It is the one sure thing an inhabitant of this world can count on ACIM Bookstore. All of your apparent successes and failures, your loves, your hates, your losses, your gains, depend on this one inevitable fact. In a world of uncertainty and chaos, it is the one guarantee you have — the barometer for your life; the clock that ticks away in the back of your mind.
At this time, and all over this world, there is increasing documentation of encounters with death. Filling our bookstores and television programs are reports from hundreds of people, from all walks of life, describing virtually the same occurrence:
A sense of being dead, of peace and painlessness,
looking down upon yourself and traveling through a tunnel to a light so bright and beautiful.
“Freedom from the chains of the physical body, seeing your life flash before your eyes. A sense of oneness and complete understanding. Meeting loved ones that had passed away long ago. A feeling of being taken care of and loved simply as you are, without question or judgment. Finally, a reluctance to return from this light, from this experience of indescribable love.”
Near-death? Beautiful light, love, oneness, understanding, peace and joy!
Does this speak to you of death, the great unknown, the one thing feared by all humans? The one experience you spend your whole life warding off. The aim of all medical and scientific research, to extend the human existence as long as possible to avoid this moment. This moment of what? This moment when you experience “an entrance into a splendorous light-filled realm in which time and space no longer exist.” Only if life is considered to be sickness, pain and loneliness could death be described as something so incredible, so desirable. Perhaps life is not the condition in which you currently find yourself. Perhaps life is not a condition at all, and these delightful descriptions of “near- death” are moments of recognition of the reality of eternal life.
Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging,
losing vitality and dying in the end?
At the moment of your supposed birth into this world, you are only dying. From day one you begin the process of getting old.
“You thread your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a little longer before it overtakes you and you disappear.”
