I want to make this really clear upfront I downloaded the book GlimpsingHeaven by Judy Bachrach about two years ago which is well before I noticeddecline in myself.
I am one of those people who has always been fascinated in near deathexperiences and I am frankly amazed at those who are not. We are all going todie, don’t you want to know if anything happens next?
Anyway, this book finally popped up as the next book for me to read and Ithought OK this is a weird coincidence … or not. I lean on the not side, Godstiming is awesome.
It begins with the author Judy who volunteers at a local hospice because asshe puts it – she is terrified of dying. She also makes it quite clear in thefirst chapter that she is not a woman of faith. I actually found that I preferredthat - she is not filling in the gaps with her own ideas and beliefs.
She wanted to interview those who claimed to have had these experiences butshe also insisted on talking to the loved ones of these travellers. She theninterviewed their clinicians so that she could document her findings in ascientific way. She is an investigative journalist and that becomes crystalclear in her writing. She goes in a non-believer and explains that she willneed her research subjects to prove themselves before she will be swayed.
(Spoiler alert) At the end of the book she admits that she is now a believer– not of God but of believing whole heartedly that those she interviewed reallydid go somewhere else. She is no longer afraid of death and believes that shewill see her loved ones who have passed when it comes her day to travel.
What I found fascinating is that because we have defibrillators available inmost work places, sports arenas etc. as well as better health care in generalthe number of these death travellers has now reached hundreds of thousands.They hold conventions all over the world where they share stories with otherfellow traveller’s e.g., Conference
However very few of them tell their closest loved ones about theirexperiences because they know they will be labelled as delusional.
Some doctors refused to talk with the author because they could loseresearch grants as a result. Others were burning to tell her their side of thestory. Many of those surgeons simply could not explain how their patients wereable to describe to them in intricate detail discussions held during surgery orthe music they were listening to while operating. Their patients had their eyestaped shut and wore devices in their ears to completely block out noise both ofwhich are commonly used in theatres all around the world.
They cannot explain it and so most of them shrug it off and move on, a smallhandful of doctors have been so affected by patients’ stories that they havemade this their area of expertise but it comes at a cost. Again, these doctorsare often written off as kooks by their peers.
One of these doctors is Raymond Moody who is an Americanphilosopher,psychiatrist,physicianand author, mostwidely known for his books aboutafterlifeandnear-deathexperiences(NDE), a term that he coined in 1975 in his best-selling bookLife AfterLife. His research purports to explore what happens when a person dies. Hehas widely published his views on what he terms near-death-experience psychology.His Facebook page is found at Dr.Raymond A. Moody | Facebookif you are interested.
Judy chose to call her subjects “death travellers” because as one Doctor putit – this patient wasn’t near death she was dead, dead and had been for over anhour. Again, modern medicine can bring people back to life even when they havebeen gone for quite some time especially if they are found in near freezingconditions.
I was also stunned by this statistic – over 65% of people who have a deathexperience end up getting divorced shortly after they return. This is becausein most cases their loved one came back … but they came back permanently changed.
Some immediately resigned their high-powered jobs and instead chose to takea pay cut to take on roles that involved helping others. Some came back withwhat could only be described as “abilities”. They were able to sense otherpeople’s feelings and in the case of one woman their thoughts. One man became amonk who now helps other travellers document their experiences.
Another man came back and found that he needed to play the piano. He was notmusically inclined but he began lessons almost immediately. He went on tocreate a piece of music which he named “the lightening sonata” because he haddied from a bolt of lightning which travelled down a telephone, he was using ina thunder storm. The person behind him in the queue to use the phone was anurse. She was able to bring him back via CPR. The list goes on and on.
So that is the gist of the book and it was a great read. There was one storythat caught my attention and I thought I would share it with you.
There are so many of these experiences where they all mention similarphenomenon –"the light “is the most common of them all. Its describeddifferently by each person but in one case the traveller is a young mom of twowho sees her grandmother inside “the light”
It reads -I asked my grandmother if the light was God. She laughed at thesuggestion and said - Oh no baby, God is not the light. The light is whathappens when God breaths. She knew then that she was standing in thebreath of God.
I adore that mental image and it’s going to stay in my brain for as long asI can hold onto it. I want to stand in the breath of God please. Sign me upnow!
Below is a summary of the book in case you are interested.
Glimpsing Heaven by Judy Bachrach
If you caught a glimpse of heaven, would you choose to come back to life?Investigative journalist Judy Bachrach has collected accounts of those who diedand then returned to life with lucid, vivid memories of what occurred whilethey were dead, and the conclusions are astonishing.
Clinical death--the moment when the heart stops beating and brain stemactivity ceases is not necessarily the end of consciousness, as a number ofdoctors are now beginning to concede.
Hundreds of thousands of fascinating post-death experiences have beendocumented, and for many who have died and returned, life is forever changed.These days, an increasing number of scientific researchers are turning theirstudies to people who have experienced what the author calls death travels -putting stock and credence in the sights, encounters, and exciting experiencesreported by those who return from the dead.
Through interviews with scores of these "death travellers," andwith physicians, nurses, and scientists unravelling the mysteries of theafterlife, Bachrach redefines the meaning of both life and death. GlimpsingHeaven reveals both the uncertainty and the surprising joys of life afterdeath.