledge; 6) A “life review” or recall of important events in the past; 7) A preview of future events yet to come; 8) Encounters with deceased loved ones or with other beings that may be identified as religious figures. (This can also happen right before death.)

The following are testimonies from people who had NDEs.

This is someone’s review of life experience: “I went into a dark place with nothing around me, but I wasn’t scared. It was really peaceful there. I then began to see my whole life unfolding before me like a film projected on a screen from babyhood to adult life. It was so real! I was looking at myself but better than a 3-D movie as I was also capable of sensing the feelings of the persons I had interacted with through the years. I could feel the good and bad emotions I made them go through.”

This testimony happened to Marta, a five-year-old blind girl who walked into a lake: “I slowly breathed in the water and became unconscious. A beautiful lady dressed in bright white light pulled me out. The lady looked into my eyes and asked me what I wanted. I was unable to think of anything until it occurred to me to travel around the lake. As I did so, I saw detail that I would not have seen in ‘real’ life. I could go anywhere even to the tops of trees simply by my intending to go there. I was legally blind. For the first time, I was able to see leaves on trees, bird’s feathers, bird’s eyes, details on telephone poles, and what was in people’s back yards. I was seeing far better than 20/20 vision.” Could a

the “beautiful lady” have been the Virgin Mary?

This NDE occurred under general anesthesia during surgery for a heart-valve replacement: “During my surgery, I felt myself lift from my body and go above the operating table. The doctor told me later that they had kept my heart open and stopped for a long time, and they had a great amount of difficulty getting my heart started again. That must have been when I left my body because I could see the doctors nervously trying to get my heart going. It was strange to be so detached from my physical body. I was curious about what they were doing but not concerned. As I drifted farther away, I saw my father at the head of the table. He looked up at me and surprised me because he had been dead now for almost a year.”

While these features are commonly reported, many NDEs differ from this pattern and include other elements. For example, some near-death experiences may be frightening or distressing rather than peaceful. This might have happened to people who were headed in the wrong direction in life. God could have given them a second chance.

When we dream or have hallucinations, the persons we dream about are much more likely to be living and from our recent memories. This is in sharp contrast to those who have NDEs where familiar persons encountered are almost always deceased. Very young children who have NDEs have similar contents to older children and adults. This is further evidence that NDEs are occurring independently of preexisting cultural beliefs, religious training, or awareness of the existence of NDEs.

An investigation of 19 Iranian Muslim NDEs concluded: “Our results suggest that Muslim NDEs may actually be quite common as they are in the West and may not be especially different in their key features from Western NDEs and therefore not heavily influenced by cultural variations, including prior religious or spiritual beliefs.”

These examples should give us some idea of what happens at the moment of death. It should also help us deal with people who are dying especially when they talk about relatives or friends coming to escort them into eternity. BC