been made manifest. I must add, though, that hardly ever has it been exactly as promised or forecast. A sense of the quixotic, or a wry humour, often seems to slant the phenomenon in some way. It’s almost as though some higher intelligence were saying: “You can’t command these things, you know.” Some of us perhaps may need to learn more trust, more confidence, in God’s ultimate caring and comfort. Perhaps, in some cases, it’s really a very positive thing. Our loved one may be so caught up in amazing, new creative tasks or learning untold heavenly mysteries as to be wholly occupied with “things above.” In truth, I do not know.
One final story before we move on. When the bishop gave me my first parish, out in the wilds of Scarborough, Ontario, he sent me a young priest from the Church of South India, who was studying at Wycliffe College, to be my Sunday assistant. His name was T.K. George, a small, gentle man of deep faith and intelligence. Just as I was writing this chapter a letter came from a former parishioner of mine saying that she had just heard from T.K.’s wife. She wrote that my former associate had died very peacefully at his home in India after a long illness. What she particularly wanted to share with those who had known him was that, just before the moment of his last breath, he told his wife he could see “[his] spiritual body coming to meet [him].”6
THERE ARE MILLIONS of people today—well over eight million in the United States alone—who claim to know what death is like. They have “died” in the sense that they have suffered cardiac arrest or have been otherwise declared clinically dead and then have regained consciousness. Others, under the influence of various anaesthetics, in the throes of giving birth, at moments of extreme crisis and danger, or simply in a “natural” out-of-body event, report curiously similar perceptions of a transitional state of being between this world and another. All have come back from this experience remarkably changed and with an amazing story to tell.
For many people, ever since Dr. Raymond Moody described this phenomenon in his trendsetting, pivotal book Life After Life, published in 1975, the near-death experience (NDE) is the final proof they have been waiting for that life goes on beyond the grave.1 The skeptics and serious critics disagree. So much more has been written on this subject in the period since that first book by Moody, and so much invaluable research has been done by doctors and scientists, among others, that we must now attempt to come to terms with the possibilities and problems raised. What light does the NDE throw upon the belief in life after death? The fact that the experience does occur on an extraordinarily vast scale in all cultures and climes is not in doubt. Researchers who are officers of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), of which I was for some years a member, report that as many as 35 to 40 percent of all those who have almost died can recall a near-death experience.2
Moody must be given credit for having given a name to the phenomenon and for having brought it dramatically to the forefront of public consciousness, but he certainly did not invent the NDE. Plato wrote about it. In his classic dialogue, The Republic, which focuses on the theme of the true nature of justice and the ideal state, Plato tells the mythos or story of a man called Er. There was a great battle in which Er was grievously wounded and ended up being tossed on a funeral pyre because he was presumed dead. However, as the fire was about to consume him and his dead comrades, it was discovered he was still alive. Plucked from the burning pyre just before it was too late, he was given proper care and was soon able to talk. He then told his rescuers of an extraordinary “journey” he had just taken. It is obvious to the modern reader that Er is describing a more or less typical NDE. The date of The Republic is nearly five centuries BCE.
Current research shows that the NDE has appeared in various forms since the dawn of literature.3 But does the NDE really constitute evidence that there is some kind of afterlife, a state of blissful existence beyond “the valley of the shadow of death”? It is to this question that we now must turn.
Since all of the basic data about the NDE phenomenon is of necessity highly personal and anecdotal—flowing as it does from first-hand accounts of the experiences of ordinary people—it is essential to make this chapter as personal as possible. Let me begin, then, by saying that, while the statistical evidence for the prevalence of the NDE is quite arresting and should not be underplayed (some NDE researchers have used a figure as high as 60 percent of all those who experience clinical “death”), it is by no means true that everyone who comes close to death, has a narrow escape, endures cardiac arrest or is declared clinically or even brain-dead and then survives has some kind of mystical revelation of a life beyond. I haven’t. But, I have, however, had several uncomfortably close brushes with death.
In the summer of 1949 while still in my teens, I was teaching school on a Cree reserve in the remotest corner of northwestern Ontario, about a thousand miles from Toronto. I was struck down with a violent fever and acute dysentery and had to be flown out in a single-engine float plane to Sioux Lookout, a tiny frontier town. For about two weeks I hovered in and out of consciousness while the two doctors at the rudimentary hospital debated whether or not to perform surgery on my seriously ulcerated intestines. In all, I was in hospital for six weeks and finally emerged a pale, skinny vestige of my former self. I was told I had had a severe case of amoebic dysentery and that neither nurses nor doctors had expected I would leave the place alive. All I remember of the crisis part of the illness was that, while I might have been able to utter a few, brief mental prayers at moments of lucidity, my chief awareness was of not having the strength to care whether I lived or not. I just wanted to be left alone. There were no mystical overtones whatever, although, naturally, once it was all over I felt extremely grateful to be alive and on the road to recovery.
A second close encounter happened in 1979 on a hazardous trek over very rugged terrain in the interior of Nepal. My photographer and I were on assignment for the Toronto Star. The project was for a newspaper series called “Christmas in Asia.” We had spent a week in Calcutta visiting and interviewing Mother Teresa, who had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her outstanding work among “the poorest of the poor.” After visiting her orphanage and the House of the Dying, we also spent some time with a remarkable Canadian minister, Rev. Mark Buntain, who had built a modern hospital and ran schools both in Calcutta and in the surrounding countryside, including one near the city dump where abandoned children tried to make a living from scouring the rubbish for saleable scraps of metal and glass. He was called “St. Mark of Calcutta.” From Calcutta we flew north to Kathmandu, hired a car to take us over a single-track, treacherous road (built by the Chinese) into the foothills of the Himalayas. We were dropped off in the middle of nowhere and had to hike the final 40 kilometres into a jungle hospital near a mountain village called Amp Pipal. We were on our way to visit a Canadian missionary doctor, Helen Huston, who was known in some circles as “the doctor on the roof of the world.” It was growing dark as we wound our way up a steep path that our Sherpa guide—a bronzed, wiry man who, though almost half my size, had the strength of a lion—said was the final ascent to the Huston clinic. Suddenly, at a sharp turn in the path, I felt myself stepping into nothingness. I fell hard against the lip of the cliff face and started to slip towards the yawning abyss below. Fortunately, the frame of my large backpack caught on a root and I lay there on my back afraid to move. I heard Bob, the photographer, call my name and then there was a crash as he too took a misstep and landed in a bush just above me. It seemed an eternity, but it was actually a short time before the Sherpa reached down and pulled us both to safety. The following day we walked back down to where our near miss occurred and were horrified by the awesome, sheer drop into the canyon that lay only a couple of feet from where we had hung so precariously. I will remember the feelings and thoughts I had during the moments lying on my back on the edge of that precipice, where the least movement could have ended in tragedy, for the rest of my life. But, there was no hint of any life review; no memory of anything other than fear and the kind of praying only extreme danger can provoke.
During
