Sheila Fabricant Linn - The Gifts of Near-Death Experiences: You Dont Have to Die to Experience Your True Home

The Gifts of Near Death Experiences: You Don't Have to Die to Experience Your True Home brings a fresh and exciting perspective to understanding near-death experiences. Everyone can benefit from learning the wisdom so clearly and eloquently expressed in this book. With each turn of the page you will find a treasure trove of insights, inspiration, and practical pointers that will really work in your life. This outstanding book is expertly written, remarkably easy to read, and enthusiastically recommended.

Jeffrey Long, M. D., author of the New York Times bestselling
Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

The Linns have written a book that is both inspirational and practical. They provide wise and gentle wisdom that lead readers into a place of growth and healing.

Richard Rohr O. F. M, author of Falling Upward

The Gifts of Near-Death Experiences will help you develop your own spiritual practice of meditation that can crack open your inner-door so that you too may glimpse beyond into Infinite Love and Light and live a life of love.

Peter Panagore, author of Heaven is Beautiful

An extraordinary accomplishment! Yes, The Gifts of Near-Death Experiences is filled with gripping stories, verified research, and more than enough supportive material to stop you in your tracks. Yet there's more. Much more. The authors, Sheila Fabricant, Dennis and Matthew Linn, all three experienced, globe-trotting teachers and counselors, have put together thoughts, suggestions, and how-tos at the end of each chapter to enable YOU the reader to feel what is revealed and then take it into your own life, be one with it, live it NOW (not next week). In fact, everything in this book, no matter the subject, is available, usable. I love the now-ness of this, the alive-ness. You don't have to die to experience the truth about yourself, where you're from or where you're going once you leave this life behind. Surprise...this is not a book about near-death, not really, it is a book about YOU, the real YOU.

P. M. H. Atwater, L. H. D., researcher of near-death states,
author of such books as Near-Death Experiences: The Rest of the
Story, Future Memory, Dying to Know You: Proof of God in the Near-Death
Experience, and Children of the Fifth World.

Copyright 2016

by Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, and

The Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Hampton Roads Publishing, Inc.

Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover art Pellinni | Dreamstime.com

Interior designed by Howie Severson

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Charlottesville, VA 22906

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ISBN: 978-57174-743-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Linn, Dennis, author.

Title: The gifts of near-death experiences : you don't have to die to experience your true home / Dennis Linn, Sheila Fabricant Linn, Matthew Linn.

Description: Newburyport : Hampton Roads Pub., 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015050623 | ISBN 9781571747433 (6 9 tp : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Near-death experiences.

Classification: LCC BF1045.N4 L56 2016 | DDC 133.901/3--dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050623

Printed in Canada

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Dedicated to Zeke Pierce
and his beloved parents, brothers, and sister
Crawford, Liv, Max, Mia, and Nikken

KENNETH RING, PH.D.

Professor Emeritus of Psychology
University of Connecticut

On May 21, 2012, I received an intriguing email from a trio of authors in Colorado, which contained a rare compliment: they were planning to write a book modeled after one of mine dealing with near-death experiences, Lessons from the Light. They wanted to advise me of their intent to make sure it was okay with me. They also asked if I might be willing to confer with them about their undertaking.

I had not heard of these authors, but apparently many others had. I learned that theya husband and wife, and the brother of the husbandspecialized in giving retreats and seminars on spirituality and healing, that they had done so in about sixty countries, and had already written some twenty-two books, which collectively had sold over a million copies. These were certainly well-established and successful authors, so I quickly assented, and with delight, to their overture.

This was the beginning of what has become a deep and loving friendship with the LinnsDenny and Sheila, Denny's brother Matt, and John, Denny and Sheila's teenage son. But that is another story. First, I need to say a bit about the book you are now about to read.

Actually, I should preface this with just a word about Lessons from the Light. The main idea of that book was that if readers really absorbed the implications of the research on near-death experiences (NDEs), they could reap many of the benefits that near-death experiencers themselves gained from their encounter with death. In that context, I argued that such an immersion in this material might function rather like what I called a benign virus; that is, by exposing themselves to the world of NDEs, readers could catch it.

The Linns wanted to do something similar in their book, but really develop this idea, take it deeper, and do it in a much more systematic way than I had. Indeed, once they had read my book, they realized that rather like Monsieur Jourdan in Molire's play, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, who was shocked to learn that he had been speaking prose all his life, they had long been speaking the language of NDEs. In short, they had already been offering a very similar perspective in their retreats and writing.

And this aim has been ably achieved in The Gifts of Near-Death Experiences. Of course, in the two score and more years since the publication of Raymond Moody's groundbreaking best seller, Life After Life, which introduced the world to the concept of near-death experiences, there have been many books on the subject, often written by NDErs themselves. These have thrilled and inspired millions of people. But there have been very few books that have attempted to distill the findings of NDE narratives and research so that readers who have not had an NDE themselves could learn how they, too, could come to see the world and live their lives as NDErs do.

The Gifts of Near-Death Experiences does this superbly, better than any book I know. So, although it, too, is replete with inspiring stories of NDEs, it is primarily a book with a practical focus. Every chapter ends with processes, so that the reader can apply the lessons of that chapter in his or her own life. Thus, you will be taken through all the major features of an NDE, and then you will be helped, if you choose, to absorb their benefits into your own life.

Ah, but there is so much more to this book than this bare summary would suggest because it's not just about NDEs; it's also about the role of NDEs and their implications in the lives of the Linns themselves. They offer the reader many intimate glimpses into their own personal history, their daily life, and their life in their community in such a way as to enable you to see just how they have been able to apply the lessons of the NDE in their own lives. Many of these vignettes reveal just how thoughtfully they themselves have been able to practice what they preach (though they