You Don’t Have to Die to Experience Your True Home

Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, Matthew Linn

Hampton Roads Publishing Company. Inc.  ©2016

The Irish like to say that there are times when “the veil is very thin.” This is, of course, the “veil” between life as we know it daily on Earth and the life people have or will enter on “the other side” of death. Most of us wonder, I’m sure, what it will be like. Will there be judgment?  What might it be like to have our lives flash before us? Do we need to be afraid? Will we know our family and friends? What about the animals we’ve known and loved and that have known and loved us? What will our life there be like? So many more questions…. Death faces every living being with mystery.

In The Gifts of Near-Death Experiences, the Linns show us a bit of the “view” through the veil as reported by thousands of people around the planet who have approached death, even begun to pass through it, only to return with vivid images, memories, even healings that often transform the rest of their lives here in the world as we know and experience it.

They describe a world more intensely alive and beautiful. Some speak of the Light, of people made of brilliant light and love – and of realizing that they too were/are light and love. Many experience their unity with everyone and everything. Those who experienced the judgment or review of life describe it as seeing everything they had done at once and experiencing the way their actions had affected others. It all took place in an intense context of unconditional love and peace, not intended for judgment or punishment but for learning how to be more loving.

There is a surprising amount of documentation and scientific research into Near-Death Experiences [NDEs] from all around the world. The Linns are skilled at highlighting deeply personal and moving stories and testimonies from people they know and from the literature while also providing copious references to collections of thousands of accounts, scientific assessments and analyses.  You will even find the URL for the International Association of Near-Death Studies. The organization still holds conferences and features an index to NDE literature, 1877-2011!  Who knew?!

While this book does offer some fascinating glimpses of the life to come, it would be a mistake to read it simply out of curiosity or anxiety about death and afterlife. Its purpose is more profoundly spiritual for our here and now. The focus in each of the chapters on the different features of NDEs is on the important benefits for the person who went through that facet of the experience.

The discovery of the Linns has been that those benefits can also be gained, if less dramatically or intensely, through simple processes of prayer. And they suggest those types of prayer at the end of each chapter. This book then is their invitation to the reader to grow in the wisdom and transforming power that NDEs have offered so many people in all cultures by clarifying and freeing the light and love that are the true heart of the human spirit.

With this book, the Linns have opened my imagination, stretched my understanding, and invited me to grow spiritually. I am grateful.

 

James E. Hug, S.J.