Dead... And Not So Dead > Near-death experiences

NDA or group-therapy ?

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monstr:
HAT FEBRUARY DAY 12 years ago, Jan Dix skipped breakfast and hurried in to work at her job as a county planner in Northern Virginia.

She was 40, a hard-working churchgoer with a husband and two teenagers whose life was comfortable but chaotic.

Shortly after arriving at her desk, she pulled a prescription bottle from her purse. Antibiotics, for a bronchial infection.

Ten minutes later, Dix broke out in hives. She was itching, nauseated, terrified. A colleague rushed her to Potomac Hospital in Woodbridge.

"I felt like something horrible was happening to me," Dix said recently. "I clearly remember thinking, 'So this is what it feels like to be dying.'"

In the brightly lighted emergency room, doctors and nurses worked frantically to save her life. She was burning up, then freezing. Her blood pressure plummeted. A doctor screamed at her to hold on.

And then, as the beeping and clanging sounds of the ER faded, Dix heard an almost indescribable tone. Soon she felt herself rising above her body and the doctors.

"I was looking down on them," said Dix, who lives in Caroline County. "I saw them get out the [heart defibrillator] paddles."

She remembers sensing a bright light behind her and knowing if she turned to face it, she would never want to turn back.

Dix's life had been outwardly enviable--a nice home and great family--but it took cigarettes, a packed schedule and a drink before bed to keep her anxieties at bay.

Enveloped by that light, though, her anxieties disappeared, even as she heard a doctor say, "We've lost her."

"I remember I wanted to tell the doctor, 'It's all right,'" Dix said. "There was this calm peacefulness, and I wasn't a calm, peaceful person."

Then, as suddenly as she'd risen, she dropped back down into her body, back into this world. She heard the doctor's voice again.

"She said, 'I'm glad you're back with us,'" Dix said. "And I said, 'Well, I am, too, but really, regardless of what would have happened, I would be all right.'"

'A subjective experience'
A 1997 U.S. News and World Report poll found 15 million Americans said they'd had a near-death experience--the kind skeptics deride as hallucinations and believers say provide windows into the afterlife.

Other polls, including a 1982 Gallup poll, say at least 8 million Americans have had near-death experiences.

"Like other things which have no rational explanation at the present time, NDEs may at first seem 'nutty,'" says the International Association for Near-Death Studies Web site. "An NDE is a subjective experience: It can be felt and reported only by the person who has it."

Experiencers, as they call themselves, often relate similar tales: of moving through darkness into light, of looking down on their bodies, of being told it's not yet time to die, of feeling euphoric and as if they've unlocked the secrets of the universe.

But fear of derision keeps many experiencers from sharing their otherworldly stories, sometimes even with relatives.

That's partly why a support group for experiencers meets every month in Fredericksburg.

Ken Hart of Spotsylvania County helps run the meetings and says he appreciates being able to explore, in a ridicule-free setting, the spiritual aftereffects of coming back from the dead.

Hart said he didn't talk to his ex-wife about what he went through until after they divorced. And he still hasn't talked about his experience with his daughter, seven years after a devastating car accident launched his life-altering journey.

"Initially, it was a deeply personal event that was outside of every experience I had ever had, and I was reluctant to mention it, fearing the reaction," Hart said. "After awhile, I came to rely on my intuition, and it made very clear when and how I was to share."

Science can't explain the near-death phenomenon, and the things experiencers glean about life and death sometimes clash with their religious upbringings, making it difficult to discuss.

"You have this wonderful thing happen, and you want to tell people," said support-group member Nancy Harding of Orange County. "So you do, and your family says, 'You need therapy.' Then the doctor tells you, 'You need meds.' Then the preacher tells you, 'You're going to hell.' Some people wish they'd never had it."

But not Harding, Dix or Hart. In a series of interviews, all three said their lives improved immeasurably after coming back from the dead.

"I had a terrible temper," said Harding, an artist, writer and hospice volunteer whose family has generally accepted her experience. "And things just don't bother me much [anymore]."

The bliss Hart felt during his near-death experience has spilled over into his life. His fear of death is gone. And his connection to God is stronger, though his beliefs are different than before.

For Dix, the experience provided the clarity and momentum she needed to break free from a pattern of drinking, smoking and working too much.

She quit her county planning job--which stressed her out--and became a massage therapist. She gave up smoking and drinking. She switched from the Southern Baptist faith of her youth to the Unity Church, which better suited her changing beliefs.

And she started talking publicly about something she'd kept secret even from her husband: She was sexually abused as a child.

"I was denying the fact that it had any effect on me," said Dix, co-owner of Natural Healings in Fredericksburg. "And once this happened, I knew that I could no longer deny it. That was part of who I was."

Gathering for support
The third Wednesday of every month, the support group for near-death experiencers meets in a chiropractor's office off U.S. 1 in Fredericksburg.

Like many such groups around the world, this one is affiliated with the international near-death association, which is based in Connecticut and devoted to thoughtful exploration of NDEs.

Harding and Hart co-moderate the Fredericksburg meetings, which rarely draw a crowd. Sometimes only they show up, so they talk about whatever's on their minds: post-traumatic stress disorder, September 11's impact on Americans' spiritual lives--anything worth discussing through the lens of their experiences.

Sometimes, other experiencers join them, and the pair share what they went through to assure newcomers they aren't alone.

But often, visitors have never been near death. Rather, they are spiritual seekers, hoping members of this unusual club can enlighten them.

Harding and Hart are happy to relate their experiences, but they don't want to be seen as gurus. And they don't want their journeys--which brought them such peace--to unsettle others.

That's partly why, outside of the group, they don't broadcast their experiences. And they keep what's said in meetings confidential--unless participants decide to share publicly, as they did for this story.

At a recent meeting, Harding talked about why she doesn't tell hospice patients about her brush with the afterlife.

Though it brought her solace, she worries that her description of life after death might conflict with the religious beliefs patients rely on for comfort.

"If they're happy with their religion, you don't tell them," Harding said.

In a way, she doesn't think she needs to say anything; she senses that her tranquility about death shines through.

"I think it does reassure people, just my calmness and attitude," Harding said. "Everybody's got this thing about death. It's the anticipation that's the worst part."

Harding, Hart and Dix say they are no longer afraid of death. Their lack of fear is a gift. But it can also be a burden. Once or twice at support-group meetings, newcomers have appeared to be contemplating suicide. If death is so peaceful, they want to know, why bother living?

"People will ask us, 'Well, if it was so great, why don't you go back there?'" Hart said.

Hart said he doesn't think it's his place to rush death, even though he "sort of" looks forward to what awaits him. But his experience taught him not just about the afterlife, but about the importance of living.

Hart said he grew up thinking his purpose was to live a good, Christian life so he could be rewarded in heaven. But his beliefs shifted after he got rammed by a car on the interstate seven years ago. He was injured so badly someone briefly pulled a sheet over his head.

As he lay in the emergency room he felt himself rising up, like Dix. And like Dix, he saw a light and felt an incredible peace. He had no wants, no needs.

"I'm looking at this body on the gurney, and it's me, and I don't care," Hart said at a recent meeting. "There is nothing you can experience that is that good."

Hart said he'd always expected that when he died, he'd see a bearded man in a flowing robe. Instead, he saw what he can describe only as a river full of sparkling drops. He knew at once he belonged there.

"That is my perfect place of being," said Hart, who works in a professional-level job for a utility provider. "I came back kicking and screaming."

Back in this reality, Hart has drawn strength from the river. Each drop represents a human experience, he says. And the drops together represent the common connection of all people--and the source of all knowledge.

"It is the mind of God," Hart said of the river.

And for a moment, as doctors frantically tried to save his life, he found himself blissfully standing in it. Then he was back on the gurney, back in pain, but with a clarity of purpose that makes his lingering physical injuries seem insignificant.

The meaning of life, as he would tell a suicidal person, is to add to that river of knowledge.

"Creating experiences is what we're here for," Hart said.

Many of Hart's beliefs about life and death are at odds with what he learned in church growing up. He knows people with different beliefs might reject his description of the afterlife.

But he says he knows what he knows--and with great certainty.

"You don't question what you experience," Hart said. "It's that powerful."

A leading near-death researcher agrees with Hart about the power of the experience--and its influence on spirituality.

P.M.H. Atwater has studied more than 3,000 experiencers. Of that group, she said, two-thirds left their previous religious affiliation behind--if they had one.

"Make no mistake, though," Atwater said in a recent e-mail exchange. "Experiencers come back head over heels in love with God and devoted to the sacred--whether that be in a church setting, in a self-help study group, quietly by themselves, or in taking on a role of some kind that honors the God in all of us and the power of spirituality."

Hart knows the way experiencers describe the afterlife can upset people with different beliefs. And he knows some people--some doctors and scientists included--believe near-death experiences are medical events, not supernatural ones.

Hart and others turn to Atwater for support.

"None of the arguments against the near-death experience hold up to scientific scrutiny," Atwater says.

Atwater, of Charlottesville, has written several books on NDEs, including "The Complete Idiot's Guide To Near-Death Experiences," part of the series of Complete Idiot's Guides published by Macmillan.

When Harding first started reading Atwater's books, she was stunned. Atwater lists things most experiencers have in common--such as a richer spiritual life, increased intuition and a lessening of worries. Everything Atwater wrote, Harding had written herself--in a journal where she described the ways she'd been transformed.

"It was just uncanny," Harding said.

Joy and heartache
For all their newfound beliefs about the afterlife, experiencers still have to live in this world, and still have to relate to loved ones who can't quite understand their journeys.

Often, the changes that bring experiencers so much joy cause heartache for their families.

"They [families] want everything to be back the way it was," Harding said.

But Harding has encountered few difficulties with her family. A brother is uncomfortable talking about her experience, which she thinks of as her second birthday. But her husband is supportive, in part, she says, because the experience made her more easygoing.

A short while after her experience, she said, her husband's company laid him off.

"The old me would've been climbing the walls," Harding said. "I just said, 'We'll get through it.'"

Hart is remarried, and his wife attends support-group meetings with him. He recently tried to talk about the experience with his daughter, a registered nurse. But as he eased into the subject, his intuition, and her remarks about death, convinced him the time wasn't right. Hart still hopes to have that conversation someday--when he senses the time is right.

Dix, the massage therapist, said she felt for her husband in the first years after her experience, as she changed radically from the woman he'd married.

"There were some bumpy years," Dix said. "But he saw how happy I was, and you know, that rubs off."

Dix said she doesn't spend much time rehashing her experience, and she attends support-group meetings infrequently. But what happened that winter day is never too far from her thoughts.

"When I left that hospital, it was a dreary day, and yet I remember thinking how beautiful it was, and how vivid the colors were," Dix said. "From then on, I knew my purpose was to find happiness."

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