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The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences - Dr Penny Sartori

In September 2011 I spoke at the British Psychological Society Transpersonal Section Annual Conference. Over breakfast I was discussing my research with some of the participants, and transpersonal psychologist, Hara Willow mentioned an experience she had on the day that her mother died. This is what she had to say:

Twenty years ago last April at 6.45am I suddenly awoke from a deep sleep. That in itself was unusual, as I had moved two months before to the Welsh hills, just under 1,000 feet above sea level, from the seaside town of Hoylake in Merseyside. I didn't think you can actually get altitude effects from a rise of 1,000 feet, but it seems that for my fiance and I, the move from a town by the sea to a farm in the mountains knocked us out completely. We slept each night for about 12 hours, for nearly a year, before we acclimatized to the mountain air and the physical work of running a smallholding.

We were usually in bed by eight or nine at night and rarely awoke before 8.30am.

That morning, it was 27 April 1991, I just found myself awake much earlier than usual. I sat up and looked at the clock and then at my sleeping fiance and the sun streaming across the leaves of the beech trees outside the window, and I felt so good. Then the feeling of wellbeing just deepened into an unimaginable sense of peace and love and rightness. I remember being swept up in the feeling and not being present in the room any more, simply lost in the experience.

I suddenly just knew that there was not ever anything to worry about; I was surrounded by and filled with the most profound, pure, ecstatic, unconditional love, love like I have never felt before. It was total, it infused every bit of me, filled me with joy.

I knew that I was, always had been and always would be totally safe; that everything was just as it should be; there was never any reason to feel fear; that everything was PERFECT and could never be anything but perfect. That the universe was unfolding exactly as it should. It felt as if I was seeing life, the universe and everything from a distant, clear perspective, from outside myself, and that this perspective was the TRUTH, and it was familiar to me.

Although I never recall feeling anything like this before, I have, however, since then, a very few precious times during deep, deep meditation, reached that place again.

The feeling gradually faded back to a normal feeling of wellbeing and the room coalesced around me and, smiling, I lay down and went back to sleep cuddled up with my soon-to-be husband.

At 8 o clock that morning the phone rang. It was my sister calling to tell me that at 6.45am our mother had suddenly and unexpectedly died.