That Great Mystery: What Awaits Us After Death?

By James Donahue

January 2005

World religions are built on a variety of thesis as to what happens to us after death. Psychics that claim they communicate with the dead believe they may have an answer. People who have technically “died” and then been miraculously revived say they have caught glimpses of “life” on the other side.

Yet to this day, nobody knows for sure what awaits us after life leaves our bodies and that spark or personality that is us escapes into the ether.

Are we doomed to wander the planet in spirit form as ghosts? Or is there a route back into the “light” that many believe is the energy that we call God. Christians hold to a myth that we are brought before a court of judgment and from there sent to spend an eternity in either Heaven or Hell.

The latter story is so absurd it is not worth comment. Yet the majority of people in this world accept some form of religious doctrine that promises an eternal life of joy following a life of trials in this existence.

That promise seems to justify the pain and suffering that torments so many people during the brief time they occupy these three-dimensional bodies. Is that why so many people are so easily drawn into religion? Is it a form of life-after-death insurance?

While religion may have a “feel-good” effect when dealing with the mystery of death, it offers no valid proofs. All religion is based upon faith in somebody else’s fantasy, which means it contains no assurance whatsoever.

Modern medicine has been successful at reviving more and more patients after they have been declared “clinically dead” in hospital settings. Consequently, we have been getting numerous stories by people who have gone through this experience. They say the mind does not shut down after the body dies. Instead, their consciousness appears to float in spirit form, still seeing and hearing everything going on around them.

Penny Sartori, a Welsh nurse working at a hospital intensive care unit in Swansea, has completed a five-year study of “near-death experiences” by patients that return after being clinically dead.

Sartori has accumulated 15 stories from people who support a growing belief that life continues on after we die, but not in the way we once believed. Her stories are being studied further by Dr. Peter Fenwick, a neuro-psychiatrist who is expanding the study throughout the UK.

Nearly all of the patients interviewed by Sartori said they floated over the resuscitation room. They could give details about the medical procedures, the nurses, doctors and other people and events that went on in the room.

Many described floating toward a bright light and then seeing relatives and long dead friends beckoning to them. Yet after arrival, they were ordered to “go back” because it wasn’t their time.

I have known three different people, two of them relatives, who personally told me this same story.

My wife’s brother, Wayne, always talked about the day he drowned when his swimming trunks got caught under a nail at the bottom of a home-made raft. He and his brother were swimming in a deep place in a local stream when they were boys.

Wayne told how he struggled in the water, unable to free himself, but then started taking water in his lungs. Soon he found himself drifting off into darkness where he saw a distant light. As he floated into the light Wayne said he found himself in a beautiful garden where there was music unlike anything he ever heard.

He said he enjoyed the experience so much he was angry when he suddenly awakened on the raft. His brother had pulled him out of the water and revived him.

Dennis Hale, the sole survivor of the Great Lakes freighter Daniel Morrell that sank in a storm in Lake Huron in about 1967, said he nearly froze to death on a raft on the open lake, while dressed only in his underwear and pea coat. Hale remained alive for over 30 hours in a snow storm and freezing temperatures before he was rescued by a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter.

Before his rescue, Hale told about going into darkness, drifting into the light, and there meeting his dead mother and other dead relatives. He also met his dead shipmates. He said he felt happy to be there and was disappointed when one of his friends told him he had to go back. That it wasn’t his time to be with them.

After that, Hale said he woke up again still adrift on the open sea, and still suffering from the pain of extreme cold and cramping.

Our son Aaron C. Donahue also died and went into the astral after reacting to a medication. He said he understood what was happening to him and struggled to return rather than submit to the pleasure of death.

Donahue said that once we get past the agony of dying, death becomes an extremely pleasant experience.

Beyond this, however, Donahue has had little to say about life on the other side, even though he can leave his body at will and visit the astral whenever he chooses.

He says we all came from that world and should, if things were in their normal state, be destined to return to it after we leave these bodies.

But things are no longer “normal” on Earth. Our planet is dying because the human race his destroyed the earth’s ecology. That unique spark of life that we are, Donahue says, comes from the living Mother Earth. Once she is dead, the spark will go with her.

The horror of this is that all living things, including the spirit life forms that contain the memory of all of the souls that once lived here, and live here now, will perish with her.

This is what Donahue means when he warns that we are heading for extinction. This is a horror that few in this existence seem to comprehend. But they will wail and gnash their teeth once the understanding hits them.

Not only will the human race disappear on Earth. Our spirits will no longer be able to enter babies prior to their birth and travel through new life experiences. Even worse, our consciousness, our memory and awareness of ourselves, will evaporate and we will be no more.

This may not sound severe to us. Yet the spirits in the astral are frantic about this. Most of the messages received from “the other side” include warnings about what is happening to the Earth.

It is obvious that from their vantage point, they can clearly see their fate. For all of us, it will involve a second and final death.