PATIENTS DRAW NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES

KEE@FSWMAG.COM DUE TO THE BLESSINGS OF BUDDHA AND JESUS CHRIST, I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED NEAR-DEATH BUT THOSE WHO HAVE APPEAR TO SHARE CERTAIN SIMILAR CONCLUSIONS! Below are curvivors of near-death who drew what they saw when they were technically dead or dying. Descriptions of near-death experiences (NDEs to those in the know) date back to Plato's ‘Republic,’ and though the gods have changed, the experiences have often been religious. Hieronymus Bosch (El Bosco) painted the pathway to death as a tunnel in "The Ascent of the Blessed," (left) depicting souls drifting skyward, carried by winged beings to an illuminated rapture. His painting captured the notion that heaven could set tortured souls at peace. In modernity, the art world is less interested in the road between this life and the next, but many people who claim to have experienced NDEs have drawn their experiences. These drawings and others have been published in P.M.H. Atwater's "The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences." Tannis Prouten, depressed and severely underweight at age 20, drew this diagram of her extrabody experience. She described a wave of warm lovingness that moved up her body from her toes, propelling her toward a corner in the living room. "I felt like ducking, as the ceiling was only an inch from me," she recalls. But Prouten says she passed through the wall and into darkness, where glowing spheres that "seemed like ... spiritual presences" watched her follow an unwavering path towards an unknown destination. Eventually dark faded to light and Prouten recalls experiencing complete euphoria. "I fell madly in love with the SPIRIT OF TRUTH!" she writes in Atwater’s book. Tonya was a young adult when she nearly drowned in a backyard swimming pool. While she was unconscious, Tonya says an ethereal, radiant woman reached lovingly toward her. She says the same woman reappeared to her years later when her daughter was attacked by a dog and needed facial surgery. Tonya calls the woman her guardian angel. Gracie Sprouse of Keene, Va., recalls an NDE when she nearly drowned at age 11. In this drawing, she shows how an angel presented her with a slideshow of her life. As Sprouse watched, she says, "I judged and convicted myself" for bad things she had done to her sisters. Arthur Yensen of Parma, Idaho, is so certain he saw heaven after being injured in a 1932 car accident that he wrote a book about it (aptly titled "I Saw Heaven"). He says heaven was entirely translucent but filled with joyous people and stunning natural scenery. Yensen remembers ethereal beings telling him he had to return to Earth. "There will come a time of great confusion and the people will need your stabilizing influence," he quoted them as saying. Yensen died in his 90s, after years of service to his community (including playing Santa in his local mall). In his picture, he depicts the women who came to his rescue after his car crash and the hilly heaven that greeted him. Celeste Weitz of Yuma, Ariz., says she died while she slept in her father’s arms as an infant. She says she awoke to realize she was looking over her father's shoulder, accompanied by invisible "others," and witnessing her father's anguish. "Upon realizing his distress was due to my not being in the body, I became somewhat upset that I was responsible for the state he was in. This is the point I believe I chose to go back to the body."