I'm been reading a lot about NDE (Near Death Experiences) lately. There's The Proof of Heaven book by Dr. Alexander, which has been making waves lately. He was a skeptic until he was critically ill, practically dead, and then he miraculously made a comeback.
He was a changed man and he shares the otherworldly experiences that changed his way of thinking. I found some of the descriptions fascinating because they echoed ideas I had learned in Jewish sources.
I'm also reading Forever Ours: Real Stories of Immortality and Living from a Forensic Pathologist with odd, otherworldly stories.
The Shavuos issue of Ami magazine had an article entitled, I Was Declared Dead about near-death and out-of-body experiences. The article reminded me of an extraordinary account by someone who became a baal teshuva (picture above) because of his NDE. You can watch it here.
What puzzles me is when the person who gets to see a vision of what seems to be the Next World, or who gets a visitation from a departed relative, is not Jewish. Most of these stories have someone being reassured that the world beyond ours is a wonderful place. I don't have reason to think that all the millions of gentiles who had these experiences are observers of the Noahide Laws. I wonder what this is about.
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