A Seattle IANDS Near-Death Experience Story

Out of the Mist by Paula Schrag

In Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, during World War II, I went into the hospital for extensive surgery. Two nights later I awoke in the hospital room about two o'clock in the morning in terrible pain. I grabbed the signal mechanism that you use to buzz for help. But I don't like being drugged and I put off pushing that button as long as I could endure the pain. My mind drifted to all the reasons why I wanted to get out of the hospital. I was a single mother working to raise three young kids. I had also saved enough money to go to beauty college. Outside there was a light on in front of the Elk's Lodge. I watched as people left the hall.

Suddenly, from the upper corner of my room, came bright mist-like clouds with pastel hues that spilled around my bed, filling the room. With them came music, like nothing I've heard on this earth, that seemed to be the colors. This ethereal music and the colored mist were One, interwoven with a tremendous love of God that I cannot explain, love beyond my capacity to grasp. A beautiful ray of light came down from the upper corner, rolling out like a golden ribbon to my bed. Suddenly, I looked down. I was standing on this golden pathway! I had arms. I had legs. But I felt no weight at all. I was absolutely astounded! I looked down to the bed and there was a sick person lying there, holding a signal device. But I wanted nothing more to do with her. Immediately I found I was in touch with what I have since called Universal Mind. I could think any question and it was answered. I was tuned into fantastic knowledge, which like the love and the colors around me was a part of the whole scene.

Two men approached me down this path with their arms outstretched. One was dressed in the uniform of WW I. I had never known my father because I'd been adopted. But I knew him then. The other man was his son. I knew it was his son. He was wearing the uniform of what I call "our war," because it was my generation's war. I knew they wore these uniforms to let me know when they had died. I walked up this pathway toward them. As I started to meet those welcoming arms, I knew that if I touched them I would not be able to come back. I also knew that there was some tremendous task I had to finish here on earth. Now I did not know about my children.

Somehow, in this amazing instant I had left all my earthly cares behind. So I didn't know what the task was. I just knew I had to go back into that body, because I was not done with mortality. As soon as that realization came to me, there was at first a look of disappointment on their faces, and then understanding that was absolutely magnificent. They dropped their arms and returned up that golden pathway. Everything started to drift away and dissolve and I was suddenly back in my body. I felt immediate pain. The first thought that crossed my mind, however, was, "No matter how much this body hurts, the pain can't touch my soul."

Years later, I traveled to Carthage, Missouri, on my biological mother's recommendation, to find out more about my father. My mother, whom I had found when I was 23, said she didn't know what had become of him. They hadn't kept in touch. At Carthage, I discovered that my grandfather had been one of its early settlers. I also learned that my father and half brother had died as they had shown me during my near-death experience.

By 1968, my life had changed. I had married my husband Lou, and was visiting the South doing research for a book I was writing. Every night before sleeping I would say the Lord's Prayer. Now I'm not much of a praying person, and I felt a frustrated sense that my praying was inadequate. One evening I stopped after saying the words, "Thy will be done," and I thought "It's right there!" Then I said, "Father, how am I supposed to know what Your will is!" And with "Knock and the door will be opened" as the basis for my imagery, I implored God, from the depths of my heart, "Please, Father, answer me. Open the door." And for one moment in time I think I ceased all thought. I listened. God answered.

Now I understood that it wasn't His door that had been closed; it had been mine. I was the one who had to open the door and all I had to do was push. Then God came into my mind and heart just as He had in my near-death experience. I felt that same ineffable connection with God's love, something beyond the scope of what we understand as love, just absolutely pure, unadulterated love move through me. Again I was in tune with Universal Mind. Two days later, when I attempted to convey to the owner of the house where I was staying not only what had happened to me, but my still rapturous feelings, she called the police. Eventually I was taken to the state mental hospital where I was tied to the four posts of a bed and heavily sedated. Days later Lou flew down and returned with me to our home in Washington.

On several occasions, I attempted to share with Lou what I had just experienced, but he would not permit any conversation about that, or my earlier near-death experience. That winter, I visited different ministers hoping that one of them might grasp that what I had gone through was indeed a spiritual experience, and not madness. The response I received, however, from these Biblically knowledgeable men was incomprehension. Increasingly, I felt isolated.

By now, I had written manuscripts about my near-death experience, as well as this most recent spiritual experience in the South. Lou would not allow me to publish them. Desperately wanting to communicate with him what I was talking about from a place of experience rather than intellect, and perhaps to help myself as well, to deal with the depression brought on by the lack of understanding I had encountered, I returned somehow to that state of greater love and interconnectedness with the Divine. The only scraps of information I have from that period are notes I made: one in particular that says, "I am seeing such beautiful visions. I have to share them with Lou."

Lou had me hospitalized, and although my recollection is fragmentary, I know I was committed against my will to Crown Hill Hospital in Seattle and given nine shock "therapy" treatments. I cannot describe the pain. All of my memory was lost, although it has returned slowly, in pieces. Since then I have heard of others such as myself who have had a near-death experience or some other spiritual experience, people of different ages and gender who have been treated similarly. I have not been able to return to that state of spiritual awareness since then.

Two years ago, Lou was himself hospitalized with viral pneumonia. He scarcely spoke a word to anyone after he was in the hospital, but by his gestures we knew right away that he wanted the IV taken off. The day he died, he reached up with one arm, and I said, "Honey, who has come for you. Whose hand are you reaching for?" But he still would not talk. Even though Lou was gasping for every breath, he shoved the oxygen mask away. Then the nurse nodded at me, and at 4 o'clock I took the mask off his face and held his hand. We all kissed him good bye. Again I asked, "Honey, who has come for you?" And the most beautiful look of peace came over his face and he said, "Mama." At 4:30 he was gone.

I have learned from what I have gone through, both in my near-death experience and my spiritual experience of 1968, that in death you are in a completely different dimension, in the embrace of God's love that is so strong and so beautiful. We try to grasp with words and thoughts what this is like, but it is truly beyond anything we have words for on earth. And I know that that is where Lou has returned.

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