On Spirituality,
Universal Life Force & God

"The whole experience almost demands a host of angels, but there were none."
Lorna

"It’s as if I’ve been touched by some kind of energy that’s still here with me."
Francoise

"I was convinced beyond doubt for the first time in my life that there is a creative force out there in the universe that oversees the happenings here on this planet."
Grace

I was asked recently whether I had ever had the opportunity to talk to people who were close to death about their dreams. On reflection , I have spoken with survivors of a near-death experience or critical illness and with relatives who were aware of some of the dreams experienced by their closest kin as they departed this life.

When we are battling illness, it seems, we often experience dreams of conflict and war, perhaps as an indication of the battle within the body between the infection or cancer and our bodily defences. On a deeper level, no doubt, such dreams are perfect metaphors, indicating how we have succumbed to invasion and encouraging us to fight back. One young girl, who went to bed apparently quite healthy, became sick during the night, was rushed to hospital and died within a few hours. She was diagnosed as having a ‘mysterious virus’. Her mother told me that her daughter was concerned about two or three dreams that she had experienced in the week prior to her death. These involved UFOs which seemed to be beckoning to her, or threatening to abduct her. I wondered afterwards whether what this girl perceived as ‘alien visitors’ in her dreams were actually symbolic of the alien visitors (viruses) in her body.

Closer to the moment of death, we are often told, our dreams and visions become more spiritually charged and uplifting. In this survey of life-changing dreams I was honoured to receive the experiences of three people whose dreams at or near-death enabled them to touch a spiritual energy which inspired in them all a will to live and recover.

River 1
Nellie
Given New Life 1985

~~~~~~dream~~~~~~

Unaware of anything except the fact that I was dying, I waited for the moment. My physical strength had gone already, and now my ‘life-strength’ was ebbing away as if it was evaporating. I could see nothing, hear nothing, yet all this seemed normal. I was in a passive state: no fears or any particular feelings, just waiting and experiencing the beginnings of a process. Although it was what we call ‘death’, what was happening seemed to be much more than could be expressed in a word or two.

Then I detected a presence and noticed light had filled space. Instantly I knew this was Jesus. Although he used no words, he seemed to question, and it was my own thoughts that I heard answering, ‘I want to die’. The rest of the communication was more of a meeting of my presence with his. Time had no relevance. It was as if he experienced with me an understanding of my whole life by enveloping me... my whole life, yet it may have been all in a few seconds.

The only words I heard him say were given to me. He said, ‘I WANT TO LIVE’. As these words entered me, they became a part of me, well and truly mine, and I answered with a new sort of joy, ‘Yes! I want to live.’ Then the tide of the flow of my life-strength turned. (Instead of leaving me, I was receiving it.)

Then I was aware that I was back in bed (where I had been all along.... at least physically anyway).

~~~~~~

Before the dream I had been admitted to hospital. I knew I was in a bad way because I had overdosed on laxatives and couldn’t stop vomiting. I was badly dehydrated and my electrolytes were all out of balance. My body couldn’t take any more abuse. Anorexic tendencies had blown out all sense of proportion so much so that I just wanted to die. Therefore I hadn’t called anyone when I was sick. But two Christian ladies found me, took me to their home, and then decided to take me to hospital.

Later I was told by a pastor friend that I had been put in a room by myself to die, and that he was in the room praying for me at that time. I didn’t know who came and went, as I was oblivious to everything except my dream, which was the most real thing to me. I wasn’t on any drugs.

Nellie’s anorexia probably started in her teens, some ten years previously, but she was bulimic for about five years before landing in hospital ready to die. During that time she worked as a trainee nurse, but was unable to hold down a job for very long. She had managed one year of night duty, but only with a lot of stopping and starting, then flunked her nursing course because she was considered too immature.

As a patient, Nellie relied on the hospital to blot out her feelings of insecurity. She didn’t have to worry about looking after herself or about doing anything much at all. She had been molested and abused as a child and was constantly told that she was dumb and stupid.

Once, when I was a kid, my father got me to hold up the motorbike while he took off the front wheel. I was taking all my strength to hold it up, so I was shaking with the effort. I couldn’t hold it any more. When I dropped it I was a stupid dumb female who couldn’t do anything.

The Psychologist who later worked with Nellie said she was close to having a split personality.

Nellie’s understanding of her dream experience was clear.

I was dying. Jesus came to me. My will changed from dying to living. It’s possible that the little girl in me, who had been abused, bashed and threatened, had caused the conscious ‘me’ to lose touch with the will to live, and that the encounter got me back in touch with wanting to live again.

When I woke up I had a new dimension within me. I battled to get well. I could only suck oranges and eat dry bread for three weeks. Gradually I managed to sit up in a chair for short periods, then walk. Next I sought out a therapist who had success with bulimic patients and went on a program for several months. It started off with eating breakfast once a week and developing special habits to cope with eating. At first I couldn’t imagine eating three meals a day, but yes, I got there. I still stick to some of those eating habits today. All this was just the beginning.

Nellie’s previous insecurity and reliance on the hospital to look after her completely turned around.

Afterwards I wanted to do things on my own. All that fear and insecurity was going. I did go back to work, and I was still lacking confidence, they said, but the nursing staff changed one month’s trial into three months because they could see me growing and changing. After three months they saw that I had changed so much - I could just about run the hospital! They kept me on.

I overcame the belief that I was dumb and stupid, started study, got my TEE, entered university and am in the last year now to become a primary school teacher. (I usually get As and Bs for my assignments now, written proof that I’m not stupid!) In between this, I studied and became an interpreter of the deaf, went to Japan to teach English, had a beautiful daughter and spent a short time in Africa doing missionary work.

Nellie signed up for work in Lesotho, a country near the Orange Free state and South Africa, with ‘Youth with a Mission’. Because she had nursing experience she thought she was going to be giving out medications to the other missionaries to take out into the villages, but she ended up being a missionary herself.

The work was only part-time because now missionaries are training people of their own nationality, so I went over there not only to be a missionary to pray for others, but also to train people over there to be able to go out and do what I was doing.

We went to one village and stayed there, where I ended up praying with people. One baby was sick; it had a fever and was crying. They couldn’t do much for it. I had some Panadol on me and thought a quarter of one would help bring the fever down. It really need to get to the hospital but there was no way due to distance and transport. we prayed with it and the next day someone had ‘foot the way’ (the local term for running the distance) all the way from his village to tell me that in the morning they got up expecting the baby to be unwell (a quarter of one Panadol would last about four hours at the most), yet it was completely well, playing with its toy in its cot.

It was while she was in Africa that Nellie discovered something that spoke louder than prayer. Training the African leaders in missionary work was exciting but demanding, and she found her first meetings with the chiefs confronting. They asked complicated questions which she felt inadequately prepared to answer.

I knew that I really needed God to give me answers. Every morning when we got up we prayed and I spent a special time in giving myself to God and seeking Him. As a result, every time we were asked questions I had an answer. For example, one chief asked ‘How can God be Three in One?’ and I used water, ice and water vapour to illustrate. I just felt I was standing there and it was going through me. Everyone over there wanted to hear. They’d stop me in the street. They’d run after me.

Throughout this experience, the most important learning for Nellie was this:

Although I was giving, I was receiving.

All this is the result of this one dream. Other dreams seem to be confirmation, or part of the actual sorting out, like an unfolding. By going through with this ‘leading’, I have come to know myself. The work that I have done for my own personality and emotional stability has given me confidence and I have an inner strength that will be with me, no matter which vocational path I choose.

The psychologist who diagnosed my fragmentary state was amazed when he worked with me, because after four years he said he didn’t need to see my any more, whereas some people take a lifetime to deal with similar problems. I haven’t been in hospital since. I feel that I’m living a life that’s fairly normal now. Beforehand I would talk to people and there was a lot of stuff going on in my mind about not feeling good about me - I didn’t feel that anyone else could feel good about me. Since this experience I’ve somehow got to know myself better and been able to accept that there is good in me and that other people can see it.

All this would never have happened except for the fact that the dream gave me the ‘knowing’ that I needed a sense of purpose. Instead of being a small me I feel the possibilities are now so wide, that as I take direction and I come towards where I feel I should be, there’s more direction, more opening, like an unfolding. My aim is to finish my Bachelor of Education and then possibly do remedial work with the deaf. I also feel that I can help other people who have been through emotional turmoil, who may have a lack of success in their own life and don’t feel that they’re worth anything, by my life, my example. I don’t feel I have to work within the church, because I think the church has got what it needs.

In the years before her death-dream experience, Nellie had been to church, but always felt like leaving because she could feel no sense of belonging. Although her dream can be credited with nothing less than restoring her will to live and saving her life through her spiritual interaction with Jesus, Nellie says she is not a Christian fanatic.

Now I don’t feel I have to go to church as far as my spiritual growth and my relationship with God is concerned, but I feel that it does me good to go there, especially to join in the singing and in my worship. I find that builds me up even more than the preaching. Sometimes I’ll go and listen to the preaching and something might come out and come alive to me, or sometimes I’ll go into the Sunday School with my daughter because I’m getting her settled - it doesn’t worry me whether I miss out or not. Praying together with someone else I find strengthening. My prayer life could weaken if I don’t occasionally get with someone else and pray.

That Jesus gave His life to me, and together we made it mine, has always been a marvel to me, and I found that the Scriptures meant He not only gave life to me but gave His life for me. It all seems so real now.

Jane’s Interpretation

Nellie’s dream experience undoubtedly reversed her will to die into a will to live, and has shaped her life drastically since then. Obviously on the verge of death at the time of the dream, neither I nor any other dream interpreter would have been around to offer advice which would have been heard. The dream fulfilled its purpose and, as such, needs no interpretation.