.jpg) Hieronymous Bosch Ascent of the Blessed (1490) |
Near-Death Experiences Tunnel of Light
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.jpg) "Tunnel of Light" in NGC 7822 (2014) |
| Preface: Astronomy Picture of the Day for December 1, 2014 showed "Stars and Dust Pillars in NGC 7822 from WISE". This galaxy near the northern constellation Cepheus is 3000 light-years away from Earth. I was struck by the "Light Tunnel" in this galaxy photo taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). It reminded me of the 1490 painting Ascent of the Blessed by Hieronymous Bosch, and inspired the poem "NGC 7822: Galactic Birth" (12-22-2014). While writing Notes to this poem, I found books on "Near-Death Experiences" at the Los Altos Library. The passages typed below recount those who experienced the "Tunnel of Light" portrayed by Bosch and now visible in the NGC 7822 Galaxy. |
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James R. Lewis, Encyclopedia
of Afterlife Beliefs and Phenomena, Visible Ink Press, Detroit (1994) (pp. 357-358) Vision Tunnel The passage from this world to the next is only infrequently viewed as a quick transition that occurs immediately after death. Instead, most traditional cultures conceive of the soul as undertaking a postmortem journey to the afterlife. This trip may be represented in many ways. Often the departed soul crosses a river, either across a bridge or on a boat. In contemporary reports of near-death experiences (NDEs), this journey is often expressed in terms of a transition through a "tunnel". Typically, people who have experienced an NDE do not realize that they have died and attempt to communicate with others at the scene of death. If in a hospital, they frequently experience watching their body from the outside as medical personnel attempt to resuscitate them. In Raymond Moody's outline of NDEs, he refers to a fourth stage as the tunnel experience— the experience of being drawn into darkness through a tunnel (or going up a stairway or some other symbol of crossing a threshold) until the person emerges into a realm of light. Some critics of assigning metaphysical significance to NDEs have speculated that this tunnel is actually a deeply buried memory of the birth canal to which people regress in response to the overwhelming experience of death.
Sources:
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Raymond Moody, Jr. with Paul Perry, Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a Loved One's Passage from This Life to the Next, Guideposts, New York, 2010 (pp. 97-98) Encountering unworldly or "heavenly" realms Visiting a heavenly realm is one of the most common elements of a near-death experience. In recent studies of this phenomenon, more than 50% of people who have had a near-death experience say they entered a heavenly realm or an unearthly location during their episode. When pressed for descriptions of what they saw, their answers are surprisingly similar. A man who had a heart attack while walking in New York City tells this story: "I was walking through a very bright tunnel, and walking very confidently even though I could see nothing but light, not even where my feet were landing. Then I came out of the light and onto a hillside where the landscape was perfect and the mountains were rolling and soft. There was nothing but blue sky and green hills and big trees in the distance. It gave me a feeling like no other place I have ever been." |
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Betty J. Eadie with Curtis Taylor,
Embraced by the Light Gold Leaf Press, Placerville, CA, 1992 (pp. 40-41) On the night of November 19, 1973, following surgery, thirty-one-year-old wife and mother Betty J. Eadie died... This is her extraordinary story of the events that followed, her astonishing proof of life after physical death.
Tunnel of Light
I saw that the light immediately around him was golden, as if his whole body had a golden halo around it, and I could see that the golden halo burst out from around him and spread into a brilliant, magnificent whiteness that extended out for some distance. I felt his light blending into mine, literally, and I felt my light being drawn into his. It was as if there were two lamps in a room, both shining, their light merging together. It's hard to tell where one light ends and the other begins; they just become one light. Although his light was much brighter than my own, I was aware that my light, too, illuminated us. And as our lights merged, I felt as if I had stepped into his countenance, and I felt an utter explosion of love. It was the most unconditional love I have ever felt, and as I saw his arms open to receive me I went to him and received his complete embrace and said over and over, "I'm home. I'm home. I'm finally home." I felt his enormous spirit and knew that I had always been a part of him, that in reality I had never been away from him. |
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Jeffrey Long with Paul Perry, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences HarperOne, New York, 2010 (pp. 24-25) First Encounters In Moody's book The Light Beyond, a woman's heart stops on the operating table as anesthetic is being administered, due to an allergic reaction. Rather than having no awareness of her surroundings, as the notion of death would lead me to assume, she told Dr. Moody that she became "relaxed and at peace." Then a highly lucid series of events began to unfold. Here in her own words is her NDE: I became aware of an opening, if I can call it that. It appeared to be elongated and dark, and I began to zoom through it. I was puzzled yet exhilarated. I came out of this tunnel into a realm of soft, brilliant love and light. The love was everywhere. It surrounded me and seemed to soak through into my very being. At some point I was shown, or saw, the events of my life. They were in a kind of vast panorama. All of this is really just indescribable. People I knew who had died were there with me in the light— a friend who had died in college, my grandfather, and a great-aunt, among others. They were happy, beaming. |
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Patricia Pearson, Opening Heaven's Door:
Investigating Stories of LIfe, Death, and What Comes After Atria Books, New York, 2014 (pp. 115-128) Going to the Light In January 1979, northern Minnesota, a young 26-year old doctor Yvonne Kason evacuated a critically ill Ojibwas woman with measles encephalitis in a twin-propeller plane to the nearest hospital, a few hundred miles away. Traveling with Kason was a nurse, Sally Irwin, and the pilot, Gerald Kruschenske. Ice covered the plane and the propellers faltered. The plane crashed into a partially frozen bay called Lake of the Woods. The ice was so thin that the plane broke through and sank. While swimming in the icy water, Kason was engulfed by an infinitely beguiling light... "The experience—it was formless," she said, "It was like dissolving into the light. I was like a drop of water, which had now merged into the sea of light. I still existed, it was still me, but I was in this incredible ocean of light and love. The strongest aspect for me was the love. Perfect love. It's impossible to describe." "I've spoken with people who have had full-blown spiritual experiences," Kason told me, "with all the characteristics of near-death experiences, yet nothing happened to them. Men who fought in the wars: A grenade drops in front of them. They're absolutely certain they're going to die. 'There's a live grenade just dropped in front of me,' and boom, they go into the light and then by some freak thing the grenade didn't go off. Or another man told me about fighting in World War II, and his plane got shot down. He goes into the light, and then somehow the pilot managed to pull the plane out of spin, and they never crashed. |
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