Early Christian NDEs
A Brief History of Otherworld Journeys
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Early Christian Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)
Dr Carol Zaleski of Harvard University conducted a review of medieval Christian literature in her book Otherworld Journeys, which follows the NDE as part of Christian visionary literature. Her basic thesis was that modern NDEs are an extension and reworking of the medieval Christian visionary experience.
Similar accounts appeared in Jewish literature too, showing up later in Hasidic writings, Hasidism being based on the teachings of Baal Shem Tov, a Ukranian Jew born in 1698. In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov states that “in earlier days when people revived after lying in a coma close to death, they used to tell about the awesome things they had seen in the upper world.”1
Zaleski points out that, in fact, the Christian otherworld journey does not directly depend on the pattern of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension, the point being that early Christian NDEs and eschatological visions were not merely tradition-based, but “mysteriously” somehow transcended tradition2.
This suggests they were based on real visionary experiences, as the pre-Christian NDEs we just looked at appear to have been based, at least in part, on actual experiences. Thus, to develop Zaleski’s thesis further, we can rightly say that Christian NDEs are an “extension and re-working” of even more ancient NDEs, such as the Greek, and undoubtedly others emanating from earlier shamanic traditions. In other words, we have been having these sorts of otherworldly experiences for a long time and Christianity certainly has no claim to a monopoly.
An apparent ancient Christian NDE (or NDE-like event) predates even the story of Er—emanating from the 1700-year-old personal diary of a young North African woman named Perpetua. She was a new mother, Christian convert, and ultimately a martyr—she met her death in 203 CE during the reign of Roman emperor Septimius Severus. While awaiting her execution (ironically for her Christian faith—ironic if you’re familiar with some awkward historical facts) in a Carthaginian prison in 203 CE, she experienced four distinct visions that parallel many modern NDEs.
“[A]long with her companion Saturus, Perpetua recorded visions in which they both traveled to an otherworldly garden where they experienced spiritual refreshment and were reunited with a divine being and departed companions.”3
As for many people who have experienced NDEs or otherworld journeys, Perpetua and Saturus returned from theirs “no longer fearing death and able, like modern near-death experiencers, to bring healing, hope, and meaning in the face of death to the community around them.”4
In her notes about the first vision,
Perpetua described stepping on a menacing dragon’s head, ascending a perilous bronze ladder affixed with all manner of sharp instruments, and emerging in an immense garden. Surrounded by thousands of people clad in white, she was welcomed by a gray-haired shepherd who offered her a mouthful of milk he was drawing, after which she awakened with the taste of something sweet still in her mouth, secure in the knowledge that she would soon leave this life.5
The second and third visions of Perpetua’s are of less interest to us, being more focused on her already deceased brother, who appeared “still suffering from the facial cancer he had while alive, and straining to drink from a pool of water whose rim was too high for him to reach.” Seeing this, Perpetua prayed for him and in her third vision saw him “drinking from a bottomless, gold-rimmed pool, after which he began to play.”6
Was this a form of ancient “spirit rescue” in which Perpetua helped her brother heal in his post-mortem condition? Given that many souls who cross over do not actually realise they have died, this is possible, and it is documented that many such souls re-create an astral analogue of the same physical problems they endured while alive. However, this is pure speculation, and the vision may have been more metaphorical or symbolic (as parts of her other visions so obviously were).
After an account of Perpetua’s fourth vision, in which she became a man and defeated an Egyptian gladiator in combat, the [document] includes a vision that an imprisoned companion of Perpetua, named Saturus, reported. In his account, Saturus described leaving his body in the company of Perpetua and four angels. Gently ascending away from the world into an intense light, they emerged in a garden full of cypress trees, rose bushes, and all manner of flowers. Soon, they were reunited with other already deceased martyrs, after which an enthroned white haired man, surrounded by many elders, greeted them.
Perpetua and Saturus then met with other members of their church family and were even called upon to settle a dispute between a bishop and presbyter. Echoing Perpetua’s experience receiving the shepherd’s sweet milk, Saturus reported that all present in this paradisal garden were sustained by an indescribably delicious aroma.7
Interestingly, the details of Perpetua’s and Saturus’ apparently shared experience don’t entirely match up, though both viewed them as divine revelations straight from God; completely and utterly real, and most definitely not regular dreams. This too they have in common with modern visionaries and NDEers, who often describe their experiences as more real than waking reality (a sentiment to which I can relate).8
Held prisoner largely in extreme darkness (sensory deprivation) and lacking food, Perpetua and Saturus were both near death, physically and psychologically. According to Robin Lane Fox, “the conditions of darkness, starvation, and sleeplessness in ancient Mediterranean prisons assured that visions abounded among early Christian martyrs-to-be.”9
Along with transforming both Perpetua and Saturus, these visions “also [transformed] the entire community of Christians who continued to experience the deceased martyrs as a living, healing presence in their midst.”10
The precise nature of these experiences is apparently not known, though I wonder if there were perhaps any carryovers of the ancient bicameral legacy at play here, allowing certain people to hallucinate forms of contact with the martyrs. Or perhaps there was even genuine contact across the veil? We don’t know.
The unpleasant and perhaps trying nature of Perpetua’s passage experience (over the dragon’s head—symbolising fear and death—and up the ladder to “heaven”) characterizes many modern NDEs as well, as Dr Stephen Potthoff points out in his excellent analysis.11
Various people report challenges ranging from demons to sewers, swamps, fogs, mists, darkness, and so on, as we shall see. While Saturus described leaving his body, Perpetua did not; her visionary experience seemed more corporeal. Saturus’ account echoes many modern ones in that he described leaving his body behind and then being carried by four “angels” gently upward toward an intense light (a brilliant light is a key feature of many modern accounts).
However, people make the journey in various different forms, whether sailing in a boat, riding a cow, or taking a taxicab!12 This shows the diverse ways that consciousness interprets (and creates) its own transformation and transitional process into the hereafter.
Eliade showed in his scholarly epic Shamanism that angelic and other psychopomps feature in ancient shamanic visionary traditions, as well as highlighting the repeated appearances of the ladder image (and stairs) in Christian visionary experiences, the latter which plainly symbolises the spiritual “ascent” (as we tend to think of it) to divine knowledge or “heaven” and/or the “throne of God” where the blessed and righteous reside.13
It is also noted that, “The Qur’an is overflowing with angels, ladders, and angels flying vertically, up and down, between heaven and earth.”14
Saturus’ and Perpetua’s descriptions of the landscapes encountered in the other realm are strikingly similar to many modern accounts: Perpetua described it as “spatium immensum horti” (the immense open space of a garden), while in 1985,
Jacqueline Amat imagined…an open prairie reminiscent of the Isles of the Blessed that Lucian, in his True Histories described as a meadow full of flowers. Like Perpetua, Saturus emerged after his journey in a heavenly garden that he described as a viridarium filled with rose bushes, all manner of flowers, and cypress trees. A more specific term than hortus, viridarium designated a type of ornamental park filled with trees and flowers that was planted around villas as well as tombs and temples.15
In accounts from the US and India we find references to beautiful gardens and meadows, reminiscent of the Spiritualist’s “Summerland.” US-based NDEer Betty Eadie explained in Embraced by the Light how she visited a garden filled with trees and flowers the colors of which were far more intense than anything on earth. “The flowers,” she gushed, “are so vivid and luminescent with color that they don’t even appear to be solid.”16
Central “divine beings” also feature in NDEs across the ages through different cultures. While Perpetua encountered the divine shepherd and Saturus the four angels, for instance, Black Elk met the Six Grandfathers of his people17; Eadie met what she identifies as “Jesus Christ”; Dannion Brinkley met the “being of light,” and son on.
Once in the sublime garden, the central divine figure for both Perpetua and Saturus is the white-haired man, though they both described him very differently, with Saturus doing so in far more regal terms. Either way, these encounters signify a spiritual “homecoming” or return to source experienced idiosyncratically, as is to be expected. As Eadie put it after her NDE, she never really left. The white-haired shepherd greeted Perpetua with, “Welcome, my child,” which expresses in anthropomorphic terms the relationship between the incarnate human/returning soul and the parent source (“God”) from which it springs.
Additionally, as Potthoff points out, the fact that the shepherd (masculine principle) offered Perpetua sweet milk curds (milk being the food of newborn babies) signifies she is undergoing a rebirth process, and is “born again”; the shepherd shows both paternal and maternal attributes (which are principles contained within “God,” the unitive ground of all being). Milk has featured in Christian Eucharist and Holy Communion ceremonies for centuries, as well as being used in ancient mystery religions for the spiritually reborn.18
Upon dying, the temporally bound “child” is reunited with the eternal “parent” once more. For triumphing over the Egyptian gladiator in her fourth and final vision, Perpetua was rewarded with the gladiator’s ultimate reward: the golden bough of eternal life. She knew she was about to be reborn into eternity.
One of Zaleski’s most impressive accounts comes from sixth century Gaul (later France) where a monk named Salvius lived, doing his work with the poor. The story goes that he died in 584 after contracting the plague from those he helped. Somewhere around the time he became bishop, Salvius had an illness-induced NDE, and, presumed dead, spent a night on a funeral bier.
He recounted:
Four days ago, I died and was taken by two angels to the height of heaven. And it was just as though I rose above not only this squalid earth, but even the sun and moon, the clouds and stars. Then I went through a gate that was brighter than normal daylight, into a place where the entire floor shone like gold and silver. The light was indescribable, and I can’t tell you how vast it was.19
In the midst of enjoying the bliss of heaven, a disembodied voice interrupted to command, “Send this man back to the world, since he is necessary to our churches.20”
The resurrected Salvius complained bitterly about being expelled from heaven and sent back to earth against his will (to work as a bishop), a common element of modern NDEs (the complaint, not returning to work as a bishop!). Though Zaleski notes that, “Salvius’s vision is a work of hagiography and, as such, differs from many return-from-death narratives of the same period which feature the visit of a sinner or penitent to hell,”21 the importance of the essence of his otherworld experience was not lost on her.
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1 Zaleski, 22.
2 Ibid. Also see Rogo’s comments in The Return from Silence, 25-7.
3 Potthoff, Refreshment and Reunion in Paradise, Journal of Near-Death Studies, 27(3), Spring 2009 2009 lANDS
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Eliade, Shamanism, 488-489.
14 Richard Murray, The Mystical Ladder of the Qur’an, https://scripturefinds.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/the-mystical-ladder-of-the-quran/ Accessed Nov. 3rd, 2022
15 Potthoff, op. cit.
16 Eadie and Taylor, 78-79.
17 Potthoff, op. cit.
18 Ibid.
19 Zaleski, Otherworld Journeys, 5.
20 Ibid., 76.
21 Ibid., 5-6.