Kenneth Ring and The Near-death Experience.
In Lessons from the Light; What We Can Learn from the Near-death Experience, Dr. Kenneth Ring, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, escorts us through the mysterious world of death, or more precisely near-death, to learn the lessons about life such a journey has to teach.
Like Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dr. Ring is an expert guide who presents us with testimonies of near-death experiencers (NDErs) about the deep significance of our relationships and the far-reaching consequences of our actions, hard knowledge obtained these witnesses tell us from the other side of life. Yet, short of having had a near-death experience (NDE) ourselves, how are we to gain by hearing these stories?
One possibility is to use for our own personal development what Dr. Ring calls the ultimate teaching tool experienced by NDErs, the Life Review. Both “a self-witnessing and interactive event,” the life review is a total re-experiencing, or re-living of one’s life from the viewpoints of detached spectator and multiple participant. That is, in a life review as reported by NDErs, a person doesn’t just watch in a detached manner a replay of one’s entire life, but also re-experiences every thought, word, and deed as both oneself doing the thinking, speaking, and acting and from the standpoint of all those who were the recipients of our actions.
Accordingly, in private one may choose to take 10 to 20 minutes to review in the mind’s eye the events of the day or a particular episode that was of particular difficulty emotionally. Cautiously, while breathing deeply, but slowly and comfortably, as scenes are replayed somewhat impressionistically within, using the imagination, an attempt is made to detach so that the idea “everything you do becomes yours” can be entertained in openness and without judgement. Making the effort to realize what it might mean to feel as the other—to be on the receiving end of one’s words or actions—could result in fruitful insights for personal transformation.
Exposure to literature on the phenomenon of the near-death experience we are told has brought comfort to millions as well as changes in outlook, values, and behavior that revolutionized countless lives. As we listen to these extraordinary reports of life beyond life we hear the familiar Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or as Dr. Ring says, “Another way of putting this would be to say that the life review demonstrates that, psychologically and spiritually, there is really only one person in the universe—and that person is, of course, you.”
