Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Chapter 2 : The Being Of Light That Comforts Man After Death

We are lucky that a lot of research has been done recently on the question :


"Is there any truth of life after this earthly life ?"


On this subject Dr Raymond A. Moody Jr., M. D. in the U.S.A. informs that over the five year period between 1970 and 1975 he has studied more than one hundred subjects who have experienced "Clinical death" and been revived. Their accounts of this experience are startlingly similar in detail. The findings of this research has been published under the title of :


"LIFE AFTER LIFE” [12].


A. COMMON FEATURES OF THOSE WHO EXPERIENCED TEMPORARY DEATH

Dr. Moody has stated on page 21 of "Life After Life" :

"Despite the wide variation in the circumstances surrounding close calls with death and in the types of persons undergoing them, it remains true that there is a striking similarity among the accounts of the experiences themselves. In fact, similarities among various reports are so great that one can easily pick out about fifteen separate elements which recur again and again in the mass of narratives that I have collected".

These basic common features as gathered by Dr. Moody are :

1. A man is dying. As he reaches this point he naturally feels the greatest physical distress, because he hears the doctor pronoun­cing him dead.

2. He hears an uncomfortable banging or ringing loud noise.

3. At the same time he feels he is moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel.

4. After this he suddenly finds himself outside his physical body.

5. But he is still in the immediate vicinity of his dead body.

6. So he sees his body from a distance, as though he is a spectator.

7. He watches the various attempts being made to revive him from the dead and the reaction of those relatives around his body upon his being pronounced dead.

8. Naturally he is in a state of emotional upheaval.

9. He notices that even after his death to earthly life he still has a "body” but one very different in nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind.

10. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died.

11. Immediately as he is out of the dark tunnel or passage the appears a very powerful "being of light"—a warm and comforting and loving spirit.

12. This "being of light" begins to ask him a question non-verbally to make him evaluate what he has done throughout his life and shows him a panoramic playback of all the major events of his earthly life from his very childhood till his death in the flash of a second so that he can evaluate :

(1) What he has done

(2) What he should not have done and

(3) What he did not do but what he should have done

13. These make him collect himself and he becomes more accustomed to his new odd condition.

14. At some point he finds himself reaching the barrier or line between earthly life and the next life.

15. Yet he finds he must go back to earth as the time of his death has not yet come. He has yet got some things to do which he must complete. At this point he resists for now he is taken in
with his experiences in the new life that follows death to this earthly life. He does not want to return back to the earthly life as the next life is unimaginably superior. But he has to.

B. THE ACTUAL EXPERIENCES OF THOSE WHO HAD TEMPORARY DEATH

From pages 69-70 of "Life After Life" two out of many similar experiences are quoted here :

Case 1 : After all this banging and going through this long, dark place all of my childhood thoughts, my whole entire life was there at the end of this tunnel, just flashing in front of me. It was not exactly in terms of pictures, more in the form of thought, I guess. I can't exactly describe it to you, but it was just all there. It was just all there at once. I mean, not one thing at a time, blinking off and on but it was everything, everything at a time. I thought about my mother, about things that I had done wrong. After I could see the mean little things I did as a child, and thought about my mother and father, I wished that I hadn't done these things, and I wished I could go back and undo them."

Case 2 : "I knew i was dying, and I remember thinking that I wanted to provide for my family. I was distraught that I was dying and yet that there were certain things that I had done in my life that I regretted and other things that I regretted that I had left undone.

"This flashback was in the form of mental pictures, I would say, but they were much more vivid than normal ones. I saw only the high points, but it was so rapid, it was like looking through a volume of my entire life and being able to do it within seconds. It just flashed before me like a motion picture that goes tremendously fast, yet I was fully able to see it, and able to comprehend it. Still the emotions didn't come back with the pictures, because there wasn't enough time".

"I didn't see anything else during this experience. There was just blackness, except for the images I saw. Yet, I definitely felt the presence of a very powerful, completely loving being there with me all through this experience.

"It is really interesting. When I recovered, I could tell everyone about every part of my life, in great detail, because of what I had been through. It's quite an experience, but it's difficult to put into words, because it happened so rapidly, yet it's so clear".

C. THE BEING OF LIGHT

On pages 58-59 of "Life After Life" Dr. Moody's recordings show :

"What is perhaps the most incredible common element in the accounts I have studied, and is certainly the element which has the most profound effect upon the individual, is the encounter with a very bright light. Typically, at its first appearance this light is dim, but it rapidly gets brighter until it reaches an unearthly brilliance. Yet, even though this light (usually said to be white or "clear") is of an indescribable brilliance, many make the specific point that it does not in any way hurt their eyes, or dazzle them, or keep them from seeing other things around perhaps because at this point they don't have physical "eyes" to be dazzled.

"Despite the light's unusual manifestation, however, not one person has expessed any doubt whatsoever that it was a being, a being of light. Not only that, it is a personal being. It was a very definite personality. The love and the warmth which emanate from this being to the dying person are utterly beyond words, and he feels completely surrounded by it and taken up in it, completely at ease and accepted in the presence of this being. He senses an irresistible magnetic attraction to this light. He is ineluctably drawn to it.

"Interestingly, while the above description of the being of light is uttery invariable............What each was trying to get across was that they took the being to be an emissary, or a guide. A man who had no religious beliefs or training at will prior to his experience simply identified what he saw as "a being of light". The same label was used by one lady of the Christian faith, who apparently did not feel any compulsion at all to call the light "Christ"!

D. THE BEING OF LIGHT QUESTIONS — WHAT HAVE YOU DONE ON EARTH?

Two cases are quoted from pages 60-63 of "Life After Life" :

"The next step of this experience clearly illustrates the difficulty of translating from this unspoken language. The being almost immediately directs a certain thought to the person into whose presence it has come so dramatically. Usually the persons with whom I have talked try to formulate the thought into a question. Among the translations I have heard are "Are you prepared to die ?", "Are you ready to die ?", "What have you done with your life to show me ?", and "What have you done with your life that is sufficient ?". The first two formulations which stress "preparation", might at first seem to have a different sense from the the second pair, which emphasize "accomplishment". However, my own feeling is that everyone is trying to express the same thought comes from the narrative of one woman who put it this way.

Case 1 : "The first thing he said to me was that he kind of asked me if I was ready to die, or what I had done with my life that I wanted to show him.

“The voice asked me a question :’Is it worth it?’ And what it meant was, did the kind of life I had been leading up to that point seem worthwhile to me then, knowing what I then knew."

Case 2 : “I got up and walked into the hall to go get a drink and it was at that point, as they found out later that my appendix ruptured. I became very weak, and I fell down. I began to feel a sort of drifting, a movement of my real being in and out of my body, and to hear beautiful music. I floated on down the hall and out the door onto the screened-in-porch. There, it almost seemed that clouds, a pink mist really – began to gather around me and then floated right straight on through the screen, just as though it weren't there, and up into this pure crystal clear light, an illuminating white light. It was beautiful and so bright, so radiant but it didn't hurt my eyes. It’s not any kind of light you can describe on earth. I didn't actually see a person in this light, and yet it has a special identity, it definitely does. It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love.

“The thought came to my mind ‘Lovest thou me ?' This was not exactly in the form of a question, but I guess the connotation of what the light said was, 'If you do love me, go back and complete what you began in your life’. And all during this time, I felt as though I were surrounded by an overwhelming love and compassion."

From these actual experiences of those who had "Clinical Death" and were revived, it establishes unrefutably before Mankind the following facts of life in the hereafter which all the religions of the world have been preaching from the very begining :

1) There is definitely life after death.

2) Man has a body even after death which is merely a process of getting out of our earthly body just like a snake sheds off its skin and carries on to live even after that in the next stage of its life.

3) Man will be displayed all his worldly deeds. He will not escape from anything he has done on earth.

4) Man will have to give an account for what he has done during his earthly life.

5) That a “Being of Light" is giving comfort to all the entrants into the new life after death irrespective of their religion, wealth, caste, colour or nationality.

6) For the Being of Light all humanity is alike. All are on the same footing. Be they Christians or Protestants or Jews or Pagans or any one else, makes no difference !

7) The Being of Light is asking the very same questions to each one and there is no escape for anybody from it - about their deeds on earth and its value after death.

This is beautifully brought out in a verse which my father used to recite during my childhood :


"God will not ask thy creed
Nor will he seek thy birth
Alone will He demand of thee
What thou hast done on earth"



References to Chapter 2 :

[12] "Life After Life" by Dr. Raymond A. Moody Jr, M. D., 32nd Printing, 1979 by Bantam Books Inc., New York.

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