A significant number of persons in the USA have had near death experiences. The unusual thing is that despite this most in the medical community do not believe these are real unless they, themselves, have actually had the experience. They think this is an experience related to or determined by low oxygen environment in the brain.

A near death experience is, however, interesting. It has certain characteristics. Perhaps, the most significant is that at the onset of the near death experience, one has the awareness that life is about to end and one simultaneously has no fear of death. In other words, one is not in a state of thinking or processing in thought. One is simply in a state of knowing. This knowing is from a place of awareness and observation. So observation is not simply visual, but it is also a state of feeling, that is accompanied by a state of calmness. After becoming aware that life is about to end, one becomes aware of the expansion of awareness to include multiple simultaneous happenings. One can easily become aware of events proceeding in a stepwise fashion to the evolution of the end of life. In the same moment one can be re-living all the events in one’s life from birth to the current moment in a timeless instant. Yet even as this is happening in a split second one is aware of all the events that are taking place around one. One is participating from a place of observation and knowing. The interesting thing is that is happening in the moments up to the event that is the end of life. It becomes a near death experience when this event does not occur or does occur but does not end life in way that it was going to. Indeed, what does take place prior to this is that even before the final event of life one has begun to shift awareness and expand it. In fact some do expand awareness to include relatives and others nearby, becoming aware of their feelings. Interestingly enough these persons have these experiences from a place of observation and knowing.

Then there are those who do experience the event that ends life and do experience a seeming portal that they traverse. These individuals tell of meeting relatives who have previously died. They often tell of being informed that their life is not complete as they will need to return to finish incomplete business.

It is difficult for most physicians to understand this as they have not had these experiences. Perhaps the most interesting knowledge that one has after these experiences, is that the ability to have multiple awareness of many events or things, even as one is having an entire life review with complete recall of each feeling associated, is confirmation that our awareness does not exist in time but only in our experiences.

The importance of sharing near death experiences in this way is to help us remember who we really are. It is in this moment, when we remember that we are consciousness awareness and that we have bodies but we are not bodies, that we remember who we really are.