Suddenly death became real. It was no longer a “philosophy” or just something that had to happen when I got old. In that moment, two years of Dead Saints research looking for answers to abstract Christian theological debates about death and the Afterlife suddenly became the central focus of my life.
Cancer forced me to find real answers to these eternal questions. It allowed me to open my heart to dreams, to revelations about the Bible, God, Christ, and the Afterlife I would never have grasped without the cancer experience.
Let me be clear. Whatever your belief system, whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim or Atheist (which is the belief, often passionate, in disbelief) this book is intended for people of all types and creeds. My ultimate hope is EVERYONE from any background will be able to find inspiration within its pages.
~Afterlife Journalism has become for me all about penning one by one the ten thousand details of unconditional love. ~Chronicle 940
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Endnotes
1Christopher R Possible NDE, #932, 09.07.06, NDERF.org. Christopher R NDE phone interview July 7, 2014. Printed with permission.
2Herbert M’s NDE, #322,10.29.03, NDERF.org
3Linda S probable NDE, #1011, 02.03.07, NDERF.org
4Jeffrey Long, M.D. with Paul Perry 2010. Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of the Near-Death Experience. New York: HarperCollins. p. 177.
5G. Gallup and W. Proctor 1982. Adventures in Immortality: A Look Beyond the Threshold of Death. New York: McGraw-Hill.
6Pim van Lommel, M.D. 2007. Consciousness Beyond Life, The Science of the Near-Death Experience. New York: HarperCollins. p. 9.
7R. F. Hoffman 1995. Disclosure Habits After Near-Death Experience: Influences, Obstacles, and Listener Selection. Journal of Near-Death Studies 14: 29-48.
8Amy C NDE, #2386, 10.09.10, NDERF.org
9P.M.H. Atwater, LH.D. 1999 & 2003. The New Children and Near-Death Experiences. Bear & Co: Rochester, VT. p. 52. Originally published in 1999 by Three Rivers Press under the title: Children of the New Millennium: Children’s Near-Death Experiences and the Evolution of Humankind.
10The White Crow theory proposed by William James in 1848 was a popular metaphor to illustrate one of the problems with inductive reasoning. A billion observations can lead to an induction, but it only takes ONE contrary observation to invalidate the whole chain of reasoning.
11Rev. Robert S. Liichow October 2007. THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE. Truth Matter Newsletters. Vol 12, Issue 10.
12Bayer Oswald 2007. Theology the Lutheran Way. Grand Rapids, MI. Eerdmonds. p. 53.
13Unverified source. Experience is suspect because of reported 115-degree high temperature and delirium. A young person sees a being clothed in bright white garments with a bright happy angelic face with arms outstretched saying, ‘Come with me and all of your worries and problems will be over. When he asked the being, ‘What would happen to my younger brother and sister whom I protect from my mean sadistic older brother?’ The being turned dark and grimaced at him and said harshly, ‘Forget about them, think about yourself!’ It threw up its arms, covered its face, and said ‘Nooooooo’ as it retreated back into a dark tunnel.
14Note: Zen originated with Taoism, a philosophy called the “The Way” or “Tao” founded in the writings of Lao Tzu, who authored the Tao Te Ching in the middle 6th century BC in Hunan, China. His writings appeared nearly simultaneously with the writings of Buddha, and the two modes of thought later blended together in Japan, in Zen Buddhism and integrated into the discipline of Bonsai. Zen is a continuation of Taoism with Buddhist concepts and language.
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Death is a Lie Humans Tell Themselves
February, 1988, Tokyo, Japan. Takanohashi sensei and David Solomon rest after many hours wiring a Japanese White Pine during a Bonsai training session. Reprinted with permission from FIL Archives
If life, or consciousness failed to survive death, there would be neither any meaning to life nor any ultimate justice. Nevertheless, many people believe that life does not continue after death. Yet, as we often discover in life, what we believe may have little or nothing to do with reality.
~ Sogyal Rinpoche
It was October 29, 2014. I was only a week away from sending the rough draft of the Chronicles to John Anthony West for editing, when Takanohashi sensei, my deceased Bonsai teacher, appeared in a dream and gruffly said “Nebari!”—pointing at an old azalea trunk and its thick, exposed roots. Nebari is a Japanese word which means root, specifically the visible spread of roots above the growing medium at the base of a Bonsai.
When I studied with Takanohashi sensei in Japan in the late 1980’s, he always uttered the word Nebari with great passion. This was the second time he had visited me during an after-death communication (ADC) dream, the last time only a few months ago on August 8. He had died in 1997, but I had not seen him since 1989. I said to him in the dream, “You’re alive!” He just grinned at me, and then the dream was over.
So on October 29, after he said Nebari in his gruff Japanese, there appeared in my dream a round sour dough loaf of bread on a cutting board. I saw my dream-self cut two slices of bread, the two slices were placed one on top of the other and cut in half, then I woke up.
I immediately interpreted the meaning of the bread, (as in “feed us this day our daily bread”) as a reference to the spiritual word explored in the Chronicles and how I was to write it. I was supposed to cut the book literally in two. So I did. I rearranged chapters, made edits, and the book flowed better. I cut in half an impossibly long 600-page tome—so thank you, Takanohashi sensei, Bonsai master, and now master editor. My first 11 chapters have become Part I, Nebari-the “roots” of the Dead Saints Chronicles.
~There is no prescribed path to death. Mine is being recorded and laid out here for all to see. ~Chronicle 819
A Life Threatening Game
It was summer 1975. I was 16 and experimenting with a hashish enhanced version of the “pass out” game with my sister and an older friend. Little did I know at the time how dangerous this foolish trick had become. One in 16 adolescents have played the choking game, a deadly playground fad that cuts off the oxygen supply to the brain, causing a ‘high’ sensation. Along with the risk of asphyxiation, the choking game comes with a chance of seizures that can cause brain damage.
I do not want to share specific details about this dumb trick, because I do not want to give anyone ideas. Anyway, according to my 14-year-old sister who was present, sometime after the “big squeeze,” I suddenly collapsed and fell on the floor, my eyes rolled into my head so only the whites showed, my body went into convulsions and I stopped breathing for about a minute. During this brief time, I saw an image of a red tricycle I rode as a young child, (which I verified later), but nothing else I could remember. When I awoke, John D.—my best friend who “setup” the dangerous experiment—was laughing hysterically, but my sister was freaking out because I had stopped breathing.
I immediately KNEW I had died and my heart had stopped.
For a very long minute, I… was… dead.
Technically, I experienced two core aspects of a near-death experience. First, the knowledge I had died. Second, the vision of a partial Life Review. I was certainly unconscious and apparently dead as my sister recounts, but I would call it a sort of a near-death twilight zone.
Before my NDE, I was afraid of death. Very afraid. I would lay in bed at night imagining what it would be like to die. It was a horrible, morbid fear that would follow me for days. I thought, “Someday I am going to die” and the knowledge would hit me like a knife in the gut, that “I will literally, really die someday.”
I could not imagine… not being.
I could not imagine… non-existence.
For me, it was about surviving death—that my personality and consciousness could cross the dark threshold and somehow be preserved. Many o
f us, I believe, have gone through this mental exercise sometime in our life. The provocative question lingers almost daily.
Does our consciousness survive when we die?
Immediately after my NDE, I still feared death. I came to consciousness knowing I had died and it frightened me. A few weeks later, however, I had a dream that seemed to be memories I had forgotten from my NDE. It is important to describe this, not only because dreams became a central part of my life during those early teenage years, but also because that “dream” was my own, personal “born-again” experience that permanently established my relationship with Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, and more importantly, I believe for most of us, dreams are our most accessible vehicle for “piercing the veil” between the celestial Realms of Light and Earth University. Dreams make communication possible with the spirit beings, long lost friends, angels, and with God. Dreams are non-physical, sometimes traumatic, events that sometimes trigger certain “core” Death Elements commonly associated with death and near-death experiences recorded in the Chronicles:
This dream began in a setting of a high-rise hotel building that was set against a bright blue sky. I had some unknown purpose for going into the building, but I suspected it had to do with robots and electronics, because a robot was in the elevator with me and small flat TV sets were hanging on its elevator walls. (Flat TV’s didn’t exist in 1975). I had this strange sensation as the elevator went higher up into the sky within the building that we were moving higher into the future. The elevator brought me to one of the upper floors, and I was surprised when I stepped out of the open elevator door, my white 1967 Chevy station wagon was there waiting for me to drive me even higher up the hotel. So I began driving the wagon up these green-carpeted ramps that went higher up several floors until I saw a man wearing a red, hotel bellman outfit.
I stepped out of the station wagon, and he motioned to me with his finger, “follow me.” I followed him until I realized I was no longer in the hotel, but walking in a “fog.” I looked behind me and hundreds of people were following me. It was morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise. The fog finally thinned out with the sunrise and I realized when the fog cleared, I was walking near my house on Coconut Lane in Virginia Beach, where I then lived.
I was staring at the large disk of the morning sun, when suddenly the sun itself began floating towards me and gently landed in front of me near my house. As the sun touched the ground, it transformed into Jesus Christ. I faced Him and fell immediately at His feet on my knees, clutching repeatedly the green grass beneath me, weeping and crying. I noticed to my left there was a young woman, about the same age as me, with short, slightly curled black hair, also kneeling; also weeping and crying. I could not see her face. We both were making a “promise” to do something. The “something” we promised the Lord, I do not know. Jesus spoke to us for some time, but again, I did not remember His words.
I awoke, sobbing. Forty-years later, I still remember every detail of the dream. It was real, more real than memories I’ve had at any time in my life. The dream experience helped ease my fear of death, but left many questions in my mind. One that stood out was the importance of completing my “Mission”—a task which I have no memory. The second, “Who was the girl kneeling next to me?” Apparently, the Mission Christ gave us was a partnership, a connection I would not make for nearly forty-years.
The dream appeared to be additional memories surfacing from my near-death experience, because it highlights several Death Elements (See chapter 13): An elevator (tunnel); scenes from the future; a bellman (angel) directing me; people walking through a fog (veil); the Sun (bright Light) turning into Jesus Christ (Light Being); a Mission for living; and prostration (perceived holiness).
Remarkably, decades later, this dream would have a near-death corollary. A woman who died during childbirth, but who was brought back to life, also saw the sun transform into Jesus Christ:
The next thing I was aware of was lying on my back on some type of bed, within a dimly lit room. I noticed the window looked like the one in the delivery room, but I recalled it had been shaded and now was not shaded. It looked like the sun was rising and that too seemed strange since it was close to noon when I went into the delivery room. Then as I gazed at the sun, it kept coming closer to the window, getting larger, speeding up, and getting brighter. My thought was that the Earth and the Sun were about to collide and I was witnessing the end of the world. The ball of Light came through the window with the sound of a swift wind, and I saw it was an awesome image of illuminating white Light that was Jesus.1
Afterlife Questions
I never told Mom, Dad, or even my Pastor, Tracy Floyd, about the NDE or my dream of Jesus—which would have revealed my foolish attempt to get high. I had been active in the United Church of Christ Youth Group every Sunday since we moved to Virginia Beach in 1972, but dreams and near-death experiences…were not their specialty. After my Dead Saint experience, my thirst to know the world of the unseen (not just be titillated by it) soared. I wanted to know everything about death and the Afterlife.
I would not have long to wait.
Six months later, on the evening of January 8, 1976, I awoke late one night to a loud “snapping sound.” For some reason, I looked out my second story window to see if I could find the source of the noise. To my astonishment, and I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw a woman standing in the middle of the street below. Then, as suddenly, she disappeared. The next morning, Mom told me Great Grandma Miller had died. I wondered, “Was she the woman I saw last night?”
Mom flew out to California for her funeral, but she never told me how Grandma wore her hair in the open casket funeral. After my cancer struck in June 2013, I told Mom about the “death ferry” dream of Great Grandma Miller’s prediction of my future death. I described her distinct appearance and her silver, braided ponytail. Mom pulled out a 1957 photo of her family, and there she was…just as I had seen her in my premonition! I can only guess Grandma Miller’s visit that night in 1976 (and I believe it was her), and her warning/preparation visit in my dream three years ago surely means…she is my guardian angel!
Mom was my source of spiritual wisdom at the time, an “unconventional” Christian who, in addition to church, was a member of a Search for God study group at the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) in Virginia Beach. I asked her about dreams and how to interpret them. Hearing my interest, she suggested I join her study group and research the works of Edgar Cayce, the renowned “Sleeping Prophet.” In addition to my Youth Group Bible Studies, the ARE opened other possibilities I had never considered; that we could learn to pray and meditate and receive answers from God through dreams. They became the Saturn V rocket, which lifted my sight ever higher towards Heaven.
I began keeping a Dream Log, and recorded continuously nearly two years of dreams until I was eighteen–dream logs I still have stored in boxes. In my Junior High school year, I completed a college elective in Parapsychology at the ARE. It was there I was introduced to the near-death work of Raymond Moody M.D., through his book Life after Life, which subsequently sold 20 million copies. His work became a bookmarker in the back of my own mind—a seed planted that wouldn’t begin growing until I began researching NDEs as a pastime in July 2011.
Why We Fear Death
As I began my NDE research in July 2011, I searched the Chronicles for answers to questions about why people attend church, temple or a spiritual retreat. Were they afraid of death? Was faith or belief in the Afterlife (or eternal life) enough to ease their fear of dying? These questions morphed into a spiritual treasure hunt when I discovered Christians and non-Christians, despite a strong faith in God, were still afraid of the same things, which made me shiver at night. Where did these deep-seated fears come from?
The Christian mystic, Dion Fortune, talks about the root of our fears in her little book, Through the Gates of Death:
“So, wh
at makes death so terrible? Is it the pain of dying? No. Morphine can deaden that. Most death-beds are peaceful when the times comes, and few souls go out struggling.” Why, then, do we fear death so? Firstly, it is the fear of the Unknown.” 2
There are other reasons we fear death including a fear of God’s Judgment in the Afterlife. For others, it may be the dread of separation from those we love, but the fear of the unknown is the one thing which makes death terrible for people of ALL faiths.
How differently would we set out to cross the threshold of Death were our minds at rest?
Death Is a Lie Humans Tell Themselves
The title to this chapter, Death is a Lie Humans Tell Themselves, is a quote taken from a Dead Saint. What does it really mean?
There may be just one thing in the universe a human being cannot do and that is we cannot imagine not being. If we try to imagine ourselves as dead, we may conjure up a body in a casket, a funeral, and lots of flowers, solemn words and mourners dressed in black. We are still here in the present; simply observing from another vantage point. However, everything, involving fear, to any extent, is rooted in a belief in death. Most of the top ten best sellers are about murder, death and dying. We are entertained vicariously by war and movies that imitate or re-enact death: The Walking Dead, is still the #1 television series and is entering its 6th season.
We thrill at being scared to death, entertaining ourselves through dangerous death-defying feats, creating faster and faster ways to propel ourselves from one place to another and allowing access to more and more methods for killing ourselves and each other. We attempt to corral death with costly coffins of impenetrable metals and as a final insult to death, we toy with cryogenics and cloning as a last ditch effort to achieve physical immortality.
The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife Page 4