The near-death experience (NDE) is a very strange phenomenon.  Thanks to modern resuscitation technology, it is possible to revive people who have died, from a car crash or on the operating table, etc. They are clinically dead for several minutes and sometimes for much longer periods. Now, if dead, the brain is deprived of blood, which is supposed to obliterate consciousness. A dead brain is supposed to imply no consciousness.

But here is the first surprise. When the dead person is restored to life, he has a strange fact to report. Not only was he conscious, but the conscious experience he has is amazing, super-real and transformative. Shocking!  But how do we know that he was really conscious while he was dead?  Another blow to a reasonable assumption--story after story recounts how at the moment of death, you exit your body, usually rise to the ceiling where you observe your own dead body while others frantically work to bring life back.   You recall all the details of what you saw and astonish everyone by your knowledge of what was happening. Weird. Could there be other invisible dead people hanging around, observing us?

There are many strange and interesting facets of the NDE, though the experience is filtered in a unique way through each experiencer. There is one special feature that explains something about the NDE. Most of the time, experiencers don’t want to return to their lives in the world. But they must because there is unfinished business that needs attention.  Still,  they would prefer to stay and bask in the ineffable presence of what is described as an atmosphere of pure love and acceptance.

Here now is perhaps the most mysterious feature of the NDE. It begins with awareness of an approaching light, which swells and engulfs you; it permeates you and reveals itself as love. This feels like the apex of the possible. Experiencers describe the presence of a transcendent embrace of the heart.  It is a form of love beyond the judgmental and the punitive.  Ecstatic and unconditional love; to feel it showered on you is like a gift from heaven.  It lingers in the mind, like an intoxicating atmosphere.  ‘Home’ is the metaphor that seems to fit the essence of the near-death journey.  It’s a remarkable idea: to die is finally to make it home and discover ineffable love!  All this is wildly at odds with our sense of rational reality.

There is another notable aspect of the NDEs. The popularity of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity, said to appear and interact with so many who find themselves in the near-death state. What to make of this? The Jesus that appears so often in the NDE radiates the spirit of divine love and peace.  Moreover, Jesus appears in the NDEs of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and all sorts of unreligious characters, always with the same infinitely tactful approach.  In many reports, individuals are converted to the figure of Jesus as their central conduit to the experience of a kind of love that seems uniquely pure and enchanting. It is a love that we experienced in the past that now seems fully realized.  The Jesus figure in the NDE talks with the souls he engages with, telepathically and intimately. The effect is to sense an invitation to surrender without reservations to the generosity of divine love. Apparently, dying and being stripped of everything, even your body, can open one up to the influx of the love God.

It’s also good to know that the Jesus of near-death experience has a sense of humor.  An American woman had a near-death experience where she saw a man whom she instantly recognized was Jesus by the love she saw in his eyes.  He was, however, dressed in a suit. They met and she asked, “Jesus, why are you dressed in a suit?” He smiled and replied, “You wouldn’t have noticed me.”