Christianity Today

Mary Neal was white-water rafting in Chile with her husband and some friends when she got pinned under a waterfall. She tried to raise her head out of the water to get some air, but the surging water was so powerful, she says, "I quickly realized I was not in control of my future."

The current twisted her body violently and began pulling her out of her kayak. At the same time, she says, "I felt as though my soul was slowly peeling itself away from my body." Just as her body was freed from the kayak, she felt a "pop": "It felt as if I had finally shaken off my heavy outer layer, freeing my soul."

Neal says that when her soul broke through the surface of the water, she was met by some 20 human spirits. Sent by God, they greeted her with "the most overwhelming joy I have ever experienced." They had "formed shapes," but not with the distinct edges of physical bodies, blurred because each was "dazzling and radiant." They did not speak using mouths, she says, but simultaneously communicated their thoughts and emotions to one another.

Mostly Neal experienced a "feeling of absolute love" as the spiritual beings hugged her and danced with her. She was now in "God's world," she says, where everything "is exponentially more colorful and intense. It was as though I were experiencing an explosion of love and joy in their absolute and unadulterated essence.

"The intensity, depth, and purity of these feelings and sensations were far greater than I could ever describe with words."

Before she began the journey with her new companions, she looked at her earthly companions trying to revive her body. They looked "so terribly sad and vulnerable" as they begged her body to take a breath.

She and the human spirits soon came to "a great and brilliant hall … radiating a brilliance of colors and beauty." She felt her soul pulled toward the entry. As she approached, she says, "I physically absorbed its radiance and felt the pure, complete, and utterly unconditional absolute love that emanated from the hall. It was the most beautiful and alluring thing I had ever seen or experienced."

She knew with "profound certainty" that this was "the last branch point of life …. The place where each of us is given an opportunity to review our lives and our choices, and where we are each given a final opportunity to choose God or turn away—for eternity."

Though she was filled with the longing to be "reunited with God," her spiritual companions told her that it was not time for her to enter the hall; she had not completed her time on earth. This filled Neal with deep sadness and she protested, but "we shared our sorrow as they returned me to the river bank," where, she says, "I was reunited with my body."

Such was the experience of the orthopedic surgeon from Wyoming, as told in To Heaven and Back: A Doctor's Extraordinary Account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, and Life Again (WaterBrook Press). As of this writing, Neal's book has sat on The New York Times best-seller list for 20 weeks.

When it comes to books about visiting heaven, it is not alone. Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, by Todd Burpo (Thomas Nelson), has been on the best-seller list for nearly two years. Don Piper's 90 Minutes in Heaven (Revell) began its epic sales adventure in 2004, with some 5 million copies sold to date. These three books are by evangelical Christians, but religious pluralists also report such experiences. Eben Alexander's Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster) hit bookstores in late October, eliciting a cover story from Newsweek earlier that month.

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