Posted on 01/20/2014 1:25:59 PM PST by Kaslin
There is a subject that I don’t really think about and don’t really want to – dying. But I recently turned 60 years old and know that, not being 18 years old, dying is sooner for me than for someone that age. So I spent some time struggling with the issue.
Part of the reason I have not focused much on the subject of death is because of my religion. Sure I have had my losses -- grandparents, mother, father, brother and friends -- and as a Jew we honor our deceased loved ones with a prayer near the end of every religious service – The Kaddish. But I am thinking more about what happens to me. After all, I only know being alive in this world. Even though I am quite happy with my life and all the joys I have had, my question became: “Is this all there is?”
I spoke to a favorite Rabbi about the subject. He educated me as to why we as Jews don’t focus on an afterlife. He said many people believe that Judaism does not believe in the afterlife, but he stated they were not accurate. He said while some might believe otherwise, Judaism doesbelieve in the afterlife though the religion focuses on life on earth and what you do while you are here. That is where the emphasis has been placed.But the Talmud speaks of “The world to come.” In essence there is a hereafter and your soul returns to God.
But that is a belief and the problem is what do we really know? I first spoke to Betty Ferrell, the author of ten books, who has been doing palliative care (in short, taking care of very sick people) for 30 years. She stated she has spent time with about 1,000 different people at or near death. Ms. Ferrell spoke of how often those people were communicating with someone from the past who had died. She had witnessed hundreds of apparent communications with people in the afterlife.
Yet that has its limited value to skeptics and gave me only marginal comfort. There are countless books about near-death experiences and people coming back from beyond describing their personal connection with the hereafter, but one has grabbed people more than anyone else – written by Dr. Eben Alexander.
Dr. Alexander has been a noted neurosurgeon for over 25 years. He was truly a man of science and not much of a religiously observant person until he had his own near-death experience which he details in his book, Proof of Heaven.
Out of nowhere Alexander contracted a rare illness. He was in a coma for a week and his loving family was being advised by his medical team (as you can imagine he had the best care one could get) that it was time to pull the plug. The part of his brain that controls his thought and emotions was gone. Then out of the blue he awoke. Over an extended period of time his full memory returned and he became fully cognizant in all aspects and has returned to his prior life.
In his book Dr. Alexander vividly describes his near-death experience and his life in the world beyond. His retention of his cross over into the afterlife is quite detailed. But the more important part of the book is what this previously non-believer did after reawakening from his coma to confirm to himself that what he remembered was not just a dream or in some other form non-real. He did a complete medical analysis and consulted with multiple experts on brain activity.He concluded that his brain was completely shut down; and, therefore, he had to be in the afterlife.
I interviewed Dr. Alexander.When asked what has changed for him since his book was published, he told me he now participates in organized religion. The heart of the interview focused on the naysayers about his account since his experience has become well-known and his book a bestseller. He stated “Critics don’t seem to have read the book.” They apparently are not citing what medical evidence Alexander presents in the book. He revisited with me his scientific efforts to disprove that he had visited the afterlife and he still concludes he cannot disprove it.
Dr. Alexander described such a wonderful existence in the hereafter I had to ask him why he came back and whether he has thought about going back to the other side. He told me that he came back and remains here because of his family and particularly his young son (he has an older son becoming a doctor) who he feels still need him.
All this has led me to examine my own thinking about what will happen to me. I know that I am healthy and look forward to many years on this planet. I have had a wonderful life and remain confident I will have many years of that same wonderful life or even better. But back to where I started -- all I know is this world and it seems such a shame that I will only have another 15, 20, or 30 years to enjoy the beauty of being – to share time with my wonderful wife, children and friends, to read books or to listen to music, to go to a Broadway musical or see a baseball game.
I don’t know if there is an afterlife, but I sure hope there is and I hope it as wonderful as what was described by Dr. Alexander. I do know that I don’t plan on finding out for a long, long while. And when I do, Laura Nyro will be my guiding light:
I'm not scared of dying,
And I don't really care.
If it's peace you find in dying,
Well then let the time be near.
If it's peace you find in dying,
And if dying time is near,
Just bundle up my coffin
'Cause it's cold way down there.
I hear that its cold way down there.
Yeah, crazy cold way down there.
Chorus:
And when I die, and when I'm gone,
There'll be one child born
In this world to carry on,
to carry on.
In the Book of Hezekiah..
:)
actually 2 Kings 20:1, Isaiah 38:1
Exactly. I turn 60 very soon. The apostle Paul said to live is Christ and to die is gain.
I kinda look at it this way. Imagine this life is a video game you really, REALLY enjoy playing. SO you are in this video parlor playing your video game and one day you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. It’s like, while you are playing your game and trying not to get killed by the bad guys, or whatever, someone runs in and says, “Hey, some guy just dropped off a Bugatti and said it’s yours and you can drive it to the airport where your personal Lear Jet is waiting to take you wherever you want.
You love your game, but this may be a bit distracting. And when you DO get “killed” in your video game, it’s not exactly a disappointment as you run to your new car with keys in hand. :-)
The Book says...
The dead were judged according to their works as recorded in the books.
Praise GOD that he is alright. I have felt the hands of an Angel save me more than once. I know that they are real. I would be dead otherwise.
Thank you, LLS, and amen. I agree with you. It's very true that God does send angels to protect us. I know of it happening in my family.
When something like that happens, you fall down and thank Him, before you do anything else.
I also have no fear of death. My husband and other family members still need me, though, so I want to be here for them.
Ah, yes, the pain idea. I also fear pain. If I must die a painful death, I hope the Lord gives me the strength to be brave.
...her last words were, “It’s Pa! And he’s coming for me in the wagon!”
&&
Many years ago, my mother told me about her father’s death. She was a very young woman, when my grandfather died at home, as most people did in those days, the 1920s. She told me that his last words were, “Mama and Papa”.
Years later, that story came back to me while I was doing some reading about people who have come back from near death experiences. So I suppose my grandfather was actually seeing his parents.
We know how very Blessed we are!
The Native Americans didn't use the word death when one of their relatives/people 'died." They called it 'passing over" - designating their belief (acknowledgment?) of continued life in another realm.
Those who have had the 'other side experience' and came back describe it a wondrous place...I've often thought that we don't have a thorough knowledge of it because people might choose suicide much more often.
Thing is, with suicide, (taking a life you didn't create), doesn't seem to slip you into the wondrous place but into a limbo where you may be stuck for some time to come?
TAke the case of 'past lives coming through' under hypnosis - or 'ghosts' being contacted by psychics:
There is a common thread. they almost invariably died a violent (before their appointed time?") death, often through suicide or homicide due in part to their life style.
I am of the opinion that those stories are not from the person's past lives, but from people in limbo who can use the person's body - which is rendered incapacitated under hypnosis, or with contact with a psychic , to make themselves heard.
Suicide, to me, would be too risky - changing what we may deem a hard situation here to one as bad or worse from which we may not escape for a much longer time.
Wow catherine! I’m really thankful that your husband survived that. And yes I do think it was the Lords grace!
Wow. What a close call. Praise God for your husband’s health.
Avenir, thank you. It really was His mercy...I’m convinced of it.
I was just speculating on this today - which is all one can really do in such circumstances so long as one stays within the known laws of physics - I wondered weather if when we die, our consciousness after the event is simply "continued" in another universe, or bubble I believe is the more fashionable phrase. Again and again would we die and continue, which could approach infinity in the limit.
Of course it's up to God as to how He does things. But it is fun to bend His fabric a little here and there.
It was a warm summer Sunday. A Sunday just like hundreds before it; but THIS day I was just a bit down as I drove the same path to church I'd driven so many times before.
I'd passed a suv full of happy looking folks that where evidently heading to the reservoir for a day of fun on the water, for they were pulling a large outboard behind them.
'Why don't I take some time off and do the same?' was my thought, as I silently envied them. 'Why don't I get to do fun things?'
'There's never enough time for...'
Then that Other voice said, "There'll be PLENTY of 'time'; later on."
And yours, as well!
Though I attended Catholic schools for twelve years, I’m not sure about angels. What I recognize is God keeping an eye on me and my family in large and small situations. I am so thankful to Him.
But if we ‘got’ what he taught, we wouldn't need man's institutions - and THEN where would they be? LOL
and in conjunction with what you wrote - He did tell us “In My Father's house are many mansions.” Yet we never got that either. We still talk of only heaven and hell.
Zero Point. Light - The Matrix.
It's all so much more that taught in mans’ institutions.
Interesting that the Mormona have a translation said to be from Moses - that reads “And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.”
Interesting in that this was published over 160 years ago, long before any knowledge or thought of other planets were out there...something we are just beginning to learn.
The vastness of creation is beyond even our imaginations.
Jesus also taught ‘manifestation’. - What we could accomplish if we put what He taught into practice. but daily we travel farther from the east...
I think this is my favorite of all poems:
excerpt from
Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
by William Wordsworth
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.
*************************
We still have glimpses - but then, it's time to cook supper...
There used to be a sort of angel "movement", in which people prayed to angels and came pretty close to worshiping them. We shouldn't do any of that. Angels are simply God's messengers, completely under His control.
Now I just spend my time observing how many are dancing on pinheads.
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