Issue 72 –
Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
by
Dr Hal Stone, PhD.
Over the past three or four years my personal studies have been focusing increasingly on writings concerned with the issue of what it means to be a senior in our society and on the issues that go with it. In particular I have been reading extensively in the area of Death and Dying — Life after Death — The Dream Process in later years, and also the study of Near Death Experiences which have become known as NDEs.
A NDE occurs when someone has been either declared dead or where the vital organs stop for a period of time where life energy no longer appears present. Whether people actually die or whether they are in a near death state with no vital signs can’t really be known. They are far enough gone however to have left ordinary consciousness and to have experiences from “the other side” that are definitively of a different order of reality.
Based on composite estimates of major polls, it is estimated today that about 10 million people have had such an experience. This is a startling reality of our time because the experiences they have show remarkable similarities and these individuals, by and large, are very much changed in their consciousness. I personally have never had such an experience. Sidra however herself experienced an NDE event in 1968 when she was spending some time in Guatemala and Honduras and suffered a major fall after not eating for 24 hours.
The study of these events goes far far back into pre-Christian times but the work was popularized by Raymond Moody in his classic book on life after death published in 1975. In this book he interviewed a large number of NDE survivors and began to lay out the map of their eerily similar experiences. The literature today is, to say the least, extravagant and difficult to keep up with.
One of the leaders certainly is a man whose name is Kenneth Ring and he has been a leader for several decades in the whole field. Recently he was interviewed by Jeffery Mishlove who has been doing these interviews since the mid eighties. He interviewed me in 1988 and does a wonderful job in the interview process.
This brings us to the present time and this mailing. A very dear friend of ours, Deborah Morris, sent us a DVD that carried an interview with Kenneth and also an article to go with it. We feel that this work is extremely important to all of us and contains material that will be an eye opener for most of you who read it. He includes an exercise that you can use that is based on what happens in the early stages of the death process that is really quite outstanding.
Some of you may find this kind of material too far out and unreal. For those of you who may feel this way I end with this story.
“Two female cannibals had their large cooking pots set up outside their little house. Mary was older and Janie was younger. They stood in silence, each cooking their very large soup. Finally, after several hours, Janie speaks and says — Mary – I’m getting tired of my husband. Again silence for an hour and Mary finally responds –Oh, then just eat the rice!”
So for those who don’t like something about the soup we are selling here just don’t eat the rice! I hope you won’t throw out the whole soup because these are deep issues and we in the world of consciousness development need to eat many different soups to find those that really belong to us. So we hope that you enjoy this presentation I was so very pleased that John Coroneos wanted to present this material to you.
With love and best wishes to you all from Sidra and myself. By the way, at this moment it is five days since I had a brand new pacemaker installed at the hospital in Santa Rosa. It was actually a close call and had it not been done when it was I would have been writing to you from the other side. This is not a sure thing because Steve Jobs hasn’t really had time to work on things there. So I am pleased to be here, in my physical body, and share all this with you.
For the video interview with Kenneth Ring and Jeffrey Mishlove, plus a discussion and exercise, visit
http://www.wanttoknow.info/nde/near-death-experience-lessons
For the full 5 part interview with Kenneth ring and Jeffrey Mishlove, visit
http://nhne-nde.org/resources/jeffrey-mishlove-interviews-kenneth-ring/