Death and Afterlife on the Emerald Isle

Got a lovely note from a writer from Ireland today.   

Ms. Fitzpatrick

She's Roisin Fitzpatrick, who had a near death experience, wrote about it, was interviewed and examined about it, and has shared her experience with the planet. 

I was going to say "I got a note from a woman in Ireland today" - but realized that whatever words I try to attach to her experience become qualifiers - so when people read this they might say "well, that's what happens in Ireland," or "she's a woman, so it's different than my reality" or even "She's from a particular part of Ireland, so that gives me some context to parse her experience into an acceptable understanding."  When talking about things that are not of this planet, it seems we have to add or subtract all of these possibilities that "it's not me" before we can accept the fact that "it could have been me."

(I could write "I got an email from a human being who had a profound other wordly experience today, and she's sharing it with the world." That should be enough of a headline, but most people need qualifiers to allow them to navigate the day.)

So let's just say she's a real person, who had a real experience, who has been examined by the foremost authority on near death experiences, and here's what he has to say about her book and her experience:

"Róisín Fitzpatrick has written a remarkable book that is unique in the annals of near-death experiences. Fitzpatrick describes her own harrowing brush with death and transcendent near-death experience, and guides us through her discovery of the forerunners of NDEs in the ancient roots of pre-Celtic culture. Experiences like Róisín’s have now been validated by hundreds of scientific studies around the world, and provide evidence that consciousness is more than the brain and indeed that we are more than our bodies. As a guide to enhancing your own spirituality, Taking Heaven Lightly is a love story in the most sublime sense." (Dr. Bruce Greyson)

So, what happened to Ms. Fitzpatrick?

Nothing short of an extraordinary event that occurred to an ordinary person, and she's chosen to "come back here" to share it with the planet.  And to you dear reader, I now pass it along to you, for your own perusal over a cup of coffee.  Here's her Blog:

(As an aside, I made a trip to the Emerald Isle when I was 19.  I was traveling with a gaggle of students, we were going to school in Rome, and somehow we managed to wend our way through Europe during spring break - well now, come to think of it, exactly 40 years ago this week.  We were staying at B and B's, and I was the fellow who would try to bargain our way into a group rate.  "I know you only charge $10 a night, but might we get a discount for 6 of us?"  It always seemed to work, if only because it seemed like these folks had never heard someone make that particular pitch before.

It as 1975 you see - before the Irish boom, before the internet, but just around the time that the government doubled the tax on beer, so everyone went to paying double what they'd paid the week before for the same pint.

I wound up playing Chuck Berry tunes in a band at a local pub, and the owner let us stay in the rooms above.  We wound up staying in Cork, invited into a home to play guitars and drink tea - it was around midnight that the "owner" of the place these guys were squatting in came home and booted us into the street.  Still, the hospitality was epic - complete strangers took us in bits and pieces. Two here, two there...  and finally we made it to Killarney, where the skies parted in Simpson's fashion, a blast of sunlight broke through, a bright shaft of light landed on top of the head of a buck - a deer who had wandered out of the brush to face our small contingent sleeping in tents.  It was as magical a moment as I've ever seen - the entire country was now aglow in a different color, as the sun reveals why it's the Emerald Isle.  I can still see that deer staring at us, a timeless beauty, faced with stragglers from the Rome Center.)

A pic I took while going to school in Rome in 1975.

But I digress.

On March 22nd, 2014, Ms Fitzpatrick had a near death experience that shook her to her core.  She traveled to see Dr. Greyson at the University of Virginia (fans of "Flipside" will note that Dr. Greyson's interview "Is Consciousness Created by the Brain" appears in "It's a Wonderful Afterlife" volume one), where he interviewed her, and gave her context and insight into the profound experience which had happened to her.  (That account is HERE).  From her website:

"In this ground-breaking book, ("Taking Heaven Lightly") Róisín Fitzpatrick shares with the reader her remarkable journey when in 2004, without any warning, she suffered a life-threatening brain haemorrhage. While in the ICU of Beaumont Hospital, she felt herself being drawn out of her body and enveloped in a radiant light. There, in a blissful vision of the afterlife, she experienced the most powerful transformation of her life. Róisín's discovery – that ‘Heaven’ lies within each of us, that we are pure love and always at one with the eternal light – changed the course of her world. She went on to make a full recovery by integrating this newfound love and light into her daily existence.

Róisín calls this her ‘near-life experience’ because it has given her the freedom to truly live life. And she encourages readers to embrace this precious gift of life by asking the question: are you living your best life now? She provides an inspirational guide with simple, yet, powerfully effective practical exercises to show ways to be able to feel and experience this light in our own lives. To quote Dr. Ranck, this is 'A book of wise words that will introduce some people to the light, will draw others back to the light and will itself long shine light in all sorts of unforeseeable and beautiful ways.'

Róisín also seamlessly weaves her near-death experience (NDE) with the eternal light – solas síoraí – of our ancient Irish myths and monuments, shining a light on our past, present and future. She shows how we can all connect with this light to enhance our daily lives, and develop a deeper connection to a sense of peace and unity beyond the physical realm. Her near death experience has been validated by Dr. Bruce Greyson, one of the pioneers and medical experts in this field in the United States for over 40 years."

Dr. Greyson also included this message to Ms. Fitzpatrick: (We have a gaggle of Fitzpatricks, Muleadys and Hayes on the Irish side of my family, and my mom always referred to them as "Ms Fitz" - get it?)

"You have something valuable to share with people who are searching for a meaning in life, a reason why we are heare and a purpose to our existence. Many people are looking for something deeper, wishing to find more joy and inner peace, maybe even yearn for a divine connection which at some level we know exists but seems to be elusive and beyond our grasp. Through the journey of your near-death experience you can share how this unconditional love and powerful light is the truth of who we really are." (Dr. Greyson)

As fans of "It's A Wonderful Afterlife: Further Adventures in the Flipside" know, I expand the research around "between life" hypnotherapy sessions to include near death experiences and other phenomenon that have been investigated, to show how there are similar accounts in all of these stories.  The key element is that of hearing or sensing or experiencing "new information" - that being information that could not have come from a memory currently in the person who experienced the near death experience, the visitation from the afterlife, or while under deep hypnosis.  When these people report "new information" from the Flipside, it verifies that indeed there is life after death.

Science has a term for "past life memory" - cryptomnesia.  It means that whatever memory you think you had actually came from something you read, heard, or saw - even in utero - because of the firm belief that everything (consciousness) is created by the brain.  And that would make sense if the data supported that assumption.  But it does not.

I cite numerous examples in the books, ("Flipside" and "It's A Wonderful Afterlife") but for starters Dr. Eben Alexander ("Proof of Life") was led around his NDE by a woman he did not consciously know, but felt he'd "known forever."  It wasn't until much later that he learned from his birth family (he was adopted) that he had a sister, and when they sent him a photograph of her, he recognized her as his "afterlife guide."  In Colton Burpo's account of his NDE, ("Heaven in for Real") he met his sister that he didn't know had died in childbirth, as his parents didn't tell him that information.  So when he returned, that was one of his observations. "I met my sister."  Just the other day Jaime Prymak Sullivan (Cawfeetawk) posted a video of her daughter seeing her grandmother on camera (also on this blog), where the daughter said that her grandmother was calling her by the pet name that only Jaime knew.  

In my own case, my father visited me after his passing and asked me to write down some information, which I did.  It included a list of names of people he was currently with, and when I showed that list to my mother she identified numerous friends who had died in WWII that I'd never heard of.

This is all "new information."

Information that could not have been looked up, could not have been known before hand.  Or if you find yourself trying to make the case that there's a remote possibility that perhaps in some strange twisting of reality those details might have been accessed, I submit that's just your brain trying to do its best to contain, or block information that's foreign to it.  There may be some physical reason for this "denial of service" message that our brains seem to adhere to, but there's equally the possibility that there's a reason why these "blocks" appear to be "thinning" or disappearing altogether (in cases where people have an NDE or go through deep hypnosis.)

I could go on, but I'll leave that as it may be.

I haven't met Ms. Fitzpatrick, but hope to do so one day, if only to discuss this further.  I did meet David Bennett, ("Voyage of Purpose") who also had a near death experience, who also was interviewed by Dr. Greyson, and who also had "new information" revealed to him during the NDE. (That he would get cancer and overcome it, and when the Doctor on call came into the office to report the news, he recognized this Dr. from his NDE and knew exactly what he was about to say.)  Here he is in his own words: