Near Death Experiences;

True stories of those who went to Heaven.

True life stories told by real people.

Tessy Rawlins

(All rights reserved circa 2014)

“I feel now as though I have stolen a piece of heaven and brought it back to earth and feel as if each time I’m able to share it with somebody, I break a piece of that heaven off and hand it to them.”

“It felt like the whole time I was in somebody's arms. Like somebody was holding me.”

“I have to tell you that the joy I felt was absolutely beyond description, because I doubt that there is such a word in any human language.”

“The place I had just come back from was the place I knew. God is real; heaven is absolutely real.”

“Heaven is such a beautiful place and heaven is for real.”

“It was mind-blowing and breathtaking”

“A current of love so deep, it seemed unfathomable that such a place had existed without my knowing. How could I have been blind all my life to this bright river of love, peace, joy that cradled me?”

“It felt like all the love of everybody in the world, everybody I knew, was hugging me,”

"I know without a doubt there's no such thing as death.”

From Tessy Rawlins, comes more astonishing, affirming and comforting true stories of those who went to Heaven, and came back to tell of the beauty, and the love that is waiting for us too.

It seems that more and more people feel the desire to speak out about their life-changing experiences of going to Heaven. No longer do people feel they must keep quiet about what happened to them; and often they feel compelled to share their experience with as many people as will listen to them.

They have a message, and that message is always of the unconditional love and acceptance of Heaven. Of the forgiveness, of the all-encompassing, loving light that wraps around them as though embracing them, and of the re-uniting with their loved ones.

Here follows some of those stories...

Bren Parks, now an artist, recalls a vivid experience that happened to her as a child. ‘While in high school, I was training for a diving competition in the Amateur Athletic National Championship competition for the right to vie for a spot on the Olympic team. It was a warm July day in 1981, and I hurried to my diving practice and coaching session. Little did I know that I would die, go to heaven and come back to my life!

A number of athletes would practice there in preparation for the competitive season. Because of this, chaos was the standard routine in the pool room.  I was practicing a rather difficult dive. I had thrown several successful dives when a fellow team member showed up and began practicing too. I would do my dives, and then wait at the bottom of the pool until I could hear the sound of the diving board as it bounced when my friend hit the board. Choosing that moment, I would spring from the bottom of the pool. We were both doing it, so nothing was thought when during my next dive, I didn’t come back up from the bottom of the pool.

What my coach and the other divers didn’t know, is that I had dislocated my shoulder on the dive before that because of a sloppy entry. I decided that since I was able to get it back into the socket, I would keep practicing. The next dive I attempted was nothing short of tragic. I made my approach, vaulted off the board and executed the dive.  However, I threw my body into the dive before I reached the full height of the vault that meant the dive would be too low.  As a result, I hit the water while still rotating and spinning with my arms in a spread eagle position. That was the last thing I remember before waking up after I returned from heaven. When I hit the water, my body was still spinning and rotating and it knocked me out when I hit the water.  I sank like a stone.

It turned out to be the most profound experience of my life. I remember that I did not feel any pain whatsoever, and I began to feel like I was floating, much like the feeling I would experience on occasion when dreaming. I also recall that I didn’t even remember just getting hurt!

It never even occurred to me that I was dying. However, I do remember worrying about my loved ones and what they would do without me. Then, suddenly, I didn’t even think about my life on earth because I became so absorbed in the moment.

I began feeling ecstatic. I am not just talking about sort of happy. I am talking about a profound joy. I have to tell you that the joy I felt was absolutely beyond description because I doubt that there is such a word in any human language.

It was the kind of joy you would feel specifically if you had been hopelessly lost for decades and had given up on even scanning the horizon for anything familiar to you that would suggest that you were even close to home.  You had even given up on the possibility of finding it and just wandered aimlessly waiting to die. Then suddenly, at the top of the hill, your home comes into view and a tremendous rush of emotion slams into you and tingles down your spine before you can burst into a run. That is how I felt, except multiply it by ten.  Incredibly, the feeling didn’t go away.  In fact, it just kept getting stronger. Still, I never made the association of Heaven and what I was experiencing.

Then, suddenly again, I began to be aware of a deep, commanding, loving and fatherly voice. This voice was inside my head and simply said “Be here now.” I was deeply comforted by that voice, which made me feel as though I had just fallen into the arms of the heart’s home.

Then I felt as though a giant hand that was much bigger than my body was pushing me down a tube.  I awoke while laying on the cement beside the pool to a face just inches from mine.

I still hadn’t consciously realized what had happened to me, and the words I said next just tumbled out of my mouth and it was as though I was hearing them for the first time myself.

“You interrupted me, I was talking to God!” I declared angrily.  Upon hearing that, the person, who turned out to be a paramedic, turned pale.  He responded by saying, “But you weren’t breathing!”

At that moment, the realization of what just happened to me hit me like a bolt of lightening.

A few hours after it happened, I lay in bed in an immobilizer for my broken shoulder and collarbone.

To this day, when I think of it, and even writing it now, I literally feel the emotion rise up into my throat and the sting of tears in the back of my eyes. Even now, the skin on my arms and the back of neck rise up and tingle at the thought of that day and especially what I experienced. You would think that time would dim the memory and obscure the intensity of emotion, but after all this time, it is as though it happened yesterday.

I have told many people about my experience through the years.

I did this when I discovered they had suffered from or were about to suffer the loss of a loved one, and in one case a dying friend.  I would tell them about it to assure them that Heaven was real and that we do indeed continue to live after leaving this world.

I believe that is why I had this after life experience.  So I could tell people and maybe help them in their struggle with their faith and to rejoice in the absolute certainty of what awaits after I die again.

So let me assure you that Heaven most certainly does exist and that our time on Earth is but a temporary stop in our existence.  I hope this can help you.

Bren now creates art pictures, (on her site mysticbren at deviant art) with the most astonishingly brilliant colours in them, one can only assume inspired by her vision of Heaven.

"I know without a doubt there's no such thing as death," said Tempe, Arizona, resident Alex Hermosillo. "I can tell you; it's a new beginning and it's beautiful. I had a near death experience that completely changed me forever. I've seen the afterlife. I have a wonderful feeling about life and what's important," Hermosillo said while sitting in the Tempe office he uses to consult with people. He calls his work Energy Healing.

"I now help to heal people. I have been given a gift, a gift of life and energy of love, and for me, turning that positive energy towards helping people is amazing and it's working," he said.

Hermosillo's journey started in the emergency room.

"I was on the gurney, looking up, I had internal bleeding and that was it," he said.

He flatlined.

"This is my story, this is what I went through and it's real, it's very real."

As Hermosillo flatlined, he said he watched it all unfold. His family crying. His doctors working on him. He said he could see his body and everything happening from above.

"The doctors and nurses were trying to save my life and then everything became quiet; very peaceful, then a beautiful golden mist came in and I was floating; I saw my mother, father, brothers, sisters. I was looking down on them and knew my time here on Earth was over.”

He said what he felt and saw next answers the questions regarding life after death. "I began to fly through the clouds, moving fast, broke through the clouds, going to a destination quickly and all of my fear, shame and grief that I had experienced on Earth was just pulled right out of me. It was the most joyous time of my entire life."

Hermosillo said he saw a single light, a pinpoint and raced to it, going through the light. "And I just felt love and peace; I'm serious, it was vivid. It smelled clean, very crisp, I have never smelled it before or after; an amazing scent and as for the sound, it's strange but it sounded like energy, the cosmos, that's the only way to describe it; energy."

He said things felt like they were moving fast, but easy to digest and understand. Then he saw others, friends, family members, many other people who had died.

"They were souls; souls that emanated light. Each one had a different amount of light, some had so much light it was like looking into sun; others had very little light, but were right there."

As for the souls projecting light, Hermosillo said the light came with meaning for each soul. "The light was a reflection of who they were on Earth, so if an individual was judgmental, hateful, had vanity and ego, they had a little bit of light," said Hermosillo. "Those who were kind, loving, helped others in their community, just good souls, they were shining brighter."

He said the brightness told a story a story about each soul. Some were bright, others dim, but Alex said he also saw what he called, 'the great lights; Buddha, Jesus, Mary, even Martin Luther King's and Mother Teresa. They had so much more light, I saw them, I could see them."

As Hermosillo describes the lights and souls in detail, he said a single light came right at him.

"It was fast, it was moving fast and came right through me and as soon as that light hit me, I heard beeping sounds, beep, beep, beep and I woke up and I was in the hospital bed, I did not want to be in that

bed, no way. I wanted to be in that place we call Heaven," Hermosillo said.

He's told the story before. Many times, in fact. He currently travels the world sharing his story to various religious groups while consulting CEOs, teachers, principals and others. His organisation is called ‘Mastery of Energy Healing’ now.

"We've had people here from Africa, and yes many business leaders and doctors as well, because they all want answers and I just give them a glimpse of what's out there," he said. "I use my energy for illness and aches and pains and so much, it's exciting. I am loving my life."

Hermosillo said he grew up a devout Catholic with nine brothers and sisters. "I would say I am not a practicing Catholic. It's not completely about that; religion is important, but this was so much wider than that.”

Following his experience, he quit his previous job in the restaurant business to focus on healing through energy."My life is so peaceful and joyous. I know what happens. It's wonderful and I know what matters; you cannot take money with you," said Hermosillo while smiling. "It's a blessing, it definitely is, I can't wait to see it again, but I am so happy to have seen it. It changed me. Life is a beautiful thing, and the new beginning is amazing, every moment of my life is a gift."

John Barnicoat is very keen to tell everyone about his own experience. John, now in his fifties, says, ‘My story goes back to 2005 when I quit drinking. In 2008, someone suggested I go to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). Even though I had quit drinking easily and hadn’t drunk since, I decided to go along.

At the meetings, they mentioned about having a ‘higher power’; it could be anything; a friend, a tree, anything. I chose God, but I was also looking for some truth; to see if he was real. Unknowingly, it’s almost like I asked for my near death experience, because I was praying for a glimpse of God, because I had such a hard time imagining him. I asked for it every day for about four months.

Then, one night after an AA meeting, I was about to get into my pick-up truck, when a lady who turned out to be on her fifth dui (drunk driving) swerved her Cadillac and hit me. What I’m told is that I went up in the air and I came down on her hood, bounced down and hit her windshield, falling off into the road and ending up eighty feet away in a ditch.

I woke up 28 days later in hospital. During that time I was on life support for 18 days. I couldn’t breathe on my own.

The first thing I remember when I woke up was a nurse said “Oh, you’re awake.” And I said, “Well I’d prefer to be outside on the ledge with the birds.” And the nursed replied, “There’s no ledge out there and there’s no birds.” ‘I said, “Well, you better look out the window.” And she went out and looked and leaned over and said “Oh, there is a ledge down there and there are birds sitting on it.” And she just gave me this horrified look because the ledge was down on the first floor and I was up on the fifth floor and she knew I hadn’t opened my eyes in 28 days. She ran out of the room! I closed my eyes with the hope I would go back out on the ledge with the birds again because that’s the first place I went to when I left my body.

I was outside the hospital and it’s really different being in your spiritual body. In your physical body when you want to go and sit down you have that thought and then you have to get up and go over and sit down; well in the spiritual body, if the thought enters your mind, you just automatically go and sit down. Your body just moves; you don’t have to walk anywhere, and I went and sat down with the birds and a bird landed and sat next to me and walked right through both my legs and it was at that point that I noticed something else was coming, then something else, and then when these three angels got there (I call them angels because I don’t know what else to call them) they put their heads together and were having a conversation.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but when they were through with their conversation they started to leave, and one of them I started to follow, and it must have sensed that I was following it and it stopped, and said to me “You have to go back,” and left.

I found I went to another sphere, full of blue sky. A beautiful man appeared. If you took a person’s beauty and enhanced it five million times, then there you have it, because that’s what it’s like. They don’t have any wings, but they are incredibly beautiful.

He said, “You have to go back now,” and I left and was back with the birds again; and evidently I went back to my body, because when I woke up I was there, and when I woke up that was the only thing on my mind, and I knew then that I had gotten a glimpse.

I immediately started telling people there really is life after death. I’d go to Walmart and the cashier would start talking to me, asking how I was, and I would say, “I never had a bad day in my life, I got to talk to real angels and I found out there really is life after death.”

So fervent is Mr Barnicoat in his beliefs and desire to share his experience with as many people as possible, he says in an interview on the internet, ‘I even had brochures made up to hand out to people.”

Lord Geddes was a physician and a professor of anatomy. Being a physician, he should perhaps have been best equipped to understand what was happening to him when his consciousness parted from his physical body, back in 1973.

He told his account to a meeting of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh.

'On Saturday, November 9th, a few minutes after midnight, I began to feel very ill and by two o'clock I had developed all the symptoms of very acute poisoning; pulse and respiration being quite impossible to count...I realised I was very ill and very quickly reviewed my whole financial position: therefore at no time did my consciousness appear to me to be in any way dimmed, but I suddenly realised my consciousness was separating from another consciousness which was also me. These, for the purposes of description, we could call the A and B consciousnesses, and throughout what follows, the ego attached itself to the A consciousness. The B personality I recognised as belonging to the body [remember 'B' for 'Body' to minimise confusion in what follows], and my physical condition grew worse...

'I realised that [it] was beginning to show signs of being composite... These components became more individual and the B consciousness began to disintegrate, while the A consciousness, which was now me, seemed to be altogether outside my body, which it could see. Gradually I realised that I could see not only my body and the bed in which it was, but everything in the whole house and garden, and then I realised that I was not only seeing 'things' at home, but in London and in Scotland; in fact wherever my attention was directed it seemed to me; and the explanation I received, from what source I do not know, but which I found myself calling my mentor, was that I was free in a time dimension of space.

I next realised that my vision included not only 'things' in the ordinary three dimensional world, but also 'things' in these four and more dimensional places that I was in. From now on the description is—and must be—entirely metaphorical because there are no words which really describe what I saw, or rather appreciated.

Although I had no body, I had what appeared to be perfect two-eyed vision, and what I saw can only be described in this way. I was conscious of a psychic stream, flowing with life through time, and this gave the impression of being visible, and it seemed to me to have a particularly intense iridescence.

‘I understood from my mentor that all our brains are just end-organs projecting as it were from the three dimensional universe, into the psychic stream, and flowing with it into the fourth and fifth dimensions. Around each brain, as I saw it, there seemed to be what I can only describe in ordinary words as a condensation of the psychic stream.'

'It is surprising to note that this dream, vision or experience has shown no tendency to fade like a dream would fade, nor has it shown any tendency that I am aware to grow or rationalise itself as a dream would do. I think the whole thing simply means that but for the medical treatment of a peculiarly prompt and vigorous kind, I was dead to the three dimensional universe. If this is so in fact the experience of liberation of consciousness, it is a most important matter to place on record.”

The Tri-City Herald, the newspaper for Mid-Columbia, recently covered the story of Ernie French. The 70-year-old man lay silent as hospital monitors beeped and the respirator breathed "life" into his prone body. Moment by moment indicators informed medical staff that their patient in the specialized intensive care unit subsisted only because of life support.

“Every day they asked if we should unhook him," daughter Shelley Wood remembers, as she stood watch at her father's bedside in the grim days and nights in 2013. “I'd lay my head on his chest and pray.”

For five days there was no brain activity and it was a case that appeared hopeless. Nevertheless, Shelley kept praying with her family. Then on the fifth, a miracle happened.

“All of a sudden his eyes opened and they were crystal blue. He kept trying to talk, trying to write gibberish, and kept trying to breathe on his own,” while alerted Hospital personnel rushed to remove his respirator.

Retired insurance agent Ernie French of Atascadero, California, had an extraordinary story to tell. According to him, he had been to heaven and back. The tale began on March 25th in Santa Maria. Ernie had been attending a friend's barbeque when he began to feel sick.

“My wife, Barbara, saw my colour wasn't good and she said I needed to go to the doctor,” remembers Ernie. “I thought I could just tough it through, but I was sweating profusely and having trouble breathing.”

Rushing by car with Barbara driving, the couple hoped to reach San Luis Obispo. The hospital was still almost an hour away. As they raced north on Highway 101, Ernie's situation deteriorated just as a local hospital sign appeared.

Once inside the hospital, Ernie says, “I’d left my body and I was at the top of the room. I was observing all kinds of people trying to resuscitate me, force a tube down my throat. I heard my doctor say, “Oh no, I think we’ve lost him!” That’s when I was transported to heaven.” What Ernie experienced there is difficult for him to describe; the brilliance, the pervading love, the communication between him and God, all without words. Yet, he feels compelled to tell the multi-dimensional story in language that seems to him, ‘flat’.

“The gate looked like the Eiffel tower, without the tower,” Ernie says about his entry into heaven. “It was filled with emeralds, rubies, diamonds and precious stones that were reflecting the tremendous light; so mind-blowing and breathtaking.”

As the new arrival took steps beyond the gate, he became aware of the transparency of the golden multi-tiered street where other beings moved below, clothed in white gowns.

“As I look,” Ernie says with awe in his voice, “I see people walking and moving who were around twenty five years of age.”

He had the distinct impression these were souls whose heavenly bodies were now flawless and ageless. And although Ernie didn’t see anyone he knew in the brief moment, his attention was drawn to an immediate hand reaching for his. Suddenly, he was face to face with Jesus Christ; and then his Saviour called him by name.

“His eyes were a beautiful blue; eyes of such compassion,” Ernie says with conviction. “And right then I knew I was forgiven; the feeling and the euphoria of knowing that love.”

He says the realization that everything during his lifetime had been pardoned; all thoughts and actions, was joyous. “There was celestial music and people worshipping and praising. Then he (Jesus) took me to a veranda, like an observation deck.”

But as quickly as Ernie had been transported to heaven five days earlier, he was about to experience a transition once again. ‘The Lord says, “Your visit is over.” And suddenly I’m slipping back into my body and can’t believe I can’t talk because of the tube in my mouth!”

Now, Ernie looks back on the walk with Jesus and the mental discourse between them as a period without boundaries of time. The Army veteran believes God gave him several directives during his journey. He was told, “You are to take my message back.” The senior citizen now spreads the word of his experience through church services or one-on-one with people he meets on the street, in the supermarket, or wherever he finds a listening ear. “Heaven is such a beautiful place and heaven is for real. When I experienced the love so marvellously, you can’t help but want to give it away.”

Ernie says the experience has changed him into a gentler, more loving person.

Reuel Stewart was brought up by Missionary parents. He says, “I was brought up in religion; I thought I knew everything there was to know about it. I had stopped reading the Bible by the time I was twelve, as I drifted more into the world and away from it.

One day when I was nineteen, me and my twin brother were swimming in our pool with a friend and my aunt. We were showing off. In those days we used to be able to hold our breath for three minutes. We often swam under the water. So, we were seeing how many laps we could do under the water, and when I got to my eighth lap, I got about half way along when I needed to come up for air. I saw the water above me and as my head hit the top of the water my body stayed laying face down in the water and I left my body; I just kept going up, and as it happened I instantly felt like all the weight of this earth dropped off me; the peace I felt; even today I cant explain it properly; the burden of having to eat, drink, get dressed and so on, was gone. When you leave your physical body all of that is gone. Never have I felt that peace before or since. I was amazed.

Ascending up into the sky, I was able to look down and see myself floating face down in the pool and at the same time I was almost in space because I was so far away from earth, but I could see everything. You don’t look with ‘physical eyes’ anymore. So even though I was so far away I could see everything so clearly that was going on in the pool in very great detail.

I was brought to what I guess was one of the gates of Heaven. The City was so big; I wasn’t able to see inside. I was looking through the gates and the gates were open. There was an angel at the gates and he was talking to me and explaining things to me, because I was asking him questions. When I looked at the City it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen; I haven’t been able to describe it properly since. The walls seemed to be like transparent diamonds or crystals. Inside the streets were glowing, like transparent gold, but however I describe it, I don’t feel like it does it justice to how beautiful it was. The walls and streets on earth are usually quite ugly things.

The grass was so beautiful. The colours are so brilliant I can’t even give a description. I can’t compare it with any of the colours I know on earth; there’s no comparison.

The whole view of it was just so much more spectacular than anything I’d ever seen on earth. I never entered inside the gate but I could see angelic beings in there, and there were all kinds of grass, trees, and a town. I was amazed and awed at its beauty, and the peace I was feeling.

‘Dying’ was the most beautiful thing that had happened to me, I wasn’t even thinking about the pool and drowning. The angel was a loving, calm being, answering all of my questions. It seemed like there was no time, like we have time in earthly understanding, but it felt like I was there for hours.

The conversation turned to my body being left and the Angel started talking about whether I was going to go back. I don’t remember making the decision to go back; I do remember thinking I didn’t want to come back because I was so happy being where I was.

The next thing that happened, I was watching them back in the pool as they began to realise I wasn’t moving; I often used to lay in the pool just floating and holding my breath so it could have been some time until they became concerned. I saw them shout for my parents to come out of the house and as my mother ran towards my body I fell from the sky and hit my body, and found myself revived.”

Reuel’s message from his experience, he says,  is that “Now I know that you don’t have to be worried about anyone dying and leaving here, because they are so much happier there than they are on earth.”

In the early nineties, a story began circulating about Lloyd Glen and his son Brian, from Ohio.

“Last summer, my family had a spiritual experience that had a lasting and profound impact on us, one we feel must be shared. It's a message of love.

On July 22nd I was en route to Washington DC for a business trip. It was all so very ordinary, until I landed in Denver for a plane change. As I collected my case from the overhead compartment on the plane, an announcement was made for a Mr. Lloyd Glenn to see the United Customer Service Representative immediately. At this point I knew something was wrong and my heart sunk. When I got off the plane a solemn-faced young man came toward me and said, "Mr. Glenn, there is an emergency at your home." My heart was now pounding.

I called the number he gave me for the Mission Hospital. My call was put through to the trauma centre where I learned that my three-year-old son had been trapped underneath the automatic garage door for several minutes, and that when my wife had found him he was dead. CPR had been performed by a neighbour, who is a doctor, and the paramedics had continued the treatment as Brian was transported to the hospital. By the time of my call, Brian was revived and they believed he would live, but they did not know how much damage had been done to his brain, nor to his heart. They explained that the door had completely closed on his little sternum right over his heart. He had been severely crushed.

The return flight seemed to last forever, but finally I arrived at the hospital six hours after the garage door had come down.

All that night and the next day Brian remained unconscious. It seemed like forever. Finally, at two o'clock that afternoon, our son regained consciousness.

By the next day he was pronounced as having no neurological or physical deficits, and the story of his miraculous survival spread throughout the hospital. You cannot imagine our gratitude and joy.

Almost a month later to the day of the accident, Brian awoke from his afternoon nap and said, "Sit down mommy. I have something to tell you."

At this time in his life, Brian usually spoke in small phrases; so to say a large sentence surprised my wife. She sat down with him on his bed and he began his remarkable story.

"Do you remember when I got stuck under the garage door? I called to you, but you couldn't hear me. And then the 'birdies' came."

"The birdies?" my wife asked puzzled.

"Yes," he replied. "The 'birdies' made a whooshing sound and flew into the garage. They took care of me. One of the 'birdies' came and got you. She came to tell you I got stuck under the door."

"What did the birdies look like?" she asked.

"They were so beautiful. They were dressed in white, all white. Some of them had green and white. But some of them had on just white."

"Did they say anything?"

"Yes," he answered. "They told me the baby would be all right."

"The baby?" my wife asked confused.

"The baby laying on the garage floor." He went on, "You came out and opened the garage door and ran to the baby. You told the baby to stay and not leave."

My wife nearly collapsed upon hearing this, for she had indeed gone and knelt beside Brian's body and seeing his crushed chest, knowing he was already dead, she looked up around her and whispered, "Don't leave us Brian, please stay if you can."

As she listened to Brian telling her the words she had spoken, she realized that his spirit had left his body and was looking down from above on this little lifeless form.

"Then what happened?" she asked.

"We went on a trip," he said, "far away." He grew agitated trying to say the things he didn't seem to have the words for. “We flew so fast up in the air. They're so pretty Mommy," he added, "and there are lots and lots of 'birdies.”

My wife was stunned.

He said they brought him back to the house and that a big fire truck, and an ambulance were there. A man was bringing the baby out on a white bed and he said that he tried to tell the man the baby would be okay, but the man couldn't hear him. He said, "birdies" told him he had to go with the ambulance, but they would be near him. He said, they were so pretty and so peaceful, and he didn't want to come back. And then the bright light came. He said that the light was so bright and so warm, and he loved the bright light so much. Someone was in the bright light and put their arms around him and told him, ‘I love you but you have to go back. You have to play baseball, and tell everyone about the birdies.’  Then the person in the bright light kissed him and waved bye-bye. Then whoosh, the big sound came and they went into the clouds.

‘He told us that "birdies" were always with us, but we don't see them because we look with our eyes and we don't hear them because we listen with our ears. But they are always there; you can only see them in here (he put his hand over his heart). They whisper the things to help us to do what is right because they love us so much.”

Brian continues, “In the weeks that followed, he often came to us and told all, or part of it again and again. Always the story remained the same. The details were never changed or out of order. A few times he added further bits of information and clarified the message he had already delivered. It never ceased to amaze us how he could tell such detail and speak beyond his ability.

Everywhere he went, he told strangers about the "birdies."

Nathan Wheeler, a thirty four year old American living in Texas, started chronicling his own experience, after friends and family asked him to describe what had happened to him.  After so many of them had asked him, he felt he wanted to address some of their questions and explain.

He had for a long time suffered problems with his heart and had visited the ER several times in 2013 with concerns over his irregular heartbeat and fearing a heart attack. On his last visit, whilst the nurse was taking blood from him he passed out, became unconscious, and ‘died.’ He was gone for over thirty seconds and when he came back they were just about to use a defibrillator on him. The Nurse was shocked and the Doctor said they’d never had anyone come back after that length of time on their own. Usually, if patients came back, it would be after a few seconds, never that long.

As he left his body he saw a bright white light and four gentlemen welcoming him, wearing white Roman-style robes. They were shouting at him, saying “You have work to do.” This confused him; he didn’t know what work he had to do there.

They showed him around a square. “It was as though we were walking on a cloud. The white light fills the air, almost like a thickness. In this environment the lights doesn’t have a source; it’s ‘there’ in every direction. I couldn’t even see the men’s feet the light was so bright. There was a mountain range in the background. We stopped near a building, about sixty feet tall. I could only see the top of it because the light was so bright. I didn’t have a single thought in my head; of life, death.

The men would mention the names of family and people I knew, and when they mentioned them it didn’t take me back knowing them on earth; it was like I’d always known them, there was no end to knowing them. I felt like I’d been there for eternity, even though there were things that were new to me; it felt familiar.

When I found myself back in my body, with the nurse looking over me, that felt unfamiliar; the only thing I wanted to do was go back. I felt so bad, so depressed to be back. It didn’t feel like this was the right place to be; the place I had just come back from was the place I knew. God is real; heaven is absolutely real. There was no anxiety when I was in heaven. I was in an absolute peaceful state. I cannot tell you how absolutely peaceful the other side is.”

Before the experience he is quick to point out that his faith had been built on things he could prove all his life, “on rational, materialist reason.” Today, Nathan believes he was sent back to tell people of his experience and unlike many experiencers, he is speaking out about his experience with no concern about people not believing him. “I believe I was sent back to share the message and risk looking like a fool!” and his message is, “Now my fear is not dying; it’s of not living and doing the things I was born to do, and if you have a passion or a yearning to do something, you need to do it.”

He points out, “Nothing you do on this side matters; in this life we think that every little thing we do is so important; on the other side it doesn’t matter. I feel now as though I have stolen a piece of heaven and brought it back to earth and feel as if each time I’m able to share it with somebody, I break a piece of that heaven off and hand it to them, and its the greatest gift I can imagine any human being having, and I want to share it with as many people as I can. The message have is how wonderful Heaven is.”

In Thailand, Doctor Dhebhanom Muangman, President of the Bangkok Institute of Psychical Research, collated a number of stories he had heard from his native country.

“This is the case of a 43 year old woman, with twelve years of education, a college educated husband and four children. The NDE began as she lay in a hospital bed, with a visitation by two white robbed young men who were not known to the patient. They informed her that it was her time to die and that she was to be taken. She did not want to go. One of the figures touched her arm and she ‘flew’ while holding the figure’s arm. She saw the roof of the hospital as she felt herself fly upward. She reached the clouds and found herself able to walk on the clouds (just like Nathan Wheeler described in his account). Shortly thereafter, she found herself in front of a desk. The figure behind the desk told her that she was the wrong person, and the right person was in the same hospital, in a room three doors down from the room in which she ‘died.’ The patient revived. However, shortly afterward, a nurse working in a room three doors from her collapsed and died.”

Another of Dr Munagman’s accounts concerns a fifty eight year old woman who was a University Professor. ‘Her NDE began in her kitchen when a cobra snake bit her as she reached down to turn on the propane gas that fed her stove. The patient died and was put in a coffin which was placed in a Buddhist temple. She remained there for three days before reviving. Her NDE began with an OBE. She found herself in front of her house. Two men in western clothes appeared and told her to get up. They said they wanted to take her for a walk. She looked back and found that the house had disappeared. The path in front of her was misty. The weather was cool and pleasant. She saw crowds of people from which emerged an older man who she referred to as Uncle (her Father’s elder brother) He told her that he was dead and was there to welcome her. (He had in fact died the day after she had). Two men came to take her ‘for judgment.’ She came before a ‘judge’ who told her that although her name was the right name; it was actually another person of the same name who was to have been taken. He instructed her to be taken back. The judge instructed the guides to take her on a tour of Heaven before she went back. Her experience of Heaven was of a cool place where birds, flowers and beautiful houses were found in abundance.

In the Boston Library Archives is an antiquarian book that covers a time in early American history called ‘Recollections of an Old Soldier: The Life of Captain David Perry.’ It was written in 1819. Captain Perry was a soldier of the French and Revolutionary Wars. When he had just turned twenty one years old in 1762, he contracted typhus.

“While I was on board the vessel, it appears to me that I ‘died’; the separating of the soul and body; and that I was immediately conveyed to the gates of Heaven, and was going to pass in; but I was told by One that I could not enter then, but in the process of time, on the set time, I should have admittance.

It appeared to me that my feet stood on a firm foundation, and that I stood there for the space of about half an hour. In this time there appeared to be a continual flowing up of people and none stopped, but all passed off, one way or the other. Just at my left hand, there appeared to be the opening of a great gulph, and the greater part of the grown people seemed to pass off there. Once in a while one passed through the gate into the Holy City. One person appeared, with whom I had been intimately acquainted and it appeared to me that I knew him as well as I ever did: it was Doctor Matthews. Afterwards, I learned that while I was sick on board the ship, he died.

This transition as I firmly believe from life to death, and from death to life, which took place nearly sixty years ago, is as fresh in my mind now as it was then; and not many days have passed from that time to this which have not brought the interesting scenes I then witnessed, clearly to view in my mind. But I never dared to say anything about it for a great many years afterwards, for fear of being ridiculed. However, The One that talked with me, told me about the Revolutionary War and showed me the British vessels in the harbour of Boston as plainly as I saw them in later years when they came. They looked exactly as they had been shown to me many years before. At the end of February 1763 peace was declared between England France and Spain, and the people rejoiced exceedingly on account of it. I told them we should have another war soon. They asked me why I thought so. I told them the British would come against us next.

I never told my own wife nor any other person of what happened to me on board the vessel, for nearly thirty years afterwards, until a great deal was said in the neighbourhood where I lived, about one Polly Davis who was taken very sick so that no-one thought she could live long, and many times the people thought she was dying. In one of these turns she had a dream or vision in which she was assured that, on a given Sunday, she would be healed, and go to a meeting the same day. On the Saturday night before the given Sunday, many people stood round her bed, expecting every moment that she would breathe her last; but when the hour she had mentioned arrived on the Sunday, she rose from her bed and said she was well. Captain Robert Scott carried her some distance to the meeting. That same day she recovered. There was so much talk about it, that I ventured to tell my experience and have since told it to a great many people; and some believe it and others do not...’

Laurel Duran, believes that her NDE healed her from quadriplegia.

‘I had an near death experience on August 18th, 1986, in a car crash. The neck-breaking crash took place on a road called Breakneck Hill Road! While in heaven, I understood that only Love is real, and everything else here is transitory and unreal.

I could comprehend and "see" my own life as a sort of beautiful hologram, completely organized and harmonious...a far, far different life view from the life shambles I perceived moments before the impact! (I was two months sober in recovery from alcoholism; my divorce was about to be finalized that week; the health club I owned was failing financially; and the guilt-based religion of my childhood had told me that everything that was going wrong in my life was my fault.)

I'd already been a Certified Massage Therapist for 7 years when my visit to heaven happened. From "beyond" I saw the mangled car crash had broken my body's neck and paralyzed my body completely. But while still on the other side I was given to understand that anything could be healed through the power of Love...including my own body down there in the mangled wreckage...that ‘Love’ instantly flooded my spirit and healed it completely!

Would I return to that body, or continue onward toward heaven? The choice was mine. And yet I already knew what I would choose: I was so overjoyed about the eternal availability of God's Love and the healing power it contained, that I wanted so much to come back to life on earth and share the knowledge, the joy, the experience of what healing really is all about! So I plopped right back into my quadriplegic body. Doctors told me to get used to it because "quadriplegia is permanent" that my spinal cord was irreparable.’

But they hadn’t bargained for the irrepressible, resilient spirit in this feisty Irish-American patient. “The Creator of all the Universe had already informed me that quadriplegia is less than a speck of dust to heal. Who would you believe?’ Just two months after the crash, Laurel hobbled out of the hospital on her own power, and with a halo vest still screwed to her scull, she proudly paddled herself and two friends across a quiet little lake in a canoe!

“I walked out of that hospital on my body's own two legs. I returned to administering Massage Therapy within another month, and today over twenty years later, I run four miles daily. I haven't needed a doctor in years because my health is excellent.

In that beautiful holographic image of my soul's life from the other side, I believe I was given a hint of an additional direction my spiritual support work would take once I returned. My depth of trust in God's Love permeates every massage I give, and every conversation I have. After all, I came back to share messages of Love from heaven.

During my near-death experience, it was so joyfully clear to me that a broken neck and spinal cord were tiny things for the Creator’s Love to completely heal. In heaven I knew what it felt like to be completely healed, and that’s the memory I came back with. I came back to share it with others. She wrote a book about her experience and healing, entitled ‘The Blue Cord.’

She says, “Now, if a person – like me, for instance - receives verification of unconditional healing power directly from the Source of all the Universe, well!

Remember that no matter what, as long as you live and breathe, there is hope of your healing. Just keep your hands open to heaven and ask them to help you. No matter what. Keep those hands open, palms up!”

Corinna Honan was a reporter for the Daily Mail Newspaper when she underwent her own NDE. She writes, “Mine was the unvarnished, bargain-basement version. No luscious flower border, not one solitary angel. But I have certainly had a near-death experience. I know it wasn’t a dream. Dreams can be vivid, but their intensity soon dissipates. They don’t keep hijacking your thoughts and pounding you all over again with overwhelming emotion. It happened some years ago, when I was in my twenties, before I knew that these bizarre visions even had a name.

A year after joining the Daily Mail as a news reporter, I had been sent to Corfu to write a travel piece on learning to sail. I was assigned to a small yacht — part of a flotilla led by a captain, his engineer and the PR for the company. This was certainly the first job I’d ever had that involved loafing in the sun and boarding a rubber speedboat every evening to sample the local taverns. On the night in question, it was the captain’s birthday. Two or three people drank far more than usual, and one of them was in charge of the speedboat taking us back to our yacht. I was sitting on its squishy rubber side as we zoomed into the dark night. In our mellow mood, none of us noticed that our driver had forgotten to switch his lights on. At full speed, he crashed into a yacht at anchor. My back took some of the impact, but I didn’t know this. In a split second, I’d fallen unconscious and tumbled into the bottom of the speedboat.

In that tiny sliver of time between consciousness and the void, time slowed right down. I became aware that I was wafting down a long, dark tunnel. I felt calm and relaxed. There was a bright light at the end that was acting as a kind of magnet, with a slow but even pull.The tunnel was straight, with indeterminate walls, and the light, which didn’t hurt my eyes, grew steadily brighter as I approached it. None of this was frightening. My brain had become a puddle of pure emotion. Euphoria, if you like. I remember thinking the following words: ‘I’m dying, and I’m happy about it.’ Actually, I’m convinced I said them out loud. I have no idea how long I was unconscious but it must have been for some time.  My companions had somehow heaved me into the yacht involved in the crash. Then blackness descended again.

The following morning, I woke up. It took a while to register that it was drenched in blood; from a deep cut on my left hand. And that I was in a stranger’s yacht. Surprisingly, I felt no panic at all, and no pain. Still high on my vision, I kept replaying the tunnel, the slow pull towards the light, and those words: ‘I’m dying, and I’m happy about it.’ Ridiculous! How could I have been happy to die? And, anyway, I hadn’t.

I seemed to spend a lot of that day grinning idiotically. Was I in shock? No doubt, but I was also in a state of semi-euphoria and feeling only the tiniest flickers of pain.’

In the summer of 1977, Lawrence Poole was a very busy national sales trainer. Having just won a squash tournament, he got into his car to drive home. Being very close to an airport, often the jets would drop oil down onto the road. It had been raining, and he had waited at the squash club until after the rain had stopped. Driving away, he hit a pool of oil and water and his car skidded out of control and straight into a post at 70 miles an hour. He hit the steering wheel and broke almost every bone in his body, and his spinal chord. After being declared dead four times, spending six weeks in intensive care, and a total of eleven months in hospital, he was left permanently in a wheelchair. Despite this, he went onto became a popular motivational trainer for corporations.

Interviewed by Lilou Mace, he talked openly about the four near death experiences he had during that time. “It was a heck of an ordeal, but contrary to what people may think, seeing my dead body and realising my life was over, was an incredible awakening, and I describe myself as the luckiest person on earth when I do my training seminars to companies.”

“Each time I died I had so many questions and yet each time those questions were answered in a nano second. My mind was changed by the experience. I realised that the questions, were answered by stopping my inner dialogue; which allowed me to see the light. It was a huge awakening. It taught me you could see it in real life if you could stop the dialogue, by meditation for example.

In one of the nde’s, I was watching from the ceiling, seeing a Doctor about to resuscitate me. I felt filled with love, like a balloon expanding with love. As soon as I realised I was in darkness, I saw the light and went towards it at great speed. A huge wall stops me reaching the light. I could see the light pouring over the wall; the light was like seeing God face to face. You understand everything. It’s just one light. Division makes no sense. I was amazed at how God was appearing out of the light.

I realised there was no need to stress over things. I surrendered to the higher power. I have a God now that’s omnipresent; the creative power that links us all. The light is everything. It’s everything; plants, people, consciousness, subatomic particles, matter, people. It gave me all the answers. I had no fear.

It helped me heal, meditate, and I never panicked again. I don’t feel I had a choice during the NDE’s to come back; I didn’t do anything. I wanted to die, but I couldn’t. I came to understand humans worry and we have lost a lot of our natural instincts which don’t allow you to enjoy the joy in your life.”

His experience led him to believe firmly in Theophysics; an approach to the material world informed by the knowledge that it is created by God. Theophysics is based on a formula of pure mathematics that demystifies the world as a unified field of force. In 1980, Mr Poole established twelve principles that purport to link the human soul and God. He has been exploring, studying and teaching how the creative process is indivisible from Nature ever since.

Dr Frank Tipler, a world renowned mathematical physicist who teaches at Tulane University, found the mathematical formula that he believes proves the existence of God. "We have a simple very straight forward proof of the existence of God."

According to Dr Tipler, that proof can be determined by the laws of physics and quantum mechanics. He's come up with an equation. It's not understandable to most, but Dr Tipler concludes the initial conditions of our universe and what made it happen, is not due to chance. He uses a diagram of the universe to make his point, and when dozens of numbers and mathematical symbols add up across the board, Dr Tipler says it equals God.

Dr Tipler was once an atheist himself and knows how hard it is to believe. But, he says that after he found the numbers and the scriptures connected so perfectly, he converted.

"My younger self forty years ago would be astounded to find his name on the book, ‘The Physics of Immortality,’ but I have been forced to do these conclusions by the mathematical consequences of the laws of physics.”

Donna Nakzawa spoke about her own experience, to More Magazine in 2010, about the traumatic hospital experience she went through and he subsequent NDE.  “Nine years ago I lay paralyzed in Johns Hopkins Hospital with a rare neurological autoimmune disease. I would later learn that the medication I was about to receive was known to cause a life-threatening drop in blood pressure. It happened to only a few patients, but as it happened, I was one of them.

“Here’s what I remember: A nurse adjusted my IV. As the drip entered my body, the room began to blur. Someone yelled, “Fifty over 30!” Machines beeping, white coats flashing starkly in fluorescent lights. The room around me receded until I saw only shadow and light. I could sense that people were upset, scared. But in that moment I felt strangely calmed, as if I were rising into a white sea of never-ending light; a current of love so deep, it seemed unfathomable that such a place had existed without my knowing. How could I have been blind all my life to this bright river of love, peace, joy that cradled me? I wanted to rock there forever.

Then I saw my father, who died when I was a child, appearing before me. It was as if an endless warmth were expanding around him. I felt my spirit reach toward that beckoning place, toward him. He spoke, his voice urgent, “Choose life.” And I knew he meant my life. He was telling me not to join him.

Suddenly I heard my young son call out—though he was at home, thirty miles away: “Mom? Mommy?” His voice was panicked. I felt myself suspended for a moment between two worlds. Then I heard my father urge again, “Choose life.”

The day on which this took place was August 25, 2001; twenty nine years to the day after my father died in the same hospital. He was forty two; I would turn forty two, three days after my experience. Nothing like those four minutes has ever recurred. And yet everything was altered. I’d always hoped there existed a greater presence. Yes; God. Now I felt sure there was the possibility of something more; another layer of meaning, bigger than our daily striving.

“Sometimes they think I’m a little loopy. I see gifts in small moments, intimations of that bigger meaning. I’ll be driving my kids to wrestling practice or the horse barn, and I’ll pull off to the side of the road to look at a particularly gorgeous cloud. A single giant cloud so achingly white against a sharp, deep blue that it calls me out of myself.”

In 2011, Laura Garrity came back to life after an astonishing fifty seven minutes, following a massive heart attack. A grandmother from North Attleborough, Massachusetts, she says she had a near-death experience after suffering the heart attack outside the school, where she worked as a bus driver. Seeing it happen, the school nurse and an assistant quickly fetched and applied a defibrillator but without result. Laura told Boston News, the last words she heard was a female voice saying, “I'm cutting her clothes off,” but she says she is in no doubt she saw and felt much more.

She was taken to the emergency room of the local hospital. She had no pulse, was not breathing on her own, and had no blood pressure. After fifty minutes in this state, with three last-minute attempts to revive her with electro-shock, she finally regained consciousness, and came back to life miraculously with no brain damage.

What she experienced while she was "out" was no dream, she said. "I know I went some place else. I know there's a different place than here. My body was here, but I just floated away right out of my body. I floated straight up and I seen myself. There's this bright light; it’s like lightening. I saw white. The colours were so vivid. It was very peaceful. I saw people, but I kept going. I wanted to see my Mum and my ex-husband, and they both came, and it was very peaceful; so peaceful, and bright. It was beautiful. I remember trying to reach out for my ex-husband, trying to touch him, but he moved back. He wouldn’t take my hand and then they floated away. It was as if he was saying “It's not your time.” And then he left, he floated away. I was just there. I remember this massive energy, very powerful energy.

I remember having such a sense of peace. The peace and the calm and the pain...no pain.  There were pictures of my son, my daughter, and my granddaughter. Every second there were pictures flashing in my mind, and then that must have been when I came back. I am not a religious person, but I was there. I know what it was like."

On WFMYnews, in Greenboro, North Carolina, on Jan 31st 2014, Mary Hatley describes what she's convinced was heaven. She says she's seen the unseen; A glimpse into eternity.

Three months ago, her life changed forever on Bass Mountain Road in Alamance County. Driving with friends in her truck, she says, “One of them had called my name in the backseat.”

Mary looked back. When the road curved, the truck lost traction and flipped several times into a ditch.

“At first, it was very bright,” she said. “When I felt the light, I just felt like an uplifting, like I was rising. It felt like the whole time I was in somebody's arms. Like somebody was holding me. It was beautiful; the light, it was very bright and then it was this bright green pasture; flowers, birds chirping. Like I could see birds flying, trees with flowers blossoming. It was like spring, it was so gorgeous; it felt like I was in a dream. That's what it felt like. But when I started feeling that peace, as soon as the light, I knew this wasn't a dream.”

“I see three figures standing in front of me,” she says, “It was my grandfather, my grandmother and my Uncle David. I never met my grandmother, but I saw her full body in a beautiful dress. I saw my grandfather holding his hand out to me. He's showing me a message, like I shouldn't even be here. I should be dead right now. And then the next thing I know I see them waving bye.”

“It felt like, this is real. God is real. God loves all of us. I didn't really want to come back, and I would never say this before, but now I would say this. And live by what god would do.”

Kyisha Garner talks about her Near Death Experience on Christian site ‘Jesus One.’ “I am a Woman of fifty five years of age, and increasingly stress has been building up, because of a number of things, and worry has been taking a great toll on me. Recently my husband passed away, leaving me alone and consumed with grief. My daughter died of cancer, leaving me four grand children to care for. Then my 81 year old mother, fell and broke her hip, had surgery, and I was left to be her in-home, care giver.

Having physical health issues, the doctor gave me three prescriptions. One of which had a warning paper describing some serious side effects, such as heart attack, stroke, and internal bleeding, etc. Anyway, I took the medication and after about 15 minutes, I began to feel very ill. I felt dizzy and sick. I walked out into the yard and it was hard to breathe. I felt intense heat from my heart spreading up my neck, down my arm, through my body and down my legs. I tried not to show it, because I had company at my home and my grand children were there. My whole body started to shake. I had pain in my head. I barely made it back to a chair and sat down.

Suddenly, I felt my spirit begin to leave my body. I had no fear, but was very peaceful. I was dying. My spirit was lifting up out of my body, ascending upwards beyond the ceiling and past the trees, ever upward until I began to hear the most beautiful songs. A chorus of angels, singing the most beautiful songs. The songs seemed to be coming from every corner of Heaven that I was ascending up into. Then I noticed I was weightless. My thoughts were not of the body, or that I had left the body.

Everything I began to see had beautiful rainbow colours. In every direction there was no end. It seems I could see into infinity, and there was no end of the beauty. I felt a Love that words could never describe. It filled me as air fills the lungs, giving me life.

As I looked around, beyond time and space, I realized I was not alone, but Angels and Heavenly hosts that worship before the throne of God, made themselves known to me. They were singing a song I had never heard before, in a language I could understand, but had never heard before. It was the language of God.

I saw birds, flowers, trees, rivers, and more things than I can name; all of the creations of God. And there was Love, Peace and a real Oneness with all of these, that I cannot explain.

I could smell roses, the most wonderful aroma I cannot fully describe. And everything was collared like a rainbow. Everything was in order.

I knew I had been there before. I knew it was my real home. As I realized I had no human body. I also realized I was alive more than ever before. More alert to every detail, more attuned to all life around me. And I had no thoughts of earth, time, or people on the earth. I felt a oneness with all that was there, like I had always been there, in this place of Love and Peace.

I was aware of God, Jesus, The Angels and all the Heavenly Hosts, like they were part of me. Part of my own eyes, mind and heavenly body. I felt no evil there. I could hear every thought and knew everything. I knew all that I was experiencing, was for me. Everything was rejoicing for me. My spirit, my heart and my mind was being rejuvenated; my slate was wiped clean from stress, fear and worry. As I looked into infinity, without end, everything was renewed in me.

I felt like I had been in this place forever. I could hear the voice of God. He said, “You are, and you will be. Have no fear for I am always with you, time without end, remember this!”

At this point, my spirit returned to my body in the chair instantly. I could feel my twelve year old grandson Ethan’s hand in mine, and I heard his prayers. He said, “Please God don’t let her leave me.”

My other hand was raised up and I could feel another hand in mine, not of this earth. It was the hand of power, strength, Love and Peace without measure.

Slowly I could feel my spirit placed back into my body..I opened my eyes and could see My Grand children looking at me with tears in their eyes. They told me that for fifty minutes, my body had grown cold to the touch. My lips turned dark purple, my skin white as snow. They were sure I was gone. The relief I saw in their faces, I will never forget. I felt their love and it was overwhelming. Now I feel renewed. I have no fear. I know where I belong. I am loved.

His Kingdom is more real than we know. Today, I went to Heaven and came back again.”

Becki Hawkins,was a hospice nurse and chaplain for over thirty years. When she had first started out, finding the job taking an emotional toll on her, she would tell her Husband about her day. He suggested it might be a good idea to write down her experiences, as a way of processing her feelings.

Now retired, she gave a fascinating talk on October 9, 2012, to a small group of people that had gathered at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Sedona, Arizona.

Talking for over an hour, she described the astonishing first hand experiences she had with dying patients, so many of whom described near death experiences and death bed visions to her.

She describes humorously one day going to do a home visit to an elderly patient she hadn’t visited before. When she got there the Lady immediately said to her, “Now listen here; we’ve got to have a talk. I’ve been to Heaven three times and they shot me out and brought me back. If you try to lay a hand on me when I start to pass then I’m going to promise you I will haunt you, so don’t be doing that. If I have to I’ll get DNR (do not resuscitate) tattooed across my chest.”

Becki duly promised her no-one would try to interfere! The old Lady continued. “You wouldn’t believe the music I was hearing, you wouldn’t believe the light and the peace.”

Continuing with her talk, Becki also tells of how one day, whilst at a charity fundraiser, she was approached by a lady in her seventies who asked if Becki would mind calling her, so that she could tell her of an experience that happened to her once. Becki duly called her and went to visit her.

The lady went on to tell her that when she was four years old, she was very ill with Polio, and was in hospital for a long time. She describes being in so much pain that she didn’t think she could stand it any longer. One day, whilst her Father was sitting by her bedside and she was watching the Nuns tending to the other patients, all of a sudden she felt herself rising above her body and watching her Dad trying to revive her. She described going to, “the most beautiful place, and it was light, and I was surrounded like it was a cocoon of warmth, and I was not hurting anymore; there was no more pain. I was filled with such indescribable love, I cannot find a word to tell what it was like; there was so much peace. But, I could see my Father’s anguish at the thought of loosing me and all of a sudden I was back in my body.

I tried to tell him, “Dad! I died.” He said, “Ssh. Don’t tell anyone that, it was just a dream.”

Years and years later, when the first books started coming out about near death experiences, I read them all, and at that point, I knew then it was not a dream; it was real.”

Becki talked about her own brother, a welder, who was unexpectedly diagnosed with a terminal tumour. He was a tough guy, who had lived a wild life, she said, wrecking two Harley Davidson’s and getting into car crashes. One day at home, he had terrible trouble breathing, and calling Becki, she advised him to get an ambulance. Their Father was in the house and came to help him whilst they waited for the ambulance. By the time Becki herself got there, he was barely breathing. He started slipping away, as the first aiders worked on him.

After he had revived and recovered, he talked later about his experience, and her brother confided that he had been reunited with a very dear friend of his, who had committed suicide. Becki said this experience had reassured him immensely, as he had been very saddened by his friend’s death, and very concerned that he had gone to Hell. He also thought a lot about whether, after the wild life he had lived, he too would end up in Hell. Having seen his friend, for the remainder of the time he lived, he was comforted by the fact that not only had his friend gone to Heaven, but that he too might have a chance of going there.

Becki compiled all of her incredible stories into a book, Transitions: A Nurse’s Education about Life and Death.

George Eager, now in his sixties talks about a time when he was seventeen, back in 1967. “I was working on a construction project down in Puerto Rico. I got really sick, from some kind of gastro-enteritis. I had no medical insurance and after a few days I went to a public clinic. They gave me some tablets to take. For seven days I was in bed very ill at the place where I was staying. I couldn’t eat and hardly drank at all. I got weaker and weaker. In hindsight, I should have called my parents, but I was seventeen! On the seventh day I was prostrate in bed with the illness and I suddenly saw my body on the bed from above, looking down and I said in my mind, “I’ve died.” Then in the next moment I said, “Well, wait a minute, who’s seeing the body if I’ve died? And, at least I’m not in pain; I feel perfectly well,” and I thought, “This is alright. I can just float around at will.”

I decided to go outside, and I floated out the window; I don’t know how else to put it. Outside it was incredibly bright. This was not a tunnel of light but it was as if light was a liquid and you’re in this sea of light. The light was everywhere, with no particular source. I felt great, I thought, “My goodness, this isn’t so bad, my goodness, it’s not what I thought it would be at all.”

I heard Church bells, and it added to the whole aura of what I call it ‘ecstatic unreality.’ After some time out there floating around in the sea of light I said to myself, “I should go back to my body; I shouldn’t leave it alone like that.” And so I went back through the window and back to the room and there was my body, and I lay there saying to myself, “I’ll just take a little rest in my body, now that I know death is ok.”

The next thing I knew, after falling asleep and waking some time later, my fever had completely abated and I felt better. I didn’t tell anyone at they time; they’d think I was nuts and I’d never heard of anybody having an experience like this in my life. It was only when I was older that I heard stories and realised this was not at all uncommon.”

At a meeting of Delaware Valley Near Death Studies, held at Ardmore United Methodist Church, a panel of four people talked about their close calls with the hereafter.

Beverly Brodksy, the group's president, related an experience that occurred in 1970, when she was twenty years old and had just moved from her native Philadelphia to California.

She met her near-death experience after a fateful ride on the back of a boyfriend's motorcycle. She hadn't been wearing a helmet. The motorcycle was struck by a car in an intersection, and she was thrown headfirst onto the sidewalk. The accident broke parts of her skull and numerous bones in her face. When she revived she was in agony.

After she was able to leave the hospital, her NDE came. She wanted to die so much, she said, that she almost willed it to happen, because she was in so much pain.

She says she left her body. “Then, I saw an angel. I'm Jewish, so I was really surprised,'' she said. In fact, she was non-practicing and considered herself an agnostic.

“The angel, who was male and handsome, took her down a tunnel, into the presence of a ‘being of light’. I had the feeling of merging, becoming one.''

The second speaker was Dorothy Bush. “I was due to have my second child near the end of February of 1959. On the fifth of December of 1958, I started to haemorrhage. Still nearly a month early of my expected delivery date of February 20, I was taken in an ambulance to a private hospital on a Sunday afternoon and upon arrival at the hospital I was taken to a room to be examined. I then felt faint and the nurse gave me some oxygen. I said that this was not of any help and she gave me more, and I again said, “This is not helping.” The nurse then started to scream, "Doctor, Doctor, hurry, please hurry, her blood pressure, it's falling!"

I glanced at the clock on the wall (I don't know why) and then suddenly I found myself in this absolutely most beautiful, peaceful place. The flowers were extraordinarily beautiful, and there was such lovely music. I can only say the flowers were so much more beautiful than any we see on Earth, and there was music and beauty; I was being surrounded by love and peace.

Then someone started to talk to me. I didn't see his face. I say "His" because it was a male voice. He said, "Dottie, I am leaving you here (on Earth) for a purpose." He then proceeded to make known to me all things. As he talked to me, I thought, ‘Why me? as I am not anyone special but since he has revealed all to me so clearly, now when I return back to Earth, I can help so many people.”

As soon as I thought this, he answered by saying: "No one will know what you are going through." When he finished talking I started to float back to Earth, and the closer I got the dirtier and uglier it appeared. I then felt myself enter into my body on the operating table with a sound like Whoosh!

My family doctor wrote the following in a medical records booklet that I kept for my son born during my N.D.E. "Resuscitation necessary because of apnea and hypoxia (oxygen deprivation) due to anemic shock.”

On seeing my husband and Mother, I said, "No one will know what I have just been through." But because of the assurance I had been given concerning the future, I told my husband and mother that I would not complain again about anything. That night just as I had been told I could not recall the great knowledge given me, but I did eventually become more patient with everyone and everything. Now I have told many people of my experience. I look at life differently. Helping people and expressing love at all times for each other is what we are here for. It is a great frustration to see people running about with a self-cantered attitude, pursuing activities that are such of a waste of time and to be unable to help them understand. Seeing so much unthinking selfishness in the world today just makes my heart ache. But those of us - and we are many - who have had the benefit of the near-death experience, long to share with everyone the lesson of this higher consciousness and love. I have no fear of death, actually looking forward to going home when God calls and I yearn to be able to assure others of the reality of the beauty and joy of Heaven, for my experience remains as vivid and convincing today as when it happened. I tell others simply, "The best is yet to come!”

In 1912, Dorothy Kerin had been given up for dead. Born in South East London in 1889, in 1902 her father died and soon after that the family faced increasing poverty. For Dorothy, this was also the beginning of long years of intractable sickness leading to tubercular meningitis and peritonitis. On February 18th 1912, she lay dying with her family gathered around her death-bed; her doctor having said that Dorothy wouldn’t survive the night.

Late in the evening, Dorothy suddenly sat up, declaring that she was well despite spending most of the previous two weeks in a coma, insisted on getting out of bed, and then asked for food, which she ate ravenously before being persuaded to go back to bed. The next morning Dorothy’s doctor, an eminent practitioner and surgeon, had no explanation. Indeed he was almost unbelieving at what he witnessed, saying to a reporter, “Had I read about it, I certainly should not have believed it.” Subsequent medical tests revealed no trace of the lesions and symptoms associated with her illness. It was a fully documented, miraculous cure and, as the news of Dorothy’s healing spread, she became an overnight celebrity, with newspapers camping outside her front door.

Dorothy described that during the two weeks prior to her healing she had received a vision of the Lord and Angels, “For me it was a time of indescribable joy and bliss, in a place and environment of exquisite harmony. I seemed to drift into space. I was no longer conscious of my body, but my soul was overflowing with love and joy, and a transcendent feeling of supreme happiness, impossible to describe in ordinary language.

I passed on and on, and as I went, the way grew brighter and brighter, until I saw in front of me a wonderful altar, formed by angels. There were six at the back, and in the front one more beautiful than the rest holding a chalice, which he brought to me and from which he gave me to drink. Then they disappeared, and as they went, they seemed to be chanting words which I could not understand. I passed on again, and soon I heard a great flocking sound, and saw coming from every direction white robed figures, some of them were carrying lilies, while some had haloes. Their movements made lovely music, and they all looked as though they were coming and going with some definite purpose. No words of mine can exaggerate the exquisite beauty of the scene. As I looked I saw one coming towards me; I thought he was coming for me, and I held out my hands towards him, but he smiled and said: “No, Dorothy, you are not coming yet.” Again I passed on, and this time I seemed to go a much greater distance, until I could go no further, when I heard a voice say, “Dorothy” three times. I answered “Yes, I am listening, who is it?” Then a great light came all around me, and an angel took my hand and said, “Dorothy, your sufferings are over, get up and walk.” Suddenly I was aware of a lovely form clad in dazzling white. He was coming towards me, and I knew it was Jesus asking me “Will you go back?”

She said that she was charged in that moment, to “heal the sick, and bring comfort.”

Subsequently, Dorothy began to study theology in 1915 under Dr Langford James of St Mark’s Church, Bush Hill Park. It was during this period while praying in St Mark’s Vicarage that it was said Dorothy apparently received the stigmata, the marks of the wounds of Christ, on her own body.

In 1929 she opened her first Home of Healing in a small house in Ealing and dedicated her life to trying to heal and comfort all those who came to her.

DrRajiv Parti, perhaps underwent a similar transformation.

“In 2008, I was a busy cardiac-anesthesiologist and Chief of Anesthesiology at Heart Hospital in Bakersfield, California. I derived my identity and happiness from the work I did and my family. But in August of that year everything was turned upside down. First, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Then, a routine surgery to treat my cancer led to complications which required three additional surgeries. My new reality included constant, excruciating pain.

As an anaesthesiologist I was the first to advocate traditional pain medications to manage severe pain. So I used them myself. But I soon discovered that I became addicted to these medications. I was now a cancer survivor living with post surgical complications, chronic pain and addiction. Inevitably within a year, I was also diagnosed with depression.

On December 14, 2010, I was back in surgery for placement of an artificial urinary sphincter. After this surgery, I was very sick, running a fever of 104-105 degrees F. Something was very, very wrong.

Ten days later, on Christmas Eve, I was admitted to the emergency ward of the UCLA hospital for sepsis (a life-threatening, severe infection). Christmas morning, the medical staff performed emergency surgery. When the medical staff inserted a catheter to drain my urinary bladder, the pain was so intense that it triggered an out-of-body experience. Though my physical body was heavily medicated and ‘asleep’, I was now conscious and aware of a different plane of existence. I could see my body, from above, in the hospital. I was aware of conversations taking place. In the operating room, I observed the surgeons. During and after the surgery, my awareness; a consciousness that was me, but was not limited to the location of my body; was completely intact. Not only was it completely intact, but it was more acute and expanded. I remember being in the operating room, looking down at my body from 10-15 feet in the air. I was looking from the left side of where the surgeons were operating on me. I could see, hear, and smell not only everything in the operating room, but also things far away. My senses had become hyper sensitive.

With my awareness still in the operating room, I simultaneously heard a conversation between my mother and sister. They were in India. They were talking about what they were going to prepare for dinner that night: rice, vegetables, yogurt and legumes. It was very cold and foggy there. My family was bundled up, using a small electric heater to stay warm, because there was no central heating. I discovered that it made no difference if people were near or far away: my awareness was everywhere simultaneously.

My father appeared, with his father at his side. My father took my hand and guided me toward a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, there was glowing bluish-white light. As I moved through the tunnel, it was as if time and space disappeared. I became aware that I was in two places, or states of consciousness, at the same time.

Inwardly, I experienced a complete and cosmic peace; a state of pure harmony, without any disturbance or excitement. I felt total, undisturbed bliss in which I sensed the cosmic connection of everything in the entire universe.

That space, which I understood to be Heaven, was very serene. Words are inadequate to describe it. I was also in the presence of a very calming, loving, formless bluish, white light; an Entity which I somehow knew and felt was supreme love, knowledge and intelligence personified. At the same time, I was back in the tunnel with my father. He was leading me. I could see my past, present and future. My father shepherded me through the time tunnel. As he did, a profound awareness washed over me. I felt deeply soothed. After my father helped me cross the tunnel, I arrived in a place of profound calmness, light and joy. I was greeted by two beings who were like young men, radiating energy and light, full of vigour, enthusiasm and love. They told me, again without speaking, that they were guardian angels. They guided me through this beautiful place. There was a meadow. There were fields with many different collared roses. There were mountains and a fresh crystal water stream was flowing. Cool, soothing air was blowing. The air had a sweet fragrance. I could hear a soft chant, as if in the distance, and yet completely audible; simultaneously, the chant felt far away and yet very near to me. At the highest level of consciousness, there was no form, but an all-pervading force, a powerful Entity of energy made of pure love. This pure, unbound consciousness was actually the base reality, the underlying fabric of absolutely everything in the universe. It was the source of all creation.

As my awareness absorbed and understood this, I found myself instantaneously immersed in the formless, shapeless bluish-white light. The Light Being began ‘speaking’ to me, but I heard the words as if through a gentle wind that was whispering in my ear. The Light Being seemed to be diffused throughout this entire dimension. It is hard to describe in words how it felt to be in the presence of the Light Being: Pure Love pervaded everything, as if all the five earthly senses were soaked in love. It was present everywhere, and all-powerful. My consciousness felt merged with the supreme primordial consciousness. I was at once communicating with It and in It. The closer, or more connected I became with the Light Being, the clearer and more intensified the chant in the distance became. The sound I heard was ‘ONG’ (which I didn’t understand at the time, but have since learned is a primordial form of ‘OM’ taught in Kundalini yoga.) The Light told me that it was not my time to leave the Earth. Everything would be all right, but my path now was going to be as a healer. I was told that I would have to leave anesthesiology and materialism behind. It told me: “Now it is time to be healer of the soul, especially of the diseases of soul, of the energy body, addiction, depression, chronic pain and cancer.”

This was a complete revelation to me. I was an anaesthesiologist who barely spoke to patients; and I liked it that way. I actually suffered from severe anxiety about public speaking and avoided it at all costs. I would have happily continued as an anaesthesiologist: it was my passion. My job afforded me a lifestyle that I had come to enjoy and identify with. While I had not been a compassionate man, I had been very well off. Until now, I had revelled in that. I loved my work, my reputation, and the material comfort it gave me. If it were up to me, I would never have given up my position and prestige. But here I was, being given direct orders from this magnificent, supremely loving, intelligent and gentle Light Being that my behaviour had to change. I was being given my life back only to live it differently.

I did not feel any anxiety or resistance to what I was being told and shown. How could I? I was in a place of unconditional, pure love and reassurance. All I could feel was deep joy and inner peace. I accepted what I was being shown with silent and profound love. Finally, I became aware, with every fiber of my being that my earthly life was being given back to me so I could help others who were suffering from chronic pain, addiction and depression.

My next memory is of waking up in the recovery room. A nurse was there, but not my family. Within 30 minutes, my family members arrived to see me. In the days ahead, the rate of my healing was nothing short of miraculous. Much to the wonder of the medical staff, my infection was all but healed within seventy two hours and I was discharged. Within days, the inflammation and pain also rapidly decreased. In the months ahead, it dissipated altogether. The depression which had blighted my life for years was gone. So too, was my addiction to pain medications.”

Because of all of this, Dr Parti has written, The Soul of Wellness, about spiritual healing.

“My whole world changed very rapidly. We downsized into a modest home. I began to volunteer and look for opportunities to perform service for others. My life is hardly recognizable. Most importantly, my nature and demeanour has shifted. I am now more caring and loving, with more compassion towards others. The insights from the other dimension propelled me to start writing and giving seminars on spiritual wellness. My core message has become forgive, love and heal. I am filled with a desire to help, to be of service, and to help people heal. I still feel connected to the Light Being and vividly recall the experience of Heaven. In all these changes, I have felt no fear. I know I am not alone, and while I may not yet have full sight of what my future looks like, I do know that there is a plan, and that the plan is a good one.’

Another doctor, Martin Brofman, tells his remarkable story of the path that led him to become a healer too. “I was at the Episcopal Hospital in Philadelphia. I had just been told that I had a "blockage" in my spinal cord, from the fourth to the seventh cervical vertebrae at the level of the neck. My right arm was paralyzed, my legs were spastic, and there were sensations like electric shocks running through my body when I moved my head.

I was told that I had to have an operation immediately, and that if I lived through the operation, I might come out of it a quadriplegic. When I asked if I had time for a second opinion, I was told that if I coughed or sneezed at any moment, I might die. Naturally, I agreed to have the operation in a few hours.

According to what the doctors had said, I might be dead in a few hours. I thought of the life I had lived, and the things I could have done but didn't, and I found myself saying to myself, "I wish I had." There were a lot of "I wish I had’s." I thought to myself that it was, in fact, a sad way to end a life, and that if I had to do it again, there would be a lot of "I'm glad I did’s."

I was taken to the operating room, and as I was being given the aesthetic, I began to experience a vertigo, a sense of spinning, I was moving through the spinning scenes; memories from the life I had lived, memories which were calling for my attention. Finally, the end of the tunnel was in sight. I came out into a kind of space, a stillness, where there was a glow of energy addressing me. It was like a spark of life, energy glowing with intelligence, not in a human form, just pure consciousness. It seemed that some distance away, there was another spark just observing the scene.

I looked back and saw my life as I had lived it, completed my thoughts about things that had happened, understood a lot of things differently, and then expressed that I was ready.

The Being began to move away. I began to follow, and then I paused. The Being quickly asked me what the thought was that had just entered my consciousness. I had thought that it would be a shame for my daughters to have grown up without their father in their life. The Being said that because my reason for wanting to return was somebody outside myself, I would be allowed to return. Before I had the chance to express that I didn't really want to return, there was a rapid, confused movement, and then I was waking up in this body.

I did not have the belief systems that would allow me to accept what had just happened. Over the next year, I began to explore ideas and philosophies I had no experience of before. I read books which described what people called, "Near Death Experiences." I knew then what had happened to me.

My diagnosis on leaving the hospital was "Spinal Cord Tumour." There was no treatment possible. I was given one or two months to live, and I decided to do that living my new philosophy of "I'm glad I did." I decided to work on myself, working in my consciousness to release the tumour.

Later, the doctors decided that they must have made a mistaken diagnosis, for it had gone.

He went on to establish the Brofman Foundation for the Advancement of Healing.

Retired teacher and musician, Dan Norman, spends a lot of his time outdoors near Gambo, Canada, where he grew up and still lives with his partner, Kathy. If he’s not working on his antique Pontiacs in the shed, he’s working in the garden or out on the water or chopping wood. Now in his sixties, one of his favourite pastimes is simply sitting on a bench along the Middle Brook trail.

In 2006, he ‘died’ of a heart attack. Interviewed in Canadian Newspaper, The Telegram, he says he was doing some landscaping at Gander’s Lakeside Homes nursing complex at the time it happened. He hadn’t been sick and had no history of heart trouble. Loading up his truck and bringing the dog along for company, he set out that morning feeling fine.

While using a ride-on lawn mower to cut the grass at the back of the home, he started to feel nauseous and dizzy. He turned off the mower and began walking towards the building. He says he saw a man standing facing the wall, about eight or nine feet tall, but at the time, Norman didn’t find it peculiar. ‘His hair was straight and long and dirty blonde. He had a long, tan colour robe that was hanging down about ten inches from the ground, and he had a rope around his waist, like you see in the Bible. He never said anything, but I knew he was talking to me. He said, “If I were you, I’d go around to the front because no one’s going to see you back here if anything happens to you.” I thought, “If he thinks it’s that serious, perhaps I should go around to the front!”

Norman says he remembers taking a few steps away, then turning back. Gander is a relatively small town, and he didn’t recognize the man, so he was curious.

“I turned around and I said, I’m going to be brazen and ask, “Who are you, anyway?” The man was still looking at the wall and then he turned to his left, right around like he was on a turntable. He said, “I look after the people.’”

Confused, Norman kept walking to the front of the building, where he began trimming the grass around a large spruce tree at the entrance. That’s where he fell down dead.

A nurse from inside the home happened to be looking out her window, and saw Norman fall. She called for a colleague and the pair summoned an ambulance and rushed to start CPR while waiting for it to arrive.

“The next thing I know, I can remember being up in the air like that,” Norman says, raising his hand. “This guy that I saw around the building, he was floating on up in the air too. I was floating along and I wasn’t scared or anything, and I happened to look down. I knew I was me and I knew I had arms and legs and everything, I was just floating up in the air. I could see people standing around and the roofs and the vents and the trees and all that stuff. I said to buddy, “How can you be up there and down there, too?” When I said that, I looked down again, and I said, “Sure, that’s not you, it’s me.” I got a big fright because I recognized myself down on the ground.”

While he was floating, Norman says, he had the most peaceful, happy feeling. He remembers being able to instantly transport himself wherever he wanted, simply by thinking of the place. He felt he was flittering around like a butterfly.

At one point, he recalls hearing the voice of his cousin’s husband, who had died two years previously. “Go back!” he was saying angrily.

The next thing Norman knew, he was waking up in hospital, his three sons at his bedside. “They told me I had flat lined, no heartbeat at all for 15 minutes, and it was a miracle I was alive at all,” Norman says.

The heart attack was Norman’s second brush with death: as a 17-year-old, he nearly drowned in a boating accident at Barachois Provincial Park, and recalls seeing a bright light, and feeling happy and warm.

“It felt like all the love of everybody in the world, everybody I knew, was hugging me,” he remembers. ‘Then it disappeared and I was walking in the water on the shore. I don’t know how I got out of the water.”

Norman acknowledges his experiences may be put down to a lack of oxygen or a drop in blood pressure, but says as far as he is concerned, what he saw and felt was very much real. He doesn’t know who the man outside the nursing home was, but has been doing a lot of research in an effort to get some answers. He says he’s never been a very religious man, but his close calls with death have changed his life.

“I want to take advantage of things that I didn’t realize before, like how beautiful everything is. I was in hospital in Gander for a month and when I opened the door to go outside, somebody had just cut the grass and I could smell it. It was beautiful, the smell of grass. Little things, like a flower or a snail or a grasshopper; it’s all so beautiful.”

Dave Haith interviewed his old friend Roy Breeze a couple of years ago in his hospice bed. In his nineties then, Roy took himself back to many years before, when as a young man he had ‘died’ whilst working at a Winfrith atomic energy site, near Winfrith Newburgh in Dorset. There had been an industrial accident and everyone had put on their protective clothing as the site was being decontaminated. Something went wrong and he was not able to get enough oxygen in his ‘frog’ suit. He says, “It wasn’t very obvious to the people standing around, but I couldn’t breathe. I collapsed, and died. It’s so clear in my mind. I remember the funny feeling. I dropped to my knees and fell forward, but didn’t hit the floor. I saw myself there, face downwards on the floor. They were fighting to get me decontaminated and to resuscitate me at the same time. They started dragging me out of the contaminated area, and I was thinking, “Don’t bother boys, leave me, I’m ok.”

I felt this sensation that I’m moving upwards. It was a lovely sensation. It’s like summer flowers in winter; it was beautiful. I thought, “This is good.”

The scenery was beautiful, all around me. It was more open than a tunnel. It becomes more expansive.”

“Doctors will tell you it’s an hallucination setting in, but I cannot deny it because it happened. I felt convinced; I had conviction. The experience was undeniable. It did give me a wonderful feeling of knowledge. When you die you just peacefully float off; it’s nothing to be afraid of, and that knowledge has given me a lot of comfort over the years.”

Tommy Thomason believes he had a brush with death. A veteran sergeant with the Newton County Sheriff's office, death came calling 43 years ago. He was 19 and newly married. He told news channels in Atlanta, "I was a brand new dad, I had a 5-month-old baby daughter and I was working at a factory here in Covington that manufactured screening wire," said Thomason. In a split second, a short in the machine he was operating sparked and Tommy was electrocuted. "But I remember at the moment of the accident, I saw liquid colours; they were vivid, vibrant, deeper, richer; nothing that you could see here."

Tommy said everything faded to black and he saw light in the distance. "As I got closer, the light got brighter and brighter, warmer and warmer..I felt welcomed. Loved. I felt like I belonged there. I felt a sense of peace, I didn’t have any anxiety.”

He remembers being on a path, "When I first stepped out I wondered, ‘Wow!  Where is this?' But then curiosity took over, and I wanted to see where the path went. I saw a foot bridge. I could see someone approach it from the other side. I couldn't see who it was; I could just tell it was a figure dressed in white.  An iridescent, brilliant white; and then this figure looked up and it was my grandfather."

His "Papa Jim" had been dead for four years. "And he looked up and smiled at me.  I just had the feeling that, ‘that’s my Grandpa!'  And I started toward the bridge, and he spoke, but he didn't speak. I perceived the thoughts in my head. He was saying, “No, you can't come now.” He says, “You got to go back, you're not ready.” But I told him, “I want to come with you.”  He says, “No you can't come now.'"

He woke in an emergency room.

Tommy said he doesn't fear death now. “It was a beautiful place, I didn’t want to leave, but I feel like I've still got a lot of living left to do here; Once you cross that river, you have eternity to spend over there."

He says he's still not sure why he was brought back, but soon after his accident he started training in CPR. Over the years, he's saved many people’s lives with his training, one of them being his former high school principal.

Professor Steve Fanning had been a Lecturer in the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, at the University of Illinois since 1980. He became Professor of History Emeritus, before retiring in 2012. He has published articles in journals and has received awards for his work. Not all of his work has been on History however. He has also published works on healing and mysticism. His interest in the last two topics came about after a near-death experience he underwent, and during his own subsequent need for healing after becoming paraplegic.

Professor Fanning spoke to the Caroline Myss Institute (CMED) about his terrible ordeal. In 1988, he was in London on a trip when he suffered a very bad asthma attack. He often had difficulties with his asthma and two or three times a year would have to go to the ER. This time, it was much worse. In real distress, an ambulance was called for him and he was taken to St Bart’s hospital. His breathing stopped and he was told subsequently that for two weeks he was on the verge of death, so much so that the nursing staff contacted his brother to ask him to come over to collect his body, convinced that he would shortly die. Yet, he continued to linger on.

When he finally came around, he was in awful pain and he was found to be paralysed from the neck down, although no cause for it could be diagnosed. Doctors told him it was likely the paralysis would be permanent.

“I didn’t tell anyone for months about my experiences that I had whilst I was in hospital, and it was only later on that I found out there was a name for it. When I did find out, I felt kind of mad because I’d thought this was my own unique experience, and it really has affected my life; there’s not a day I don’t go back to thinking about it.”

He goes on to explain his Near Death Experience, “In this life you have to describe things happening sequentially; this happened and then that happened, and that’s the way I’m going to describe it but that’s not the way it happened; it was all at once. That’s when I learned. Time was a fiction that you had to have in this life to get by, but it’s not a real thing that really exists.”

“The place I went to was all one colour- blue/grey, like twilight on Michigan Lake if you have ever been there, where the water and sky are all one colour. Beside me, to the right, was a Being; I could feel the presence. It was big and powerful. Then I began a re-experiencing of my life; not watching a movie but like literally being there again and it wasn’t just a scene. It was filled with all the emotional content; what was happening, why I felt I was doing what I was doing; my rational for my actions. But the weird thing was, at the same time, there was another experience that was the other people’s experiences; what they were experiencing of me; you saw other people’s reasoning’s for their actions, and how your actions were affecting them emotionally. Then, you could also see as an overview; I saw how I would do other things to hurt people, or how I acted because of how someone had made me feel bad by what they had done to me. It was terribly humbling.”

“I found myself in the centre of the Universe, in the middle of Space. It was the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever witnessed. I felt like I was an individual ray of connection with everything in the Universe.”

“My experience gave me help to deal with my paralysis.”

As he lay in the hospital bed trying to lift his shoulder, the only part of his body that moved, he focussed on trying to strengthen it and he says, “I began to feeling energy coming into my body, energy like electricity; I could feel it, I could see it.”

Despite Doctors telling him the nerve damage in his legs was too severe for him to be able to ever walk again, very slowly; and with tremendous effort and will, he gradually began to walk again.

During his process of healing himself, he became very interested in both his near death experience, as well as the study of Healing.

Since his incredible recovery, he has gone on to write significantly about healing and hold healing workshops.

At age 58, Kim Rives has the look of a poised public speaker, with long dark hair, kind brown eyes, and lots of confidence; but it's her story that continues to captivate audiences throughout Utah. Not only does she tell them a harrowing tale of suffering and a surprising visit to heaven; she teaches that ultimately three things matter: to love, forgive and help one another.

Rives' terrible suffering began in 1997, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time she was a single mother who had found part-time work as an aide and music therapist at Sunshine Terrace, a nursing home. She had not been there long when she was tragically diagnosed with advanced breast cancer.  She underwent a series of gruelling operations, including a bone marrow transplant. With a seriously weakened immune system she contracted a virus and was then hospitalised for a further three weeks.

Afraid she was dying, she asked to go home to die. She prayed to be released from the intense pain she was suffering. She wanted to die, to leave the pain behind.

Lying in bed one day she suddenly found herself strangely hovering on the ceiling, looking down below at a body in a bed and realised it was hers.

In interviews, Kim goes into great detail herself about the experience she went through. “As I was pondering this, a man appeared to me on my right hand side, dressed in white. He gestured for me to follow him. He seemed like a man of good character and so I did. We went through the ceiling and that didn’t hurt! and we ended up in a beautiful heaven with beautiful lush green grass and roses on all sides of every colour.

“As we travelled in this meadow, I saw a beautiful City up in the distance and asked if we could go there, and instantly, in a moment we were there.

The streets were gold and there were beautiful buildings with diamonds in the mortar, and I saw Angels on both sides of the building. They were talking and conversing with one another. They seemed happy and contented.

‘The man continued to motion for me to follow him. We went into one of the buildings and there in the rooms I was able to meet different people; family and friends who had passed.”

Inside a classroom, she says, she met her deceased grandmother, who was teaching other ancestors about genealogy. Her twin sisters, who had died in infancy, were also there.

“The place that stands out to me the most is when I met God. Hearing a beautiful chuckle to my right hand side, I realised it was him. I wanted to look at him but was afraid of what God would think about me as a person. So I sat there for a long time and finally decided I would look at him. He was laughing. I looked and saw the most beautiful sight. He had a light that streamed out of his body a few feet; beautiful blue eyes that were streaming blue. He greeted me with such unconditional love. There was no shame or blame or condemnation toward me. Only unconditional love. He didn't point out my faults, my failings, my weaknesses. He just loved me. He said, “Look to the light and live.” And with that came the feeling that if we really want to live we need to love ourselves and love one another; forgive one another and forgive ourselves; be kind to one another.

He said “What would you ask of me?”

He was setting me an example of service. I told him I’d like to know what every good emotion felt like in its perfected state, and he told me to put my arm into his light and it would be like a grid of those pure emotions, and so I did and I felt perfect love, peace, joy, forgiveness. It was a glorious experience, and I realised it was worth living well to experience these emotions.”

Since her experience and her recovery, she has trained as a corporate motivational speaker. She says, “Many people have lost loved ones and want reassurance of an afterlife. Others have their own near-death experiences to share. Sometimes after a seminar or discussion, she will have 300 or 400 e-mail messages. There are so many people out there who have fears. What I realized in heaven is the Lord loves us all. We all make mistakes and are learning. He knows everyone's heart.”

In 2004, Retah McPherson was “living the dream” as most people would describe her life, and loving it. She had the best of everything and to top it all off, she was crowned as ‘Mrs South-Africa.’ This opened many doors for her and ushered her onto a platform of public speaking.

However, returning from one of these events one night, she and her family were involved in a very serious car accident. The accident left their 12 year old son, Aldo McPherson, in a coma and on life support.

Retha has travelled the world talking about what happened.

“At about 6:30pm, we had a freak car accident on the Grassmere Toll Plaza, just south of Johannesburg. There, on the highway, was a stationery vehicle without lights, right in our lane.  My husband had no choice; he couldn’t go right, because that was the fast lane.  He had to swerve to the left to avoid driving into this car.  Our car hit a water furrow, and rolled and rolled and rolled.

When we eventually came to a stop, it was the worst of the worst. My children were not in the car anymore. We struggled free from the car, and I realized my kids weren’t in the car anymore. When I eventually got out, it was only the silence of the night that surrounded me.

“I called to them, and our little boy Josh then started crying from somewhere in the bushes next to the car.  When I found him, he only had a cut to the head. But we couldn’t find Aldo, (their twelve year old.)  “I was running up and down the highway, scared and confused.  I tripped over a suitcase and some wreckage and fell on the tar, my hands bleeding.

“I remember a car stopped, and a man got out and started praying: “In the name of Jesus, no death will take place here tonight.” He kept saying: “This boy will live and he will not die,” repeating it over and over again.

She eventually found her son on the other side of the highway. He was already in a coma.

Despite medics at the scene telling his mother and father to say their goodbye’s to their son, he did live. However, he was left in a coma for months and suffered severe brain injuries as a result of the accident.

Aldo was unable to speak after he came out of his coma. He was also blind, although one of his eyes eventually healed. When he wanted to communicate he had to write.

He began writing to his family, revealing what he had experienced in heaven and what God had been revealing to him. He told his mother, “In heaven there is a big gold bridge and people are outside, but not everybody goes in because they are not ready.”

During his recovery, he asked his Mother “Did you see Jesus?” His mother said, “No”, to which he replied, “But he was just here; he touched my eye.”

He also wrote about two children who he had met in Heaven. He said they were very happy but they were worried about the grief their parents were going through. Astonishingly, he even wrote down the address of where the parents lived. It was impossible that he would have known this family or their address! One was called Anton, he wrote, and gestured in a circle around his head. "Mom, you should tell Anton's mom that he is healthy!" He wrote down a place where we'll find Anton's parents, and that is exactly where we found them later. They told us that Anton had Down's Syndrome when he was alive, and that was what Aldo tried to indicate with the circle around the head. He also wrote about Dwayne. His parents called him Dwayna, and when we met them, Aldo wrote for them that 'Dwayna' was healthy and with Jesus and so happy. “He cannot wait for you to go there too.”

Together, they produced,  ‘A Message from God’, detailing their experience and the writings in Aldo’s letters.

In his letters he said “Do you know that we will be together in heaven? There we will no longer be sick. Everyone is healthy and God sits on His throne with His Son next to Him. Jesus loves you so much – believe me. God loves you and me very much. You are the reason He sent me back. I didn’t want to come back, but He wants you to be ready. Please show people my diary and that which Jesus is saying through His spirit. Know that one day, like God, we will all live in Heaven. We'll see God in heaven, with the angels. Look forward with me to go back there. That is why I am sometimes so difficult, Mom - it's because I want to go back there. Please Mom, will you also tell other people? People go to heaven.”

I hope you enjoyed these lovely, comforting, and affirming stories, that show us Heaven really does exist; that our dear loved ones are waiting for us, and that we will be reunited with them and wrapped in the pure love of Heaven ....