What’s after Life? by John Burke

Author:John Burke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Living/Spiritual Growth;REL030000;REL012120
ISBN: 9781493419173
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2019-11-04T00:00:00+00:00

The Being of Light

The highlight of many NDEs is a mystical Being of Light who fills them with a love beyond imagination. In Dr. Long’s study, 49.9% of people said they encountered a “definite being, or voice clearly of mystical or otherworldly origin.”40 But just who is this Being of Light? Not surprisingly, this question is where researchers’ opinions diverge most.

Erlendur Haraldsson and Karlis Osis, two Scandinavian researchers, studied five hundred Americans and five hundred Indians to determine how much religious or cultural conditioning shaped one’s NDE. They noted, “If the patient sees a radiant man clad in white who induces in him an inexplicable experience of harmony and peace, he might interpret the apparition in various ways: as an angel, Jesus, or God; or if he is a Hindu, Krishna, Siva, or Deva.”41

Though I have heard researchers state conclusions like this, I have never read of NDErs describing anything like Krishna (who has blue skin) or Siva (who has three eyes). Though they may have different interpretations depending on their culture, what NDErs describe is similar across cultures. People everywhere know intuitively this is God. This God is Light and Love, and in God’s presence, they’ve never felt so known, loved, or alive. The characteristics of this God of Light reported around the world seem amazingly consistent with what the Bible reveals.

Haraldsson and Osis state that “the phenomenon within each culture often do not conform with religious afterlife beliefs. . . . Christian ideas of ‘judgment,’ ‘salvation,’ and ‘redemption’ were not mirrored in the visions of our American patients.” I examine this claim in depth in the book Imagine Heaven to show how Osis and Haraldsson’s expectations of these ideas do not match what the Bible teaches; however, they also note:

Several basic Hindu ideas of the afterlife were never portrayed in the visions of the Indian patients. The various Vedic “loci” of an afterlife—Hindu Heaven—were never mentioned. Nor were reincarnation and dissolution in Brahma, the formless aspect of God which is the goal of Indian spiritual striving. The concept of Karma—accumulation of merits and demerits—may have been vaguely suggested by reports of a “white robed man with a book of accounts.”42

None of the Indians in Haraldsson and Osis’s studies mentioned the ultimate Hindu goal of moksha, the self finally absorbed into the impersonal ultimate form of God, yet Indians did sometimes describe a loving, personal, white-robed Being of Light with a beard and a book of accounts. “The [Indian] patient seemed to die. After some time, he regained consciousness. He then told us that he was taken away by messengers in white clothing, and brought up to a beautiful place. There he saw a man in white, with an account book.”43

Haraldsson and Osis say, “[In Indian NDEs], the man with the ‘book of accounts’ is always pictured as a benign ruler. An aura of sacredness rests upon him regardless of whether he is called ‘the man in a white robe’ or ‘God.’”44 Steve Miller studied western versus nonwestern NDE

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