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Yesterday during meditation, I asked for direction on reaching people who would benefit from hearing Jeffery Olsen’s story and speaking with him during the next IANDS Visiting Author’s session (I am the host). Like usual, I didn’t think about my request again. Then, this morning on my usual walk I came across a sign posted in a neighbor’s yard with a picture of a boy five or six years old grinning from ear to ear wearing a graduation cap and gown. The sign said, “Congratulations Nicholas!” I rolled my eyes and thought “Oh, brother.”
Not long ago my husband and I had seen a grade school graduation on the news and commented on how silly it was. I lamented how in “our day” we had to keep our nose to the grindstone for 12 years (13 counting kindergarten) until we could be celebrated for our accomplishment with a high-school graduation and party, if we were lucky. Nearly simultaneous to my eye-rolling and recalling of this conversation, I heard THE VOICE say “Some parents never get to see their children graduate.” At the same time, I was shown a vision of Jeff Olsen in an elementary school courtyard sitting on a bench dedicated to his deceased toddler, head in his hands with tears spilling through his fingers. In his book Knowing Jeff tells about having been asked by the school to give a speech to that year’s graduating class. He had not been reminded that it would have been his son’s graduating class, nor had he remembered this himself. This realization only occurred to Jeff as he sat alone on that bench moments before speaking.
Spirit’s message hit me hard, and I felt like such an idiot for chastising anyone or anything that has to do with celebrating any aspect of life. I should know better considering my profound STEs taught me that LOVE in all its glory should be celebrated; and so I try so very hard to make the most loving choices and thoughts possible as I navigate my humanness! But we are ever-learning and practicing the habits of LOVE, and I thank God/Spirit for today’s lesson! And, Jeff … if you read this, know that the lessons of your NDE are still rippling outward and touching others, bringing more love and kindness into the world.
Jeffery Olsen was a featured speaker at the August 12-16, 2020 IANDS Virtual Conference, and as the featured author with his latest book Knowing during the IANDS Visiting Author’s ONLINE Book Club on July 26, 2020. Check out upcoming authors and sessions at https://isgo.iands.org/home/iands-book-club/
The Healing Wisdom NDEs Teach Us About Dying Alone
May 1, 2020 | by Nancy van Alphen
The CNN March 29, 2020 headline landed a sucker-punch to our collective psyche just as debilitating as the virus rapidly spreading around the world, and that has today led to the deaths of nearly half-a-million people1.
The headline?
“The Covid-19 Virus Preys on What Terrifies Us: Dying Alone.”2
Fast-forward four months, and hundreds of similar headlines have deepened our angst. The fear of dying alone is almost as horrifying as dying. Why is that? I venture to say it all comes down to love.
As near-death experiencers will tell you, everything comes down to love. It is the nature of our being, and the force that created and holds everything together (some might term this ‘God’). When we die, we try with all our might to hold onto the last vestiges of that love, seen clearly in the faces of family and friends. We finally get what “it” was all about.
The profoundly good news that NDE wisdom brings us is that like love itself, we never truly die. Further, we likely do not die alone either, despite the headlines. Okay, it’s not exactly like having your close loved ones around…or is it?
A common occurrence among near-death experiencers is seeing previously departed loved ones. Sometimes this happens at the moment of death, sometimes further into the NDE. Couple this with the many stories whispered between hospice nurses about patients talking or reaching out to loved ones shortly before they die. I myself experienced this with my dying aunt. At a time when I hadn’t told many people about my spiritually-transformative experiences, for fear of being labeled, I opened up to her feeling it would bring her comfort. To my surprise, my aunt told me she saw “Daddy” (my grandfather) just outside her backdoor, beckoning her to come open it. She said she’d felt him around ever since she’d been diagnosed with cancer and she knew he would be there for her the moment she died.
Maggie Callanan, a long-time hospice nurse and author of Final Gifts and Final Journeys, coined the term “Nearing Death Awareness” after witnessing nearly 2,000 deaths during her career3. What I experienced with my aunt is not uncommon, according to Callanan. She witnessed many patients appear to talk to deceased spouses or other loved ones that others could not see. These exchanges bring comfort and acceptance to patients, making the dying process easier. Callanan implores us not to attribute these musings of the dying as hallucination or confusion. To the contrary, it is usually the living who are confused. A dose of acceptance would go a long way toward making the bereavement process easier, too.
Many hospice nurses and physicians are thankfully beginning to consider that dying isn’t the end, and that end-of-life visitations may be a gift to all of us, helping us remember our true identity as eternal beings.
Barbara Karnes, RN and author of Gone from My Sight, agrees with Callanan’s perspective and pointed out recently in a blog post4 that she believes we do not die alone. Some of her stated observations provide additional support to what NDErs have reported regarding hearing. Karnes writes that “A person can hear even in the moments following death.” There are many examples in the NDE literature of this phenomenon, including hearing jokes made by medical personnel, and hearing oneself be declared dead by EMTs. In a particularly fascinating veridical NDE (claims made that were verified to be true), Pam Reynolds found herself floating above her body during an operation in which she should not have been able to hear, and her eyelids were taped shut. She accurately reported conversations, music selections being played, and activities she could see going on in the operating room.
NDEs offer much that point to an eternal existence, but let’s get back to the idea of dying alone.
If deceased relatives don’t immediately greet us upon death, it may be a benevolent being unknown to the NDEr. Some have referred to these beings as angels, others call them spirit guides. Sometimes they are familiar, other times not. But what is clear, is that they are there to help. In many cases, they guide the newly departed through celestial realms to meet with others in the afterlife, such as a religious figure or a council for a life review. For NDErs whose time had not truly come yet, these benevolent beings can provide physical assistance. Tricia Barker, whose spine had been crushed in an auto accident, found herself out-of-body flanked by two angels. She watched in amazement as they worked through the surgeons trying to save her by zapping healing energy into their backs. True to her angels’ promise, she did walk again.
Its often hard for near-death experiencers to plot a timeline of their unearthly excursion. Not surprising since space and time are man-made concepts and only “The Impossible Now”4 truly exists. Perhaps that is why the Light seems to appear at different times for different people. Or perhaps it’s because the Light infuses all things and all beings on the other side of existence. For example, some NDErs and dying hospice patients see the Light right away in the hospital room as they die. Others see it at the proverbial end of the tunnel. Still others see it in the essence of everything they encounter, which brings certainty that God is everywhere and everything.
One thing most NDErs agree on is that the Light is real and it is intelligent. It can also take on any shape or appearance it wishes. While I’m not particularly religious, my STEs have led me to believe whole-heartedly that the Light (which I equate to God) is always with us, and in fact is also us. This idea and concept of separate but one is hard to grasp, but when one encounters the fullness of the light, not only do they feel “home,” but they claim it impossible to feel alone. Long-time NDE researcher PMH Atwater stated to me personally that the Light is the most common phenomenon shared by NDErs; and they all feel it in the same way – as unconditional love.
If that’s not enough evidentiary information that we don’t die alone, let’s go back to the land of the living for a moment. There is a wonderful group of researchers out there who form the “Shared Crossing Research Initiative.”5 Their aim is to promote graceful dying “characterized by a conscious, connected, and loving end-of-life experience accompanied by a shared crossing.” They teach techniques that increase the possibility of a living person escorting a dying loved one to the other side. This is called a “shared death experience” (SDE), and they do occur naturally as well. Principals of this group will moderate the “Healing Perspectives on Dying Alone” panel during the *upcoming IANDS Virtual Conference. They will also reflect on results of a years-long study that points to the reality of SDEs.
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by two main researchers of the organization several years back, Dr. Michael Kinsella and William Peters. Years before my STEs, I had an after-death communication (ADC) with my mother who had passed two-days earlier. She appeared to me glowing, at a younger age, and in a white robe. This was at a time before my main spiritual experiences, when I knew nothing about these commonalities regarding how deceased loved ones appear in spirit. My mother had been angry for years over ongoing issues, but when I saw her she exuded joy! I said to her telepathically (another commonality), “Mom, you’re not angry anymore!” She replied, “That’s not possible here.” The visitation ended at that, and though I told myself this is how a grief-stricken brain deals with loss, it was so real I could no longer cry over her death.
While I did not help my mom cross over, per se, I do count this as an SDE. Apparently, the researchers did too, or they would not have interviewed me. Details aside, there are those who have had – naturally or through pre-planning – shared death experiences. These can occur with the still living person either within proximity, or a world away from their dying loved one.
Posted on the Shared Crossing Research Initiative website is the testimonial of a woman who attended training sessions for increasing the chances of having an SDE with her ailing mother:
She said, “I want to share with you something that happened to me on the night my mother died.” She continued, “I was sleeping in the next room when mom died, but I remember getting pulled out of my bed and seeing in the distance a girl with blonde hair. I thought it was my daughter but when I got close, I could see it was my mother. She turned, smiled and said, ‘I love you and want you to see that I’ll be fine. Now go back and care for your children. I will be with you always.’ Cindy went on. “I then awoke back in my bed. I went into my mom’s room and saw that she had indeed died. An indescribable peace came over me, followed by gratitude.
As Barbara Karnes states in her blog post, “Dying is scary and challenging to our idea of how life is supposed to be. …When dying reaches into your personal sphere (and it eventually will), I hope these thoughts bring some comfort.”
Finally, it’s worth noting that many NDErs are greeted by their deceased pets on the other side. Sometimes pets show up immediately, other times they may greet the departed in “Heaven’s waiting room.” There are enough testimonies of this to certainly make me smile. If I take my mother’s statement into account that anger is “not possible here,” coupled with NDErs descriptions of a place of unconditional love, then I have to logically and spiritually assess that YES indeed, my Charlie (my sweet little Cairn Terrier whose ears never went up), and my childhood best friend, Kernel, will be there with tails wagging to plant slobbery kisses all over my face!
The wisdom brought back by near-death experiencers regarding our eternal existence and the idea that we are never truly alone, even at death, is compelling. Seeing loved ones departed and not; angels and spirit guides; pets; and especially, the Light of Unconditional Love can alleviate the grief and fear we have of dying alone. While none of this is news to near-death experiencers or those who circulate in spiritual communities, it is a message that still needs disseminating. My hope is that it reaches those who have lost loved ones due to Covid-19 and mistakenly felt their loved ones died alone. To the spiritual beginner, these may be hard truths to swallow, but I invite you to open your mind and say “ahhh” to let a new kind of healing begin.
*While the IANDS Virtual Conference has passed, you can still purchase video-on-demand up until November, 2020. The conference had a plethora of speakers sharing detailed experiences, and research that continues to support claims that we are never truly alone, and we likely don’t die alone… even if it seems that way on this side of the veil.
World Health Organization (WHO); https://covid19.who.int/; accessed June 23, 2020 (exact count: 469,587 worldwide deaths)
Math is not my jam. Nor is physics. That’s why I find it so surprising that spirit is reaching out to teach me about Oscillation Harmonics and how the principle of such relates to God, and how it will be used in the future (and is in fact already being used “out there” in the universe(s)). “Whoa” I hear you say, being even more surprised that I am so-called taught by “spirit.” If that’s not your jam, then simply attribute these musings to my dreams. I will, however, add the caveat that my mind is too simple to dream these things up.
I “accidentally” (spirit would say otherwise) ran into the concept of Oscillation Harmonics while writing an essay for a contest held last year by BICS (the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies). My essay didn’t get much attention because, I believe, much of it was theory rather than proof of an afterlife, which was the purpose of the contest. However, the twists and turns my essay took were no coincidence. My lessons on oscillation harmonics had begun.
In one section I addressed the “OM” sound heard by many near-death experiencers upon entering into an all-encompassing, loving light – one of the most shared commonalities of NDEs. Two notable near-death experiencers who write about this are Dr. Eben Alexander (Proof of Heaven) and Dr. Rajiv Parti (Dying to Wake Up). Some call this light and its accompanying sound consciousness, others call it God.
I endeavored to find out just how this sound is created. One thing led to another, and I found myself absorbed in the principles of Oscillation Harmonics. Again, I’m no science whiz, so I find the easiest explanation to digest is in the workings of a synthesizer:
To create sound, direct currents of energy are converted to alternating currents (DC to AC). The signal oscillates at a given frequency to generate a desired sound. Sine waves are the most basic result. Frequencies are manipulated to create different tones. Oscillators – How a synthesizer Works (uaf.edu) accessed May 19, 2020.
Musical sounds are actually a combination of many simple harmonic waves corresponding to the many ways in which the vibrating parts of a musical instrument oscillate in sets of superimposed simple harmonic motions, the frequencies of which are multiples of a lowest fundamental frequency. Mechanics – Simple harmonic oscillations | Britannica, accessed March 30, 2023
As often happens I was given an understanding during a teaching session (or dream, if you will), that the “OM” sound is the result of light and darkness folding in on itself, with light being mass and dark being the opposing force against which the light utilizes to constantly rebalance itself to its equilibrium point. The movement inherent in this process is vibration, which creates sound.
In my essay I represented this concept within the simplest wave function of oscillation harmonics, the sine wave:
A sine wave. The colored areas represent mass (in this case, light), whereas the empty space between the waves represent a counter force (in this case, darkness). In my essay, I theorize based on scientific articles that darkness is actually a type of matter as well.
If interested in more of my theory/teaching on this,
you can read the entirety of my essay here.
After the lesson was
over, I went to the internet the next morning to deepen my understanding. I
summed up other seemingly important points in my essay, but quickly forgot
about it all because in truth I couldn’t really wrap my mind around it (read:
math). If you look up anything to do with oscillation harmonics, you’ll find
enough formulas to make your head spin (mine did!).
Interestingly, at the
time I was also working on a project/book with the working title “Nominative
Determinism from a Spiritual Perspective.” Nominative Determinism is the fancy
terminology psychologists use for a person who is shaped by their name, whether
in career, hobby, or behavior, etc. The simplest explanation of this would be a
man named Tom Cook who becomes a cook or chef. Psychologists believe there is a
subliminal (but not subtle!) drive at work here.
Me too. But I believe the drive was intentioned by one’s soul. In NDE and spiritual circles, there is a strong belief that a soul chooses its parents and plans its life in advance of coming to earth. The soul drops clues for itself to keep on its intended path, and sometimes the reminder is in the form of a person’s name – a reminder that is there throughout one’s lifetime. Of course, there is no scientific evidence of this, unless you consider the countless number of NDErs who were shown this while on the other side of the veil.
You would be amazed at the instances I’ve found, and I continue to collect examples. Let me entertain you with one I find especially interesting. Ruby Bridges was the first African-American child to attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the state’s segregation crisis – one in fact that affected the whole U.S. Television footage of the young girl being protected by police as she entered the school (and verbally insulted by white housewives) was everywhere on that day in November, 1960 as it was such a divisive event.
Ruby is now, and has been her entire life since that day, a civil rights activist. I’m not sure when or where I encountered Ruby’s story, but it was certainly after my spiritual experiences (I may have heard of her earlier, but the connection to Nominative Determinism – spiritual or otherwise – did not click.). In fact, considering all the research I’ve done regarding her, I’ve never found anything that mentions the symbolic significance of her name.
Let me pause here and
give you a moment to think. Do you get it yet? RUBY BRIDGES. Ruby bridged the segregation
issue, crossing the line, and town, to move from an all-black to an all-white school.
And “Ruby?” Well, we all bleed red. Ruby’s name is no coincidence, I’m certain.
Don’t misunderstand, I
don’t believe every soul plans clues or reminders or foreshadowing of this kind
as a subliminal reminder of their purpose here on earth…but if you could only
see the examples I’ve collected. I started down this path in regard to my own
name, but I will reserve that story for another time (gotta get to that book!).
So how do oscillation harmonics, nominative determinism, and God come together here? What crazy point am I trying to make?
I needed backup to ensure I wasn’t just imagining that I was being taught about oscillation harmonics and the folding in on itself of light and dark. I often receive confirmation as “synchronicities” and I was about to get a whammy!
While speaking to my
husband about the subject, he brought up oscillating AC/DC currents of energy.
A lot of gobbledygook, I thought. It didn’t hold my interest but I proceeded to
look it up just the same, and what I found blew me away and forms the crux of
where these topics meet. Researching AC/DC currents, I found myself staring at
a webpage about George Ohm.
I wrote all of this up
in my essay, not really knowing the ultimate significance of it. But a few
nights ago, this changed.
My dream teachers showed up again. They told
me I was ready to learn more about oscillation harmonics. I zoomed up into
outer space and saw the earth in the distance with longitude and latitude lines
crisscrossing the surface. I was “told” –
or made to understand – that one can pinpoint any location anywhere in the
universe(s) based on where opposing points of light and dark meet – similar to how
we currently use intersections of longitude and latitude lines to determine
locations on earth.
The teaching continued.
Each meeting point has a unique sound that is expressed by the combination of
the light point and the dark point. You may think that these constantly change
if light and dark is folding in on itself (movement), but in reality it is not
moving forward (as in space-time), but it is instead vibrating (as demonstrated
using a synthesizer, or any musical instrument really).
Just to throw another
odd concept into the mix, my essay touches heavily on the point of equilibrium,
which I equate to the only thing that actually exists, the “now.” There is
truly no past or future, only the present moment. My theory is that we move
through all these present moments, which create what we perceive as “movement.”
This is much like a film (how movies used to be produced!). Each frame is
projected at such a rate that we perceive continuous movement.
The point is, that just as with an oscillator, there is a singular point from which everything emanates (mass/light), a force of energy, and an opposing force (dark) that returns the first force (light) to a state of equilibrium. The vibration of such creates sound and perceived movement. The unknown factor is the “force of energy.” This is expressed in oscillation theory as an unknown differential. In a spiritual sense, I see this as God’s first thought, or the prime mover, the “Word,” or what have you….
My teachers continued,
informing me that with the unique combination of these two-point sounds, one can
locate any point in the universe(s), and dare I say, transport anywhere.
This last bit threw me
off completely and my teachers knew it so a demonstration was apparently in
order. I immediately found myself on a sinking ship. Oh, the irony! There was a
storm, and the ship was going down fast when my attention was directed to an
angelic looking woman with a glowing aura on-board. She was holding an unusual looking
item in her hand. It was metal, and not copper but a color resembling dark,
burnished copper. It was disk-shaped and had channels running from a small
section on one end and spreading out like a fan to the other end. It reminded
me of a women’s razor that was popular
in the 70s, a Flicker. The channels on the razor however, were circular (picture
below):
I quickly learned it was a musical instrument. The woman held it up to her lips and began playing a song. As she played, the ship propelled forward at incredible speed and in the blink of an eye was at the shore. I was “told” that the song incorporated all the unique pairs of notes that reached from the ship’s original position in the ocean to its stopping point at the shore.
As if this wasn’t enough to grasp, I was told that if only the last two notes had been played – the ones that corresponded to the shore’s points – that the ship would have simply disappeared from the sinking point to its resting point at the shore. There would have been no speeding through the water to get to safety.
If that was
easier and even quicker, then why didn’t the woman just play the two notes, I wondered. The response came as quickly as
the thought entered my mind: Human knowledge builds on itself, so first
things first.
That was it, the end of the lesson. As always, the next day I found myself laughing at my dream-teaching as I told my husband about it. But in the depths of my soul, I knew I was being taught things. And not just about Oscillation Harmonics, but other things just as wildly spectacular (other blog posts for other days).
Though this lesson was over, my teachers clearly thought I needed to review an earlier lesson, which is to QUIT DOUBTING. For this, I was given a confirmation of the harmonics lesson.
Out to lunch on my own the next day, I opened a book on my kindle that I had started months earlier but never finished. I launched into chapter six of Bonnie Jenning’s book, My Near-Death Experience: To Orion’s Belt, Escorted by Extraterrestrials.
During Bonnie’s NDE she
interacted with both spirit beings and beings from other dimensions (Yes,
aliens – not an uncommon aspect of NDEs). At one point she was instructed:
“…Read these binary numbers for us.”
I said “I don’t read binary numbers.… Immediately I must have read them anyway. For them, the codes represent beings of energies, their location in the universes, their time on their timeline, and any specifics needed to find them… If someone needs examining or help, which they don’t do often, they use binary codes to find the person.”
“They brought up star charts for me to read. …I pointed to where we were, and to other places in the universe. …Because of my knowledge, I was allowed to go out into the universe by myself, unattended. …I was allowed to travel alone.”
I understood this synchronicity as confirmation of my own lessons and that others are bringing this knowledge to humanity as well. It is just a matter of time before scientists develop a system by which we can locate a person or place anywhere in the universe(s) based on binary codes, which are 1) something and 2) not something working in tandem. Sound familiar? The light and the absence of light (dark) form a unique something (musical note) together.
If you find this a bit fantastic, try living my life. Before my “core experiences” (awakening), which I in no way sought out, I was living a straight-laced, logically-minded existence (read my book for the full story: Caught Between Heaven and Earth). I still try to, but that is an uphill battle. The upside? It’s actually really fun to learn such amazing and interesting things that pre-my-experiences I wouldn’t have believed in million years.
Plus, one day I just might get to zoom around the universe(s) all on my own!
