Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [95]
“It was Grandmama,” she recalled.“And I went to her. And with her was my musical uncle David Saxton,” Pam’s mentor, who had died of a massive heart attack years earlier. They looked young, she said. They shimmered as if they were wearing coats of light, and soon she spotted “a sea of people and they were all wearing the light.”
“I remember asking,‘Is God the light?’And the communication was, ‘No, He’s not the light. The light is what happens when God breathes.’
“And I thought, I am standing in the breath of God.”
My mind caught on the word “breath.” The connection between breath and spirit dates back at least two thousand years. The Hebrews called it ruach, the Greeks called it pneuma, and what they meant was the spirit of God.When Jesus appeared to his friends after the Crucifixion, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”5
It occurs to me that perhaps this metaphor, like DNA, has been passed down through the generations, not because it is poetic, but because it is true: whether that breath arrives in death or in life, in practiced meditation or unbidden surprise, in first-century Jerusalem or twentieth-century Atlanta, that is what standing in the presence of God feels and sounds like—a wind that penetrates the heart, a breath that transforms a person and her world at a cellular level, a spirit that robs her of words but leaves peace in their stead.
Pam stood for a few moments in the breath of God. She yearned to go deeper into that light, but was stopped and told she needed to return. Her uncle, David, escorted a reluctant Pam back to the operating room.
“There I was again, with David, looking down at the body. Only at this point, that thing looked like a train wreck. It looked like what it was—dead. I did not want to get in it, I didn’t even want to look at it, and now my uncle is reasoning with me. He says, ‘Sweetheart, it’s like diving into the swimming pool. Just dive in.’ ”
She protested, and then her uncle began reminding her of all her favorite things—her favorite food, her favorite smell, her favorite bird-songs—Pam’s connection to the world.
“And I’m looking down and the body jumped. There were people around the gurney and the body jumped”—as they restarted her heart with a defibrillator. “And I thought, Okay, you know what, they’re electrocuting that thing, I’m not getting in it.’ Then my uncle pushed me! And I hit the body, and I heard the title track to the Eagles album Hotel California. When I hit the body the line was, ‘You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.’ And the body jumped again. That time I was in it and I felt it. And I opened my eyes and I saw Dr. Karl Greene, and I said, ‘You know, that is really insensitive!’ ”
Pam laughed. “He told me I needed to get some more sleep.”
At first she thought she had been hallucinating. But the next day, Pam met the cardiac surgeon who had commented on Pam’s small femoral vein near the groin. From her angle, Pam had not seen the doctor’s face during the out-of-body experience.
“I recognized her voice and I mentioned it. She looked at me kind of funny.”
When Pam returned to Phoenix for her one-year checkup, she told Dr. Spetzler what she had “seen,” including “doing the electric paddle thing” at the end of the surgery. And he said, ‘Oh no. That didn’t happen. ’ And he looked a little relieved, and frankly I was as well.”
“Why relieved?” I asked.
“Well, if that part is wrong, maybe the rest of it is as well. Maybe it was just a hallucination,” she said
“So I came back and told my doctor here. And he said, ‘No, I’ll check my records but I believe that they defibrillated twice’—which would make sense because I saw it once and felt it once. And sure enough, he confirmed it. And he called and talked to Dr. Spetzler,