Ascent from Death to Life

Howard Storm's near-death experience (NDE)

The true account of one man's extraordinary near-death experience adapted from My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life by Howard Storm.

Introduction by Occult Mysteries

By his own account Howard Storm was not a very pleasant man before the near-death experience he recounts in his book My Descent Into Death: A Second Chance at Life. In it he tells us that he was a confirmed atheist hostile to every form of religion and those who practiced it. He often employed anger and ridicule to manipulate those around him and didn't find joy in anything. He had no faith in anything he couldn't see, touch or feel. He was convinced that the material world was all there was and that nothing whatsoever existed outside or beyond it. He goes on to tell us that he considered all religious or mystical belief systems to be deceptive fantasies. The theories and doctrines of material science were the only truths he acknowledged. In short he was a thoroughgoing materialist like millions of others the world over. Until, on Saturday 1st June 1985 he had a near-death experience that would change his life forever.

His moving account of what happened to him after being admitted to hospital with a perforated stomach proves that consciousness survives so-called 'death' and that Heaven and hell exist. But more than this, his brutally honest testimony shows us what a powerful grip the lower self has upon the Higher. How it can (and does) suppress every good impulse and thwart every spiritual aspiration, so turning an intrinsically good man or woman into a raging beast bereft of all higher qualities. Aside from anglicising the American spelling used by the author and shortening his narrative in some places, we have not changed anything in his account.

Descent into Hell

Struggling to say goodbye to my wife,
I wrestled with my emotions. Telling her that I loved her very much was as much of a goodbye as I could utter because of my emotional distress. Sort of relaxing and closing my eyes, I waited for the end. This was it, I felt. This was the big nothing, the big blackout, the one you never wake up from, the end of existence. I had absolute certainty that there was nothing beyond this life — because that was how really smart people understood it. While I was undergoing this stress, prayer or anything like that never occurred to me. I never once thought about it.

If I mentioned God's name at all it was only as a profanity. For a time there was a sense of being unconscious or asleep. I'm not sure how long it lasted, but I felt really strange, and I opened my eyes. To my surprise I was standing up next to the bed, and I was looking at my body lying in the bed. My first reaction was, "This is crazy! I can’t be standing here looking down at myself. That's not possible."

This wasn't what I expected, this wasn't right. Why was I still alive? I wanted oblivion. Yet I was looking at a thing that was my body, and it just didn't have that much meaning to me. Now knowing what was happening, I became upset. I started yelling and screaming at my wife, and she just sat there like a stone. She didn't look at me, she didn't move — and I kept screaming profanities to get her to pay attention. Being confused, upset, and angry, I tried to get the attention of my room-mate, with the same result. He didn't react. I wanted this to be a dream, and I kept saying to myself, "This has got to be a dream."

But I knew that it wasn't a dream. I became aware that strangely I felt more alert, more aware, more alive than I had ever felt in my entire life. All my senses were extremely acute. Everything felt tingly and alive. The floor was cool and my bare feet felt moist and clammy. This had to be real. I squeezed my fists and was amazed at how much I was feeling in my hands just by making a fist. Then I heard my name. I heard, "Howard, Howard — come here."

Wondering, at first, where it was coming from, I discovered that it was originating in the doorway. There were different voices calling me. I asked who they were, and they said, "We are here to take care of you. We will fix you up. Come with us."

Asking, again, who they were, I asked them if they were doctors and nurses. They responded, "Quick, come see. You'll find out."

As I asked them questions they gave evasive answers. They kept giving me a sense of urgency, insisting that I should step through the doorway. With some reluctance I stepped into the hallway, and in the hallway I was in a fog, or a haze. It was a light-coloured haze. It wasn't a heavy haze. I could see my hand, for example, but the people who were calling me were 15 or 20 feet ahead, and I couldn't see them clearly. They were more like silhouettes, or shapes, and as I moved toward them they backed off into the haze. As I tried to get close to them to identify them, they quickly withdrew deeper into the fog. So I had to follow into the fog deeper and deeper. These strange beings kept urging me to come with them.

I repeatedly asked them where we were going, and they responded, "Hurry up, you'll find out." They wouldn't answer anything. The only response was insisting that I hurry up and follow them. They told me repeatedly that my pain was meaningless and unnecessary. "Pain is bullshit," they said.

I knew that we had been travelling for miles, but I occasionally had the strange ability to look back and see the hospital room. My body was still there lying motionless on the bed. My perspective at these times was as if I were floating above the room looking down. It seemed millions and millions of miles away. Looking back into the room, I saw my wife and my room-mate, and I decided they had not been able to help me so I would go with these people. Walking for what seemed to be a considerable distance, these beings were all around me. They were leading me through the haze. I don't know how long. There was a real sense of timelessness about the experience. In a real sense I am unaware of how long it was, but it felt like a long time — maybe even days or weeks. As we travelled, the fog got thicker and darker, and the people began to change. At first they seemed rather playful and happy, but when we had covered some distance, a few of them began to get aggressive. The more questioning and suspicious I was, the more antagonistic and rude and authoritarian they became. They began to make jokes about my bare rear end which wasn't covered by my hospital gown and about how pathetic I was. I knew they were talking about me, but when I tried to find out exactly what they were saying they would say, "Shhh, he can hear you, he can hear you."

Then, others would seem to caution the aggressive ones. It seemed that I could hear them warn the aggressive ones to be careful or I would be frightened away. Wondering what was happening, I continued to ask questions, and they repeatedly urged me to hurry and to stop asking questions. Feeling uneasy, especially since they continued to get aggressive, I considered returning, but I didn't know how to get back. I was lost. There were no features that I could relate to. There was just the fog and a wet, clammy ground, and I had no sense of direction. All my communication with them took place verbally just as ordinary human communication occurs. They didn't appear to know what I was thinking, and I didn't know what they were thinking. What was increasingly obvious was that they were liars and help was farther away the more I stayed with them. Hours ago, I had hoped to die and end the torment of life. Now things were worse as I was forced by a mob of unfriendly and cruel people toward some unknown destination in the darkness. They began shouting and hurling insults at me, demanding that I hurry along. And they refused to answer any question. Finally, I told them that I wouldn't go any farther. At that time they changed completely. They became much more aggressive and insisted that I was going with them. A number of them began to push and shove me, and I responded by hitting back at them.

A wild orgy of frenzied taunting, screaming and hitting ensued. I fought like a wild man. All the while it was obvious that they were having great fun. It seemed to be, almost, a game for them, with me as the focus of their amusement. My pain became their pleasure. They seemed to want to make me hurt by clawing at me and biting me. Whenever I would get one off me, there were five more to replace the one.

By this time it was almost completely dark, and I had the sense that instead of there being twenty or thirty, there were an innumerable host of them. Each one seemed set on coming in for the sport they got from hurting me. My attempts to fight back only provoked greater merriment. They began to physically humiliate me in the most degrading ways. As I continued to fight on and on, I was aware that they weren't in any hurry to win. They were playing with me just as a cat plays with a mouse. Every new assault brought howls of cacophony. Then at some point, they began to tear off pieces of my flesh. To my horror I realised I was being taken apart and eaten alive, slowly, so that their entertainment would last as long a possible. At no time did I ever have any sense that the beings who seduced and attacked me were anything other than human beings. The best way I can describe them is to think of the worst imaginable person stripped of every impulse to do good. Some of them seemed to be able to tell others what to do, but I had no sense of any structure or hierarchy in an organisational sense. They didn't appear to be controlled or directed by anyone. Basically they were a mob of beings totally driven by unbridled cruelty and passions.

During our struggle I noticed that they seemed to feel no pain. Other than that they appeared to possess no special non-human or superhuman abilities. Although during my initial experience with them I assumed that they were clothed, in our intimate physical contact I never felt any clothing whatsoever.

Fighting well and hard for a long time, ultimately I was spent. Lying there exhausted amongst them, they began to calm down since I was no longer the amusement that I had been. Most of the beings gave up in disappointment because I was no longer amusing, but a few still picked and gnawed at me and ridiculed me for no longer being any fun. By this time I had been pretty much taken apart. People were still picking at me, occasionally, and I just lay there all torn up, unable to resist.

Exactly what happened was...and I'm not going to try and explain this. From inside of me I felt a voice, my voice, say, "Pray to God." My mind responded to that, "I don't pray. I don't know how to pray." This is a guy lying on the ground in the darkness surrounded by what appeared to be dozens if not hundreds and hundreds of vicious creatures who had just torn him up. The situation seemed utterly hopeless, and I seemed beyond any possible help whether I believed in God or not. The voice again told me to pray to God. It was a dilemma since I didn’t know how. The voice told me a third time to pray to God. I started saying things like, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...God bless America" and anything else that seemed to have a religious connotation. And these people went into a frenzy, as if I had thrown boiling oil all over them. They began yelling and screaming at me, telling me to quit, that there was no God, and no one could hear me. While they screamed and yelled obscenities, they also began backing away from me as if I were poison. As they were retreating, they became more rabid, cursing and screaming that what I was saying was worthless and that I was a coward. I screamed back at them, "Our Father who art in heaven," and similar things. This continued for some time until, suddenly, I was aware that they had left. It was dark, and I was alone yelling things that sounded churchy. It was pleasing to me that these churchy sayings had such an effect on those awful beings.

Lying there for a long time, I was in such a state of hopelessness, and blackness, and despair, that I had no way of measuring how long it was. I was just lying there in an unknown place all torn and ripped. And I had no strength; it was all gone. It seemed as if I were sort of fading out, that any effort on my part would expend the last energy I had. My conscious sense was that I was perishing, or just sinking into the darkness.

— Hieronymus Bosch — Garden of Earthly Delights — Detail from the third panel: Hell —
Oil on oak panels, ca. 1500

Rescued from Hell

Now I didn't know if I was even in the world. But I did know that I was here. I was real, all my senses worked too painfully well. I didn't know how I had arrived here. There was no direction to follow even if I had been physically able to move. The agony that I had suffered during the day was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. I knew then that this was the absolute end of my existence, and it was more horrible than anything I could possibly have imagined.

Then a most unusual thing happened. I heard very clearly, once again in my own voice, something that I had learned in nursery Sunday School. It was the little song, "Jesus loves me, yes I know..." and it kept repeating. I don't know why, but all of a sudden I wanted to believe that. Not having anything left, I wanted to cling to that thought. And inside, I screamed, "Jesus, please save me." That thought was screamed with every ounce of strength and feeling left in me. When I did that, I saw, off in the darkness somewhere, the tiniest little star. Not knowing what it was, I presumed it must be a comet or a meteor, because it was moving rapidly. Then I realised it was coming toward me. It was getting very bright, rapidly. When the light came near, its radiance spilled over me, and I just rose up — not with my effort — I just lifted up. Then I saw — and I saw this very plainly — I saw all my wounds, all my tears, all my brokenness, melt away. And I became whole in this radiance. What I did was to cry uncontrollably. I was crying, not out of sadness, but because I was feeling things that I had never felt before in my life. Another thing happened. Suddenly I knew a whole bunch of things. I knew things...I knew that this light, this radiance, knew me. I don't know how to explain to you that I knew it knew me, I just did. As a matter of fact, I understood that it knew me better than my mother or father did. The luminous entity that embraced me knew me intimately and began to communicate a tremendous sense of knowledge. I knew that he knew everything about me and I was being unconditionally loved and accepted.

The light conveyed to me that it loved me in a way that I can't begin to express. It loved me in a way that I had never known that love could possibly be. He was a concentrated field of energy, radiant in splendour indescribable, except to say goodness and love. This was more loving than one can imagine. I knew that this radiant being was powerful. It was making me feel so good all over. I could feel its light on me — like very gentle hands around me. And I could feel it holding me. But it was loving me with overwhelming power. After what I had been through, to be completely known, accepted, and intensely loved by this Being of Light surpassed anything I had known or could have imagined. I began to cry and the tears kept coming and coming. And we, I and this light, went up and out of there.

We started going faster and faster, out of the darkness. Embraced by the light, feeling wonderful and crying, I saw off in the distance something that looked like the picture of a galaxy, except that it was larger and there were more stars than I had seen on Earth. There was a great centre of brilliance. In the centre there was an enormously bright concentration. Outside the centre countless millions of spheres of light were flying about entering and leaving what was a great being-ness at the centre. It was off in the distance. Then I...I didn’t say it, I thought it. I said. "Put me back."

What I meant by telling the light to put me back, was to put me back into the pit. I was so ashamed of who I was, and what I had been all of my life, that all I wanted to do was hide in the darkness. I didn’t want to go toward the light anymore — I did; yet I didn’t. How many times in my life had I denied and scoffed at the reality before me, and how many thousands of times had I used it as a curse. What incredible intellectual arrogance to use the name as an insult. I was afraid to go closer. I was also aware that the incredible intensity of the emanations might disintegrate what I still experienced as my intact physical body. The being who was supporting me, my friend, was aware of my fear and reluctance and shame. For the first time he spoke to my mind in a male voice and told me that if I was uncomfortable we didn’t have to go closer. So we stopped where we were, still countless miles away from the Great being. For the first time, my friend, and I will refer to him in that context hereafter, said to me, "You belong here."

Facing all the splendour made me acutely aware of my lowly condition. My response was: "No, you’ve made a mistake, put me back." and he said, "We don’t make mistakes. You belong."

Then he called out in a musical tone to the luminous entities who surrounded the great centre. Several came and circled around us. During what follows some came and went but normally there were five or six and sometimes as many as eight with us. I was still crying. One of the first things these marvellous beings did was to ask, all with thought, "Are you afraid of us?" I told them I wasn’t. They said that they could turn their brilliance down and appear as people, and I told them to stay as they were. They were the most beautiful, the most...

As an aside, I'm an artist. There are three primary, three secondary, and six tertiary colours in the visible light spectrum. Here, I was seeing a visible light spectrum with at least 80 new primary colours. I was also seeing this brilliance. It's disappointing for me to try and describe, because I can't — I was seeing colours that I had never seen before. What these beings were showing me was their glory. I wasn't really seeing them. And I was perfectly content. Having come from a world of shapes and forms, I was delighted with this new, formless, world. These beings were giving me what I needed at that time. To my surprise, and also distress, they seemed to be capable of knowing everything I was thinking. I didn't know whether I would be capable of controlling my thoughts and keeping anything secret. We began to engage in thought exchange, conversation that was very natural, very easy and casual. I heard their voices clearly and individually. They each had a distinct personality with a voice, but they spoke directly to my mind, not my ears. And they used normal, colloquial English. Everything I thought, they knew. They all seemed to know and understand me very well and to be completely familiar with my thoughts and my past. I didn't feel any desire to ask for someone I had known because they all knew me. Nobody could know me any better. It also didn't occur to me to try to identify them as uncle or grandfather. It was like going to a large gathering of relatives at Christmas and not being quite able to remember their names or who they are married to or how they are connected to you. But you do know that you are with your family. I don't know if they were related to me or not. It felt like they were closer to me than anyone I had ever known.

Throughout my conversation with the luminous beings, which lasted for what seemed like a very long time, I was being physically supported by the being in whom I had been engulfed. We were in a sense completely stationary yet hanging in space. Everywhere around us were countless radiant beings, like stars in the sky, coming and going. It was like a super magnified view of a galaxy super packed with stars. And in the giant radiance of the centre they were packed so densely together that individuals could not be identified. Their selves were in such harmony with the Creator that they were really just one. One of the reasons, I was told, that all the countless beings had to go back to their source was to become invigorated with this sense of harmony and oneness. Being apart for too long a time diminished them and made them feel separate. Their greatest pleasure was to go back to the source of all life.

Our initial conversation involved them simply trying to comfort me. Something that disturbed me was that I was naked. Somewhere in the darkness I'd lost my hospital gown. I was a human being. I had a body. They told me this was okay. They were quite familiar with my anatomy. Gradually I relaxed and stopped trying to cover my privates with my hands.

Life review

Next, they wanted to talk about my life. To my surprise my life played out before me, maybe six or eight feet in front of me, from beginning to end.

The life review was very much in their control, and they showed me my life, but not from my point of view. I saw me in my life and this whole thing was a lesson, even though I didn't know it at the time. They were trying to teach me something, but I didn't know it was a teaching experience, because I didn’t know that I would be coming back. We just watched my life from beginning to the end. Some things they slowed down on, and zoomed in on and other things they went right through.

My life was shown in a way that I had never thought of before. All of the things that I had worked hard to achieve, the recognition that I had worked for, in elementary school, in high school, in college, and in my career, they meant nothing in this setting.

I could feel their feelings of sorrow and suffering, or joy, as my life's review unfolded. They didn’t say that something was bad or good, but I could feel it. And I could sense all those things they were indifferent to. They didn't, for example, look down on my high school shot-put record. They just didn’t feel anything towards it, nor towards other things which I had taken so much pride in.

What they responded to was how I had interacted with other people. That was the long and short of it. Unfortunately, most of my interactions with other people didn't measure up with how I should have interacted, which was in a loving way. Whenever I did react during my life in a loving way they rejoiced.

Most of the time I found that my interactions with other people had been manipulative. During my professional career, for example, I saw myself sitting in my office, playing the college professor, while a student came to me with a personal problem. I sat there looking compassionate, and patient, and loving, while inside I was bored to death. I would check my watch under my desk as I anxiously waited for the student to finish.

I got to go through all those kinds of experiences in the company of these magnificent beings. When I was a teenager my father's career put him into a high-stress, twelve-hour-a-day job. Out of my resentment because of his neglect of me, when he came home from work, I would be cold and indifferent toward him. This made him angry, and it gave me further excuse to feel hatred toward him. He and I fought, and my mother would get upset. Most of my life I had felt that my father was the villain and I was the victim. When we reviewed my life I got to see how I had precipitated so much of that, myself. Instead of greeting him happily at the end of a day, I was continually putting thorns in him in order to justify my hurt.

I got to see when my sister had a bad night one night, how I went into her bedroom and put my arms around her. Not saying anything, I just lay there with my arms around her. As it turned out that experience was one of the biggest triumphs of my life.

The entire life's review would have been emotionally destructive, and would have left me a psychotic person, if it hadn't been for the fact that my friend, and my friend's friends, were loving me during the unfolding of my life. I could feel that love.

Every time I got a little upset they turned the life's review off for awhile, and they just loved me. Their love was tangible. You could feel it on your body, you could feel it inside you; their love went right through you. I wish I could explain it to you, but I can't.

The therapy was their love, because my life's review kept tearing me down. It was pitiful to watch, just pitiful. I couldn’t believe it. And the thing is, it got worse as it went on.

My stupidity and selfishness as a teenager only magnified as I became an adult — all under the veneer of being a good husband, a good father, and a good citizen. The hypocrisy of it all was nauseating. But through it all was their love.

I must return to Earth

Not being ready to face the Earth again, I told them that I wished to be with them forever. I said, "I'm ready, I'm ready to be like you and be here forever. This is great. I love it. I love you. You're wonderful."

I knew that they loved me and knew everything about me. I knew that everything was going to be okay from now on. I asked if I could get rid of my body, which was definitely a hindrance, and become a being like them with the powers they had shown me. They said, "No, you have to go back."

They explained to me that I was very underdeveloped and that it would be of great benefit to return to my physical existence to learn. In my human life I would have an opportunity to grow so that the next time I was with them I would be more compatible. I would need to develop important characteristics to become like them and to be involved with the work that they do. Responding that I couldn’t go back, I tried to argue with them. I pleaded with them to stay.

My friends then said, "Do you think that we expect you to be perfect, after all the love we feel for you, even after you were on Earth blaspheming God, and treating everyone around you like dirt? And this, despite the fact that we were sending people to try and help you, to teach you the truth? Do you really think we would be apart from you now?"

I asked them, "But what about my own sense of failure? You've shown me how I can be better, and I'm sure I can't live up to that. I'm not that good." Some of my self-centeredness welled up and I said, "No way. I'm not going back."

They said, "There are people who care about you; your wife, your children, your mother and father. You should go back for them. Your children need your help."

I said, "You can help them. If you make me go back there are things that just won’t work. If I go back there and make mistakes I won't be able to stand it because you've shown me I could be more loving and more compassionate and I'll forget. I'll be mean to someone or I'll do something awful to someone. I just know it's going to happen because I'm a human being. I'm going to blow it and I won't be able to stand it. I'll feel so bad I'll want to kill myself and I can't do that because life is precious. I might just go catatonic. So you can't send me back."

They assured me that mistakes are an acceptable part of being human. "Go," they said, "and make all the mistakes you want. Mistakes are how you learn." As long as I tried to do what I knew was right, they said, I would be on the right path. If I made a mistake, I should fully recognise it as a mistake, then put it behind me and simply try not to make the same mistake again. The important things is to try one's best, keep one's standards of goodness and truth, and not compromise those to win people's approval.

"But," I said, "mistakes make me feel bad."
They said, "We love you the way you are, mistakes and all. And you can feel our forgiveness. You can feel our love any time you want to."
I said, "I don't understand. How do I do that?"
"Just turn inward," they said. "Just ask for our love and we’ll give it to you if you ask from the heart."

Coda by Occult Mysteries

Howard Storm's near-death experience ends here. Those of you who have personal experience of the lower and higher planes of the Astral World and the beings who dwell in them will know that his is a true and faithful record. Those who do not must take our word for it, for the writer has seen the demonic creatures Howard Storm encountered and the beings of Light who befriended him. His account is one of the most accurate and moving records of what happens after death that we have ever read and this is the main reason we have decided to publish it.

But there are other reasons too. Firstly, that even a confirmed atheist may hope for a conscious life after death. Secondly, as Howard Storm discovered, however selfish and brutish a life we may have led, there is redemption to be found. Thirdly and most importantly, the all-embracing, unconditional love God has for all of us, for God IS Love. Very few people know what perfect love really is. Howard Storm does. So do we, and it is our earnest prayer that if you take nothing else away with you after reading his extraordinary account you will take away the imperishable Truth that God is Love and love is God, and the more godlike love is, the closer we are to the Source of that Love which is also Light and Life.

Note: If this article has encouraged you to take up the study of the spiritual side of life, or deepen your existing esoteric studies, you may find much to interest you in our many articles, a full list of which can be found on our homepage.

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NDEs explored

In our customary Afterword we review the NDE of Howard Storm together with the work of Dr Raymond Moody and others in bringing near-death experiences to the wider attention of the public.

While many people have now heard of the blissful, spiritualised experiences that are typical of most near-death-experiences (NDEs), the hellish conditions and entities encountered by Howard Storm are less well known. And yet, as long ago as 1978, in his book Beyond Death's Door, an American cardiologist Dr Maurice Rawlings (1922-2010), described several cases of individuals who had NDEs no less terrifying and distressing than that recounted by Howard Storm.

Unlike Dr Raymond Moody whose pioneering research on NDEs has at least received some favourable attention from mainstream scientists, Rawlings' work has been largely dismissed and derided. His crime? He was a Christian whose avowed aim was to proselytise his faith to prevent people going to hell. Although we, as our loyal readers know, are not Christians we see nothing wrong with this aim. Indeed, we applaud any attempt to turn people away from the mechanised, materialistic outlook which now prevails and informs almost all aspects of modern life.

One psychologist, perhaps suffering from a belated sense of charity admitted that whilst science does not deny that the distressing experiences Rawlings recorded weren't real "a more unbiased and credible approach needed to be taken to understand them." Of course it does. The smug hypocrisy of some scientists is truly off the scale!

The latest research suggests that the number of distressing NDEs may be as high as 15%. We think this is probably an underestimate. People who experience what Howard Storm did are naturally reluctant to talk about it because decent people don't encounter demons or enter hell, do they? Actually they do, as we learned in our article about Life after death in which we recounted the NDE of Drithelm, a pious Christian who flourished in the 7th Century.

Some of the NDEs Rawlings investigated involved scenarios that were eerily reminiscent of Drithelm's description as the following short extract shows. "I was moving through thick smoke, as if through a tunnel. After some period of time I began to hear the voices of a multitude of people. They were screaming, groaning and crying. But as I was looking down, I saw fire, smoke and people inside of this burning place. They were screaming and crying, they were burning, but they weren’t burning up, they weren’t being consumed."

Many centuries earlier, Drithelm recounted. "Walking on, we came to a vale of great breadth and depth, but of infinite length; on the left it appeared full of dreadful flames, the other side was no less horrid for violent hail and cold snow flying in all directions; both places were full of men's souls, which seemed by turns to be tossed from one side to the other, as it were by a violent storm; for when the wretches could no longer endure the excess of the immense heat, they leaped into the middle of the cutting cold; and finding no rest there, they leaped back again into the middle of the unquenchable flames."

Only a purblind bigot could fail to recognise the similarity between these two accounts separated by more than 1,300 years. Accounts moreover, which are eerily similar to the descriptions of hell to be found in Dante's Inferno and the horrific scenes depicted in the third panel of the ironically titled triptych Garden of Earthly Delights painted by Hieronymus Bosch in 1500 which illustrates Howard Storm's account of his NDE.

In 1975, three years before Maurice Rawlings published Beyond Death's Door, Dr. Raymond Moody released his best-selling book, Life After Life. It was Moody who invented the term 'near-death experience' after recording and comparing the experiences of 150 persons who had almost died and then recovered. Since then he has published many more books on NDEs, and continues to lecture about the subject today.

We said earlier that Dr Moody's research has received some favourable attention from mainstream scientists. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia does not mention this in its typically negative article about the good doctor! Instead, we are told that "his methods have drawn criticism from the scientific community," among them a professor of psychology at a prestigious US university who commented: "such reports are hardly sufficient to argue for the reality of an afterlife."

What a shock he will receive when he departs this life! Or perhaps not. As Bombast and Flitterflop learned in their conversation about consciousness after death, "the Higher Self...lives a life either completely conscious or semi-conscious, or it falls into that dreamless sleep ... comparable to the state of non-existence." We may be sure that quite a few psychologists will experience this pleasant state of nihility after they have departed this world!

Moody found several elements common to all NDEs, which may be summarised as follows:

Intense sense of peace and freedom from pain.
An out-of-body experience (OBE), what Occult Science calls astral projection.
Moving through a tunnel at high speed until a brilliant light is reached.
An encounter with one or more Beings of Light often mistaken for Jesus, Buddha, or some other Holy personage.
A comprehensive and often traumatic episode during which the Being(s) of Light present the dying with a panoramic review of their present life in which they relive every act and every thought.
A reluctance to return to Earth.

All six elements were experienced by Howard Storm and have been similarly recounted by generations of ordinary men and women. Perhaps the most interesting of these from the perspective of Occult Science is the very bright light that features in almost all NDEs. At its first appearance it is typically dim, but it rapidly increases in brightness until it attains an unearthly brilliance.

But one does not need to die — or even nearly die — to experience this marvellous light. Countless numbers of human beings have seen the selfsame light during deep meditation or spiritual exaltation. One of the best descriptions of this wonderful, spiritual Light is to be found in the writings of the German Seeress, Hildegard of Bingen.

"From my infancy, up to the present time, I being now more than seventy years of age, I have always seen this light in my spirit and not with my external eyes, nor with any thoughts of my heart nor with help from any of the senses. But my outward eyes remain open and the other corporeal senses retain their full activity.

"The light which I see is not located but is yet more brilliant than the sun, nor can I examine its height, length or breadth, and I name it the 'cloud of the living light'. And as sun, moon and stars are reflected in water, so the writings, sayings, virtues and works of men shine in it before me. And whatever I thus see in vision the memory thereof remains long with me.

"Likewise I see, hear and understand almost in a moment and I set down what I thus learn. But sometimes I behold within this light another light which I name 'the living Light itself'. And when I look upon it every sadness and pain vanishes from my memory, so that I am again as a simple maid and not as an old woman.

"And now that I am over seventy years old my spirit, according to the will of God, soars upward in vision to the highest heaven and to the farthest stretch of the air and spreads itself among different peoples to regions exceeding far from me here, and thence I can behold the changing clouds and the mutations of all created things; for all these I see not with the outward eye, nor do I create them from the cogitations of my heart...but within my spirit, my eyes being open, so that I have never suffered any terror."

What marvellous words these are! What a wonderful picture they paint in the mind's eye of the glories that await us all in the spiritual realms Hildegard beheld in her visions and which some fortunate individuals such as Howard Storm have seen in their NDEs. Not that this has discouraged the usual atheistical sceptics from dismissing the light Hildegard experienced as "hallucinations induced by pathological causes."

Moody found that the Being of Light encountered during NDEs has a very definite personality — an observation confirmed by Howard Storm in his narrative. The description he shares with us of the supernal love and warmth which emanates from these beings is quite wonderful. It is, as he and Moody both observed, utterly beyond words.

Howard Storm makes an interesting and significant remark at one point during his encounter with his Beings of Light which will not be lost on the trained occultists among our readers. He says: "They said that they could turn their brilliance down and appear as people..." Because, of course, they are 'people', that is to say human beings just like you and the writer, though infinitely wiser and more evolved.

Howard Storm confirms this fact later on when his guides tell him that he "would need to develop important characteristics to become like them." Need we list them? You can find these characteristics described in many of our books and articles, notably in The Book of Sa-Heti, we quote:

"He knows the thoughts and aims of every man, without the telling, and forgives them for their waywardness and passion. He knows that life is an illusion, a dream, and death an awakening to worse or better life. Loving all men, yet being indifferent to their love, he has no ties that bind him down to earth."

Moody goes on to say that the appearance and characteristics of the Being of Light seem largely to reflect the religious beliefs of the person undergoing the NDE. As most of the subjects he interviewed were nominally if not actually Christians they tended to see Jesus, the Christian idea of god or one of the Christian saints.

A Jewish man and woman on the other hand identified the Being of Light they saw as simply an "angel." Others, as we noted in our investigation of Life after Death believed they saw Buddha, Krishna, or some other holy being. We know of cases from personal experience where people saw Druid priests, Theosophical 'Masters', and in one case, the Egyptian Goddess Isis. This proves not only that we see what our prior training, beliefs and preconceptions have conditioned us to see, but that all is illusion!

By this we do not mean to suggest that NDEs are not real or that the beings seen by those who undergo them are not real, but simply that we do not see things or beings as they really are — an important occult truth we have pointed out in several of our articles over the years. Hence a person with no religious beliefs, training or aspiration would and does see simply a 'Being of Light'. Hence Moody is quite right to use this term rather than 'guide', 'angel' or even 'Master'.

Occult Science teaches us that there are an infinite number of beings in the higher realms who, as on Earth, vary enormously in their mental and spiritual maturity. Some might with every justification be called 'gods' so far are they advanced in goodness and wisdom from mere mortals. Beneath them we find rank upon rank of guides, helpers and guardians. But all are compassionate, forgiving and loving, as Howard Storm discovered when he met them.

Moody found that communication with such beings is not verbal. The opposite applies to the demonic entities who tormented Howard Storm who, as he relates, communicated with him verbally. This proves that the lower we descend in the scale of vibration, the more material things and beings become. This is also the reason the denizens of the pit were unable to read Howard Storm's thoughts but the Beings of Light could.

The direct, unimpeded instantaneous transfer of thought which prevails in the higher realms means there is no possibility whatsoever of misunderstanding or concealment. Hence, as we discussed in our investigation of the Egyptian ceremony of the Weighing of the Heart, dissembling, prevarication, obfuscation, and all the similar ways in which human beings deceive one another, are quite impossible during the review of Howard Storm's life.

Moody provides us with several examples of the Light beheld during an NDE of which the following is typical. "I floated up into this pure crystal clear light, an illuminating white light. It was beautiful and so bright, so radiant, but it didn't hurt my eyes. It's not any kind of light you can describe on Earth. I didn't actually see a person in this light, and yet it has a special identity, it definitely does. It is a light of perfect understanding and perfect love."

LIGHT! Is there any more enduring mystery than that of Light? What is it really? Is it a wave or is it a particle, or is it both? Science has developed countless theories about light in all its multitudinous variations but still does not know what it actually is. So it neatly sidesteps the question and concentrates its efforts on what light does, or appears to do, not realising that this is as great an illusion as earthly light itself.

Howard Storm tells us that he saw "a visible light spectrum with at least 80 new primary colours." We do not doubt him in the slightest. For all we know, there may well be 800, 8000, or eight million 'primary' colours to be seen in the Celestial Spheres described in Vision 11 of The Golden Star. But however glorious they may seem, all are derived from ONE LIGHT. And that light is God Himself however we choose to conceive of that Divine Principle or First Cause.

We would like to end this Afterword with a passage from the previous Vision — number 10 — of this luminous book in which Ma-u and Ma-uti, the two Egyptian pilgrims who are conducted through the higher and lower realms of the Astral World by Neteru-Hem, the Divine Messenger, behold the light of the highest spiritual realms.

"There was nothing but LIGHT. They seemed to be standing upon it and leaning against it and even be part of it, for it went right through them as if they were made of crystal. The effect was indescribable and beautiful. Within the white radiance every shade and tint of colour imaginable could be seen; yet — all was White!"

Such then is the Light — the Great Light of God. Those who have beheld it can never forget it. Like Howard Storm, their lives and thinking are changed forever. It is the dearest wish of the writer that you, who are reading these words be blessed with that holy vision in God's good time.

occult mysteries