There was this fellow, middle-aged or thereabouts I'm guessing, afflicted with bronchial asthma and emphysema, who got into a coughing fit and ruptured a disc which left him in agonizing pain. He was eventually referred to a neurosurgeon who put him in the hospital and into traction. He needed surgery, so a lung specialist was called in to help strengthen the patient. The anesthesiologist didn't want to put him under, but finally consented. The operation was scheduled for Friday. On the previous Monday
I went to sleep and had a restful sleep until sometime early Tuesday morning, when I woke up in severe pain. I turned over and tried to get in a more comfortable position, but just at that moment a light appeared in the corner of the room, just below the ceiling. It was just a ball of light, almost like a globe, and it was not very large, I would say no more than twelve to fifteen inches in diameter, and as this light appeared, a feeling came over me. I can't say that it was an eerie feeling, because it was not. It was a feeling of complete peace and relaxation. I could see a hand reach down for me from the light, and the light said, "Come with me. I want to show you something." So immediately without any hesitation whatsoever, I reached up with my hand and grabbed onto the hand I saw. As I did, I had the feeling of being drawn up and of leaving my body, and I looked back and saw it lying there on the bed while I was going up towards the ceiling of the room."
As he left his body, he felt that he had taken on the same 'form' as that of the light. He experienced it as mostly circular in shape, of the substance of "a wisp of smoke or a vapor...like the clouds of cigarette smoke...illuminated as they drift around a lamp." And yet he knew that the form had certain attributes, for he had taken the light's hand with his own. After this, he and the light begin traveling - through walls and down corridors - with a sensation of motion but not speed. Instantaneously, it seemed, they arrived at the hospital's recovery room, the location of which the patient had not known. Below them, doctors and nurses in green uniforms went about their chores.This being then told me, "That's where you're going to be. When they bring you off the operating table they're going to put you in that bed, but you will never awaken from that position. You'll know nothing after you go to the operating room until I come back to get you sometime after this."
The light's voice, by the way, was not an audible one. But the patient insists that it was "vivid" in form and unmistakable in content. Then the light revealed the reason for this little trip: that he didn't want our patient to experience any fear when the time came, because "he", the light, would not be there at once, though he "would be overshadowing everything that happened and would be there for me at the end."They returned to the patient's room and he to his body. He knew now that he was going to die, but was "not in the least afraid," and entertained no questions, such as "What can I do to keep this from happening?" When shaving before the mirror, he "noticed that my hand didn't shake like it had been doing for six or eight weeks before then." On the day before the operation, he began writing letters to his wife and adopted son, a nephew, with whom they were "having some trouble." While writing he began to weep, uncontrollably, and again felt the presence. No light this time, but it asked him, "Jack, why are you crying? I thought you would be pleased to be with me." And Jack said that he very much wanted to go with 'him,' but that he was worried his wife wouldn't "know how to raise" their nephew, and thought that his own presence might have done the boy some good. The presence replied that "Since you are asking for someone else, and thinking of others, not Jack, I will grant what you want. You will live until you see your nephew become a man." And then he was gone.
The operation went flawlessly, and Jack woke up in the same bed that the presence had pointed out. The anesthesiologist was there when he regained consciousness, with all kinds of fancy equipment on hand, but was amazed that he didn't have to use any of it. Jack had recovered like a man with normal lungs.
It was three years after the event that he gave this testimony. Up to that point, he had told only his wife, brother and minister of his encounter with the presence. He felt no need to proselytize, or to convince others. He claimed that the encounter was as real as any waking experience in his life, even more so, though he could not explain why. And further, "I don't have any doubts anymore. I know there is life after death."
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Taken from Raymond Moody's well-known book, Life After Life, 1975.
My question is: Is this sort of thing possible?