If Heaven were Real

If Heaven were real, what would we expect to find there?

I had a near-death experience many months ago, and in that time I had experienced a vision of some sort.  It felt brief, but also like an eternity.  I was standing before a great expanse of white light.  There was a clear divide between where the light and shadows met.  Behind me, there was pure darkness, so immense it was not just seen through the eyes.  I felt an unbelievable despair just looking into that long shadow.  I turned back towards the light and began to walk forward, but no matter how many steps I took, the shadows were no farther away from me.  I stood at the event horizon of both heaven and hell, waiting for judgment… but it never came.  

As I contemplated and tried to understand what I was experiencing in that moment, before I could truly even begin to process it, I was in a hospital room alone.

The vision I had, I was ready to dismiss it as just a dream.  I’ve had weirder things happen in my dreams, see, so there was no good reason to believe that my soul had truly stood on the edge between heaven and hell.  But there was this feeling in my chest when I thought about it, when I pictured what I had seen in the dream.  It was a complicated feeling, difficult to put into words, but when I pictured that darkness… it felt real somehow.  I would feel just as I did in that moment, a great despair and agony.  Dreams, they don’t typically leave that much of an impact, do they?  At least, they don’t for me, not typically.  There would have to be some relation to those events, like someone I loved being hurt.  But dreams are random amalgamations of things that are familiar to us, so why did this one feel so deliberately crafted, yet so alien?

It didn’t feel like something that was simply conjured up by my mind.  In many ways, it feels like what I saw was simply beyond my understanding, like it was being shown to me.

I didn’t know what to do with this information, not at first.  I was eventually discharged from the hospital and thus began my acclimation back to normal life.

Much time has passed since I left the hospital, but I’ve come no closer to finding the answers I seek.  I spent time digging into religious records and trying to deepen my understanding of a possible afterlife.  While there are many different interpretations and ideas of what exists in the beyond, and why it exists - why we exist; ultimately, none of them truly reflected what I saw in my vision.  

That darkness I saw, it was overwhelming.  But as I continued to look back on that memory, I noticed something else… or, I could better describe it as, I noticed the lack of something.  When I saw the light, I felt nothing.  No warmth, no happiness, no kind of emotion, nothing at all.  This dichotomy left me even more puzzled as I continued searching for any threads to follow.  And then… in the coming days, I would have another vision.  This time, there was no darkness.  There was “light” surrounding me.  Was this it - heaven, I wondered?  All around me, there were things I felt I recognized, but if I tried to focus my vision, it would be apparent that there was nothing there.  It was just a blank canvas of light, stretching out onto every horizon.  

I heard whispers, people that were dear to me calling out my name.  These voices began to take shape as vivid memories; my seventh birthday, my high school graduation, my first job offer, my first love… and then there were some I didn’t recognize but they somehow felt familiar to me; getting married, having my first son, the funeral of my wife, and then tragically, my own child.  I was left with confusion and grief as those memories faded and the darkness began to take their place.  As it encroached all around me, I felt paralyzed to do anything.  But before it could entirely consume me, I awoke back in my bedroom in a sweat.  I felt like this was the moment I had to make a choice, to continue my search for answers, or to cast all this away as just crazy dreams.  I thought that my experiences had scrambled my mind and my perception of what is and isn’t reality.  I thought I might’ve been losing my grip and by continuing down this path, I would be enabling the craziness to take hold of me completely.  

But then, I thought about those final moments of the dream, those memories, the darkness taking hold.  Maybe there was some meaning to all of this, I thought… so I woke up the next morning with a greater resolve to see this through until every stone had been turned.  Only then, would I give up on my mission.

Some time had passed since my decision to continue my research into these strange visions, but my efforts were leading me nowhere.  I was visiting a local university to sit in on lectures and dig through sources in the library.  I even consulted on a few professors on the topic, while remaining as vague as possible about my visions.  In the end, there were few suggestions for what I could’ve been experiencing, but the most likely culprit seemed to be a deep trauma from the near death experience.  Even I’ve considered that possibility, and to be perfectly honest, it’s one I’ve grappled  with since the beginning. 

But then, something strange happened.  I’d go as far as to say that this chance encounter is what ultimately solidified my resolve and my path; it’s what showed me that even if I wanted to give up and abandon my search, there’s no turning away from the things I’ve seen.  One day as I attended Dr. Miller’s lecture on the history of Gnosticism, a girl sat next to me.  Clara.  I immediately recognized her as the woman from my visions, my future wife and mother to my future child.  Of course, I wouldn’t dare reveal anything to her, less she would dismiss me as some kind of lunatic.  When she sat next to me, however, I couldn’t hide my anxiety as my mind started racing and the memories came flooding into me more vividly than in the vision.  I saw it all so clearly, and felt a maelstrom of emotion stirring as I tried to reconcile these foreign memories with reality.  Clara must have noticed, and she put her hand on my shoulder asking if I was okay.  At that moment I had finally realized that the entire lecture had passed and a new class of students were filling the room.  I quickly gathered my things in a panic and tried to take off without saying another word, but Clara stopped me again and asked what I was thinking about that had me so deep in thought.  

I didn’t know what to say or where to begin.  It was hard to even place myself in the moment and try to communicate anything to her at all, but I managed to calm myself before finally asking, “The afterlife, I was thinking if there’s really such a thing waiting for us.”

“It’s that intriguing to you?”, she responded.  I nodded, and decided to tell her a bit about what I was researching.  “NDEs?  You know…” Clara trailed off and looked around kind of nervously before continuing, “I’ve had one too, when I was a lot younger.  I even started to experience these weird dreams for a while, visions of what felt like another life.”

I was struck by what I had just heard.  I must have been dreaming, I thought.  I’m still asleep in the lecture hall, clearly that must have been it.  The dreams, the visions, those memories, then meeting her, talking to her, and then this… it was too much, too fast, I thought.  But my train of thought was interrupted by the realization I was still having a conversation with her and I didn’t even know how long I’d been checked out.  “Dreams of another life?  Did you ever find a reason for why they were happening?”

“Not really, and one day I stopped having them.  I never really looked back after that, but hearing your story kind of reminded me of them.”

“I see…”

Before I could continue, Clara realized she had another class to attend in just a couple minutes, and so she offered to exchange numbers and meet over coffee soon.  This was yet another moment that gave me pause.  For some reason, her offer made me nervous.  Not like the butterflies in your stomach kind of nervous.  It was more like this impending feeling, like I felt our meeting had a meaning and purpose that I couldn’t comprehend.  After all, I had seen her in these visions; I had seen our life together and all that tragedy that came with it.  And that darkness… 

But in spite of my fears, I accepted her offer and handed her my phone.  While she was typing away, she glanced up at me and smiled.  “This is interesting”, she said.  Confused by her comment, I asked her what she meant by that.  “I didn’t expect to talk to you like this, that’s all.”

Unfortunately, that’s as much as I could get from her before she noted she was running out of time and we parted ways.  “I really have to go, but we’ll talk again soon.”

 As she walked away, I couldn’t shake this feeling that I couldn’t explain.  Indeed, something had felt off since the day I awoke in that hospital but I was no closer to finding the truth of it.  If anything, I was left with more questions at the end of each day.  But ultimately, ever since I had met Clara, it no longer felt like I was in control.  It was like I was being ever so subtly pushed along a path that I couldn’t clearly see.  The visions, our meeting… I can’t deny I was deeply fascinated by it all, but as I pushed further and further, I maintained this fear that I was letting chaos into my life, disorienting myself and tearing away at everything I thought I knew about reality.

Some days had passed and the weekend finally came.  Clara and I had exchanged a few messages before finally meeting, but the conversations never went too far.  That day at the coffee shop was the first time I had learned anything real about her.

When I arrived, Clara was already sitting with a coffee in hand.  The shop was very comfortable with a “home-y” kind of vibe to it.  The dim glow of the lights filled the shop with a warm lighting, and all around there were groups of kids and young adults going about their lives.  Being in a place like this almost made me feel like I didn’t belong, but when I sat next to Clara and we began to speak, I almost entirely forgot that feeling.  Clara took a sip of her coffee and began, “So, your NDE.  Tell me about it.  What happened?”

I hesitated at first to answer, “Straight to the point, are we?”

“I don’t like to beat around the bush.  I was interested ever since you first mentioned it.  But you don’t have to tell me if-”

But before I could even let her finish her thought, I stopped her and affirmed that it was alright.  “It’s fine, it’s not that deep.”

“I was walking home one day; I had only stepped out to grab something for dinner.  But as I was on my way, someone caught my attention.  They were tall, wearing a black hoodie and some kind of mask to cover most of their face, exposing only their eyes.  But even that was enough to glean his intentions, I think.  I felt something from him, some kind of aura maybe.  Or maybe I saw something, like malicious intent.  I don’t know what it was that compelled me to pay attention to him, but I couldn’t shake it.  I couldn’t just keep walking, even though his presence at that moment was totally innocuous.”

“Then, just as I was about to snap myself out of this strange transfixion, I suppose he spotted his target and began a slow march towards them while holding some kind of weapon in his hand.  Directly down his path, a young man, probably close in age to myself.  I followed him while shifting randomly through my phone in an attempt to mask myself and blend in.  Unfortunately, before he could engage with the presumed target, he crossed the street and confronted me directly.”

“His confrontation was aggressive, asking if we had a problem and ‘the fuck are you following me for?’.  This turn of events left me stunned, but I feared I wouldn’t be allowed to keep silent without this escalating further.  I tried to deny his accusation, but he noted that he caught me watching him for a moment from across the street.  I didn’t know I was staring at him like that, but I tend to get lost in thought… so, I understood that there was no easy way out of this. In fact, I might have just been the one in the wrong, in spite of my best intentions.  But he wouldn’t accept my plea that it was just a misunderstanding.  I looked around and noticed that there was nobody around anymore.  I believed… I thought he had made a mistake, following my gaze as I scanned the surroundings, and as I caught that his attention was no longer focused on me, I ran as fast I could towards a busier area.  But I wouldn’t make it that far.  He caught up in almost the same instant I took off and threw me to the ground.  I don’t know if I should detail the rest of this story, for your sake.  I imagine you can tell where it goes from here.”

Clara remained silent for a second before speaking, “That person you were trying to save, were they really a young man?”

“I don’t really know, they were so far away.”, I responded.

“I see”, Clara said softly.  I pressed her as to why she was curious about that particular detail, but she handwaved it as a random curiosity in my story, citing that the young man might have been able to defend or diffuse the situation themself.  She wasn’t wrong, and I still don't know what it was that spurred me to action.  I tried to explain to her that it was out of character for me, as I don’t usually interact with others.  I tend to avoid people, if anything.  “So is this out of character for you, too?”

“I think it is, but lately I forget myself.”

“I can kind of relate…” Clara started,  “I told you I had an NDE when I was younger, right?  It’s kind of a long story, but in the end, I was drowning.  That’s when it all began, those weird dreams.  I think… I think I saw myself in another life.  There were people I didn’t recognize, but they felt familiar somehow.  And they felt so real, it all did.  The dreams didn’t feel like dreams at all, but I don’t know what else to call it.  And I haven’t felt like myself since they started.  I’ve honestly had like, an identity crisis?  I don’t know, I’ve just been so confused trying to sort myself out.”

“People that feel familiar, huh?”

The similarities between those dreams that Clara and I shared… could it be?  Were we truly being drawn to each other by something like fate?  That idea wasn’t long lived, however, as Clara’s phone started ringing.  She answered and excused herself from the table to take the call, and I was left to ponder her story.  An identity crisis, I thought.  Maybe that’s what I was going through too… not knowing who to be.  I felt that life had dealt me a rather difficult hand to play with, and I spent much of my adult life resenting my own curse of existence.  I know that must sound mad, but it is what it is.  I didn’t want to exist, but the violence of suicide still scared me.  In the end, I was only existing, hardly what I would call living.  Waking, working, and resting before repeating the mundane cycle.  I didn’t have friends, nor did I want them.  I avoided my family and peers.  I was completely isolated, until that fateful day when I thought to myself as I stared into that stranger's eyes, that this may not be the worst way to go… “helping” somebody else.  I thought that maybe that would give my life some ultimate meaning, whether I lived or died.  That irresistible urge to interfere with a situation that had yet to come to pass, I think now that it might’ve been an entirely selfish desire.  A part of me feared that Clara picked up on this, and that’s why she called me out without making any direct accusations.  She mentioned she was a psychology major, so it’s possible that my mindset is more clear to her than it even is to me.

Clara finally returned, once again breaking my train of thought.  I smiled meekly at her return, almost against my own will.  I just thought that it was nice to have someone to talk to, someone who could relate to me or at least understand me.  Was she finally that person?  Clara smiled back and took another sip of coffee as she sat down.  She seemed to glow brighter than anything else in the room while I looked at her.  I quickly diverted my eyes, reminded of my confrontation with that previous stranger and my issue with staring.  “It’s okay, I won't beat you up for staring”, Clara remarked.  I almost choked at the audacity, but I managed to laugh.  It was perhaps the first time that recounting that experience, I didn't feel pain and regret and confusion.

“Didn’t expect to catch a stray like that”, I muttered.

“Sorry, couldn’t help myself”, she said as she chuckled and took yet another sip of coffee.  We continued to talk about other things, leaving the conversation of NDEs and visions behind us until finally, the time came for us to split ways.  Clara expressed interest in meeting again like this, over dinner maybe.  I tried to hide my budding enthusiasm to continue this relationship with her, wherever it may lead.  But something in the back of my mind urged me to proceed with extreme caution.  It was that same lingering feeling…