Questions are Still Open.
Read my story and judge for yourself.I am a science-based person. I believe in what I can see and measure. I love math, physics, chemistry, biology -- all the "hard stuff".
But as many others I have attended Sunday School, gone to Church regularly, am married, and my kids are baptized. I consider myself a cultural Christian, though I consider a belief in the Christian God as irrational. Sorry -- no offense meant, that's just how it is.
I don't want to start a discussion on evolution and intelligent design, but believing in a supreme being as the inventor and creator, maybe even an old bearded man, is at the moment too big a mouthful. And the question is not how, but why...
For a great many years I didn't offer any thoughts on anything supernatural -- then a couple of years ago I underwent surgery. I hadn't given it any consideration. It was quite a minor thing -- just a pop in and out of the hospital to have my gall bladder removed -- 36 hours at the most. But, as you might have guessed the operation didn't go as planned.
I didn't have a "traditional" NDE. I didn't walk through a tunnel. I didn't meet Angels or God or my passed away relatives. But I had this sensation of being part of a Unity, I "dreamt" that someone came and asked me to follow, not by words, but it was clear that I had to come.
He showed me a coffin and I got the impression, that what I was to see was very important. There were others there too, shadows, persons, I couldn't distinguish one from another. I looked into the coffin, and the bottom became like quicksilver, and was held up like a mirror that reflected the light very sharply. It was like looking into the sun -- then I woke up in the intensive care unit, all wired up on monitors, with nurses and doctors buzzing around like bees on a honey pot.
But really, this was not the most significant thing about this experience -- that was two matters -- first of all that I told this to my wife, before I was told about the problems during the operation, which is at least to me very important. It is not an experince invented for the occasion!
Secondly, what I consider even more important was that this was not -- even though I wrote it in the start -- a dream. This is as real to me as any other memory. I can recall this -- now some years after -- as clear as thinking back on my breakfast this morning. It is not a dream, it is a memory. What I experienced was real -- I was there, I saw it, I felt it.
I also have to emphazise the tremendous sensation of comfort. It was not a scary experience -- it was a sensation of being a Unity -- I really think I caught a glimpse of eternity and all-knowing.
But have I then become religious? My answer would have to be -- "define religious!" I have not become more religious in the sense that I read the Bible or attend Church. I still consider it irrational. But...I am religious in the sense that I consider physical death a new start instead of an ending. I don't want to use the word soul -- it has implications I cannot see the consequenses of.
Somehow I think, that there is a "core of being" a part of our consciousness which is carried on. And if not, then so be it -- if what I experienced is death, then I do not fear death.There is nothing scary about that -- on the contrary. It was warm and comforting.
After my hospitalisation I haven't had any sequelae. I have become more assertive and more selective on my time spending -- and more prone to seeking quietness. It is not that I don't like noise, talking, music etc., but I need to have periods of silence.
I continue to consider belief in a "God" quite a task, but I have become more open to what is part of this world or not. Just because we cannot see or measure it, it doesn't mean it isn't there. Maybe we just haven't found the ways to do that. I said earlier that the question to me wasn't how, but why...
Those questions are still open for answers. And though I think there is no life after death, there might still be being after death. But from there to reincarnation, soul wandering and all that stuff there is quite a way to go.
L.
