Blog

By Cathy Eck

Near Death Experience

About every six months, I get an email with the story of Mellen-Thomas Benedict’s near death experience.  In case you have missed this frequently circulated email, here is the link to his website:  https://www.mellen-thomas.com/stories.htm.  I’ve always enjoyed his story.  I read it nearly every time it comes my way.

But it’s so easy to read a story like this and think “So that’s how it is in heaven or when you die.”  We assume that what was true for Mellen-Thomas (and others who have had near death experiences) is also true for us.  It’s easy to forget that what we experience is based on our beliefs.  One of the cool things about our brain and our senses is that we get to create our life; and at the same time, we get to be voyeurs into the lives of others.  Then we think, “If it can happen to them, it could happen to me.”  We all seem to have that belief, and it runs constantly. This belief could be good if we are observing someone else’s joy or success.  But we usually say this when we watch the evening news.  We start to forget that we are all creating individually at the physical level.  Our oneness is only at the True Self or spiritual level only.

There have been at least a thousand times when I was sure that someone else was creating in my experience, and I had nothing to do with it.  I was a complete victim.  Then I would see that they were creating in my experience because I was giving them permission to do so with my own beliefs.  I’d get to the causal belief in me, and their ability to force my life ended.  The biggest trap of all is around religious dogma.  It is a giant mechanism designed to control masses of people under the guise of being helpful and caring.  Government is a close second.  Because we have major religions and large governments, we tend to see much of the same reality because they create collective beliefs.  That is not how we were designed to live.

Letting Go on Speed

After a couple of years of letting go, I started to realize that a near death experience is actually a lot like letting go on speed.  The heaven that people describe is what earth starts to look like as we let go of the false self.  The near death experience produces a strong dose of the truth, much like the insights people get as they let go, and often problems disappear or their body heals (again something that often happens when people let go of beliefs).  However, the near death experience does seem to have a lot better special effects.

Lester Levinson, an American who achieved mental freedom, said that he came to see death as an addiction.  He said that we get used to willing it to us when we have made such a mess of our minds that we get sick of living.  I get what he was saying.  If you’ve got a mind filled with beliefs and then let them all go at once, it would be like a giant orgasm.  Lots of people are addicted to sex.  Orgasm is actually said to be called petite mort or “little death” in French.

Lester said that you must clean up your act in your body.  If you don’t, you’ll be back again and again to finish the job.  That doesn’t feel bad to me so I suspect it is at least close to the truth.  I’ve let go of a death urge in my mind many times; so I do suspect that we choose death.  But if we are unaware of our choices in life, we won’t know if we are choosing death.  We also won’t know that we can reverse the choice.

Lester’s theory actually made more sense to me than the notion of coming back again and again to suffer or receive punishment as karma for past deeds. That idea scared the crap out of me, which proves it isn’t true..

In my experience, I’ve seen time and time again how people labeled incurable just needed to let go of their beliefs (letting go makes miracles normal).  So Mellen-Thomas’s story makes sense.  I’ve also watched people moving toward death because they felt that was the only way that they could exit a bad marriage.  I’ve seen people unconsciously choosing death because they felt they’d never fulfill their dreams.  Death (like life) seems to have an intention behind it that we can’t see if we aren’t in the dying person’s shoes.

Judgment Day

At one of my workshops, a woman said to me,  “I’m a devout Fundamentalist Christian, and I never thought I could listen to someone like you.  But what you do in your mind is exactly what Christianity says we will do when we die — you are doing the Judgment Day while alive.”  I hadn’t thought of it that way.  But it’s true.  Her beliefs only created a timing difference in that she plans to do what I’m doing now after death.

I review events in my life and let go of the beliefs that created different experiences so that my memories can return to perfection.  I usually do see the other person’s perspective.  Forgiving also happens as part of the process.  These are all Christian teachings.  The Christian woman joined me in the original notion of the Judgment Day (from ancient Egypt) where you must die with a light heart to get to heaven.  They didn’t say get a light heart after you were dead.  It was also said that we must “die while alive” meaning the false self must die while we are living.

How Did We Get Here?

In piecing together the ancient puzzle pieces, I suspect that the early Egyptian idea of living a pure life became unachievable as people became more power-hungry.  So they changed the rules, turning the Judgment Day into a speedy review.

After that, all kinds of schemes came about to wipe the slate clean while alive without doing the true work.   I guess we got lazy.

The latest invention came just before the Civil War with the idea of “being saved.”  Today we have an illusion that allows people to treat others like shit and still be friends with Jesus.  We’ve fallen a long way.  Initiation was once the way back; but why go through initiation when you can just go to confession, get saved, or buy an indulgence.  We’re suckers for one-stop shopping or the quick-fix.

Death as an Illusion

So why hold on to all this crap until we die (or why die at all)?  Mellen-Thomas discusses this briefly.  He says “You have a chance to look at it (your life at the moment of death) but most people do not.”  How interesting?  People don’t even want to look at their life when they are dead.  It explains why I’m not the most popular site on the web.

The hardest part of mentoring people to let go is to get them to look at their memories and emotions.  People are terrified of their emotions because they don’t understand their true purpose.  Many would rather hang from an airplane then go back to their past.

They believe that they can’t let go so why did up a painful past.  They think they are being punished for something and often have no clue what they did wrong. They also think the bad stuff from the past was real when it was all just part of the illusion; they don’t realize the event means nothing from the True Self’s perspective.  Letting go is only about getting rid of the causal belief so it can’t happen again.  In my experience, people come to realize that they are truly good once they let go.  Blame and victimhood disappear.  Guilt and shame are washed away.  It is holding on that creates all the problems.

If you die with your causal beliefs, and you believe in the continuation of the soul, logic would tell you that you’re going to see the same crap in a different time and space.  I suspect that is what Lester saw.

It is just like the illusion of freedom that we create with projection.  A doctor projects his fear of disease on to his patients.  It works well until he retires, then all of his projections come flooding back into his mind; and he gets the disease he was trying to heal in others.  If death is a belief that we assume frees us of beliefs, it would work for awhile.  We’d think we left those crappy thoughts back on earth until we realized that time and space are an illusion.  So we pop back into earth to try again.  It is like going on a vacation and then finding out you took yourself with you.  It sucks.

The near death experience is a way of getting clarity for a time.  But if you can’t get and sustain the clarity by your own volition, then you have to create a near death experience again and again to stay free.  I don’t recommend that path.  The goal of initiation, if you go all the way, is to be fearless and to be completely free to do and be anything without beliefs to hold you back.  Initiates were enlightened; but most enlightened people are not anywhere close to the level of freedom of the initiates.  It seems the near death experience brings enlightenment, but not complete freedom.

I can’t think of anything more amazing than to live from a free state of being on earth all the time.  I see it as our natural state.  The ancient initiates called it heaven on earth.

So here are a few lines from Mellen-Thomas’s experience (shown in bold) that you may have noticed if you’ve ever completely let go on any issue.

“I had been an information freak in the 1970’s, and I had become increasingly despondent over the nuclear crisis, the ecology crisis, and so forth. So, since I did not have a spiritual basis, I began to believe that nature had made a mistake, and that we were probably a cancerous organism on the planet. I saw no way that we could get out from all the problems we had created for ourselves and the planet. I perceived all humans as cancer, and that is what I got.”  TMB

Mellen-Thomas said it was very important to examine our world view.  I’d add to that to let go of any part of our world view that doesn’t feel good.  We have three main levels of beliefs:  1)  beliefs about ourselves, 2) beliefs about others, and 3) beliefs about people in general and the world.  Nearly every problem in my body has been caused by a belief that caused me to see others or the world in a disempowering way.  I saw myself as a victim of someone or something else. Rarely were my body problems caused by my own self esteem or lack of it.

I found that strange at first, but it makes sense if you remember the old ancient maxim:  As the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.  The body is the mini-me of the world we perceive.  To change our body, we must change our world view.  Consequently, letting go to free our body can be a challenge because beliefs about the world around us appear to be collective and unchangeable since so many people believe them.  That’s all just part of the illusion and why breaking out is so tricky.

“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.” TMB

Having facilitated regression therapy in my past, I noticed this statement to be reality for many.  Most people saw light just because they were told they would see light.  But others didn’t see anything.  In other words, people do what they are told even when they are dying.  Sad, huh!  But it makes sense.

Now Mellen-Thomas said he wasn’t religious; but most people don’t know what they believe.  They might not like religion but often they do believe it and have buried it in their unconscious mind.  Often they’ve put a new belief system on top like positive thinking.

The mind is like a tape recorder.  It doesn’t discriminate, it just records and plays.  The record and delete buttons are the property of our authority figures until we make our True Self the authority.  If we had any religious authority figures in our early life, we’ve probably got some religious beliefs in hiding.

All Is Mind

To understand this, you have to accept the initiate’s maxim, “All is mind.”  You see if all is mind, then nothing is here except what you think is here.  Quantum physics now agrees with the ancient maxim.  If the body is only a figment of your imagination and you delete the body, you are still your thoughts.  If you’ve got lots of unwanted thoughts or beliefs, you’ve been punked.   This brings us back to Lester’s point of view.

The confusion centers around the notion of the soul, which was invented by religion.  The initiates referred to the True Self and the false self.  The True Self is immortal; the false self is temporal.  If you let go of the false self, the True Self remains.  It is like hitting a reset button.  What actually happens for you is largely a consequence of how you see the True Self and false self in relation to the body.

Western religion has the True Self in the clouds along with the old fart on the throne.  So when you drop the body, you’d drop the false beliefs since they are in the body, and you’d be your True Self again listening to harp music.  That is why they consider life one trip only.

Eastern religion has the True Self as the spirit and the false self as the ego, and they say that you must drop the ego.  As people drop the ego, they often can do amazing things with their bodies.  They were much closer to the initiate point of view, but they felt that you had to be come desireless to do that.  I’m not into the begging bowl stuff.

The initiates were about creating the body temple and living life to the fullest.  So the goal of life was to drop the false from the body and allow the True Self to take up exclusive residence.  In this way, the body could be immortal.  There were no longer limitations since the false self is the limited part of our mind.

What About Sin?

If you believe the religious notion that your soul has been stained, and you can’t remove the stain, then you just might carry that baggage around with you for lifetimes.  I don’t know because that is a path of the illusion that I’m not traveling.  The notion of the soul that is imperfect never made any sense to me.  I’d let go of the lie that you have a stained soul and see what happens.  I used to kind of believe in the soul, and I let it go.  I didn’t die.

I now see the soul as a religious way of getting people to think that they are their false selves since the soul holds the religious beliefs and the person’s flaws in it as well as the good stuff.  It is a sweet term for the false self — makes it look all righteous.  It implies that you can’t let suffering or beliefs go because they are in the soul.  The soul is a perfect example of level confusion.

“As I asked the Light to keep clearing for me, to keep explaining, I understood what the higher Self matrix is. We have a grid around the planet where all the higher Selves are connected. This is like a great company, a next subtle level of energy around us, the spirit level, you might say…..

Then the Light turned into the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen: a mandala of human souls on this planet. Now I came to this with my negative view of what was happening on the planet. So as I asked the Light to keep clarifying for me, I saw in this magnificent mandala how beautiful we all are in our essence, our core. We are the most beautiful creations.” TMB

This is exactly how the ancient masters viewed the True Self.  They saw each True Self as connected to every other True Self.  All True Selves were in harmony.  But I must add that the false selves were not meant to be connected; false selves were separate containers to hold our thoughts.  Originally, the intention for the false self was good.  The false self was used for creating; false selves were dropped when the creation was complete.  People also didn’t create in other people’s experiences.

The ancient flower of life symbol was a reminder of this very concept.   If you expand it to 3D, you basically would have all the people who you interact with throughout your life connecting to your circle.  Relationships would be very satisfying.  With some people, we connect more intimately; others are outside of our direct sphere of influence but still part of our world.  This is perfection; everyone living from their True Self — individual, but interconnected.

“In that instant I realized even more. I realized that WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN SAVED, and we saved ourselves because we were designed to self-correct like the rest of God’s universe. This is what the second coming is about.” TMB

Ah!  So important.  This is why positive thinking, prayer, confession, doing good deeds, religion, and therapy usually don’t make a damn bit of difference.  Being saved is a belief that fixes a belief.  It is kind of the same thing as two wrongs making a right.  Initiation was self correction.  We can be supported or taught how to self correct, but ultimately we have to do the work.  This is why the guru can’t do it.  This is why Jesus ain’t coming to get us.  We must self-correct!

“Then the Light said, “You have a desire.” The Light knew all about me, everything past, present and future.”  TMB

This explains why we don’t have to affirm our desires.  Our true Self already knows them.  The false self is just holding them away from our view because it’s honoring our beliefs, our false God.  As we let go, the desires just come into our life naturally and normally — no miracles necessary.  It can’t be any other way.

“As I rode this stream of consciousness through the center of the galaxy, the stream was expanding in awesome fractal waves of energy. The super clusters of galaxies with all their ancient wisdom flew by. At first I thought I was going somewhere; actually traveling. But then I realized that, as the stream was expanding, my own consciousness was also expanding to take in everything in the Universe! All creation passed by me. It was an unimaginable wonder! I truly was a Wonder Child; a babe in Wonderland!

At this point, I found myself in a profound stillness, beyond all silence. I could see or perceive FOREVER, beyond Infinity.”  TMB

Now Mellen-Thomas shows us the reward.  And it matches the idea of the galactic and universal cycles of the Mayan calendar, where we were all supposed to reconnect at the global and universal levels of consciousness.  Others have seen this with the aid of LSD or shrooms.

“What mystics call the Void is not a void. It is so full of energy, a different kind of energy that has created everything that we are. Everything since the Big Bang is vibration, from the first Word, which is the first vibration. The biblical “I am” really has a question mark after it. “I am—What am I?” So creation is God exploring God’s Self through every way imaginable, in an on¬going, infinite exploration through every one of us. I began to see during my near-death experience that everything that is, is the Self, literally, your Self, my Self. Everything is the great Self.”  TMB

That is the True Self, universal and one with God, explained so beautifully.  He gets back to the true notion of God before the purposeful confusion in Genesis 1-2 where God moved from the being that Mellen-Thomas just explained to the power-hungry, punishing Lord or Ruler of the country or territory who only liked the chosen people because they obeyed him.

The most popular line I hear from people is I want to know who I am.  I want to find myself.  The very purpose of the Yahweh God was to cause people to forget their power and who they were.  Following God’s will works if you see God and your True Self as one (a state of being that is free and made of unconditional love).  But surrendering to an ancient tyrant isn’t the best choice to make.  You see this with Islam, which is all about following God’s will.  It sounds so good and plays out so badly because they are not following the pure, loving, creator God — they are following a modern form of Yahweh just like Jews and Christians.

“At first all the memory of the trip that I have now was not there. I kept slipping out of this world and kept asking, “Am I alive?” This world seemed more like a dream than that one. Within three days I was feeling normal again, clearer, yet different than I had ever felt in my life. My memory of my near-death experience came back later. I could see nothing wrong with any human being I had ever seen. Before that I was really judgmental. I thought a lot of people were really screwed up, in fact I thought that everybody was screwed up but me. But I got clear on all that.

About three months later a friend said I should get tested, so I went and got the scans and so forth. I really felt good, so I was afraid of getting bad news. I remember the doctor at the clinic looking at the before and after scans, saying, “Well, there is nothing here now.” I said, “Really, it must be a miracle”’ He said “No, these things happen; they are called spontaneous remission.” He acted very unimpressed. But here was a miracle, and I was impressed, even if no one else was.”  TMB

Mellen-Thomas’s mind was now clear, and look what happened; his body went back to perfection.  Drastic way to let go, but it worked for him.  In the end, it is only a matter of time.  I tend to be impatient, and sometimes I’ll wish for a quantum leap.  But doing it one belief at a time teaches me clearly where I made mistakes in creating my life experience.  It slows up the Judgment Day to a speed that I can understand and learn from.  I’m not so inclined to get sucked into the bullshit again if I can see where I messed up.  And I have the chance to achieve real freedom on earth while alive.

This story is a wonderful reminder.  I’m glad it comes around every six months or so.  It reminds of what lies ahead if I just stay on this path.  There is no light at the end of the real tunnel — that is the illusory world that sees light as the opposite of darkness.  There is life and joy and freedom at the end of the limited illusion.  And we are the ones in the driver’s seat.  Mellen-Thomas got sucked through his tunnel like he was moving through a vacuum hose.  But we can also move along slowly and enjoy the scenery.  After all, once we get this right, we probably won’t be back this way again any time soon.  So it’s fine to enjoy the journey.