Ex-atheist describes near-death experience

Standard-Times ^ | 1/31/2004 | LINDA ANDRADE RODRIGUES

[Taliesan]

The story is bogus. We know there is no supernatural, because it does not show up on instruments. So it's not there. He was on drugs, and hallucinated.

[utahagen]

What the heck is this orthodox Christian doing in the United Church of Christ denomination? Most of the ministers of that denomination are quasi-Unitarian.

Great story.

[axel f]

Wasn't this guy profiled on "Unsolved Mysteries"?

[mountaineer]

I had the same question. The UCC is decidedly anti-evangelical.

[justshutupandtakeit]

He "broke every one of the ten commandments" including murder? Wow.

[adam_az]

Amazing what oxygen deprivation will do to the mind, isn't it?

Even more amazing is what one mans oxygen deprivation will do to the minds others. ;)

[Gunslingr3]

He was on drugs, and hallucinated.

Probably a fair guess, "Howard Storm went on to earn a master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and for 20 years was an arts professor..."

[Elliott Jackalope]

As I understand it, there is a big difference between NDE's and hallucinations. Hallucinations tend to be rather intangible, and vary wildly from experience to experience and from person to person.

This is a subject that I find myself very interested in. You can check out http://www.near-death.com to read about the NDE's of a large number of people. Some are very different than others, but there is a commonality between them that is interesting to contemplate.

I've been agnostic for a long time, but I find myself coming to believe that this reality is a subset of a larger reality. One of my favorite quotes from one person's NDE was when they asked the question of the angelic beings they encountered "what religion is the right one to follow". The answer? "Whatever one brings you closest to God".

[yonif]

Even more amazing is what one mans oxygen deprivation will do to the minds others. ;)

ROFL

[adam_az]

This is a subject that I find myself very interested in. You can check out http://www.near-death.com to read about the NDE's of a large number of people. Some are very different than others, but there is a commonality between them that is interesting to contemplate.

And all suspiciously similar to the archetypes and ideas we have all been exposed to our entire lives. What a shock!

[EggsAckley]

At the risk of being labeled "crazy" I want to offer a short anecdote about the night my mother died.

I woke up at 4:07 AM, went to the living room where my mom was, with her care-giver, and he signaled to me that everything was okay. I went back to bed and immediately went into the deepest sleep I have ever experienced. It was like the "sleep of the dead", that's how I described it. Thirteen minutes later they were pounding on my bedroom door, but I did not respond. The nurse had to actually come into the room and shake me to wake me up. (I'm usually a very light sleeper.)

They told me that she was gone, and I told them what I was dreaming just as she passed on. I was on a street in our home town, very near our house. The houses on the street were beautiful; they seemed to be gilded and were glowing. I was surrounded by hundreds of people I'd known long ago, and we were marching up that street, arm in arm, and we were happy, rejoicing. We were happy because we were going to be flying!

I believe that somehow my mom kept me asleep and I was "seeing" what she was "seeing" as she died.

flame away, but I'll never believe differently. It was a gift.

[Ciexyz]

A female pastor in the Pittsburgh PA area, Pastor Georgia (I hesitate to give her last name), has given seminars in which she tells a story from her days as a nurse. She ministered to an individual who clinically died and was resuscitated. The man claimed to be ushered into the presence of Jesus, who was in the process of taking him before "the Dad" -- and then he was resuscitated.

Pastor Georgia asked the man, "You mean, he was taking you before The Lord?" And the man was adamant: "Jesus was taking me before "the Dad". No one goes into the presense of "the Dad" unless Jesus takes him there!"

What made this story so poignant, is that the man in question had no church background, he had been an agnostic, ignorant of the Gospel, until Georgia ministered to him in the hospital and he accepted Jesus as Savior a few days before the near-death experience. No one in his experience, the man said, had ever referred to the Father God as "the Dad", this was a concept that the man had picked up when he died and went to the beyond.

You can accept this story or not, as you will. But it has touched everyone who has heard it.

[jwalsh07]

We know there is no supernatural, because it does not show up on instruments

LOL. Too much. Exactly how does one measure the supernatural? An Oscilloscope and a DVM?

[WVNan]

....and as with other patterns of existence, just how is it that those archetypes are near universal?

[Rome2000]

They began to tear off pieces of his flesh, and he realized that he was being taken apart and eaten alive, methodically, slowly, so that their entertainment would last as long as possible.

Kind of sounds like the Washington press corp.

[stanz]

Was this one of those e-mails that gets periodically circulated? If so, it's probably been debunked by Urbanlegends.com.

[Ciexyz]

I believe that somehow my Mom kept me asleep and I was "seeing" what she was "seeing" as she died.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I'd bet that many of us have stories about unusual experiences that we hesitate to share, for fear of being labeled "nuts".

Here's one that I've shared a number of times that sounds like it's straight out of The Twilight Zone. In the funeral home where my Mother was laid out, I stepped into an adjoining room for few minutes to compose myself. I stood there in the dark and silence, and suddenly a phone that was on the mantel started ringing. (This wasn't a private office, it was a viewing room that was empty, and it just happened to have a phone on the mantel.)

I looked at that phone and said, No way, this is crazy. I let it ring three times and then I said to myself, okay, I'm picking this up. When I lifted the receiver, I heard static on the other end. I listened for some seconds, then put the phone down. When I told my Dad later about it, he just laughed. He said, "That was your Mother. That sounds like something she'd do." (You can believe it or not!)

[Riverman94610]

Beautiful account,Eggs.No,you are NOT crazy.There are accounts of NDE's in all cultures and periods of history.I rest much easier with the hope that one day I may be reunited with deceased family members and loved ones in the"next life"-call it Heaven if you want-and I have had very similiar dreams such as yours.
Riverman,whose intense spirtual beliefs were way more important in my rejection of Marxism than the political-economic shortfalls of the ideology.

[js1138]

I find this debat rather boring because I had an out of body experience many years ago, at age 10, while having surgery under ether. My own memories are of a much more vivid experience visually. I was floating through space, seeing the entire universe from outside. Actually it was more like I was the universe.

It never occurred to me to attach religious significance to something seen while my brain was drugged.