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Chapter 6, Hallucination or Glimpse of the Afterlife?

In my own search for God, one of the most startling experiences that encouraged  me to pursue my quest were the patients, roughly a dozen, who told me about near to death experiences (NDE). There was also a friend, who sought my counsel because of my medical background, who had an out of the body experience (OBE) during surgery. Comprehensive descriptions of what these experiences are like will be given a little further into this chapter. Although I did not keep notes on these discussions with the patients, I do remember the details of those that impressed me the most. I was aware of such events from my own reading and from my medical background, and from having taken courses in ‘death and dying’ to better serve my patients. The description provided by each of these patients was dramatic, very impressive, and amazingly consistent in similarity. The change in attitude by each patient, in the way they approached their individual existence, was also very profound for them and instructive to me. The experience of each patient strongly suggested to me, and I know they felt that way, that they had had a glimpse of the afterlife while being so close to death.  Frank J. Tipler in his book, The Physics of Immortality, 1994, devoted 36 pages to a discussion of an afterlife, as conceived of by the major religions of the world, covering both Eastern and Western theologies, to provide him with a means of proving that immortality might exist after our life on earth. It allowed him to try and present a mathematical proof and a proof from the science of physics, although he states very directly that he is an atheist.