Her second experience was more intense. "I felt myself separating again; saw myself, as if in a bubble. I was one-year old, in my crib, crying. I kept looking back and forth between my real self lying in bed and as this baby. And the second or third time I turned around, I saw this God-force, if you want to call it that. It moved through me, pervaded my DNA, held me up.
"As soon as I acknowledged it, we moved toward the baby, and it was as though it became part of a cloud of bubbles--each one being a different moment in my life. I relived all the abuse I suffered as a child at the hands of my mother. But I felt detached, the way I did as a kid, and I felt a realization of something I didn't know before. All my adult life I felt like a piece of dirt on somebody else's shoe, and I never knew why. And yet, re-experiencing all of those moments, I realized I had chosen to believe I was bad. I understood why I always felt so worthless.
"And my first thought, watching all this abuse, was, No wonder I am the way I am."
Harris was transformed by her experience: She speaks of acquiring a "general realization about the way everything works." Her experience led her, fittingly, to become a respiratory therapist, and to work with dying patients. She feels she may indeed have something to offer others who are suffering without knowing why.
Yet the question remains: Was Harris, in the face of great pain and trauma, merely dissociating from reality and into a world of her own invention, the way she admits doing as a child in the face of her mother's abuse? Does the coupling effect--her linking of her NDE and the recollection of abuse--reveal a pattern of dissociation, of simply tuning out reality? or, as she puts it, did her earlier experience with dissociation leave her with a special "pathway" or channel through which she was able to reach such otherworldly levels?
"Yes, I am dissociating," she admits, "but I am also out of my body and I am someplace else. My real separation and tuning out was my misery all my life. When I had my NDE, it was easier for me to slip out of my body because I already knew how. The ability was there to let go. And what I experienced was a sense of who I really am--the person I would have been had I not been abused. I had forgotten her, the part of me that remained intact. The part of me that is the spark of God."
Like Ring and other investigators, Harris believes that childhood dissociation may provide the adult with a kind of "road map" to be followed later, a receptiveness to paranormal experiences. As proof that she did indeed leave her body, she recalls overhearing a nurse's conversation that in fact took place in another room--while she was confined to her circle bed. The conversation was later confirmed by those present.
The Transformative Question
Of all aspects of near-death experiences, personality change is the one most scrutinized for insight into what is actually occurring. It attracts researchers of all persuasions. There are those who feel that the only "real" NDE is one that transforms its subjects. And there are others who are concerned merely with what can be learned from those transformations.
"The public wants to know where they go when they die," contends John Sappington, M.D., professor of psychology at Augusta (Georgia) College. "As scientists, we can't answer that question. Nevertheless, there are ways to study NDErs as a group, things we can learn from them and possibly apply to a therapeutic situation which would benefit a client."
For Sappington and others, the issue is not whether the person is actually meeting God, but why NDErs routinely seem better adjusted, more at peace and content with themselves and the world after their experience. Disregarding, for the time being at least, how they got that way, and focusing on the changes themselves, psychologists would like to borrow this newfound sense of well-being and utilize it in therapy.
Reports are highly consistent and common: "I understand things so much more" and "My senses all seem heightened." Subjects claim "sudden knowledge and comprehension of complex mathematical theorems." Psychologist Ring has identified a consistent set of value and belief changes. They include:
a greater appreciation for life
o higher self-esteem
o greater compassion for others
o a heightened sense of purpose and self-understanding
o desire to learn
o elevated spirituality
o greater ecological sensitivity and planetary concern
o a feeling of being more intuitive, sometimes psychic.
o He also observes "psychophysical changes," including:
o increased physical sensitivity
o diminished tolerance to light, alcohol, and drugs
o a feeling that their brains have been "altered" to encompass more
o a feeling that they are now using their "whole brain" rather than just a small part.
NDErs undergo radical changes in personality, and their,significant others--spouses, friends, relatives--confirm these changes, reports Bruce Greyson, M.D., clinical psychiatrist and associate professor at the University of Connecticut. Like Sappington, he is concerned with what can be learned from such new outlooks on life.
Tags:
absolute proof,
barbara harris,
conscious,
corroboration,
dead relatives,
death,
dialogues,
earmarks,
george gallup jr,
moment of my life,
nders,
near death experience,
near death experiences,
pope gregory,
raymond moody,
recent poll,
shining angels,
sixth century,
transcendental,
true believer,
tunnel experience,
visions of hell
