The Website of PMH AtwaterOne of the internet's most comprehensive sites on the near-death phenomenon!

One of the internet's most comprehensive sites on the near-death phenomenon!

Raul - "Heaven and Hell"

Before Christmas of this year, I found myself doing more research on my NDE. To be more specific, my Life Experience NDE that still in many ways haunts me or I should say, surfaces in its own way. I cannot deny what occurred to me in 1996 no matter what I say, and if I tell my friends and people I know, they look at me strangely. There has been some in the health care profession that I have worked with saying to me that should see a "professional" meaning, psychological counseling. I found their recommendation to be insulting and insinuating that my mental health was diminishing. My closes friend, she feels uncomfortable when I bring the subject up. I have tried a support group in my area, but even they, I found them uncomfortable. I could sense political wrangling, and a kind of new age spirituality. Please forgive me for saying "New Age Spirituality," but I am somewhat moderate in my faith, Roman Catholic, and having to sit around after the group had said their things or talked, meditated while holding hands is not something I care for.
Now I come upon your web page. Back in 1996 you did not have a web page, but an e-mail address that you shared with others. To be honest with you, I'm not sure what to expect. I'm not sure if telling you of my NDE there would some kind of resolution, peace. Ever since 1996, my life, has not been the same. The last time I tried to put on paper my NDE, it taxed me to a point that I slept more than a bear in hibernation. I am not sure if it's prudent or feasible in this medium to tell you in detail everything that occur to me in my NDE. I have in written some of the NDE on paper that totals thirties some pages, that is, typed on both sides of the page.
A short history before NDE. In 1996 I had a severe infection of the cardiac muscle caused by staph. aureus, a pathogen that lives normally in your mucous membrane and skin. Some physicians speculated that such bacteria could have gone into my blood stream only through a cavity, but such bacteria normally enters through either dental works such as an extraction or if a person is an IVDA (intravenous drug abuser/user.) I do not fall on either category, but at that time I suffer episodes of sinusitis with several rupture of the mucous in the nose, nose bleed. To make a physical history short, I had to have open heart surgery in which the aortic valve was replace. I was in the hospital from the last day in March until the 14th of July 1996. I was send home with a home attendant and numerous medications that if I did not take them my very life would be in jeopardy. One of these medication was Coumadin to keep my clotting factor at a certain level so clot would not form in my prosthetic aortic valve.
One of the side affect from Coumadin is bleeding. To my ignorance, I assume that I would bleed from neck down. I took measure to observe, make notation of any physical changes that might occur. But I did not took into account that I might bleed in my cranium. Sometimes during the latter part of August, I had a severe migraine in which I heard numerous voices, my balance could not be trusted even while I lay down, and the pain was above what would be a normal headache/migraine. I have had in the past one migraine and numerous headaches, but this one could describe as pain with a schizophrenic pathology in it. I lay that day in bed trying to meditate and suppress the pain as I have in the past but I could not. I only know is that I grab my bed like a person holding on for life. The room to me was moving and the voices in my head became so dominant that I-, I believed that I passed out. When I woke up it was sunny outside, warm. My head felt as if the voices had diminish, but I could still heard them, like a low whisper. I could feel that I had a residue of a headache in the frontal part of the brain, so I decided to recline in my recliner and meditate like I have done in the past to suppress the pain and allow my body to take over the pain. When I reclined, that is when my NDE happen.
Please keep in mind, my NDE is viewed by others as a witness NDE because I have in my body an ICD-pacemaker/defibrillator. It recorded in September of 1996 19-consecutive ventricular fibrillation on top of a subdural hematoma. This has been documented in Montifiore Hospital in The Bronx where a craniotomy was perform to evacuate as much of the hematoma as possible and interrogation of the ICD not only by that hospital but as well as my private electrophysiologist.
NDE: September/October 1996. I remember closing my eyes and try to meditate on my headache. I wanted to suppress the pain but get rid of the voices that I heard in my head. I closed my eyes. I thought I was still meditating when I saw the following.
I saw myself coming to a door. It was attached to what it looked like a log cabin. I knocked...
I then, I found in a room. There was no walls, no pictures, no textures. I was not alone, but with two other people. One of these individual was a man who wore a plaid coat, like the sport coats that was worn back in the seventies. In front of us there was a latter that looked like it was from a fire latter that is seen in the apartments in New York City. We had to climb it. One went up and then it was my turn. As I climb, I saw a door. I climb and landed on a platform where the door was. I open and walk into another room, except this time I was alone. In this room there was Seals, seven in total. The Seals were curbing downward to a point at the other side of the room. It looked like when I was in college in a lecture hall, amphitheater lecture hall. At each Seal I was to say a prayer. What is strange to me, is that, that part of me knew the exact prayer to say before each Seal. When I walked down each Seal, and came to Seal number 3, 2, and 1, they became one, to form another door. I said the correct prayer and passed through.
This time I found myself in a room where I was to be tested by the Trial of Fire. There was seven trials. Each trial one had to say the correct prayer. I remember asking someone to be with me when I came to the last trial. This person integrated with me and allow me to pass the last trial in which I had to endure and be engulf by fire.
In my last trial, I was taken to be crucify. I remember that I told this voice, you can crucify me, but you have in your power for me not to feel pain. I remember laying on a cross and I remember seeing the mallet. Not an iron hammer, but a large mallet that drove the nails in me. I remember hearing a voice saying that I was being crucify not of the flesh but in the spirit. What is strange is that I heard that I was not supposed to see that mallet, yet I did. These are one set of images that I experience.
I experience another set of images in which I am not sure if it's a fantasy, or some kind of struggle, but I remember that Lillith, the first Eve was in it. She did not have a body, but she took on the image of a person I have known, and I'm not sure if that person still lives or has passed away. There was a struggle in which she tried to persuade me that what I was seeing things, that what I was experiencing was an illusion, I was hallucinating. What was strange, that part of me knew I was not hallucinating, it was not an illusion. I had to battle with her in which I had to choose between destroying her or vanish her to a place where she would be alone for all eternity. I knew deep down to destroy her would mean to destroy all of us. That she, Lillith, was part of all human history. I also saw the stars like we see it in a rural area where the urban lights does not drown them. Except, I could not see soil or earth beneath my feet, only the stars.
In another image, I saw a life that I had not lived. This is where I have written about and have warned that is not prudent in this medium to write about, too lengthy, But I will extrapolated some from it. 'I was working for a consulting firm in which I climbed the corporate latter to vice president of research. I went home that day, when the phone rang. I picked up the phone and it was a guy that I knew. I had not spoken to him in many, many years. I told him to get something to eat, and he told me to get something to drink. When I got my drink and settle down on the floor to have a long conversation, it was around 8:30 PM.' This is where it gets strange. What I said above, back in 1997, when I began to investigate my NDE, and look more into it, I call around to see if this man whom I knew since 1984, and went each our way in 1987, I was behind my desk doing bills that pilled up from my hospitalization and other bills that I needed to be taken care of. My phone rang, it was showing, ID Caller, 'Pennsylvania' 1-610-***-****. I knew I did not know anyone in Pennsylvania. So I did not pick up. This was about between 8 and 9 PM. I stayed behind my desk for another several hours. Paying the bills, filling, and sorting things out that I have postpone for a long time. The next time the phone rang was around 10:43 PM that night. I picked up the phone without thinking as if I was back on my job. It was the guy that was in my NDE, but the time when he call me made me more scared than I could realize. The first time he called me was between 8 and 9 was too exact to the NDE.
In another image, I saw where my mother was. An institution that looked like a hospital. She was dying. Back in 1997, I receive a phone call that told me my mother was dying. My NDE told me before it happen and where it would take place.
In another image, I was told to 'judge' others. This is where the souls of the departed were to be judge. I told, and I say this with great care, I told "God" that I could not judge, only he could do that. He told me to do it. So I did it. What it's strange is that in that group I saw Mother Theresa, and Princes Diana. I knew that Mother Theresa was not in the best of health before March of 1996, but I saw her in that group of those who had passed away. When I saw Princes Diana in the group, I thought it was someone who looked like her. She lives in Long Island, and she and I had worked together in the same health care institution. When Princes Diana died in a car accident, I freaked out.
My last image that had confirmation happen in April of 2001. In my NDE, I saw two men in an intimate way. I knew who they were, what they did in the past. What was remarkable was that back in 2001 I was getting off the bus where I live, when I saw this person power walking. He stopped and we talked. When he told me about these two men whom we knew and what happen to them, I became nervous, one might say, I freaked out, again.
There is one more image that I simply do not talk about or have not related to others. That is my being in the presence of God. I say this with great caution because I did not see the face of God, but I knew I was in his presences. I did not see my self verbalizing, articulating, even annunciating words, yet I was with Him, talking with Him. I did not hear any words from him but I knew, I felt his response. He sat and throughout my NDE, I kept asking him for his permission to come up and be with Him. I saw the three archangels that guards the entrance into heaven. Michael, Rafael, and Urial. They did not have the physical shapes as we know it, I only saw a fuzzy shape of three beings. What's more I heard a voice saying 'that I was not supposed to see them,' yet I saw them. I was in a place that was purgatory and hell. Purgatory it's a place where one contemplate on the action one does in the now, today. The time in there is finite. While hell is a place absent of light and others. Dark, a void where you are absolutely alone. Not what one is socialized to believe, like Dante's inferno. I also had an encounter with Lucifer. Again, a voice said that I was not supposed to see him, yet I knew who he was. It was as if he was someone in upper management of a corporation, yet this is where it gets strange. Satan was near and I was scared, fear him. As if Satan was something that was dark, evil.
When I woke up and regain some awareness of self and where I was, I felt empty, like I had a void in me. For a while I wanted to go back into my NDE and be where I was happy and peaceful. Yet for me, the void is tangible even today. Ever since 1996, there are moments in which I would ask God for permission and be with him. Dr. Atwater, has anyone in your research ever said to you about how the empty one feel after an NDE. For me this is constant. I have tried to do pray, be active even with my limited condition (cardiomyopathy) yet at time I want to be where I was happy, focus on things that keeps my mind busy, but there are moment, even now, where I can feel my NDE. Looking at a television program, movie, even reading it that has near death experience is taxing emotionally, and spiritually, that I have been know to go under my cover and sleep for a while.
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