Join Robert with Kirsty Salisbury on "Let's Talk Near-Death"

Join Robert with Kirsty Salisbury for this new, light-hearted thought-provoking and entertaining interview

on her award-winning podcast – NDE stories, afterlife conversation, the truth about death,

and how to realize Heaven wherever you are!

Let's Talk Near-Death with Kirsty Salisbury, and special guest Robert Kopecky

Simple, Solid Bridges to a Working Spiritual Life (Learned the Hard Way)

 

      
            I'm known for having had the [mis]fortune of surviving multiple "near-death experiences," and as a result I (unintentionally) find myself absolutely certain that there's a spiritual reality that underlies, informs, and precipitates all of this success-seeking, bill-paying, precaution-taking material existence. It's a function of what the Hindus call Maya, the illusion of Life. While being hit on the head three times very hard may exclude me from what's normally considered as "sanity," I think it was what I personally really needed. I needed experiences that painfully proved the existence of a reality that's magically extra-dimensional in every sense – physically, spiritually, and conceptually. Realizations that I suppose are more commonly known as faith.

            Thankfully a lot of us acquire this understanding in easier ways, from our parents, or from religion, or just in the course of coping with the slings and arrows that life throws our way. Apparently being challenged by hardship does help to make us realize that there's a reliable order alive in the universe we can turn to, especially when things get tough. Naturally, I certainly can't recommend near-death as a means to bridging that elusive gap between the harsh realities of "material" life and a more grace-filled "spiritual" life, but I can offer you a few very practical bridges into that living magic that makes everything so much more enjoyable – grounded in this fundamental concept:

            We are spiritual beings learning through physical experience; we are designed to overcome the mental and physical barriers presented by human sensory experiences and realize our spiritual nature. There are bridges – invisible spiritual mechanisms (choices) – built into this physical experience that afford us passages to our spiritual evolution.

 
Here are a few solid bridges that help us cross that dimensional divide:

Unconditional Kindness is the most available (and enjoyable) mechanism that engages us with our spiritual life by giving us an immediate heartfelt identification with others – the [proactive] warmth and support that we respond to ourselves, when it's unconditionally shown to us. Being unconditionally kind to others is being kind to ourselves, because we find we can easily forgive others for just being human, and realize that applies to us too. We give everyone a break, because life is tough for everyone. As part of that, Unconditional Kindness obliges there be no exploitation, manipulation, or participation in doing harm of any kind in our actions, so we end up being forthright, friendly vegetarians who work at something that contributes to Life in a meaningful, productive way. (We even get to forgive those who can't understand our approach to Life)
            Hindus call this Karma Yoga, and it instantly connects us to an unseen dimension of profound compassion and generosity that we may have never known was alive everywhere in the world. We make, and find others who are making, good karma.

Honesty in all our relationships and dealings, and in what you might think of as a variation of confession—owning up to our mistakes, not always needing to be right—is really a visible invisible bridge. We all know how it simplifies our life, since being honest gives us fewer of life's complications to fear, because you're simply never adding to them. Your motives remain those of a seeker of fairness, truth, and wisdom. You become seen and known as a person who is resolutely trustworthy, whose intentions are of the highest order...that sounds pretty spiritual, doesn't it? It's a kind of intellectual vigilance that Hindus call Gnana Yoga.

Giving, simply put, may be the single most important bridge, particularly to an agnostic that isn't interested in "extra-dimensions" but does want to live with a more graceful connection to Life. What we might call Compassionate Consciousness (altruistic effort like charity and volunteerism) – often referred to simply as service (like responsible parenthood, being a good friend, etc.) – is the most reliable bridge to a working spirituality. It's simply the singular most effective means to overcoming the sense of separateness we develop while sitting and thinking about ourselves and our own life situations – that selfishness that paints us into our own little corner, only using the color fear.
            In selfless service—with no regard for reward or recognition—we're immediately attached to a greater universal intelligence by the lightest of all yokes: the engagement created by contributing to the cycle of well-being. We almost immediately escape the harsh realities dictated by our ego, and instantly begin to lighten and align our karma. (Karma Yoga, again)

Humility – not as a form of self-deprecatory ineffectiveness, but instead as a subtle, powerful sense of reality and connection; as an extraordinary underlying energy that filters all of your Life experiences, and provides an intuitive ideal to live by with purpose and grace. We've all experienced this powerful kind of humility as a truth-bearing, holistic force in Life, often demonstrated by the people we really respect the most. Nobody is really that important—even if they are; and often people who don't act important but just show up with open-hearted willingness are the most important of all.

"Conscious Contact with Source Energy" is what all these bridges lead us to, actually. A personal attachment and conscious surrender into the energy and intelligence alive in the Universe, regardless of whether we personify that power in popular traditional ways, or form our own concept of it as "The Field of Love," or other force. In this way we surrender—as a strategy—into the power that energizes and directs our being, recognizing the true control that our choices give us over our lives. You become aware of all kinds of beauty, the inherent divinity in nature; and realize that your actions in Life can be devoted to this undeniable Source of Creation – to "God," to Life, to one another, to Love. The Hindus call this devotional, or Bhakti Yoga.

            I don't pretend to know the designs of the Universe, only to have experienced the effectiveness of these visible (invisible) mechanisms in my own life and in the lives of those I'm close to; but I do know this:
            You do deserve the life that you have – with most of your biggest difficulties defined by whether you willingly cross these bridges towards "the spiritual," or stay stuck (and frustrated) on this side of the river, avoiding the magical extra-dimension of Life.

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

Announcing: The Zen of Near Death ©2019

I'm pleased to announce the working title of my next book:

The Zen of Near Death

Afterlife Lessons for Transcending the Mess 

©2019 by Robert Kopecky
Watch for it in 202?

Lessons from an "Out-of-Body Experience"

It isn't often that you hear someone describe what it's like to die – that's an experience rarely reported; but I have the dubious qualification of having survived three distinctly different "Near Death Experiences," and I'd like to pass on what I learned from the first one, an "out-of-body experience" – in hopes that you'll never find the need to try this at home. It wasn't what you'd call fun, but it was very informative.

We most often think of Evolution with a capital E, as in "the Theory of," or as the transitioning growth of successive generations, species adapting across expanses of Time – and so it is. My experiences lead me to consider it as a personal process, largely because of realizing the importance of the Eternal Moment (in which everything alive is always living), and because the evolution of the whole spreads out from the evolution of each individual. As that phenomenon of personal experience, my life's evolution is more directly related to my NDEs than to all but a few of my "conscious" life lessons. It's like peeking behind the curtain...

So here, preceded by brief circumstantial descriptions, here is the gift I received from my first NDE, set down short and sweet as possible:

I was in a serious single car accident (I'd like to say through no fault of my own, but it wouldn't be true) and instantly found myself suspended in mid-air over the crash site, observing the wreckage, my body, and the ministrations of the lovely people who rushed to my aid (God bless 'em). After a while into all the hub-bub, I was gently shepherded off by a kindly entity (that remained out-of-view) into what I can only describe as a soft, warm, cotton-wool cloud, and on to a place of great ease and comfort where I was sat down in a congenial but serious conversation regarding the true nature of things, and my position within it.

The space was idyllic, like a very nice summer's cafe. There was no sense of Time or of gravity, and certainly not of any want or necessity.Thought operated in a non-sequential, undemanding way – all at once easily, as it were, rather than in any urgent, serial way (like after a good meditation). Here's what I learned:

We are avatars living spiritually within these physical bodies, very much like driving around in a car (...I wish I could afford a new one). Of course, our bodies are us, here in this place we call The World; but they aren't really us – they're the means to experience this sensory experience, "good" and "bad," and to gain as much from it as we can in the service or our own, and our greater collective Self's evolution. This allows us to investigate the karma of our lives, to repair it, and to create it anew by being of service to those we love, and to the world as a whole.

So when we observe others as well, we can realize that they are simply their karmic energies (as I am mine), filtering through their somewhat limited (and not always easy to maneuver) human forms. That understanding informs a sense of compassion and identification that allows the people and events in your life to clearly be happening for you – not to feel like they are happening to you. Then, we can objectively witness the miraculous diversity of Life – in all it's sometimes challenging forms – with tolerance, respect, and wonder!

I call this way of seeing: The Gift of Perspective.

"The fundamental, simple, and great mystical realization is that by which you identify yourself with consciousness, rather than with the vehicle of consciousness. Your body is a vehicle of consciousness."

Joseph Campbell

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

The "Spirituality Today" Review, by Peter J. Morris

While Spirituality Today is no longer with us, this book review from it's Editor, Peter J. Morris, still is:

Writer Robert Kopecky has the extraordinary distinction of having died and gone to heaven not once but no-less than three times during his life. On each occasion he has been unceremoniously sent back down into physical reality and these dramatic experiences have, quite naturally, led him to develop a unique perspective of what it means to be a human, alive on planet Earth at this time.

A Place of Being

In his book, How to Get to Heaven, Kopecky identifies the specific life lessons each near-death experience (NDE) has taught him. More specifically, he has come to recognize that his three NDEs were not separate events at all but that they formed an important part of an evolving sequence. He qualifies these as; Perspective, Presence, and Purpose; with each one heading up a different section of his book.

The experiences of death and brief awareness of life on the otherside’ to which Kopecky was party, leads him to conclude that what we perceive of as ‘Heaven’ is less a ‘place’ and more a ‘state of being’. He qualifies this further by saying, “Going to Heaven isn’t about dreaming a dream of the afterlife. No, going to Heaven is about being right where you are — wherever that may be — and waking up.”

A Threefold Perspective

In Part One of How to Get to Heaven the author examines our core human traits and in particular those that require development. These include humility, release of ego-control, love and kindness. He is of the opinion that practicing honesty and forgiveness aids this process.

Part Two focuses upon the state of presence as a means of creating quality to our lives. Kopecky describes this in the following way, “Awareness in this very moment informs and determines where we’ve come from in life, where we are, and the amazing potential we can access to empower where we are going.”

In the third and final part of his book the author explores how by carrying all of these spiritual principles into everyday actions it becomes easier to discover our own special purpose.

Review

So many reports of near death experiences include a single, common theme, which is that the recently deceased needs to return to the Earth plane specifically to fulfill – or complete, a personal destiny; or in order to undertake an important task for humanity. This also seems to be the case with Kopecky – someone who has clearly taken this challenge to hand and unravelled a personal destiny from which so many people can now benefit.

Whilst the spiritual philosophy that permeates his book has been drawn from mainly Eastern or Buddhist principles this does not color the book to such a degree that it becomes detached from its central theme. Indeed, the result is a deeply satisfying read for throughout its pages Kopecky presents a very personalized style of writing – one that keeps the reader thoroughly engaged and hungry for the next round of insights. The depth of revelation and enlightenment here is rarely found in spiritual publications and comes as a breath of fresh air.

How to Get to Heaven by Robert Kopecky is a comforting book for anyone concerned about the fragility of life. More importantly though it is the sad, the lost and the lonely, the dispirited, disillusioned and disengaged who will gain most from reading it. For those readers I”d personally guarantee that How to Get to Heaven offers the chance of a major personal transformation long before reaching its final page.

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!

A Talk for Virginia Beach IANDS at Cayce A.R.E., 4/14/2018

Thanks to Neil Helm and the Va Beach Chapter for this lecture/book event, and excellent workshop – a beautiful group in a lovely location.

I'll be appearing at the IANDS 2018 "Explore the Extraordinary" Conference, Seattle 8/30–9/2

Join me for my lecture on How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying) - Registration opens soon!

...yours truly, and many more. My lecture will be Thurs. August 30th,    
3 to 4:00PM. 

I Hope to see you there!

https://conference.iands.org/

It's "How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying)" Book Launch Time!

March 2018

I'm pleased and grateful to announce the release of my new book, exploring simple spiritual solutions for ourselves and our world (by someone who learned the hard way)

 From Llewellyn Books, it's: 

How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor

NDE survivors, mystics, swamis, and saints have all described a Heaven of infinite Love, luminous radiance, and complete compassionate connectedness—but I'm here to tell you that you don't have to go to quite so much trouble to locate that Heaven on Earth in your everyday experience of life. It's all around us, and within us, all the time!

Here you'll find reviews from Thomas Moore, Anita Moorjani, Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee, and many others, for a voyage into the Perspective, Presence, and Purpose that can help us realize a kind of paradise, in any world we may happen to live... 

On Positive Energy TV, with Michele Granberg!

Join me & Michelle Granberg for a wonderful conversation on Positive Energy TV, for Princeton Public Access! It's all about Life, death (and of course, near-death experiences), 

Love, joy, connections, and living in the eternal moment!

Visit the Brand New Website

I'm very happy to announce my new website is up–it's basic for now–but soon I'll be listing events, and featuring reviews and links to shows and happenings...💛 

http://www.robertkopecky.com

Come by and check it out!

Why Are Near-Death Experiences All So Different?

Despite what current politics may suggest, there’s no doubt that a “Divine Consciousness” is rapidly expanding throughout the human race. Even my coffee cup is about to start talking to me. A lot of what was once considered ridiculously paranormal has now been empirically proven, and popularly embraced. In fact, the human race is clearly now a race between the realization of the role Consciousness plays in the creation of our world, and the destructive consequences that ignoring it has caused, and is causing everyday.

So what does that have to do with ‘Near-Death Experiences?’ Well, now it seems even Science is converging on the ancient, but currently revolutionary concept that Consciousness itself may be an elemental force – a field, like gravity, or electromagnetism. That Consciousness itself is really the eternal quantum field of being, generating the formation of material life – rather than the other way around (this idea, as biocentrism, is very intelligently proposed by Dr. Robert Lanza, of Wake Forest University). And what are ‘NDEs’ but further testimonies of the continuation of consciousness beyond physical life?

The rapidly growing Near-Death Movement – based on thousands of testimonies of people who have experienced consciousness beyond the limitations of our physical life – is yet another example of humanity’s limitless spiritual potential. It's additional evidence of our ability to co-create whatever reality we participate in – be it on the Earth right here, or in that sweet hereafter.

I'd never given any of it much thought, until the power and meaning of my own three "NDEs" arose, and compelled me to write a book that put me into the hub of the hubbub. I've since discovered that the community of near-death experiencers ranges somewhere from five to fifteen percent of the general population, globally. Now that's a whole lot of non-ordinary reality.

Naturally, I have less reason than the average Joe to doubt the veracity of all that testimony; but I have found plenty of reason to ask this question: why is it that near-death experiences are all so different? If we're all governed by eternal, invisible machinery, why do we see such a range of afterlife options, all tailored to the individual participant? Shouldn't we all go down that identical tunnel into the light, and meet Grandpa in that same shimmering field of Elysium?

Some near-death returnees report celestial extravaganzas. Some tell of organizations of elders and angels, structured in an elaborate cosmic framework. For others, it's a hellish nightmare, complete with every infernal cliché. The reason for all these differences can be simply explained if we consider the way we’re always participating in the field of Consciousness – how we are always creating our own individual realities.

 My own NDEs were humble, by comparison, but they all had one glorious factor in common; that I did not lose Consciousness when I lost consciousness. In fact, all three times, I experienced an enhanced consciousness, seamlessly uninterrupted from this life to the next.

Skeptics suggest this sense of continuity is the result of a still-active mind – a mind not yet fully "dead," and they're right. Since Consciousness is a field we eternally participate in, our mind never actually dies, it simply joins a greater mind. The Hindu Vedas suggested that thousands of years ago. Dear Dr. Carl Jung described it too, way back in the 20th century. Mind continues working on, beyond these physical constraints.

And as for the differences, well, imagine someone dying, and awakening in this world. What would they experience? An ongoing war somewhere? A recital by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? Perhaps a high-powered business lunch – or even that visit to Grandpa's? In this elemental context, we all imagine the life we are living, and live it. We all enter into the life we need to experience. This is the mystery of any incarnation; and it will continue to be the mystery, from this life to the next. What NDEs do tell us is that our continuing engagement in a greater mind is defined by the karma we create in our life (or lives), and carry that with us (and back) in a way.

"Memory ensures that nature creates individual forms that are copies of the primal universal forms."

                              The Hermetica

What if all bets (the limitations of this material world) really were off when it comes to our greatest potential imaginable – the unharnessed power of “God’s mind?”  What if our imaginations were released from the obvious limitations of this physical form? Almost anything is already possible here and now – so how about a world where your imagination is set free to manifest reality, without material limitations?

In "the next world," as in this one, our karmic imagination is like the clay connecting us to Divine Consciousness; that Consciousness is like the ever-spinning potter’s wheel that everything grows up out of; and the source of power is like, well, The Source of Power.

Welcome to every life (and afterlife) you will ever live–and remember, whatever life you’re living, create that life with Love!

Read more about the same thing, by Kevin Williams at the wonderfully complete and comprehensive Near-Death.com. And check out this Wiki entry for the Tibetan theory of the "bardos," or transitory states of the afterlife.

Read about concepts like these and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor  from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this page, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it at your local bookstore!

What Are Near Death Experiences, Really? Realizations of a Three Time Survivor

Believe me, I never intended to become a “Near Death Experience” survivor, much less to have had it happen three times over the course of my life, but then I suppose anyone who encounters “near death,” encounters it by accident. On the whole people don’t generally plan on dying, even though we know that eventually we’ll have no choice but to add it to our schedule.

It goes without saying that I didn’t actually die—or I wouldn’t be here to tell you about my three trips into “the afterlife;” and obviously, no NDE survivor has actually died and stayed that way—a simple truth that justifies all the skepticism and conjecture surrounding the subject. But we NDE survivors can be a fairly emphatic bunch, given the powerful redefinitions of reality that our otherworldly perceptions have created in our lives. We (who didn’t necessarily choose to become believers) can be prone to dismiss the skepticism of non-experiencers in much the same way as they may dismiss our “paranormal” assuredness.

I make an effort not to do this, because despite having survived three of them myself, I don’t necessarily believe that NDEs are the definitive look into the “next world” that some of us insist on, as much as they are a preview of the potential that may follow this life—for each one of us. I make a special effort to leave my NDE memories as they are, or as they originally were, without further elaboration. I hold to this principle not because newly arising details in those memories don’t seem true and deeply meaningful, but because I know how unreliable the memories maintained (or often generated) by our human physiology can be.

I don’t think that NDEs are really a reliable description of what we should expect after this life, as much as they are a reflection of our spiritual lives (—what may be missing in our current lives), and a door into the truth about how complex all of Life really is. After all, each near death survivor can only report their magical passages from the limited point of view of a human living life on this Earth—not as a fully disinterred, extra-dimensional spirit.

Since the publication of my first book, How to Survive Life (and Death), I’ve also found myself becoming something of an accidental expert. It’s resulted in my spending countless hours in the library and online, pouring over spiritual accounts, ancient wisdom, and neuroscientific explanations. In my travels, I’ve read and heard hundreds of other survivors compellingly heartfelt NDE stories. I’ve even witnessed firsthand some of the miraculously synchronistic gifts of insight and intuition that have been received by this unique group of human beings—and for me this word, unique, has become the operative in describing what’s really going on in the expansive, extra-dimensional world of Near Death Experience.

With my three different experiences myself, and all the stories I’ve come to know, to me the one unavoidable characteristic these experiences share in common is how perfectly tailored they are to each survivors experience of Life. Many NDE events correspond to a set of common motifs. In my three cases they were an out-of-body perspective of my own death, an interview or ‘life review,’ and a forced return back to this life (against my will); but many experiences include encountering the light at the end of the tunnel, an “Elysian” field populated with beloved deceased relatives and friends, a view of the Earth from deep outer space, and other commonly uncommon scenarios. But always, my NDEs aren’t quite like yours may be, and in every case, the nature of the motifs themselves, as well as the narrative details, are uniquely custom-formed to suit the experiencer’s life. As it turns out, even the surprises aren’t really that much of a surprise.

In researching the commonalities of these experiences, one almost immediately discovers that the changeable contents of NDEs are often determined in large part by the predominant religious and cultural expectations of the experiencer. Western Christians meet a Christian God or Jesus, or witness angels in traditional heavenly landscapes. Hindus may meet, and be guided by Yamaraja, the god of death, and be introduced to The Akashic Record that details their karma from life to life. Buddhists often meet Yama, as their guide into the afterlife, who may lead them into a surrealistic exploration of the bardos—the different levels of Life between lives. Jews of different types experience their own particularly appointed, expectation-based hereafters, and so on. Islamic doctrine states that (due to the spiritual limitations of our human form) humans cannot accurately know anything of the afterlife, Muslims tend not to have (or to report) near death experiences. That’s a belief that as an experiencer of three very diverse experiences, I tend to share.

There are a few characteristic features of NDEs that tend to remain consistent: being enfolded within a brilliant, pure white or golden light; “seeing” beings of light; experiencing different ‘sensory’ realms and perspectives; and having a kind of ‘life review’ take place. These aspects tend to be consistent, yet their form, content, and interpretation can be vividly unique to each experiencer. To me, the most important consistency in my stories, and in all the stories I’ve ever encountered, is the experience of the continuing connection and expansion into what I call the field of Divine Consciousness.

You see, in all three of my events (despite not being physically aware of actually having a body), I never stopped experiencing Consciousness (which I now capitalize as a force of Divinity). Like most NDE survivors, I realized a complete and total merging into a greater conscious sense of intuitive, omniscient intelligence, accompanied by an indescribable non-physical sensation of loving wholeness and belonging-to. It’s this continuing expansion into “mind” (possibly exclusive of brain), manifesting into varying spiritual dimensions that informs my understanding of what NDEs really are.

God bless the scientific, materialist skeptics, many of whom base their doubts in the explorations of neuroscience, and the mysteries revealed in the systematic, technological investigation of the brain and its many functions. The challenges they face are that—aside from the fairly direct operations of our physiological machinery, and the organization and distribution of data concerning feelings, facts, and perceptions—they still can’t fully describe exactly what the brain is, or everything it can actually do; nor have they been able yet to really wrap their heads around what Science calls “The Hard Question,” that is, how does conscious intelligence arise out of simple matter?

I think that materialists are absolutely right in their assertion that NDEs are abstract perceptual phenomenon resulting from the brain not being completely dead. After all, this is a pretty abstract Universe (floating around out here in outer space), and abstraction often leads us to our most accurate and dearly held truths; and more importantly, I don’t believe any NDE survivor would suggest that their brain (as we experience it) completely died, a well-known exception being the wonderful Dr. Eben Alexander, a neuroscientist who is understandably compelled to investigate all the academic imperatives. The rest of us would simply acknowledge that we went on “thinking,” and “seeing” in what we call the afterlife (as did Dr. Alexander).

This is simply because despite the implied “physiological death” of our human brains, our mind itself does not die—instead, most of us experienced a kind of incorporation into a greater mind, into an expansive, organizing, Consciousness-based intelligence—a kind of matrix of potential experience. This is another important consistency common to all NDE survivors, despite their religious and cultural associations.

Our brain, as the organ that interprets our experience can only speak to us through the ideas and imagery we know and can express as humans. As a material machine, the brain is a real mystery, but that mystery opens up a lot if we think of the brain as being a spiritual machine. If the brain is actually connecting us to a field of Divine Consciousness as human physiology dictates (rather than generating all experience out of new material), then the ideas and images of all experiences—including the near death variety—conform to the typical pattern recognition that enables us as humans to organize the worlds we experience, and to report on them.  

In the near death state—free of the constraints imposed on us by human form, our consciousness is free to expand and be expressed in Divine Consciousness as our karma requires, and allows. Good karma can deliver heavens to you, bad karma can send you into hells.

We can be conceived of then as (I believe our spiritual selves to be)  packages of timeless karmic data—amorphous kinds of energetic information clouds with feathered edges that exist projecting back from our physical embodiments into our past, and forward into our futures, overlapping and interacting with other such packages in a timeless, unseen field of pure, unrealized potential. In near death, we enter this unrealized field of Divine Consciousness unconstrained at last, and perceive what our karmic form memories, and our imaginations, uniquely manifest for us. Many of these perceptions will still conform to the pattern recognitions of our changing forms as we report on them as humans.

From this opening-up into extra-dimensional, spiritual potential, the current scientific evidence begins to cascade into place. As wholly energetic phenomena—as quantum packages of karmic data—the changing states of “our selves” can best be described by thermodynamics—as energy simply changing forms; as well as by quantum mechanics. The medium (the “ether” apart from Time and Space) that we exist in can be described as the quantum, Planck, or “Zero Point” fields, hosting the attractor energy patterns of nonlinear dynamics, where each conscious receiving/transmitting/projecting energy participant manifests shared and personalized realities from the field of Divine Consciousness common to all Life in the Living Universe, as in Dr. Karl Pribram and David Bohm’s Holonomic Brain Theory (the holographic universe). Our shared patterns of life are relatable to Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphogenetic field” theory of like physical forms sharing quantum energetic information, and spontaneously generated in unison along the lines of Dr. Stuart Hameroff and Dr. Roger Penrose’s proposal for the collapse of “mind” energy waves into matter at the quantum level of infinitely small quantum tubules. (Forgive my haphazard simplifications of these complex scientific theories).

That paragraph of scientific possibility only goes so far to describe what’s behind the scenes we relate as the memories of our experiences. The actual language of words and images (archetypes) we use can be described by Dr. Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, a framework of shared, extra-dimensional data that fits into all of this abstract theory very well. We draw on our shared wellspring of descriptive imagery to relate to one another the uniqueness of our experiences.

Add to this the latest discoveries of neuroscience given us by way of The Blue Brain Project, a major Swiss-based study that digitally recreates the biology of the human brain as accurately as humanly possible. It’s most recent investigations into the synaptic neural connections at work in our perceptions of the world we live in (as detailed in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience) utilize the mathematical field of algebraic topology to create a more accurate mapping of this activity. They’ve revealed a previously unnoticed, remarkably ‘spiritual’ reality—the spontaneous neural formations that determine our perceptions, while only measured (or considered) in terms of three dimensions, actually take place in up to ­eleven dimensions.

 No wonder MRIs come up short. No wonder the manifold workings of the human brain remain so mysterious. This is evidence that comes as no surprise to people who are informed by spirituality as well as by science.

With this in mind, we can see that the contents of our Near Death experiences may simply be based on the interaction of our personal ‘karmic energy packets’ of quantum information within the transpersonal, nonlocal field of Divine Consciousness (Brahman to a Hindu, emptiness to a Buddhist, The Kingdom of God to a Christian), resulting in our participation in dimensions populated by other energy beings and states coexisting there (our “next world”), and perfectly customized to the data contained by each experiencer’s karmic self—our souls.

Then, the imagination and illusions that we experience here in this life on Earth (what the Hindu Vedas refer to as maya, or “The Play of Life”) don’t end at our physical death—as our near death peeks behind the curtain demonstrate so spectacularly. Some people may behold heavenly landscapes, talk intimately to an estranged, long-lost relative, ride a golden butterfly with the spirit of their unborn sister, witness interactive timepieces from their past, chat with Jesus, or experience a variety of momentous (or even mundane) scenarios—much of which can be witnessed in psychic episodes here in this life—and all of which is entirely true to the experiencer.

And what always does hold true in Near Death Experiences (as it did in the three I survived myself), is that each one was custom-designed by my own spiritual, karmic information, expressly for me to realize, expressly for me to learn from.

By this simple, Divine process, every moment of every life we live is working for our spiritual evolution in the very same way. 

Read about this and much more in: How to Get to Heaven (Without Really Dying), Wisdom From a Near-Death Survivor from Llewellyn Worldwide available direct on this site, or online. The first book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond is available the same ways – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!