The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife Read online

  June 10, 2013

  Three weeks later, I leaned over to pinch off tiny, green Shimpaku needles from my favorite bonsai, planted in a four-foot high brown glazed, clay pot. I stood back to check my work. Looking underneath the tree to see if I needed to cut more, I nearly lost my balance. I felt nauseous, ran inside the house into the bathroom, and vomited. My legs felt strangely disconnected from my body, like Pinocchio wooden legs. I mentioned the weird symptoms to my wife, Delynn, and she said, “Oh, that’s exactly what I feel when I get vertigo.”

  After dinner, Delynn and I took a stroll through the gardens surrounding our home. Sunbeams poked through the spruce trees. Birds chirped in the cool of the evening. The sound of gravel crunching underfoot required no words. It was a perfect, peaceful evening, but walking through the dizziness was challenging. I had practiced and taught T’ai Chi for years where balance is everything— and mine was dreadfully off.

  I blew it off thinking I had a simple inner ear infection.

  June 12, 2013

  Two days later, on Wednesday evening, June 12, I received a call from John, a longtime friend, I hadn’t heard from in over a year. He asked me if I was alright.

  I told him, “I’m okay. Why?”

  “I had a dream last night you were in trouble. I was told to call you.”

  “John, I am fine,” I said.

  We talked for a few minutes, but quickly the call was over. It didn’t even occur to me to put the pieces of it all together: The after-death warning from Paul Solomon and Great Grandma Miller. The spa premonition. John’s call. My dizziness.

  The clock was ticking…

  —

  Endnotes

  1Deep gorges, canyons, and great gulfs represent symbolic barriers of the boundary separating Heaven and Earth often encountered during near-death experiences. (See chapter 13, Death Step by Step).

  2On July 26th, 2013, I told my mother about the “death ferry” dream. She showed me a photograph of Great Grandma Miller who had died when I was 16-years-old. I instantly recognized the woman from my dream as my Great Grandmother. Mom’s photo showed her hair in a different style than I saw in my dream—her hair tied up in a braided ponytail—the same braided ponytail Great Grandma had when she was laid to rest, a fact I could not have known, since I did not attend her funeral.

  — 2 —

  The Race, the Research, & the Dead Saints Epiphany

  David Solomon Pruning Japanese Shimpaku, Akio Botanical Gardens, Spring 2013.

  “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the Year, “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.” And he replied, “Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

  ~Minnie Haskins (England, 1875-1957)

  On Thursday, June 13, 2013, as I neared completing two years of NDE (Near Death Experience) research, I was diagnosed with GBM IV (glioblastoma multiforme stage IV) a very rare, aggressive form of terminal brain cancer with a median survival rate of 15-18 months, and no recorded instances of permanent remission. The catastrophic news halted midstream, the completion of Akio Botanical, a five-acre Japanese landscaping project that surrounded our home in Washington State.

  Ted Kennedy died of GBM just 15 months after his initial diagnosis and he famously used to say until he passed, “I am still here.” As of March 13, 2016 as I prepare to bring this book to print, I pass my own thirty-third month of survival. So I, like the venerable senator, can also say, “I am still here!”

  The waters ahead may be turbulent and treacherous, but the sky is clear, and I accept my fate, however it plays out. The scientist in me even sees this as an opportunity to explore, in a unique fashion, the unknown territory called The Afterlife. It faithfully and objectively records the challenges of finishing a writing project, wholly devoted to all aspects of dying and after death survival (physical, psychological, philosophical, religious and scientific) before the lethal tumor in my own head takes me away.

  My NDE studies were initially both intensive and wide-ranging but without a focus. My ultimate aim was to someday write a book on the subject, but frankly, knowing myself, it probably would have never happened. This is where the story acquires its plot. By the time the cancer diagnosis bomb dropped, my NDE “hobby” had already assembled a vast trove of near-death research.

  If my life had an expiration date, it appeared I had better get to work writing. After months of iterating the outline, the Chronicles burgeoned into a Trilogy… three separate but complementary explorations of a single grand theme.

  Book I:A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife

  Book II:Training Wires of the Soul

  Book III:The Armageddon Stones

  Between the apparently inescapable prognosis and my own instinct, I knew the writing project would be a race to the finish, one that would continue right down to the very last moments of my life. It was as though it was orchestrated by God, angels, and deceased friends and teachers on the “other side.” It was a work that had to get done.

  The Race

  Despite debilitating brain fog and fatigue from radiation and chemo treatments, I wrote with a Blues-Brother-Mission-from-God vigor. The Chronicles materialized steadily, often daily. Mystics would call it revelation, or artist’s inspiration. Atheists, skeptics and materialists call it hypothesis formation in order to make it reasonably acceptable to their academic colleagues.

  I would wake up with insights and direction. My mind was always pondering, always asking, “Lord, how should I write this?” Sometimes insights came in the form of a dream or just a “knowing.” Answers and new realizations would come late at night and I often had to text myself so as not to forget the words by morning. While I never stopped thinking about the book, often brain fog from GBM would limit my ability to write. Hours of rest would become days of rest, then weeks. It’s hard enough to write, even with a normally functioning brain!

  At times, I wanted to abandon the Chronicles and focus only on my family and my bucket list. Sometimes I despaired. I was dying! But then, the Hand of God would reach down, slap me upside the head with some new inspiration, and pull me out of bed. I’d get a phone call from some friend I hadn’t heard from in thirty years. He’d send me a dream or a thought of how to proceed with a chapter, the title of a book I should read, or perhaps just a sunrise I should experience. So the Chronicles became my Afterlife training ground, teaching me ever more about the Earth School we attend, our divine “boot camp.”

  My book would be the culmination of forty years of personal experiences, Eastern and Western spiritual practice, scientific/scholarly research into a variety of related fields, ongoing journal work and dream analysis. The Dead Saints Chronicles would set out to validate the vivid descriptions of the mysterious Afterlife realm recorded by the Dead Saints throughout human history. My prognosis assured my own entry into that realm in the not-so-distant future, lending it an immediacy and a unique perspective; a book about the Afterlife unlike anything written to date.

  Dead Saints Epiphany

  Why the Dead Saints?

  In early November 2012, during my usual 20-minute morning drive to the local 76 gas station for my favorite coffee, I was casually musing about my near-death research when suddenly the words Dead Saints and Apostle Paul appeared in a vision.

  In that instant, I knew all my NDE research would become a book, and Dead Saints would be part of the title. In that instant, I also knew how the book would be structured. It was inspired by Paul, the Apostle, who, 2000 years ago, wrote his Epistles directed to the saints. It was the specific word he applied to those Christians who had had an encounter with God, Christ and unconditional love. That experience transformed their lives and freed them from the fear of death. It was just such a mystical and transformative experience of brilliant Light that turned Saul of Tarsus, a notor
ious persecutor of Christians, into Paul the Apostle.

  While that ecstatic moment on the Road to Damascus is common knowledge, less well known is another experience of Paul’s that may have been what we today would recognize as a classic NDE:(2 Corinthians:1-4)

  It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such a one caught up to the third Heaven. (A place beyond the stars) And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

  The accounts of Paul’s conversion describe it as miraculous, supernatural, or otherwise revelatory in nature. The NDE testimonies shared in modern times are similar to St. Paul’s experience. Thus, Dead Saints refer to those who have gone through and been transformed by their NDE.

  The term Dead Saints differs from the Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu “saints” who are known and revered for their piety, devotion and miracles. These Dead Saints represent a unique Class of saint, usually ordinary people who after actually, if only briefly, dying, return alive to this side of life with absolute KNOWLEDGE of the immortality of the soul and a concomitant loss of the fear of death.

  But with that experiential knowledge comes a sense of urgency. The Mission must be completed; they have so much to do and so little time to do it in. These contemporary Dead Saints may acquire spiritual gifts and some become interested in the paranormal. Like Paul, they share a newfound love for the Being of Light (in the Christian case, Jesus Christ) they encountered while “out-of-the-body.”

  Flashback: Near-Death Research Project Launched in July 2011

  By late July 2011, I was engaged in disciplined research, cataloging about fifty near-death testimonies a day from blogs posted on NDERF.org, but as yet I had only a vague intention of using that research “someday” as the foundation of a book. NDE researchers had done a thorough job establishing the reality of near-death experiences, but few had systematically indexed, analyzed, commented upon and connected the dots of the myriad, profoundly paradigm-changing details brought back from the Afterlife.

  Gradually, I realized connecting those dots was to be my Mission. I believed (and still believe) that worldwide acceptance of the near-death phenomenon could have momentous worldwide consequences. Thus, the seed for The Dead Saints Chronicles was sown, took root and grew.

  Near-Death Lightning: October 5, 2011

  I was reading the near-death experience of Christopher, a 60-year-old Vietnam vet from North Carolina, who died during surgery to remove his left lung. Without warning, I began laughing hysterically. I felt continuously zapped by a thousand volts of humor. The room and I appeared to be sealed in a bubble of holiness and absolute gentleness. The laughter turned into uncontrollable sobbing. Time lost meaning. Only the moment mattered. I could barely speak. I dropped to my knees and repeated over and over, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  I spent the next several days floating in that holy softness so often described by those who have died and returned to life. I could tolerate no cussing or yelling. When I walked outside in our Japanese garden, everything looked more alive, perhaps an unseen connection between the plants, birds, rabbits and myself. I felt such peace for a few days. I thought I was in Heaven.

  I wondered, what triggered such a dramatic event?

  There were clues. During Christopher’s surgery, before dying on the operation table, he began speaking aloud in what appeared to be a two-way conversation. After Christopher was resuscitated, one of the surgeons later approached him to discuss the surgery and talk about the remarkable conversation that happened:

  [Surgeon standing at Christopher’s bedside begins speaking]

  You’re probably wondering why I’m standing here.

  Christopher replied, ‘You want to tell me some more about my dying?’

  No, that’s not the reason why.

  ‘Well, what’s up, doc?’

  I’ve been performing these same surgical procedures for the past 25 years and something happened here today I’ve never experienced before. It’s had such a profound effect on me that I have to tell you about it.

  ‘Okay, go ahead.’

  We had you wide-open and were removing a special kind of fat tissue from your heart to use to tie-up your fistula when all of a sudden you started talking out loud. Surprised, we all jumped back from the table as we initially thought you had come out from underneath the anesthesia, but when we checked our instruments, we found, no, you were still under...still unconscious...so we just stood there and listened while you talked.

  ‘What did I say?’ [He had no recall of anything that had happened while this was going on.]

  It’s not so much what you said as it was to whom you were talking to.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘You were talking to Jesus Christ.’

  When he said this, I thought he was some kind of a nut. I didn’t really know what to say, but I noticed he seemed to be a little astonished.

  ‘Well, was He talking back or was I just hollering out into the void?’

  He quickly said, ‘We couldn’t hear any other voices, but it sounded like you were engaged in a two-way conversation.’ 1

  My encounter could be described by the Christian term, “slain in the spirit,” but I have experienced this first hand among large groups of believers during laying-on-of-hands healing services, and felt the movement of the Holy Spirit (associated with laughing and crying), but my living room encounter was much more intense.

  It then occurred to me I must have invoked Jesus’ Holy Presence while visualizing the NDE. I wasn’t praying at the time. I wasn’t asking for an experience. It just happened. My encounter raised an important question: “How could the simple act of reading a dying man’s near-death meeting with Jesus Christ evoke such a profound experience for me? Could this happen to others who read about near-death experiences?

  I began to believe others could tune in to an NDE testimonial like Christopher’s and vicariously share it. I gave the direct encounter with Jesus a name. Near-Death Lightning. A term that became an important thesis in the Chronicles.

  The Method, Early Insights, Sudden Unanticipated Urgency

  For the most part, I have selected significant, but not-always-obviously related snippets from innumerable NDE accounts which, when woven together, address timeless and universal questions about the purpose of life and death, the physics of the Cosmos, the reality of God, and the proof of immortality. Often it was seemingly minor details brought back by the Dead Saints, viewed in the context of theology, mythology and philosophy that brought these normally abstract subjects to life and provided meaningful insights into the nature of the Universe itself.

  With the advent of the internet, NDE reports have increased exponentially. For the first time in human history, technology has given ordinary people the ability to post extraordinary individual experiences on popular dedicated websites and reach massive audiences without going through the expense and time of publishing a book.

  The Dead Saints Chronicles include near-death experiences of both children and adults, drawn from accounts of some 5000 people, who describe what it is like to be dead. We learn from people who have faced death and who came back to life KNOWING death is not something to fear; death is literally an illuminating transition to a greater reality ruled by Love.

  These are the stories of those changed lives, or Dead Saints as it were, who have died (physically or mystically) and journeyed beyond this life and this Earth to a divine dimension of celestial Light and color, who received life changing counsel from Jesus, from God-like Beings, angels, even deceased family members, and who were able to retain and bring back this apostolic message
. Their stories of personal transformation (sometimes bestowing upon them supernatural powers, such as healing and prophecy) and their unalterable sense of a universal love are qualities in keeping with the generally accepted definition of saint.

  Are Dead Saint Experiences Holy?

  If the Apostle Paul can be transformed by his encounter with a dazzling Light from Heaven, can people who today experience the same Light receive divine revelations as holy and life changing as St. Paul? Can these Dead Saints, who have glimpsed paradise, return to life with holy conversations? Why would their experiences be any less holy than Paul’s?

  While addressing these questions, I draw mainly from Judeo/Christian accounts. This is not meant to disparage or exclude other spiritual traditions. It is simply that the bulk of the available NDE evidence comes from the West and in all likelihood is what most of our audience will be familiar with.

  More often than not, the truths brought back by the Dead Saints through direct personal experience are infused with a humble authority. One writes:

  I found myself embracing solitude rather than wasting time retelling a story; NDE is not a mandate, not a commissioning to holiness. I can, as any other human being, make a claim to holiness, without ever being touched by the Sacred. And the mindless repeating of story, a story that cannot ever be fully told, is loath to me. I am a simple, uninteresting, semi-rational, ordinary, human being (my wife sometimes doubts that). And I am constantly making mistakes, laughing about them or apologizing. And still in search of an answer.2

  Some NDEs are more equal than others. Though always intense and unforgettable, not all NDEs are equally transformational. Some experience a Christ-like change. However, the NDE is not a guaranteed free pass to endlessly serene sainthood. Not everyone, upon returning to life on Earth, is turned from a caterpillar into a butterfly. Some become sad and angry, having lost “Heaven” and feel they were given little choice about returning to life in order to carry out their Mission. Some accepted their Mission and returned, but by no means did all accept their return to Earth willingly.