Out of Body

He said, "About three months ago at home, I was robbed, beaten with a crow-bar and left for dead. I recovered in the hospital but had a cardiac arrest two months later. My daughter came home and found me lying on the floor. She says I was dead. I had turned blue. My heart had stopped beating minutes before she found me. She gave me cardiopulmonary resuscitation for one minute. She phoned a man who lived two blocks away, and he came right over to help her. Next she called the paramedics, and they arrived a few minutes after the neighbor began assisting with C. P. R. The paramedics used electric shock to start my heart. They rushed me to the hospital where I lived in a coma for two days. When I woke up I told my daughter about my experience.

“I remember feeling like I was a spirit out of my body. I could see myself lying dead on the floor with my daughter blowing air into my lungs. Then I saw the a man who lives down the street from my daughter, but I didn't know who he was. He was helping her give C.P.R. They took turns breathing air therough my mouth into my lungs and pumping my heart by pushing down on my breast bone. I felt myself going through a dark place looking toward a lighted place ahead. On both sides of me there were evil pools. When I entered the lighted area, I felt a wonderful warm feeling of being in paradise. I met my long dead mother and my grandfather, and they seemed alive. I was greeted by several other dead people I knew when they were alive.

“There was a place for messages like cubbie-holes you see behind the desks in hotel lobbies. I was told there was no message for me. I understood it meant I should leave paradise because there was something I needed to do on earth. I don't know what. Anyway, I woke up after two days in the hospital. When the neighbor man came to visit me, I recognized him as the fellow who helped revive me. He was the same man I saw in the vision. I don't know what else to say, except now, I'm not afraid of going to the next world."

Three weeks after telling me the above story the man died.

I met a Spanish speaking woman about sixty who told me her story in Spanish. I will try to interpret what she told me. She said she had a cardiac arrest in a hospital bed. She felt herself floating up to the ceiling in the corner looking down at herself on the bed. A doctor and two nurses were trying to revive her. She was glad to be free of pain and wished they would leave her alone. She wanted to stay free of pain. She said she felt very small as she went through a dark tube or tunnel and finally entered a bright yellow lighted area and immediately felt elated and tranquil in the bright, warm paradise.

She said, "I almost saw the face of God. But they wouldn't let me stay. It felt so good to be free of pain, I didn't want to go back. But my daughter has an impaired brain with a low I.Q., and she needed me. I could hear the doctor calling me back as he worked on me. I saw myself, and I reluctantly made myself cough. I re-entered my body, and right away, I felt the pain again. That was six months ago. I am still feeling the pain of life, and I don't like it. I wish I could go back to that place where I escaped from life for a little while."

Captain Clifford Hanson was a retired U.S. Navy officer. During World War Two he was the pay-master at the naval base on the famous island of Corigador. General Mc Arthur abandoned the island to the advancing Japanese forces. Chief Petty Officer Cliff Hanson stood on the beach and watched as the native island leader President Quezon paid Mc Arthur several hundred thousand dollars to save his family. Mc Arthur put the money in his pocket and later deposited it in his personal bank account. President Quezon, his wife and children and General Mc Arthur were saved. They rode on a Navy P.T. boat to Australia. Before leaving Corigador McArthur walked into the water with movie cameras capturing his promise, "I shall return."

Chief Hanson was captured with the rest of the Americans who stayed behind. The Japanese marched them to a ship where they sailed to Manila. The prisoners were held in a make-shift prison formerly used as a hospital. The prison was kept secret from the world until the defeat of Japan.

During his confinement Chief Hanson met an American medical doctor and they became friends. When younger prisoners began dying from malnutrition, Hanson and the doctor read a book on nutrition and learned that rice is not a whole protein. Older men could survive without full proteins, eating rice only, but young, growing men became sick and died unless they had full proteins to eat. The book said a portion of beans added to rice when eaten and digested would form full proteins. Cliff Hanson was a Chief Petty Officer, a trusted leader, and he was in charge of distributing food to the prisoners of war. Most of the people were Americans, but many were English. A Japanese man who spoke English brought large sacks of rice to Hanson. Hanson collected watches and gold rings from the prisoners to bribe the Japanese man who agreed to bring every tenth sack filled with the life giving beans. The bean sack was marked so Hanson could hide it from the guards. It was not legal to have the beans. The beans were sparingly mixed with rice. Many young lives were able to live because of the protein.

When the doctor complained to the Japanese he had no medical supplies, they beat him until he passed out. He continued to complain and the Japanese continued to beat him. On one occasion the guards forced him to dig a grave and lie in it as they began covering him with dirt. A Japanese officer stopped them from burying the doctor alive just in time to save his life. It was during the beating and buriel experience that the doctor went out of his body and watched them beat his physical body. He laughed because he felt wonderful that they couldn't hurt him while he was out of his body.

The Chief was also tortured and beaten on many occasions. He too learned to get out of his body and watch in order to avoid the pain. However, Chief Clifford Hanson suspected it was not good for his mind, and he stopped doing it. The doctor was not impressed with warnings from Cliff, and he learned to leave his body even when he was not hurting. Eventually the doctor began acting strange and finally, he lost his mind. After the war he was hospitalized in the U.S. and finally, he died in a mental institution.

Another thing Hanson did while he was a P.O.W. was to help gather material for a prisoner who knew all about radios. Hanson was not able to trust many of the men to keep secrets from the Japs. He said, "Ordinary men will say anything to get food when they are hungry. So I asked the men to pick up and save pieces of wire and metal. I did not tell them why. The radio man even used tin foil from candy or cigarette wrappers. He said he needed a good magnet to make a speaker so we could hear the short wave broadcasts and learn what was going on in the world. I stole a phone receiver from an old room in the hospital. Soon the radio was finally completed. It worked. A carpenter made a short stool with a false bottom to hide the radio. The Japs did not find it.”

The doctor and a few other trusted people listened to news from Hong Kong and other reliable broadcasters. Cliff told me, "News from San Francisco was too full of propaganda to be of much use. We learned more from the Chinese and English broadcasts from Hong Kong and Australia.

“The radio warned us that the Japanese war was almost over. We knew we would perhaps be rescued but feared that the Japs would kill us. But one day, they marched off and left us alone.”

After liberation from the Japanese, Chief Hanson was promoted to Warrant Officer and continued to serve in the Navy until he advanced to full Captain. He retired in Fallbrook, California with his beautiful wife. Captain Clifford Hanson was a friendly man who did not think of himself as a hero. He was too modest.

At age sixty two, I was hospitalized for heart pain. In surgery, the doctor inserted a long wire-like tool into an artery in my right groin and threaded it into the artery that sends fresh blood to my heart muscle. I was awake when I heard the doctor say my artery had closed and would not open. I lost consciousness. My wife Barbara was there and she explained to me what happened. "You had a heart attack on the surgical table and your heart stopped. They used an electric machine to shock you, and you almost jumped off the table twice but your heart would not beat. They wheeled you into another surgery room prepared for open heart surgery. The surgical team was ready, and Dr. Don Buehler opened your chest in such a hurry, he didn’t even take time to scrub. He started manual heart massage. After working twenty minutes using several methods including electrical stimulation, your heart finally began to beat regularly and a triple by-pass procedure was performed."

I woke up from a coma after a few days. I had every tube known to man attached to my various organs. I had experienced a perfect opportunity for an out of body experience. Unfortunately, it didn't happen.