“That’s me!”
"I remember a doctor, a hematologist, approaching my body in the hospital bed," wrote William Peters. "He gently called out my name and I remember thinking as I watched the scene from above, Do I really want to go back into that body?"
A couple of days ago, I finished reading William J. Peters (with Michael Kinsella), At Heaven’s Door: What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach About Dying Well and Living Better (New York City: Simon and Schuster, 2022). I found it interesting. Here are five of the passages in the book that I marked during my reading:
In the first two of them, William Peters recounts some personal experiences of his own.
In February 1993, I contracted a rare blood disease — idiopathic thrombocytopenia, a potentially deadly bleeding disorder with no known cause. I found myself floating above my physical body in the intensive care unit at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. I remember looking down from the ceiling and listening to the nurses talk about the four patients in the ICU. I heard one nurse describe a healthy, young adult male patient with a rare blood disease. She walked over to his bed. I looked down at his face and, to my utter surprise, I shouted to myself, Holy crap, that’s me!
I remember a doctor, a hematologist, approaching my body in the hospital bed. He gently called out my name and I remember thinking as I watched the scene from above, Do I really want to go back into that body? As I pondered this question, I decided at least to try to answer the doctor. “Yes, doctor.” As I spoke those words, I found myself refilling my physical body almost like sand pouring into the bottom of an hourglass . . . and the sensation in my physical body returned. I felt totally exhaausted, but my consciousness was back in my human form. . . .
I did not share this experience with anyone, but I do remember realizing that I am not my physical body. It was abundantly clear that whatever I referred to as “me” had an existence independent of my flesh and blood. (16-17)
Afterwards, having understandably become interested in working with those who were at death’s door. Peters began to volunteer at the Zen Hospice Project of San Francisco. At the hospice, he worked with indigent people who were terminally ill. While engaged in that work, he had a shared-death experience with a man that he calls “Ron.” Ron was rapidly declining. Eventually, he slipped into semi-consciousness. On the particular occasion in question here, Peters was reading to him from Jack London’s famous adventure novel The Call of the Wild:
Suddenly I realized I was floating above my body. I glanced over and I saw Ron hovering above his body as well. As we looked at each other, I could see Ron’s bright eyes; his face was vibrant and alive with health, unlike the shell of a man lying on the bed. This new Ron flashed me a big smile as if to say, Check this out. Isn’t this cool? This is where I have been hanging out. Everything is wonderful up here. A few moments later, I was back in my physical body, rooted to my chair, and reading to Ron, as his eyes remained closed. He passed away not long after. (17)
Everything that we have learned from our research on end-of-life accounts and the consistency of these accounts suggests that a benevolent afterlife awaits us at the other side of death’s door. (21)
As he grew sicker, Adela and her mother became his full-time caregivers at home. She recalls the moment her mother came into her room, adjacent to her parents’. Her mother said, “‘I think he’s gone; he’s not breathing.’ I walked in, and he was not in his body anymore. But I saw him, as clearly as I see you now, slightly elevated but in the corner of the room, a light behind him. I said to him, ‘Go into the light,’ and I smiled. He started laughing. It was the most beautiful, amazing moment between us, so many rich layers of things coming together right then. I was laughing, and he was laughing, and then he turned and he went. He was gone.” (51-52)
When I was an intern, and I was doing my ER rotation, we lost someone one day. I actually saw their body rise, the form lift out of his body. (99)
My wife and I were able to listen, last night (Saturday night), to a very good online presentation from Jeffrey Mark Bradshaw, one of the vice presidents of the Interpreter Foundation, about his new book, Freemasonry and the Origins of Latter-day Saint Temple Ordinances. I think that many people out there will find the book interesting.
We had a pleasant surprise this evening, not long after returning from spending time up in Bountiful with my wife’s father (soon to complete his ninety-sixth year): Friends from Helsinki, Finland, dropped by, unexpectedly. We had a short but very pleasant visit.
Final note: I owe my readers a partial potential retraction and I owe Mark Anthony a limiting correction and an apology. In my post yesterday, I mentioned my inability (during what I freely admitted was, at most, a modest and cursory online search) to find any references to “Mark Anthony the Psychic Lawyer@” as an actual attorney. I’ve since been told, though, that Mark Anthony is only his partial name. It’s the name that he uses as a psychic, but not the name under which he practices law. Mark is apparently his first name, while Anthony is his middle name. Unfortunately, my informant doesn’t know what his last name is. And, since I’m not all that exercised about the matter, I don’t plan at the moment to do any further searching for him as an active attorney. I still have reservations, though.
