I’ve done my own deep research into near death. It was just that the research was unexpected, unwanted and supremely badly timed. It happened in 2012 when, at the age of 36, I got flu. It feels ridiculously small a word to contain the devastation is caused, so let’s use its full name. Influenza. But even that does not convey the magnitude of the destruction it wreaked on so many lives.
Within 48 hours I was in ICU and was put on life support. I was to stay in an induced coma for three weeks while my body was intubated and motionless on a bed as the virus moved from flu into an undiagnosed lung condition. What was happening to my body was one thing as it lay kept alive by a snake-like embrace of tubes and pipes and machines. A totally different thing was happening to my spirit or soul. During the entire process I had an extended NDE in which I gradually travelled further and further away from my body and into other realms and worlds.
The story gets even more surreal and inexplicable because, at the very same time that I was fighting for my life, my husband was dying too. It was just that his death was expected as he was losing a four-year fight against brain cancer. He was slipping in and out of consciousness just ten kilometres down the road while I was in a coma. A big part of my NDE and soul journey was saying goodbye to him – in a different dimension.
At one point during the 18 days, I stopped breathing. It was 24 minutes before I was put back on the breathing machines and resuscitated.
The coma and the longer journey are detailed in my book Love and Above: A Journey Through Shamanism, Coma and Joy. But I will expand on my coma in the next chapter and take you through the stages – or ‘worlds’, as I called them – of my travels during the NDE. I am also going to explain why ‘shamanism’ was used in the title, and why it is so useful a word in the broader discussion of death.
When I woke up from the coma in late 2012, the topic of near death was on everybody’s lips. This was due to an American neuroscientist who had published a book called Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife. Nobody had heard his name before, but that year the name Dr Eben Alexander was everywhere. The book raced to the top of The New York Times bestseller list and the scientist was being interviewed across mainstream media.
The story was truly extraordinary, mainly because he was a top neuroscientist. Alexander had been in an induced coma for seven days after getting a rare viral meningoencephalitis and collapsing at home. The event had happened four years before the book came out. In the book he carefully details the entire medical event, but most importantly his experience of what he calls ‘a rich spiritual odyssey that completely defies any conventional scientific understanding’.
Before Alexander, a lot of people had written about NDEs – but he was a scientist. I repeat – a neurosurgeon! This wasn’t some random nutter with faith and a stroke of luck writing about a crazy trip.
This was a BIG DEAL. Imagine being a neuroscientist and knowing what was happening to you clinically, but also having a mystical experience. His account of his own medical condition, his journey to heaven and the book itself were all groundbreaking in the already vast but contested field of study.
Western NDEs are the ones most studied and recorded and most tell of the sensation of floating up; spending time in a beautiful, otherworldly realm; meeting spiritual beings and a loving presence; encountering long-lost relatives or friends; and finally coming back.
Alexander’s experience ticked all those boxes. I could tell just from the title, Proof of Heaven. I was intrigued, but scared. Why? Simple. I hadn’t seen heaven. I hadn’t seen angels. Nor God. It had been empty and infinite. What I had seen had been very different. It had been ritualistic. I had been comforted by tribal African women who sang to me and helped me. I had drifted into a great and expansive nothingness. I had been helped back home by a strange and intriguing otherworldly I called the Forest Man.
I know that now you are itching to know more. That is the nature of these strange and mystical experiences. ‘More,’ we say, hungry for all the little details. ‘Tell me more.’ And yes, they are so unusual. The details and the whole experience of an NDE are so fascinating.
So, the title alone, Proof of Heaven, was a red flag to me and my stranger, more African and dare I say shamanic experience of near death. I was unable to read the book at that time. I was unable to read anything at all really, as a much bigger thing had happened. My husband died just three days after I woke from the coma and got out of hospital. I had been taken to see him when he was in his last stages of life. I was in a wheelchair, having just fought my way out of death, and he was entering into it. He was already in a coma as the tumour had created a suppression of his central nervous system by the time I saw him, and he was unresponsive. I didn’t even wonder at that stage whether he too was elsewhere in the spirit realm, looking for me.
I was unable to cope with that strange duality. I was so fragile that the enormity of the experience had to be put aside. I also needed time. I was still fighting my way back to health – I had been in a coma for close to a month and the physical recovery from that was painstaking and tough. I was battling with grief, and learning to walk again, eat again and talk again. My focus was on physical recovery and weaning myself off the mass of drugs that were keeping me ‘stable’.
Being a journalist and author, I wanted to record the events and feelings in writing.
Once I had recovered enough fine motor function I started by texting, then eventually I sat down with my laptop and noted down everything I remembered. It was long and detailed. I wrote down the entire journey, and even grouped the experience into the clear various phases.
Slowly the experience of being ‘so close to death’ faded. And the ordinariness of life took over. I was back in the non-magical world, and it felt solid and secure and comfortable. I was so relieved to be there.
This is an extract from The Other Side: Journeys into Mysticism, Magic and Near Death.
Sarah Bullen is a multi-published author and literary agent. Her books include The Other Side: Journeys into Mysticism, Magic and Near Death
Love and Above: A journey into shamanism, coma and joy.
Write your Book in 100 Days
and link to each book on Wix pages and the Amazon and Takealot links :
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