The white light
I knew my computer was about to die. The monitor was partially shattered and it had been operating slower than ever. That day, it happened, it died right before my eyes. As the monitor lost power, for a second, it flashed images on the screen, in reverse-chronological order. I saw images I had worked on days and months before. I froze with my mouth open.
At that moment it occurred to me, that the white light “phenomena”, described by many, all over the world, is not an experience about dying and crossing over to the other side, but re-living the experience of being born.
The white light stories are generally all the same and contain common elements. These experiences are triggered when under severe duress, during severe physical trauma or during what is referred to as “near death experiences”. Accounts of this experience, may have different beginnings but will invariably end like this, “…and then I saw the white light, it was blinding. I was overcome with a feeling of peace and serenity. My relatives were there to guide me”.
The white light experience is so powerful and vivid because it is our first experience outside of the womb. It occurs after one of the most traumatic moments in our life, our passage through the birth canal. It is like the calm after the storm. The people you love the most are always there to comfort you. Most of the time you see your Grandma and your aunts.
The images we saw when exiting the womb were etched in our memory, like when an image is burnt onto a computer screen. When our brain is drained to its lowest electrical power, our memories begin to fade away one at a time until we get to the first memory, the one that’s burnt in.
Seeing the white light is an awesome experience that takes us back to the very day we took our first breath and felt our lungs burn as the air violently rushed in. That was the day when we left the darkness of the womb and entered into the light. In those fragile moments right before our birth, it feels like we are going to die.
The experience of seeing the white light, is not a vision of our death, it is a memory of our birth.