By Brian Foster

After Anna’s child was born, her doctor was called back to discover major hemorrhaging which was imperiling Anna’s life. Anna was transported to a pool of light. Where her deceased family members were waiting for her.

This is a Spiritist interpretation of what she went through and what she saw. I don’t judge her observations or feelings, just provide the reasons for her experiences. What lies behind her journey into near death? What kind of universe, organization, and processes orchestrate the sum total of those moments of other worldliness?

These are the questions we shall review. Anna A’s NDE experience is gathered from the wonderful website, nderf.org, her individual chronicle is located here.

The Ascent into the Light

Anna seemingly had a normal childbirth. She was able to see her newborn son. The doctor had left after a long and grueling labor. There was no sign of excessive bleeding. Soon after the doctor left to clean-up, she started to go into shock from loss of blood. Anna describes what happened next;

“I heard them calling her and asking her to return. I had squeezed my eyes to the point of utter pain from the “freezing” that had overtaken every single limb, which I was sensing in such detail during those minutes. All of a sudden, I could only think of God and felt an urge to go, to let go and slightly opening my eyes, last thing I whispered to the nurse while grabbing her medallion of a cross hanging from her neck onto my chest, “Do you believe in God?”… She was engaged in saving me, but that second, she turned to me, removed the necklace and placed it inside my hand. And that’s when I started floating.”[1]

With her body failing, her spirit began to disengage from her body. The question may be asked, exactly what separates from the body. Modern science considers the brain to be our total repository of all of our thoughts, memories and personality. While research is beginning to cite examples of brain-dead people remembering events that occurred in the operating room and other locations, there is no accepted scientific explanation for this phenomena.

Spiritism supplies the answer. Not only the answer but the entire cause and effect. We are not just a collection of cells directed by brain mass located in our heads. Yes, that is part of it, but what we feel, see, and touch about ourselves is just our physical manifestation. For our bodies are in essence a discardable spacesuit. Our souls, our spirit is immortal. It is Anna’s spirit that ascended, leaving her body behind.

There is one more puzzle piece to complete the picture. Our perispirit, that which connects our spirit to our body. The perispirit is the channel through which the spirit absorbs all of the memories, actions and even attitudes that we experience while on earth. Every data point is recorded. Our innermost thoughts are saved and nothing is able to erase them.

Hence, when Anna floated, she didn’t notice a long silvery cord that still connected her to her body. Like an umbilical cord, which feeds the baby, the connection from her body to her spirit still functioned. She still had the means to return.

Anna’s New Body

After leaving her body, she climbs into the light. She discovers what she really is;

“The life I’d been living on planet Earth was an insignificant second of an experiment, which I’d volunteered for. The ME, the I wasn’t Anna the lady who’d just given birth, but it was a light being – “LIGHT” in every sense. i was made of the same light as the one the pool was filled with. It sensed everything, felt everything beautiful as there can ever be, thought and understood everything and was floating around inside the pool happily, FINALLY back HOME!!”[2]

“An insignificant second of an experiment”, this is the time span of your life on earth in relation to your total existence thus far. You now have a window into what it feels like to be immortal. Someday, the sun will burn out, and your memories of the earth, now a dead planet, will be distant.

As Anna realized, this is the manner in which you should consider your life. Whatever calamity befalls you, whatever situation you are locked into, is all but a moment of time, which shall pass very rapidly. Practice viewing your life from the mountaintop. Look down and see the obstacles are not as large as they seem. The worries not as great and the picture not as dark as first feared.

Next, Anna wrote, “which I’d volunteered for”, in that sentence fragment the entire truth of our reason for being on earth is exposed. We reincarnate on earth. For many it’s not an involuntary process, but one in which we are intimately involved. In the books inspired by the spirit Andre Luiz, psychographed by Francisco C. Xavier, he tells of people and couples in the spirit world who actively plan out, in minute detail, the arc of their lives.

They select their parents, who most probably, they have had in previous lives, their characteristics and the trials, the events they will live through. Happenings that will supply instructions they feel they require to improve.

Hence, the great milestones of your life are predestined. And you are the person who selected them. All design to enable you to reach your goal. The goal of improvement. The betterment of your spiritual knowledge, for one day you will become a pure spirit and not have to reincarnate again. Only if you wish to descend to a planet to assist others.

A more detailed explanation of the process of reincarnation is in my book, The Case for Reincarnation – Your Path to Perfection.

Anna also expressed the sensation of lightness. In the Spiritist books the words they use is less dense. Whereas, we on earth live in dense bodies and our senses only perceive about one eight of the world around us, in the spirit world, the real world, we are ethereal, we are less dense, and our atomic structure is different. We live in a different dimension than the one where physical earth resides.

Our form, our clothes are shaped by our thoughts. We are what we think we are. Spirits move by the power of thought. Spirits are able to walk, but they are also able to think where they wish to be and appear there at great speed. Anna examines her state of being more fully;

“And, “LIGHT” as in lightness, no gravity, no strings attached (that’s how I sensed at the time), I was sooo happy that I wouldn’t have to sleep, or eat anymore, no tiredness, no negativity, no anxieties whatsoever, and you float and float lightly, dancing and singing with no audiovisuals, you’re just BEING, that’s what you’re for – TO BE!”[3]

Meeting her Family

As mentioned previously, when you reincarnate you are frequently with family members. For one of the laws of the spirit world is the Law of Affinity. Where like-minded souls are attracted together through shared values and interests.

Anna relates how she met her deceased mother-in-law and wished she could have played with her grandchildren. Then Anna found out;

“She “answered” – “Don’t you worry at all! Before this child was born, we went together to all the gardens and lovely forests and we laughed and played and sang together. Besides, now that I’m here I can protect you much much stronger than if I were there, weak and ill”[4]

In this reply are two very important concepts about the spirit world, where we all come from. First, we are part of our own plan for reincarnation and our spirits merge into a physical body, beginning in the mother’s womb.

Our spirits are connected to our bodies, when we sleep we are able to temporarily leave our slumbering cocoons and visit other spirits. Hence, Anna, and her baby in her womb visited her mother-in-law in the spirit world.

Secondly, when Anna’s mother-in-law said she could protect Anna and her children better from the spirit world, it demonstrates the amount of interaction spirits have with us. Our spirit guides and family members watch out for us. Like hovering parents over their elementary school children. The children are too absorbed to notice, but their parents are present, ready to jump in at the first sign of trouble.

Anna didn’t just encounter one relative, but many, and friends from the spirit world. All were happy to see her. They took her to a “library” and explained why she was on earth.

Anna’s Job

“Apparently, I had a “job” up there and had left it “briefly” when coming to Earth because I’d needed to experience certain things and learn certain things in order to be able to continue my work”[5]

Now comes the shocker, life after death is like life before death. You still work. You are still productive. You are still learning, every minute, every day. However, the conditions we toil in aren’t similar to our experience. We work in a location of intellectual stimulation, pursuing our passion, comfortable in the knowledge that what we are doing is for the good of all, not just to add one more trophy automobile to the boss’s garage. Anna describes her feelings;

“Time and space had no physicality, no validity. I’d call the whole thing as FREEDOM, the PERFECT FREEDOM, which every person I know aspires to, fights for, dreams of etc”[6]

But, in order to gain more productive positions in the spirit world you need to gather more experience. Just like in our world. The desire for increased responsibilities entails the need for training and knowledge. Therefore, Anna came to earth, with a mission. And not just Anna, for she was part of a team with a job to do.

“However, these thoughts I’d filled into the manuscript I was in charge of had a great purpose, served a great purpose, which as a Light Being I knew, however, back into my human body, I don’t have a clue, as if there was a veil administered upon my return. There were many other light being conducting similar work, and yet I knew that not every soul or light being is given such a task. Ours was a team destined to do this… Others were destined for other “work”…”[7]

It seems strange that a person who is given a task to accomplish is sent on a mission with no recollection of what that assignment entails. Although, you aren’t just randomly set down on some beach and told to attack. The family you are born into, the events of your life are all methodically planned to guide you to your full range of responsibilities. Additionally, you have two items from the entire arc of your previous lives, your conscience and instincts. Your conscience has implanted all of the Natural Laws and your interpretation of the rules and regulations. Your instincts will alert you when to act and move forward or when to find other avenues.

Hence, you are set upon a relatively narrow road and as you travel you shall, without conscious knowledge, accomplish your jobs as you encounter them. You do have freewill to make the wrong decisions and to ignore all signs of your intended work. There is no penalty in failure, since the spirit world understands the complexity of the situations and the emotions involved in our physical bodies. But there are rewards for the self sacrifice and attitude displayed along the way whether or not the mission was a complete success.

Anna Learns About the Importance of her Work

Anna felt so comfortable, so at home in the spiritual realm, she wanted to remain. But then;

“Someone was telling me “Anna, need for you to go back”… That moment I felt earth-like sadness, which hurt piercingly what I’d been in that duration – that Light Being… And I found myself far from the pool and the library, but looking at the Planet earth from the space/cosmos, and a light being’s had risen next to me pointing at the Planet, and a voice asking me “Look there (the planet)! What do you see?”, I said “I see Planet earth and I don’t want to go back. This is my home, why are you sending me back there?”. He soothingly calmed me (all sensory, no touches, no words), then asked again (oh, with such divine voice, an actual, physical voice), “Look again….. What do you see NOW?”.. Suddenly I saw what the voice saw – “I see our planet and there are no borders dividing countries… The borders are gone!!”… He said “This is why you’re going back. You have a mission.”… And that’s how I came back.”[8]

Anna discovers that she is part of the mission to transform our planet. According to Spiritism, our earth is a planet of atonement. A place where we are reborn to pay for our past wrongs and to learn the hard lessons so that we may become better souls. Spirits who are full of love, charity, fraternity and honest in our daily dealings.

The earth is being guided by the spirit realm to become a planet of regeneration, where there are more good than bad spirits, where wars, envy and hate start to recede. To learn about the entire plan for earth, the organization and processes of the spirit realm and how you fit into it, read my book Explore Your Destiny – Since Your Life is (mostly) Predetermined.

Conclusion

Anna, like all of us, are not just physical bodies with an organic conscious, that will one day fail and dissolve back into carbon-based compounds. We merely use our bodies as the key to enter another world. A world that serves as our college, in which we take classes, sometimes we enjoy the subject, others we hate and more often we are bored.

Even though, we may not adore all of our lessons, we must remember that we are being graded. Hence, if we maintain a good attitude and are able to continue radiating love to all, even during our difficult times, we shall emerge victorious from our adventure on Earth.

If the story of Anna’s NDE interested you, you may want to read other accounts in my book, What Really Happens During Near Death Experiences – According to Spiritism: 12 NDE’s are Explained and Explored.

If you wish to learn about the Spirit Realm and the organization of Heaven as high spirits told an English Reverend, read the first of my three book series, Heaven and Below – Book 1 of Spiritism.

Works Cited

Near Death Experience Research Foundation. (2014, Dec. 13). NDERF – Anna A. Retrieved from NDERF: http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm

[1] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)

[2] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)

[3] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)

[4] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)

[5] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)

[6] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)

[7] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)

[8] Near Death Experience Research Foundation, “Anna A NDE”, n.d., http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/anna_a_nde.htm, (accessed Dec. 13, 2014)