The Heaven that we all know or rather talk about is an actual place the people who die and have Near Death Experiences say they have visited.

Here is an excerpt: 

“I know I went to heaven…Before being killed in a car accident, I remained skeptical of near-death experiences. I simply didn’t see how a person could die, go to heaven, and return to tell about it. These stories all seemed too rehearsed and sounded alike. Then I died, went to heaven, and returned. Not for an instant have I ever thought it was merely a vision, some case of mental wires crossing, or the result of stories I’d heard. I know heaven is real. I have been there and come back.”

In this quote from chapter eighteen in 90 Minutes in Heaven, Don Piper explains that he went to heaven and he does so with great conviction. This is very common for people who have Near Death Experiences as many people will say that they had an experience of “Heaven” or “Paradise” with the same strong conviction.

   In the large amount of research into Near Death Experiences (NDEs) collected in over 30 years, we find that many NDEs contain positive or pleasant experiences that have an indescribable profound sensation of peace, joy and love.

   These powerful experiences of a profound positive feeling state are called “Pleasurable NDEs” or “Heaven-Like Experiences,” and they contain heaven-like scenarios where people are reunited with deceased family members, meetings with religious figures or beings of light. They also include pleasant so-called life-reviews, where people review the positive episodes of their lives that are played back to them in a form of flashback.

   One researcher of near death experiences, P. M. H. Atwater, has studied more than 4,000 cases of near death experiences and out of her large sample of over 3,000 adult cases, she estimates that 47 percent have had a heaven-like experience. Besides heavenly experiences we also find in NDE research that most people, 80 – 90 percent, will experience profound sensations of peace, joy and love, and even most of the people who have distressing or unpleasant experiences will still describe their experience as positive on a whole.

   Before Piper told us that he knows he went to heaven and that heaven is real. In the same chapter he also tells us that, “I don’t have to defend my experience. I know what happened to me. For those of us whose faith is in the reality of heaven, no amount of evidence in necessary. I know what I experienced.”

   The same conclusion that Piper here makes is very common for people who have NDEs as their experience for them represents something truly authentic and real beyond any shadow of doubt. While some of us have trouble believing their testimonies, for them it is hard to understand why we do not believe in the gift that they bring back:

I am confounded by why people wonder if it’s real. If I were to take an airplane ride and go to another city and then come back, and I said: “I was just visiting so-and-so place,” no one would ask: “Are you sure? Are you sure you went?” And yet, this was much more real than that.

   In this testimony Connie expresses the paradox in making people believe that what people who have NDEs experience is real. One thing that makes this paradox hard to understand for some people, is the fact that what people experience on the other side is experienced as more real than anything in this world.

   The near death experience (NDE) is often called a hyper-real experience of an otherworldly realm that is more real than this world. This we can learn from one testimony where Melanie tells us that the NDE is: “Beyond anything that can be experienced in this world.”

   For people who have NDEs this factor is one of the most convincing pieces of evidence to them because they have an experience of a higher or bigger reality, which exists beyond our limited spectrum of reality here on earth.

   NDE researcher Kenneth Ring explains in his book Lessons from the Light that:

            Something real, indisputably real, is happening to these experiencers…They are at once elsewhere but still here, in some sense with us…But, then, they are taken into an elsewhere to which we, the witness, can no longer have direct access…another reality.

   In my own research, I asked each Near Death Experiencer (people who have NDEs) to agree or disagree with statements in a questionnaire. To the following statement: “The power of my experience, which is beyond anything that I have ever experienced on earth, made me absolutely sure that my experience was real,” I found that 93 percent said that they agreed.

   The consensus here tells us that from the perspective of the Near Death Experiencer (NDEr) we are dealing with a very different and abnormal experience. The statement also points out that “the power” of the experience is what convinces people beyond reasonable doubt that their experience is real. 

   Based on this insight of the NDE being otherworldly in its nature, I asked deeper into this power of the experience in my questionnaire by asking each NDEr to compare the sensation in their NDE to the sensation of experience here in this dimension on earth.

   Here I found that 78 percent said that the sensation was stronger than here on earth, with 26 percent saying 50 – 100 times stronger than in this dimension, and 53 percent saying a thousand times stronger or beyond description. In the category of a thousand times stronger or beyond description, I got statements such as; “beyond my ability to describe,” or it “cannot be measured,” and Priscilla gave this very good explanation in her testimony:

Something that cannot be put into words. Part of the reason for this is that the experience of leaving this dimension and entering another is a very powerful sensation.

   As Priscilla here tells us; it is the event itself of leaving this world and entering the other dimension that induces such a powerful sensation that cannot be put into words. And while this experience cannot be described exactly in human language, the sheer power of it still speaks so laud that there is no room for doubt in the mind of the experiencer.

   If we were to make a parallel to an experience in this dimension, we would have to imagine a state of heightened awareness, e.g. a situation where we almost had an accident. In the moments just before the accident we will experience an extreme sense of heightened awareness and sharpened focus to help us avert the accident. Most of us will have no doubt about the reality of this situation, in fact, some of us may say this moment is more real and even note upon the sense of timelessness.

   The same sort of sharpened awareness and intensity of sensation is what NDErs experience in their NDE, only it is much more powerful than anything in this dimension and this sheer power of the experience is the convincing factor. 

   It is also this convincing power and sense of reality of the experience that makes the NDE different from a dream or a hallucination. Given that a dream or hallucination is often used to explain away the NDE, I asked the NDErs to compare their experience to a dream or hallucination. To the statement, “What I experienced could have been a dream or hallucination,” 86 percent said that they either strongly disagreed or disagreed.

   When I turned the question around, I got an even bigger consensus through the statement: “What I experienced was very different from a dream or hallucination.” Here 93 percent said that they agreed with 80 percent saying that they strongly agreed.

   From this result, it is very clear to the experiencer that the experience has a distinctive quality, which is unlike anything else in this dimension, and that the experience is not like any dream or hallucination.

   One NDE testimony explains this:

I am convinced that my experience is real. Everyone has had a vivid dream and anyone who is sane can tell the difference between a vivid dream and an experience. Having the experience itself is the convincing factor and that cannot be expressed in words.

   All of us know the difference between a dream and reality, maybe not while in the dream but surely after the dream is over and we return to this reality again. It is the same for any sane person having a hallucination. After the hallucination is over, most people will know what is real and what is not. This is the same for people who have NDEs; after coming back NDErs are also able to clearly distinguish their experience from a dream or hallucination.   

   To elaborate on this point and build upon the last insight of the sense of a stronger reality, it is not uncommon to have NDErs suggest that this world is ultimately a dream. Connie tells us that, “It is the most real experience I’ve ever had. It is more real than waking up from a dream here on earth.”

   If we here think about the feeling of waking up from a dream and the exact moment our mind refocuses to distinguish the dream from reality. The exact moment is the moment of awakening and that is how the NDE is experienced – only this world is the dream and the other dimension is reality. This is what is meant by the otherworldly and higher-dimensional nature of the NDE.

   We also find another distinguishing factor that separates the NDE from dreams and hallucinations, and that is the fact that most people who have NDEs remember the experience clearly many years after. Where dreams and hallucinations are often forgotten after some time, the memory of the NDE stays clear in the mind of the NDEr many years after.

   Michael confirms this in his testimony:

My experience was real to me. It was real to me because eight years later, I still see what I can consciously remember with absolute clarity – the Light, the people, the peace. Clinically dead at the time, I should have no memory at all, but I do – stronger than any waking or dreaming moment.

   Being different and stronger than “any waking or dreaming moment,” I also asked the NDErs to rate “how real” their experience was to them from 10 to 1000 percent. Here two thirds said more than 100 percent with 53 percent answering “1000%” real. This was of course a trick question to highlight the higher sense of reality since in our normal understanding nothing can be more than 100 percent. However, Russ was cleaver to point out something important: “How can anyone quantify a particular number without anything to compare it to?”