Clinical death and bais din in shamayin

Seraph

Fri, Feb 06 2009, 2:55 am

Do you believe stories of people in comas that have visions of walking down a dark dark place towards a really bright light?
Or people that had a clinical death, and while that happened they were in "bais din in shamayim"?

Honestly, I half believe, half don't. I believe more when I hear about it on a tape, etc, than if I know the person it happened to. I mean I believe in shamayim there are bais dins and everything, but how do I know if this is what really happened to them and not just them wanting to be listened to, so they make up stories based on other stories they heard to promote their agenda and to feel popular?

ora_43

Fri, Feb 06 2009, 3:57 am

I find it difficult to believe the more detailed stories. "I saw a beautiful white light and felt peaceful" is one thing, but specific descriptions of the beit din, malachim, etc, I'm wary of.

It just seems odd to me that someone would be given such concrete evidence that Torah is true and the words of the chachomim were true before their (final) death. What about bechira chofshit?

octopus

Fri, Feb 06 2009, 1:08 pm

I believe in out of body experiences. If you read about people that have been pronounced dead, and they feel themselves (their souls, I guess) floating around the room, and they see their body. And didn't chazal say that this world is like a hallway (I think it is in a rashi somewhere) so it kind of makes sense to me some of these descriptions. However- I don't necessarily believe every account is true. Maybe some of these people combed through chazal and made up their own experiences.

I did have a teacher in twelfth grade that had a near death experience. She described what she saw, and it jived with what chazal said. We had a lot of discussions about the different stages of death and though I guess it was sort of strange to have those kinds of discussions in high school, in a way, I guess it was kind of therapeutic for her and it was mighty interesting for us students.

ChossidMom

Sat, Feb 07 2009, 1:16 pm

ora_43 wrote:

I'm with Ora.

People can have all kinds of agendas and they probably think they're doing a real "chessed" by making up a story so that they can be mekarev people.

I once read a very interesting book, though, by Elizabeth Kubler Ross called Death and Dying and it described many near death experiences. Interestingly, noone mentioned a beis din shel ma'ala.

shosh

Sat, Feb 07 2009, 2:02 pm

I'm really not sure what to think. As for out of body experiences, I once went through a trauma (nothing that meant I was about to die, ch"v, but still traumatic), but one of the weirdest parts of it was that I felt as if I had floated up to the ceiling and was looking down at what was going on instead of it actually happening to me. I was told that this "out of body" experience is very common as a reaction to trauma as it protects the person from being unable to deal with it.

Maybe some of these other experiences are in that category, I don't know. The person was going through something terrible physically, and this was how their mind dealt with it ... In terms of white lights, etc, it does seem to be a common feature of these stories. But I have to say that I am still very wary of them.

amother

Wed, Feb 25 2009, 11:48 am

I guess it would depend who's telling the story.

My sister recently told me she had a dream where she was in gan eden, or at the entrance of Gan Eden, and she was talking to our grandmother who passed away 2 years ago. My grandmother was describing to her what Gan Eden was like with great detail. (when she woke up, my sister couldn't remember the description, just the idea that it's nothing like what people think it is and it's 100000 times better) After hearing all about it my sister wanted to stay and my grandmother kept telling her she couldn't because it wasn't her time yet because she still had too much to accomplish down here and she got really upset. She woke up crying.

She has dreams like this all the time, and wierd experiences, and I believe her because I get them too, just nowhere near the way she gets them. So when she describes an out of body experience, I believe her. When someone I don't know does, I want to believe it, but I still remain a bit skeptical.