After taking more than one excursion into the Undiscovered Country, I developed an interest in what other people may have encountered there.

Several years later, I discovered the website of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation. It features an enormous database of near-death experiences that have been submitted by users world-wide. At that time, there were approximately 3000 entries. Over a number of months, I read them all. The reports ranged from profound to just plain crazy. Part of the problem was the result of semi-literate people experiencing things above the symbolic level who then attempted to convey them using verbal descriptions. (One fellow found himself on the bridge of the star-ship Enterprise and Captain Kirk was Jesus! Sounds completely silly on the surface but it is interesting to note that the word “enterprise” comes to us from the French “entreprendre” which means “undertake”. And a “kirk” of course, is a church…)

Below is my distillation of that data into the most common experiences that were encountered time after time as described by the most sincere and level-headed experiencers.

  • The experience is “more real” than this world.
  • Extreme relief and happiness to be “Home” again.
  • Total assurance that the loved ones left behind will be okay.
  • A light so brilliant that it should be blinding but is not.
  • The air is notably “warmer” although not uncomfortably so.
  • A tunnel, door or bridge to mark transition the into next world.
  • Full life review.
  • They judge themselves.
  • Meeting loved ones who have died.
  • Surrounded by unconditional love.
  • All communication is telepathic.
  • Seeing colors that one has never seen before.
  • Hearing music that is more beautiful than any previously experienced.
  • 360° vision/awareness.
  • Instantaneous travel.
  • Complete understanding of all mysteries.
  • Anger at finding themselves returned to this world.
  • Loss of all fear of death.
  • Increased empathy for others.
  • New or enhanced psychic abilities.

Now see if you can rise above these written descriptions. To comprehend the non-verbal concepts that lie not just above the words but above the very symbols that the words imply.

If you cannot, I recommend you keep trying. It’s well worth the effort.

Don’t be too disheartened if you cannot grasp it however.

You’ll experience it for yourself soon enough…

I am sure that many of you have encountered the “scientific” explanation that the near-death experience is simply an illusion created by the expiring mind to comfort us as we die. That the body has evolved to do this. That a few people somewhere along the line mutated to include this trait and then passed it along to their offspring after they died.