Piper's Near Death Experience example essay topic

90 Minutes of Perfection Any pain to be suffered comes first. Instinctively you fight to live. The conscious mind does not believe any other reality could possibly exist beside the earth. We have been trained since birth to live. Life tells us who we are and we accept it's telling. Your body wants to live and will fight to survive.

Your body goes limp. Your heart stops. No more air flows in or out. You lose sight, feeling, and movement - although the ability to hear goes last.

Identity ceases. The 'you' that you once were becomes only a memory. There is no pain at the moment of death. Only peaceful silence... calm... quiet. But you still exist. It is easy not to breathe.

In fact, it is easier and more comfortable not to breathe than to breathe. The biggest surprise for most people in dying is to realize that dying does not end life. Whether darkness or light comes next, or some kind of event, be it positive, negative, or somewhere in-between, expected or unexpected, the biggest surprise of all is to realize you are still you. You can still think, you can still remember, you can still see, hear, move, reason, wonder, feel, question, and tell jokes. You are still alive, very much alive.

"Actually, you " re more alive after death than at any time since you were last born. Only the way of all this is different; different because you no longer wear a dense body to filter and amplify the various sensations you had once regarded as the only valid indicators of what constitutes life". (Atwater) You had always been taught one has to wear a body to live. "The only thing dying does is help you release, slough off, and discard the 'jacket' you once wore". (Atwater) When you die you lose your body. That's all there is to it.

Nothing else is lost. Don Piper is someone that died. He was in an accident where he was hit head on by an 18-wheeler on a small bridge over the Trinity River. When emergency personnel found no pulse he was covered up and was waiting on the justice of the peace to pronounce him dead. "Piper remembers nothing of the accident, but everything about heaven". (Vara) While he was dead, Piper experiences this unimaginable trip to heaven and titled his book 90 Minutes In Heaven.

90 Minutes in Heaven is not a typical story. It does not follow the ideal literary scheme. There is no rising action, there is no climax, or even a plot reader's can follow. What is the book then? It is a recollection of survival, a display of undeniable strength and compassion. This book is how Don Piper died, went to Heaven, and returned.

Don discusses the wreck, his journey to heaven, his return to earth and then his recovery. However, Mr. Piper is not a proclaimed author, nor is he an English professor. He is a Baptist minister who wanted to share his experience with the people of this world. There are so many ways to approach the subject of Don's near death experience but there is only one way to examine the experience. The way Don Piper wanted everyone too.

He wanted everyone that read the story to believe and to have hope. He wanted us to smile, and he wanted us to cry. He believed that because he had this experience that we are all stronger and we should not try to hide the awesome powers God has. Don Piper's near-death experience is a true story. When researching Don's trip to heaven it is not classified as an "out of body experience" but a "near death experience". The Near-Death Experience (NDE) may be defined as 'A lucid experience associated with perceived consciousness apart from the body occurring at the time of actual or threatened imminent death.

' (Long) Or and experience an individual had while they were clinically dead. Where as the out of body experience or OBE is more closely related to dreams and meditation trips. Some encounters with OBE's are when a person is high, or hallucinating. Don Piper was definitely not hallucinating nor was he dreaming.

His accounts of heaven and his findings were not drug induced. NDE's are happening everyday, even though Don's story may be unique; other individuals who have had NDE's surround him. A Gallup Poll in 1992 led to an estimate that 13 million Americans had experienced a NDE. The population of the United States in 1992 was approximately 260 million, leading to an estimate of NDE prevalence of 13 million/260 million, or 5%. His experiences while in Heaven are somewhat related to other recollections people have had while "dead". Many people report of seeing the light.

One woman recounts that when she found herself in the light, 'the feeling just became more and more and more ecstatic and glorious and perfect... If you took the one thousand best things that ever happened to you in your life and multiplied by a million, maybe you could get close to this feeling. ' (Atwater) Another man wrote, 'then there was peace. Peace, but in order to give an idea of what one means by that, the letters would have to be written thousands of miles high in soft glowing colors. It is a complete happiness, total happiness, beyond the realm of happiness. ' (Atwater) Reverend Piper did not see a light nor did he traverse down a dark tunnel.

He does not remember fading away or coming back and he heard nothing. The next moment of awareness he was standing in heaven. He did find himself standing in front of a "large shimmery gate". (Vara) Piper recalls the perfection of heaven and saying heaven was "breathtakingly beautiful. It is beyond belief" (Piper) In the book of Genesis a verse is quoted for Pipers book stating, "How awesome is this place! This is none other that the house of God; this is the gate of Heaven".

(Gen. 28: 17) The physicist, David Bohm, said that the energy of the universe is not a neutral energy but energy of love, and the near-death experience returns from his or her encounter with death to communicate it to others. This is the message that Don Piper was fulfilling after his trip to Heaven. He knew he must come back and relay to everyone what he had seen. He was very reluctant at first to come out and talk about it and did not speak of the heavenly experience for almost 2 years. He was also afraid people may think he was crazy. Theologians cannot say whether this was a true trip to Heaven or not.

David Capes a professor of New Testament at Houston's Baptist University also wonders if these near death experiences are true trips or is it the firing and misfiring of the brain. Other researches on NDE's were conducted in the Netherlands, where they actually followed hundreds of resuscitated patients. The researchers did conclude that NDE's are merely "something we would all desperately like to believe is true". (Lom mel). This was the only research that even closely helped people into believing his experience. Most scientific experts dismissed these occurrences as "wishful thinking or the misguided musings of oxygen-starved brains" (Vara) When Don was in heaven he remembers too many specific details for the trip to just be a recollection of memories.

He remembered people touching him and exact details of who was there and what the looked like. "Even now, years later, I can sometimes close my eyes and see those perfect countenances and smiles that surprised me with the most human warmth and friendliness I've ever witnessed". (Piper) Rev. Piper knows he was in Heaven and professes his 3 spiritual lessons he learned. God answers prayers, God performs miracles and Heaven is real.

He left his position as the minister of education at the First Baptist church in Pasadena to handle speaking engagements. He now talks openly about his experience and gives me people hope and peace of mind. A woman told Piper that she had been praying all week for God to give her peace about her daughter's death. She confessed "God put your book in my path at Wal-Mart.

It has truly watered my soul back to life". (Vara) Rev. Piper is not afraid of die ing anymore. He says that Heaven "is the most real experience I have had in my existence. That's why I can't wait to get back there".

(Piper) Piper's accident lead to a greater faith and trust in God. Pipers last few paragraphs in his book mention having thirty-four surgeries and many years of pain but that has helped him realize the truth of Paul's words to the Corinthians " Praise be to the God and Father and out Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God" (2 Cori. 1: 3-4) As long as Rev. Don Piper is here on earth, God must still have a purpose for him. Remembering that helps him endure his pain and the physical disabilities he has been burdened with. "In my darkest moments, I remember a line from an old song: 'It will be worth it all when we see Jesus. ' I know it will".

(Piper).