New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
| One hot day in May 1967, 16-year-old Reinee Pasarow of La Crescent, California, awoke suffering from the effects of a severe allergic reaction. A doctor was summoned and he gave her an injection, then left, assuring her that she would be fine. Over the next several hours, she struggled to remain conscious; then, as she was eating lunch with her mother and a friend named Jerry, she collapsed into unconsciousness. Her breathing was so irregular that her mother and Jerry were afraid she would die before the ambulance could get her to the hospital.
As the minutes passed, she lapsed in and out of consciousness, knowing that she was dying and fighting desperately to stay alive. Finally the battle seemed no longer worth the effort and she surrendered to the inevitable, the great sleep of death. But the moment she did so, to her considerable surprise she found herself a few feet away, hovering in the air and looking down at her body. "I was acutely conscious," she would write, "I could see more clearly than with my physical eyes and I could sense every sound, every action and even every thought of the persons around me. I felt over-whelmed but deeply exhilarated." After observing two firemen’s frantic efforts to revive her, Reinee attempted to call to her mother to assure her that she was all right, but her mother couldn’t hear her. Then Reinee felt herself transported to a point just above the telephone wires. She saw that "everybody was staring at my body, all of them??"even those dearest to me??"oblivious to my true presence. I sensed that I could no longer be a part of their world and that I would have to go on." In an instant she was swept away. Thrilled at this newfound, unexpected freedom, she soared to the limits of the atmosphere and stared at the beautiful planet that lay below. She sensed the incredible oneness of the earth and she was struck with the profound realization that, although the world is full of many different persons and many different species, all have a place in the grand scheme of things. "I felt at one with every human being who had ever graced the face of our planet," she would recall. Then she became aware that someone had joined her. Reinee knew who it was. Her companion was a beloved uncle who had died some time before. With love emanating from him to her, he led her to a sea of vibrant light. All around them Reinee could hear a sweet celestial music. Soon an enormous light came into view, a light so magnificent as to make the sun seem no more than a candle by comparison. Again Reinee was engulfed in an overwhelming feeling of love and joy; it was emanating from the center of the light. Instantly she became one with the light. "I was at once a particular entity and a cosmic molecule??"a separate being and yet an integral part of this vast, incomprehensible body of energy. The awareness of a loving, universal cosmic order made my former concerns and knowledge meaningless, for here, in this single, magnificent energy of life, of which we are all manifestations, was the essence of all meaning, the alpha and the omega." In an instant her life flashed in front of her and she could see where she had gone wrong. She knew that the only truly significant moments in her life were those in which she had manifested love. When the review of her life ended, she wondered about the purpose and direction of mankind. No sooner had the thought come to her than she witnessed??"all in the proverbial twinkling of an eye??"the entire evolution and history of the human race. She learned that humanity is at a turning point, that it must deal with all the obstacles to unity before a new age of universal peace will dawn. She was ejected to the other side of the light, where briefly she glimpsed a world populated by beings of light. One of them extended his arms to her. But then an announcement sounded from the great light. The words IT IS NOT TIME seemed to reverberate throughout the universe. Reinee now moved through a tunnel of colors until she reached a plateau of darkness. There was a harsh clanging sound and Reinee returned to the near vicinity of her physical body, which was being loaded into the ambulance. As the ambulance raced to the hospital, Reinee popped in and out of her body but never strayed far from it. She heard an attendant pronounce her "D.O.A." Reinee’s body was taken to the emergency room. Meanwhile her astral body stayed close to her mother, as she waited in the hallway for the family doctor to arrive. When the doctor showed up, he burst into the emergency room and demanded of the young doctor in attendance, "Where is she?" "She was D.O.A.," the young doctor replied. "The hell she is!" the older doctor shouted and cursed his colleague for not injecting Reinee with a proper amount of adrenalin. He worked furiously to revive her and slowly Reinee returned to life, her astral body reluctantly reentering her pain-racked physical body. She was angry because she did not want to give up the freedom and happiness she had experienced while in the astral body. Since her astral journey into the realm beyond death, Reinee Fender has never been the same again. Reinee has never thought for a moment that her experience was imaginary. For one thing, all the events she witnessed on the physical plane??"the conversations, the actions of the persons involved, the hospital scene??"happened exactly as she remembered them from her astral observations. And the experience of the astral world was just too overwhelmingly real to her to be mistaken for even the most vivid of dreams. Furthermore, the events she participated in there and the things she saw and sensed have all been reported by other astral travelers??"something she did not know at the time and would learn only in her adult reading. "Every particle of my being had been shaken," she has written. "Every belief, every value and every goal had to be reevaluated after my luminous journey. The near-death experience was for me a great liberation??"a rebirth??"and its effects still can be felt in my daily life." "Most of all, as a result of the experience, never again could I fear death. Never again could I look upon life as being anything less than a divine gift that transcends the limits of this physical realm." It is one thing to believe, as most people do, that our souls survive physical death and enter a higher, happier realm than the one we inhabit here. It is quite another to know that from the personal experience of astral projection. |
