say that he’d taken “a bad turn.” In the article he wrote in the medical journal and in his interview with Katz, Sharpe said he then told the medical team not to resuscitate him if he suffered another relapse. He wanted the experience to “go on and on. If that was eternity, I wanted to stay there. I was annoyed at being brought back to earth.”
Some facts given in Katz’s article are important. Sharpe was not a member of any religious group and had not been to church for many years. In his own mind, he had “long ago reached the conclusion that death was the final end and that beyond that there was nothing.” He had, according to the hospital staff, received only Demerol and was not on any hallucinogenic chemical. (Demerol, a strong narcotic, normally produces extreme drowsiness and some confusion of mind as it numbs pain. In rare cases it can contribute to hallucinatory experiences of a confused nature, quite unlike the highly structured account that Sharpe describes.) Having “returned from death,” he had lost any fear of it he previously had. “I’ve had the rare privilege of seeing behind a closed door that’s never opened. I’m no longer afraid to go.” Finally, Sharpe wrote his story for the Canadian Medical Association Journal at the urging of his physicians, Drs. Robert L. MacMillan and Kenneth W.G. Brown of Toronto General’s coronary care unit. It bore the very conservative title “Cardiac Arrest Remembered.”
Those familiar with the writings of Dr. Carl Jung will be aware that the great psychoanalyst, at first a colleague and then a critic of Sigmund Freud, had a very similar experience to that of Sharpe, one which he later said ranked among the most meaningful of his eventful life. During a brief clinical “death” after a heart attack, he said, “It seemed to me I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of earth bathed in a glorious blue light. Ahead of me I saw a shining temple and was drawn towards it. As I approached, a strange thing happened. I had the certainty I was about to enter an illuminated room and meet there all those people to whom I was beloved in reality. There I would understand at last the meaning of my life.” Jung then realized he was being pulled back into his physical body. It happened at the same moment his doctor injected him with a strong heart stimulant.6
Of the hundreds of readers who responded to the requests in my column to describe briefly any experience they had had which for them constituted evidence of an afterlife, about forty responded with a story of an NDE. What was significant, in my view, is the fact that no two of them were exactly the same and none was a replica of the full, classical NDE that is regularly discussed in the media. That, plus the way in which most respondents stressed that this was the first time they had ever told anyone outside their immediate family circle about the experience, gives considerable credibility, I believe, to the conviction that what they describe did actually happen.
• R.H.D., of Burlington, Ontario, wrote: “Prior to quadruple bypass surgery in 1979, I experienced cardiac arrest while in the intensive care unit at Joseph Brant Hospital. The arrest occurred during sleep but I was brought ‘back to life,’ as it were, by a very alert and able nursing staff. I have retained a very vivid recollection of the few minutes that I was ‘dead.’ Whether it was a dream or a temporary entrance into eternity I will obviously never know. However, just prior to administration of electric shock by the staff, I travelled through a long and misty-white tunnel, the end of which I never reached and the surroundings of which were immensely peaceful. I can remember no other details but it was an experience which I can never forget. It was not just a matter of imagination.”
• P.W.L. is a physicist with one of the largest public utilities in Canada. He had an NDE in 1965, a decade before Life After Life appeared. P.W.L. only realized that other people had had a similar experience when he happened upon the condensation of Moody’s book in Reader’s Digest in 1976. He never spoke of it to others until 1989, when he took an introductory course on the New Testament at the Toronto School of Theology. Early on a Saturday in January 1965, he was involved in a serious car accident on the Gardiner Expressway, the major arterial roadway running along the Toronto waterfront. The police closed the Gardiner immediately afterwards and the story was carried in the final edition of the Toronto Star the same day. His memory of the actual crash was “wiped out,” he says. He was not wearing a seat belt and only learned later that he had been battered between the two doors and the steering wheel and then thrown clear. He does remember lying waiting for the ambulance and giving his girlfriend’s phone number to some bystanders. He was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital where, in emergency surgery, his ruptured liver was sutured and repairs done to a series of tears in his lower intestine. While unconscious on the operating table, P.W.L. had “an amazing experience.” He became aware of a bright, round, yellow light overhead. “Then, I was up there beside the yellow light, watching the operation from the vicinity of the ceiling. I could see myself in the yellow illumination, in sharp focus on the operating table below. There was medical equipment above my body but it didn’t impede my view in any way. I had the feeling that I was in the arms of God. An overwhelming sense of unconditional love and concern and support completely saturated me, in direct mind-to-mind contact, and it persisted for an indefinite duration. There was no dialogue involved. And then I woke up in the recovery room. My immediate reaction was, ‘So that is what God is like!’” Having graduated from university in physics not all that long before, he says he was a “nominal Christian” with considerable skepticism prior to his NDE. He is aware that what happened to him is not firm proof of anything, but it changed his religious outlook completely. “Before, I could only hope, but now I know what God is like and that God loves each of us, whether we deserve it or not.” One immediate result of the NDE, he says, is that he proposed to Jean, his girlfriend, while he was still in hospital, and they were married nine months later. I met with this man not long ago at the close of a lecture I had just given. We discussed his NDE briefly and I must say that I have seldom met anyone whom I would judge to be less given to hallucinations or flights of fancy than this particular scientist.
• Several women wrote about NDEs or out-of-body experiences they had had during the process of giving birth. Two of these were instances where the baby was either born dead or died during the delivery. P.R., for example, relates that on August 1, 1947, she had the following “unforgettable experience.” She was in the delivery room of the local hospital. “Something had gone wrong with the way the baby was being born. Suddenly, I remember, I found myself walking up a path in a beautiful garden. The scent of the flowers was over-powering. I was walking towards a figure dressed in white, surrounded by a bright light. This person was holding a baby in his left arm and holding his right hand out to me. I heard someone calling me from what seemed a long distance away and suddenly I was out of the garden and back in the delivery room. One of the nurses, who happened to be a friend of mine, told me that the baby had died. I have not been able to talk about this very much but have told members of my prayer group.”
• J.C.S. writes: “On my father’s deathbed, but while he could still speak, he told my husband and me that he had nothing to fear now that the end of this life was drawing to a close. Then he told us about his bout with pneumonia in 1939 or 1940, pre-antibiotics, at home. He said he had never felt so ill before or since. Then he ‘died.’ He was at the ceiling of his bedroom looking down at the doctor seated by his bed shaking his head at his body, with his parents standing arm-in-arm behind the doctor. His father was grim-faced clutching his wife who was sobbing gently. Dad was met by a being of pure, warm inviting light. No words were spoken, but there was clear communication. This being was to be his guide. The ceiling ‘disappeared’ and he found himself, with his guide, on the edge of a shining path. He was gently told that he had died to the life of that body below. Seeing his parents’ obvious distress, my father asked if he could make them happy. His guide told him that he had a choice to make. The path that led to the next life beckoned, but he could return to his body. He was warned that much physical pain might ensue. Even as Dad watched the doctor begin to pull up the sheet to cover his face, Dad chose this life. He felt a wave of approval and then he was back in his body looking up at the shocked face of the doctor. After Dad had finished speaking, his countenance was beaming and he appeared to be other-worldly. Visiting hours were over. Dad kissed both of us and said that this was likely his final ‘good bye’ to us. He slipped into a coma that night and died a couple
