[Shaahayda Rizvi]

Hello Stephen,

Your question on transition to the next world — Is there a next world?  This topic is  quite close to my heart for a number of years and I have been immersed in the books, lectures, other research by one Neurologist who is convinced that there is life after death. His conviction is based on experiments and research on patients who had NDE, and his name is Peter Fenwick. He links NDE with what the next world possibly is.

Results of the experiments:

“We found that these experiences were not psychotic, not drug induced and there seemed to be no unitary brain pathology. Neither did they necessarily occur when the subject was, in actual fact, close to death……. But from the point of view of scientific research, the most
interesting were the 9% that occurred when the patient was being resuscitated after a heart
attack, at a time when the patient was unconscious and should therefore have been quite
unaware of their surroundings. And yet in a few cases the patient reported having ’seen’ what was happening to them and was able to recount verifiable facts about their situation.”

There are so many common features between near-death experiences and end-of-life
experiences that one can only conclude that the former are giving us a glimpse of another,
different reality, one which we can hope to experience when we do actually die. For example
the dying often talk about a strong spiritual light which draws them towards it, very similar to
the light at the end of the tunnel seen in an NDE.

The feeling of peace, including awareness of the presence of dead friends, relatives or
spiritual beings, also seem to be common features in both experiences. In the NDE, visions of
a paradise-like place, a beautiful pastoral landscape are common, and evoke the same feelings
reported by the dying who seem, in their final hours or days, to go in and out of ‘another
reality’ – one that is full of light, love and compassion…

The ELE which the dying most often describe in the days or hours before death are the visitors
who often come into their room and will stand around or sit on the deathbed in the room.
Occasionally unknown people wait at a distance and come closer as death approaches. These
deathbed visitors appear to be in real space as even if the dying person cannot speak, they
can often indicate their presence by becoming more animated, or directing attention to a
particular part of the room. Usually the visitors make it quite clear that they have come to
take the dying person away, and they may be quite specific about the departure date (‘I’ll be
back on Tuesday…’) ”

Source (Perceptions of Beyond the Near Death Experience
and at the End of Life Dr. Peter Fenwick)