Editions Grasset

Patrice Van Aersel has made a detailed study of near-death or after-‘death’ experiences interviewing hundreds of people who have undergone them. His findings broadly speaking are as follows:

There are stages in a near- and after-death experiences and only 10% of people reach the 5th stage.
They include:

1. The extraordinary inimitable light which has been described by Walt Witman and the one according to Dante is capable of trans-humanising a man into god. It is a super-orgasm of the ‘Yes’, which can be called ‘a ravishing ecstasy’.

2. Intellectual illumination – it is impossible to describe as it ‘takes your head’, bliss or intuition such that you know the sense of the universe. You identify yourself with creation

The transformation people undergo after having this experience can be summarised as follows:

1. Total compassion for all human beings
2. No more fear of death
3. Interest for material possession disappears.
4. Your intelligence reveals to you your own latent genius. Memory becomes fantastic.
5. Your whole body reveals awareness.
6. You want to share the experience with other people
7. Your personality becomes very charismatic – you exhale a strength to inspire others (like a guru)
8. You develop psychic powers which can be dangerous with an inexperienced person and can make for a monstrous ego

A person sees all of their life as if in a tunnel.

After the 4th stage experience, one’s being is totally transformed. So much so that sometimes the people nearest and dearest to them can hardly stomach the alteration. Example: a former policeman no longer could bear violence to the point where he thought it was totally wrong to show violence on tv.

The near-death experience changes values; one no longer cares what people think of one:

• You say what you think.
• You realise that a good part of your attitude to life is dictated by the fear of public opinion. All ideas such as the fear of being laughed at disappear, like childhood illnesses.
• One loses is the attachment to material goods. One discovers that this attachment is a source of our feelings of insecurity.
• Other values get higher – for the taste of living ‘I never get bored any more’ is a phrase often used by people who have gone through all the stages.
• Nature assumes an enormous importance. Colours, odours and shapes all sorts of details impinge on the senses more.
• The primordial importance of the dictates of everyday life, and the importance of compassion also are accentuated.
• A spiritual life has awakened in people undergoing this experience. It is not to do with religion.

The more occidental they are, the more attracted they are to the orient. Reincarnation becomes evident for them. The modern individual with his big ego doesn’t understand that it doesn’t survive death. They are in a different state of consciousness.

Three quarters of these people develop gifts since their travel into the light, so of them can feel by hands or can read thoughts of people, or see the colour of the aura, or visualise illness from a distance. They have ‘prophetic visions’ some of them seeing into the future, ‘flashes forward’. One lady had the same experiences just picking a flower with friends without having had a near-death experience – it is modified consciousness. The light that people see is the same light as is seen in the orient under the name of the Brahamic Splendour.

There is an awakening of the kundalinis; at the bottom of the spine there is a giant reserve of vital energy, when you awake it is like a snake coming up your spine. In certain conditions the snake which never sleeps can come out and lets the energy come drop by drop like a leaking tap. The yogis have known for thousands of years how to awaken the kundalini. By doing it the yogi can give the impression of a super-man – but it isn’t that, it is simply a man who has awakened.

Out of body experiences can be induced, for instance by sound.

It is not however all good news: the belief there is a dazzling white light and a realm of happy tranquillity inevitably awaiting us at the end of our lives is not a thing guaranteed. Some people have much worse experiences.