The Silence of Lazarus & My Near-Death Experience

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—5/16/11—Apparently, Lazarus took a leap beyond a near-death experience (NDE). I say this because those of us who’ve had one like to share, and the market seems fairly good for persons able to put their NDEs into words. I’m thinking particularly of the Baptist preacher from Texas who saw his story soar to the bestseller list. The author, Don Piper, crushed by a truck, claims to have spent 90 minutes in heaven. The scene he describes and the type of music he heard seem pretty much made up of the features of heaven set forth in sermons by pastors in the Southern Baptist Church that I attended as a child and youth.

His trip to heaven follows closely the narrative elements in accounts by others who have shared their NDEs: a flight through a tunnel, brilliant lights, greetings by departed kin and friends, and a sensation of love that’s overwhelmingly joyful and fulfilling.

When I put the story of my own NDE into words, the narrative pattern cleaves closely to others in Raymond Moody’s collection of NDEs and those now appearing on the Internet.

As a 19-year-old airman recently arrived in Puerto Rico, I went for a swim in the base pool with friends—all better swimmers than I—and waited to dive in after reaching the shallow end of the pool. Not having swum there before, I didn’t know just how shallow the pool was where I dived and, as a result, I bumped my head on the bottom and was briefly paralyzed. (The first X-rays falsely indicated a broken neck.)

Unable to move, I watched bubbles ascend to the surface and burst into bright rings beneath the Caribbean sun. I fought the involuntary force to breathe as long as I could and then resigned myself to drowning, thinking as I did so that drowning was not a bad way to go. Quick, not messy, final.

Some kids in the pool spotted my body, their yells alerting my buddy Jim Gray to check if I had made it to the side of pool where he sat sunning himself. Not seeing me, he leapt to where the kids were pointing, pulled me from the pool, and began pumping my lungs. A medic watching from the window of a nearby barracks saw what was going on and came to relieve Jim. Bringing me around took several minutes, I was later told.

Meanwhile, I had embarked on my NDE. Up through a tunnel, twisting and turning as I went, I flew with lightning speed it seemed, emerging from the tunnel and finding myself being greeted by a multitude of persons or, at least their shapes, for they seemed to have form but no substance. Scores and scores though they were in number, I seemed to know them all and they me.

The form advancing to embrace me was that of my Grandfather Jerry Watson, who died more than eight years before I was born. (I knew his features well from having seen family snapshots and a photographic portrait of him.) “Welcome, John,” he said. I seemed to be awash in love; love expansive, integrating, whole.

Before I could move forward to embrace or be embraced, I heard the voice of Grandmother Watson, “Come back, John, come back! You are needed here.”

Much as I loved her, I resisted her call. I simply thought it would be unjust punishment to be yanked back to earth out of this realm of peace and wholeness. She spoke again, tearfully, imploringly, “Come back, John, come back. You are needed here.”

Suddenly, I found myself in a state I’d experienced some months before in the hospital at Keesler Air Force Base: out of body and looking down on my suffering form while trying to find ease from a terrific sinus headache. But this current out-of-body episode positioned me in a distant place as I watched my form being worked over by someone pressing on my chest as a crowd hovered closely. “Why should I heed Grandmother’s call when I’m happier than I’ve ever been before,” I reasoned.

Before I could frame an answer, the tunnel again encircled me, and down I went, twisting and turning headlong, back to earth and into my body. Between pain I felt from the chlorine burn of lung tissue and the pangs resulting from the medic’s rhythmic pressure, I heard, “He’s coming around, he’s coming around.” I didn’t want to come around: far from it: I wanted the burn to cease and the pressure to stop. It was then I realized I was alive, and was thankful to be so, even if hurting. But thankful or not, I yearned to get back to that happy state, to that realm of boundless love.

Ever one to seek answers to mysteries, I wanted to know how I had been carried to that realm. Perhaps if I had remained the theist of my first 18 years, I would have explained it as God’s plan to enlighten me about his mission for me. Many who survive NDEs do settle for such an explanation. My introduction to science and my consequent distrust of supernaturalism quickly and permanently pulled me away from the theistic camp, however.

But where to turn for an explanation? Medical researchers and psychologists offer several theories: the activity of a dying brain, the result of a hallucination, an injury to the temporal lobe, a deprivation of oxygen to the brain, an act of depersonization on the part of someone afflicted with intense pain, a memory of birth. These theories and more are found on the Internet (see nderf@nderf.org).

If I choose among them, the closest explanation to my experience is depersonization, for in both my out-of-body episodes, a pain-free form of me floated above my pain-racked body. Yet, in the drowning incident I reached a state more akin to the warm, cozy, all-embracing love associated with an oxygen-starved brain. My secularism argues that both theories, in part, account for what I experienced in my own NDE.

Perhaps, as medical science further investigates the chemical, physiological, and psychological activities of the brain under stress, a more compelling theory will evolve and be tested. I hope so.

Unlike Don Piper and scores of others who’ve had an NDE, I received no prompting to convey a message of hope about an afterlife. Perhaps Grandfather Jerry had not received marching orders for me.

About an afterlife, Lazarus, dead and stinking when called forth from the grave, could have served as an esteemed and celebrated witness, but he was silent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus). John the gospeler tells us only that some people had their faith in Jesus strengthened while others rushed to the authorities with warnings about the power of Jesus and his threat to the nation.

Given the worldwide interest in eschatology, one wonders why Lazarus remained silent; why Mary and Martha made no attempt to query him. Did he have nothing to report, or did he find his experience in the afterlife ineffable? Was he, as a resurrected man, therefore immortal? John is silent on the subject. Or was John’s detailed account of Lazarus’s death and resurrection meant to lend credence to core message of Christianity—that in Jesus alone resides the power of resurrection? To me, the story (John 11:1-53) reads like a skillfully wrought, theatric foreshadowing of Jesus’s death and resurrection. A kind of dress rehearsal if you will.

If I had been on the scene, you can bet I would have grilled silent Lazarus.