Impossible Realities by Maureen Caudill

Author:Maureen Caudill [Caudill, Maureen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781612832821
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing
Published: 2012-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

What was it that my mother saw on her deathbed? Was it a true vision of those who had died decades ago? Or was it merely a hallucination? One scientist at California State University, Bakersfield, L. Stafford Betty, investigated deathbed and near-death visions in an attempt to answer that question.79 Betty considered two types of visions. The more common vision is much like the one my mother had. In this case, the dying person sees spirits, generally of relatives, friends, or other loved ones who have died before. These spirits are seen to come to greet the dying person and encourage them about the positive nature of their coming transition from life to death. The spirits are nearly always recognized by the one dying but are not generally observed by others in the room at the time.

The second type of deathbed vision is something like a travelogue in which the dying person is given a glimpse of a wonderful place that they know is where they are going after they pass into death. Often, these visions occur only moments before death, and the words spoken by the dying are obscure and somewhat uninformative: “It's so beautiful there!” is a typical utterance for this type of vision.

Betty also noted that these visions can happen under two types of circumstances. One is when people are dying over a period of time, as from a major illness; this was my mother's situation. In these cases, the visions happen any time in the days or weeks before physical death, and the person is often conscious immediately after or even during the vision. People who are conscious when experiencing this type of vision see both any living people present and the dead at the same time and can communicate with both. (Thus my mother's concern about seeing and speaking to me at the same time as speaking to her dead loved ones.) They also generally know the difference between the living and the dead, though they sometimes count themselves as among the dead, as my mother did. The dead generally appear as “spirits,” while the living appear as normal people.

The other circumstances of deathbed visions are those who are in perilous circumstances that may or may not result in imminent death. These latter often turn into classic near-death experiences where they may be given a choice over whether to return to their bodies—or may be ordered to return to their bodies. In such circumstances, the individual can generally offer comprehensive descriptions of their experience once they recover.

Betty provides four reasons why these reports should be taken seriously as valid anecdotal reports of the existence of spiritual survival after death. First, he claims that the dying person reports them as being visions of “living” spirits—even when they are die-hard atheists and materialists with no prior belief in an afterlife. They also tend to be very adamant about the reality of their experiences—again, no matter what their prior beliefs in survival after death. Unless you're willing to

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