NDE: Powerful, Life-Changing Near-Death Experience Quotes (Updated)

A collection of powerful, life-changing quotes from people who have had near-death experiences, as well as those who have researched this very important topic.

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“Merely learning about the near-death experience has effects similar to those reported by NDErs.”

– Kenneth Ring, Lessons from the Light

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“For me personally, I’m showing more love to others now than before I started my near-death-experience studies. My understanding of near-death experiences has made me a better doctor. I face life with more courage and confidence. I believe NDErs really do bring back a piece of the afterlife. When NDErs share their remarkable experiences, I believe a piece of the afterlife, in some mysterious way, becomes available to us all.”

– Jeffrey Long, author of Evidence of the Afterlife

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“‘It’s like climbing right inside a movie of your life,’ says one Near-Deather. ‘Every moment from every year of your life is played back in complete sensory detail. Total, total recall. And it all happens in an instant….’ During this instantaneous and panoramic remembrance NDRers reexperience all the emotions, the joys and sorrows, that accompany all of the events in their life. More than that, they feel all of the emotions of the people with whom they have interacted as well. They feel the happiness of all the individuals to whom they’ve been kind. If they have committed a hurtful act, they become acutely aware of the pain their victim felt as a result of their thoughtlessness. And no event seems to be too trivial to be exempt….

“Whitton has uncovered evidence that thoughtless acts are not the only things that cause individuals remorse during the life review. Under hypnosis his subjects reported that failed dreams and aspirations — things they had hoped to accomplish during their life but had not — also caused them pangs of sadness.”

– Michael Talbot, from his book, The Holographic Universe

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“I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m simply telling you what I believe. And I have no idea what the next life will be like. Whatever I saw was only from the doorway, so to speak. But it was enough to convince me totally of two things from that moment on: One, that our consciousness does not cease with physical death; that it becomes, in fact, keener and more aware than ever. And secondly, that how we spend our time on earth, the kind of relationships we build, is vastly more important than we can know.”

– George G. Ritchie, M.D., summarizing his famous near-death experience which helped launch the near-death experience movement. From his book, Return From Tomorrow. Readers may also be interested in Ordered to Return: My Life After Dying by George G. Ritchie and Ian Stevenson.

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“I have never interviewed anyone who had a near-death experience who told me that they came back to make more money or to spend more time at their jobs away from their families… Instead, they become convinced that they need to be more loving and kind. They react to their experience by living life to its fullest. They believe their lives have a purpose, even if that purpose is obscure to them. Invariably it involves concepts such as love of family or service to others. They seem to know that the love they create while living will be reflected and radiated back to them when they die.”

– Melvin Morse, M.D., from his book, Parting Visions

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“What do I think happens when we die? I think we enter into another stage of existence or another state of consciousness that is so extraordinarily different from the reality we have here in the physical world that the language we have is not yet adequate to describe this other state of existence or consciousness. Based on what I have heard from thousands of people, we enter into a realm of joy, light, peace, and love in which we discover that the process of knowledge does not stop when we die. Instead, the process of learning and development goes on for eternity.”

– Raymond Moody, from his book Paranormal: My Life in Pursuit of the Afterlife

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“I looked up and I saw this light; it wasn’t a normal light, it was different. It was luminescent. And it grew. I kept looking at it like, ‘What is that?’ Then it grew large and I went into it.

“I went into this tunnel, and I came into this room that was just beautiful. God held me, he called me by name, and he told me, ‘Mary Jo, you can’t stay.’ And I wanted to stay. I protested. I said, ‘I can’t stay? Why not?’ And I started talking about all the reasons; I was a good wife, I was a good mother, I did 24-hour care with cancer patients.

“And he said, ‘Let me ask you one thing — have you ever loved another the way you’ve been loved here?’ And I said, ‘No, it’s impossible. I’m a human.’ And then he just held me and said, ‘You can do better.’ ”

– Mary Jo Rapini, describing her near-death experience

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“Don’t worry about yourself. You’ll be fine. Help other people.”

– God’s advice to Carole

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“I saw all people as ‘energy’, and depending where our energy level was, that was the world we created for ourselves. The understanding I gained from this was that if cancer was not in our ‘energy’, then it was not in our reality. If feeling good about ourselves was in our energy, then our reality would be positive. If cancer was in our energy, then even if we eradicated it with modern medicine, it would soon come back. But if we cleared it from our energy, the physical body would soon follow. None of us are as ‘real’ or physical as we think we are. From what I saw, it looked like we are energy first, and physical is only a result of expressing our energy. And we can change our physical reality if we change our energy. (Some people have mentioned I use the term ‘Vibration’). For me, personally, I was made to feel that in order to keep my energy/vibration level up, I only had to live in the moment, enjoy every moment of life, and use each moment to elevate the next moment (which then elevates my future). It is in that moment of elevating your energy level that you can change your future (like my test results). It sounds very simplistic, but it felt very deep when I was experiencing the understanding of it.”

– Anita Moorjani

Read about Anita and her NDE here. The quote above is located here.

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“I now know that a lot more exists than we are consciously aware of or capable of understanding. Each day, I am understanding more and more since the NDE. I am finding out that there are things I now feel I ‘know’ or ‘understand’, which I never did before. The best example I can think of is: imagine there is a huge warehouse, which is dark, and you live in this warehouse with one flashlight. Everything you know about this warehouse is seen through the light of this one small flashlight. Whenever you want to look for something, you may or may not find it, but it does not mean the thing does not exist. It is there, but you just haven’t flashed your light on it. You can only see what your light is focused on. Then one day, someone flicks on a lightswitch, and for the first time, you can see the whole warehouse. The vastness of it is almost overwhelming, you can’t see all the way to the end, and you know there is more than what you can see. But you do see how all the products are lined up on all the shelves, and you notice just how many different things there are in the warehouse which you never noticed, never even conceived having existed, yet they do, simultaneously with the things you know existed (those are the things your flashlight had been able to find). Then, even when the light switch goes back off, nothing can take away the understanding and clarity of your experience. Even though you are back to one flashlight, you now know how to look for things. You know what is possible, and you even know what to look for. You start viewing things differently, and it is from this new springboard that your experiences start to happen. And so I find that in my daily life, I am referring referring to different aspects of my experience at different times, and I am understanding things in a different way, and knowing things I did not know I knew.”

– Anita Moorjani

Read about Anita and her NDE here. The quote above is located here.

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Realizing My Magnificence Means Accepting All My Feelings And Emotions

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Question: What I found most interesting in Anita’s account is that she talks about the information she got about the influence of her inner attitude on her life. Now if I understood that correctly it is about somehow being totally in tune or such … something like being totally yourself. I would appreciate if she could say more about that. To me, this is actually the key issue about the NDE. What can we gain from it to live life in a better way?

Anita Moorjani: Oh, this one is easy! The number one lesson I learned is that it’s really important to always be me, and to value myself. For me, this insight was the key to understanding why I had cancer. Now I’m not saying I know why others get cancer. But in my case, my biggest insight was that my inability to value myself was one of the key elements that fed my own cancer.

Living in a world where I learned to believe that I am not lovable enough, not deserving enough, and not perfect enough, until and unless I could live up to some unrealistic expectation of what it means to be perfect, is a big part of what caused my body to become sick and fall apart. I bought into a fictitious belief of what it means to be perfect. But my experience caused me to become aware of the fact that I was never less than perfect or less than magnificent. I just thought I was, and thinking and believing these untruths is what eventually drove me to become sick. I had been spending my life, up to that point, trying to attain something I already was.

Also, I used to mistakenly think that “positive thinking” is all that is required to lead a positive life. I learned, however, that it is far more important to be yourself than it is to be positive. And sometimes, being yourself does not necessarily mean being positive, and it’s important to know that that’s ok too.

I agree that it’s good to find things in life to feel positive about, and it’s wonderful if we are able to cultivate a disposition where we can easily find things to feel positive and grateful for. But I have learned to be careful not to deny myself the right to feel bad, negative, angry, etc, when I am really feeling that way. It’s not always easy to be positive, especially if things are not going well at a particular time. So it’s even worse when we are adding to a bad situation by judging our negative feelings about the situation!

Prior to my experience, I would have suppressed those emotions and not allowed myself to express them, because I would have judged them as being negative. I always thought I had to be positive. But by suppressing these emotions, I was denying a very real part of myself. In essence, I was sending a message to myself that parts of my being were not deserving of being expressed. And as I continued to deny these emotions, they only became bigger. As you probably already know, what you suppress only pushes against you even harder. So over a period of time, it became harder and harder to keep those negative emotions under wrap. Which means, it became harder and harder to be the positive person I was trying so hard to be, because I was just so focused on trying to suppress the negative emotions! Trying to stay positive then just becomes an energy drain.

Realizing my magnificence means accepting all my feelings and emotions (and not just the positive ones) without judging them. None of our emotions are actually negative. We only judge and label them so. I have since learned to embrace all my feelings and emotions without judgment, and this makes it much easier for me to be a happier, lighter and more positive person, and relieves me of the burden of trying to be positive during times when I don’t actually feel that way.

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“Many events in my life I experienced, but not from how I remembered it, but from the point of view… [of] how the people, animals, environment experienced it around me. I felt it as my own. The times I had made others happy, and sad, I felt it all as they did. It was very apparent that every single thought, word, and action affects everything around us and indeed the entire universe. Trees, plants, animals too. I have been a long-term vegetarian since about 18 years old and I know this was appreciated and is a good choice in life. Spiritually it seemed to show proof of respect for all life, and even seemed to balance some of the negative and wicked things I have done in my life. In the life review we judge ourselves; no one else does. The light/god did not. But with no ego left — and no lies — we can’t hide from what we have done and  feel remorse and shame, especially in the presence of this love and light. Some of the things in life we think of as important don’t seem to be so important there. But some of the insignificant things from the material human perspective are very important spiritually.”

– Justin U describing his near-death experience on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation website

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“If something ever happened to me again, I would give faith healers and healers the first chance; I would give a miracle the first chance… If someone was all wired up and everything, I would bring a whole bunch of healers in the room, some manifestors, and let them have a go at it. I traveled the world studying these things and I’ve seen people healed of the most amazing things by holy water, holy places, holy men, holy women, and holy moly. I would give a miracle the first chance… the universe is one giant miracle and you are a part of that!”

– Mellen-Thomas Benedict

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“Ever since the experience, I have carried a terrific sense of urgency to share it with the lonely, discouraged and dis-eased people such as alcoholics, drug addicts and the social outcast. I have shared what I have learned from this and other training experiences with my patients and audiences, the knowledge that a God of love loves us regardless of our race, creed, or color. I have received many letters and have had patients say that my sharing my experiences with them has either saved them from committing suicide or completely turned their lives around because it gave them a much better understanding of God’s love and plan for their lives. I realize I have had to inject much of my own personal history into this book, but I do so because I hope the reader will come to realize, if God can put up with a ‘knucklehead’ like myself, then He certainly can love and forgive others.”

– Dr. George Ritchie, from Ordered To Return: My Life After Dying

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“The Light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked the Light, “What is going on here? Please, Light, clarify yourself for me… The Light responded. The information transferred to me was that during your life after death experience your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the Light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not. As the Light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our higher Self matrix.”

– Mellen-Thomas Benedict

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“One of my questions to the light was, ‘What is heaven?”‘

“I was given a tour of all the heavens that have been created: the Nirvanas, the Happy Hunting Grounds, all of them. I went through them. These are thought form creations that we have created…

“I saw the Christian heaven. We expect it to be a beautiful place, and you stand in front of the throne, worshipping forever. I tried it. It is boring! … It is childlike. I do not mean to offend anyone. Some heavens are very interesting, and some are very boring. I found the ancient ones to be more interesting, like the Native American ones, the Happy Hunting Grounds. The Egyptians have fantastic ones. It goes on and on. There are so many of them. In each of them there is a fractal that is your particular interpretation, unless you are part of the group soul that believes in only the God of a particular religion. Then you are very close, in the same ball park together. But even then, each is a little bit different…”

– Mellen-Thomas Benedict

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“During my near-death experience I had a descent into what you might call Hell, and it was very surprising. I did not see Satan or evil. My descent into Hell was a descent into each person’s customized human misery, ignorance, and darkness of not knowing. It seemed like a miserable eternity. But each of the millions of souls around me had a little star of light always available. But no one seemed to pay attention to it. They were so consumed with their own grief, trauma and misery. But, after what seemed an eternity, I started calling out to that Light, like a child calling to a parent for help. Then the Light opened up and formed a tunnel that came right to me and insulated me from all that fear and pain… The Light came to me and turned into a huge golden angel… Then I was taken to the Light.”

– Mellen-Thomas Benedict

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“In one of my visits with the Light I was told that the near-death experience… would become more and more popular and it would have an affect on the entire world when a critical mass was hit and all these people have died and come back and are telling you that there is a lot more going on than we think.”

“The other side is not all it is cracked up to be. There’s a lot you can’t do on the other side. There’s a perfect combination though. A body without spirit is a wasteland and a spirit without a body is a wasteland. And we are the perfect matrix of body and spirit. With body and spirit, you can have it all.”

“Everyone has direct access. Everyone is directly connected to The Source that we all are. There are many ways to get there. There are many ways to experience this. It is as natural as breathing, as natural as sunlight. What we have to realize is that we all have that direct connection. Some can do it through meditation. Some through song and dance. There is a million ways to do it. And no one is ever cut off, or ever will be cut off from The Source that we come from. To really focus it we must — and this is a lesson I had to learn — you must come into a space where you love your life and then everything can flow…”

– Mellen-Thomas Benedict from a Coast to Coast interview with George Noory on November 17, 2009

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“God gave everything to us, everything is here — this is where it’s at. And what we are into now is God’s exploration of God through us. People are so busy trying to become God that they ought to realize that we are already God and God is becoming us. That’s what it is really about. When I realized this, I was finished with the void, and wanted to return to this creation…”

– Mellen-Thomas Benedict

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“I am profoundly moved and persuaded by the near-death experience.”

– Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions and Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine

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For more information about near-death experiences (and related phenomena), go here.

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