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Into the Light – Fay Marvin Clark

My apparent death in the hospital in 1935 given in the first chapter of the book might appear to be out of yearly order of events in the balance of the book. It was my intent to do so, as that event so changed my life that it gave new meaning to my early life, as well as changing the course and goals of my life since that memorable experience.

In the expression of myself in the following pages, I am not attempting to disprove anything; neither do I wish to condemn nor injure the beliefs or religious theories held by any individual or school of thought.

If the reader finds anything on the following pages that will tend to make him or her a better citizen, a better father or mother, son or daughter, or a better church member, then let them accept it.

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During the Summer of 1935, as the result of an automobile accident, I lay in the hospital bed and stared at the two doctors who were discussing my condition, a condition that I certainly did not consider as serious. I realized that while I had been bleeding quite profusely from both ears, and that they said my skull was fractured and some of my ribs were crushed, yet, regardless of that, I did not feel any pain only a sense of physical tiredness.

Soon my mind began to take on a new feeling, a sensation of alertness or awareness that I had never experienced before; the room and each object in the room seemed to take on a new sharpness of detail.

The conversation of the two doctors was of particular interest, because they were discussing my condition and seemed to be of the opinion that they had done everything possible for me.

I remember that this seriousness on the part of the doctors seemed to amuse me as I was sure that I could get up at any time and leave the hospital.

As my vision seemed to sharpen, I began to sense a new perspective of my surroundings. I found myself looking down on my body as it lay on the bed, and my sight seemed to be coming from the ceiling at one side of the room.

I saw myself lying on the bed as well as observing the other objects in the room.

It was some time before I began to realize that while the physical body on the bed was mine, it certainly was not me.

Here I was looking down on the entire room with a sharpness of vision and a clearness of perception and understanding that I had never before experienced.

Even my sense of hearing seemed to have sharpened, and from the remarks the doctors were making, I understood that they thought I was dead, as they were no longer talking about me, but about other similar cases where the patient had also died.

How long it lasted I do not know. One of the doctors later told me it was possibly five minutes.

I do remember that while it was strictly against my early religious training to believe in the continued conscious existence of any part of me after death of my physical body, it was with no sense of fear, but rather of fuller understanding that I began to survey my new condition.

I felt more free, more able to understand my relation to everything, than ever before. I seemed to sense a feeling of closeness and understanding that I had never before experienced.

I looked down at my body and felt no regret at having left it, but rather a sense of release. I had a feeling that while it had been a good body and had been valuable to me, I would have no further need for it.

Finally, because I was curious, I wondered about the other patients in the hospital. The first floor contained the emergency room where my body was. The patients' rooms were all on the second floor. I no sooner thought about the other patients than I found myself on the second floor, mentally opening each door, hoping to find someone to talk to; but in each room I found only empty beds. After I had visited each room on both sides of the hall and finding no one, my thoughts returned to the doctors and the room where my body was. Again I found myself in my former position, up next to the ceiling, observing my body on the bed, listening to the doctors' conversation.

It must have been at about this moment that one of the doctors walked over to the bed and picked up the edge of the sheet and started to drop it over my face.

At that instant I felt myself somehow being drawn to my body where it lay on the bed. I felt myself entering my body and the feeling of warmth and freedom left me and I found myself in my body, cold, cramped and restricted of movement; I could see only ahead instead of in all directions.

I remember hearing the doctor calling out that he believed my eyes had moved.

All through that night and for many nights and days to come, that sense of understanding never left me, the understanding deep within me that I could not die - that we do not die, only our physical body dies.

I felt that inasmuch as I had been drawn back into my body, it meant I was going to get well, regardless of what the doctors or anyone else might do.

The truth of survival after bodily death was so overwhelming and beyond my comprehension that I did not tell the nurse or either of the doctors. In fact, I did not even tell my wife, as I was afraid that even she could not understand what had happened.

When I left the hospital, I did ask one of the doctors if he really thought that I was dead that first night. He replied that by all the rules he knew, I should not be walking out of the hospital and that I should always be thankful and feel that I must not have finished my work, otherwise I would not still be alive.

Two years later one of the doctors was kidding me about not looking in all of the rooms that night, as they almost always had patients on the second floor. He then called his nurse to check the records for the night that I was admitted to the hospital. In a few moments the nurse came back and stated that, that was one of the few nights there were no patients on the second floor!

That night back in 1935 started me on a quiet search, a search for knowledge that would help me to understand things that I knew to be true, and yet were directly opposed to all the religious teachings and training that I had been exposed to up to that time.