How have you loved, what have you done for others? is Nicole Dron’s second book. She is best known for her NDE, which she describes in detail in 45 seconds of eternity. She was one of the first Frenchwomen to speak out about her experience in 1968, when she underwent surgery. Here are a few extracts from his book. I recommend reading it in its entirety: it’s a very rich book, particularly on the meaning of life, now and in the future.
I would like to invite you to continue your quest and get as close as possible to “your truth”. The one that will enable you to answer The question: How have you loved, what have you done for others?
Bathed in Light
I was bathed in infinite Light, Love, Intelligence, Wisdom, Consciousness and Peace. I can never forget. I know that within me exists this essence, this magnificent life force that animates me and makes me conscious. I am an eternal particle, a segment of the world soul that resides in all beings. I was amazed to discover this.
I came back to learn to love on a soul level and to have the courage to be “real”. I was told that we would return to Earth until we had acquired enough Love and Wisdom. It’s all a question of evolution, and once we’ve evolved, we can move on to other planes of existence.
When you enter the “Light-Love”, you not only feel this infinite love, you become Love. You are Love. All the doors and windows of your soul open and you understand everything, you know everything. It’s not an accumulation of knowledge. It’s an energy of infinite knowledge, love and wisdom. By a phenomenon of osmosis, of resonance, you become this energy.
45 seconds of eternity and fulfillment
During the operation, my heart stopped beating (flat electrocardiogram for about forty-five seconds). And in those forty-five seconds, I had a profound, intense, unforgettable experience. Its indelible imprint forever colors every dimension of my life. It still rests within me, reminding me of the fullness, beauty and immense peace of a state that defies description. Compared to this state, the exclusive pursuit of material wealth, fame, power and glory seems paltry and miserable.
Then I found myself in an abyss of darkness and silence. Then I was propelled at full speed through a tunnel towards a marvellous light, so alive… The closer I got to it, the more it grew and the more an incredible joy penetrated me. And I entered this Light… And now, there are no more words…
Light and all is said
How can you talk about the Light? You have to live it! It’s a splendid, living, radiant substance of incredible purity. It’s also infinite peace… In it, I was no longer conscious of time and space, but of Being. I realized that I was eternal, that I had always lived and would always live, that there is only life…
It’s an indescribable moment, and just thinking about the word “Light”, even forty-eight years later, still moves me to the core, sometimes to the point of tears, so intense is the memory. No human word or concept can describe or explain this Light. It’s a substance of love that some might call God, or the emanation of God, or the energy of the world, or the Source.
Never mind the words! I’m not even trying to analyze it. For me, she is the Light, and that says it all. This Light is also an ocean of pure Love, a love that offers itself and asks for nothing. It’s a love that fulfills and restores you, a sunny Love.
Becoming Love
Not only did I feel love, but, by a kind of osmosis, I became Love. I was Love and I was Life, and I can never forget that. This fusion, this feeling of being One in Love with all that “Is”, is at the heart of my experience. It’s my treasure.
Entering this Light was the most beautiful moment of my life. In her, I saw my younger brother again, and it was an unforgettable encounter. I realized that the bonds of love never die.
Two simple questions
Someone I’ll never forget asked me these two simple yet demanding questions: – How did you love and what did you do for others? In his presence, my whole life unfolded, with its beauties of course, but also its weaknesses and shortcomings. My whole life was measured against what it should have been if I had always acted with love and wisdom. It wasn’t a judgment, but a realization of what was keeping me from love.
Love is the secret of life, the secret of God. And I know there’s only life!
Having experienced the sacred, the beauty and the unity of life, and having tasted the state of plenitude that characterizes it, I’m convinced that nothing is more important on this Earth than seeking to establish it within ourselves and around us. For it is from this state that the best in science, art, religion and human relations emerge. Imagine, too, the predominance of Consciousness in politics and economics! The whole quality of life depends on the recognition of this fullness of life, which can be called God, the Supreme Being, the original Absolute Intelligence, the Source of Life, the Father, etc., and on the ability of every human being to connect with this source.
Love is the essence of every living religion
The important thing for me is not the fact of belonging to a religion? It’s to access, through it, the essence of religion, the magnificent Love and Wisdom in which I’ve immersed myself at the heart of my experience, and to embody it. It’s the path of transformation that matters to me. It is the alchemical process that turns the caterpillar into a butterfly, and leads man to the “great experience” of the Presence of God in every being.
I believe that a religion or tradition that leads to tolerance, respect, love and knowledge, a religion that invites us to become fraternal, better and more aware, is a religion that has preserved its sap. The important thing is to unite with God and realize Him within you. It’s to seek the Source within. For the truth itself is infinitely greater than the glimpse of it offered by all the world’s doctrines, philosophies and religions.
Mystical experiences,” says Mario Beauregard, “reveal the capacity of individuals to enter into contact with an objectively real, transcendental force, a force beyond themselves, time and space. Hence the many psychic phenomena that remain unexplained by science, such as ‘miraculous’ cures, the placebo effect, premonitions, near-death experiences, the feeling of union during prayer or meditation.”
What’s the point of knowing the rest?
People often ask me what’s the point of “wracking our brains” to find out what’s going to happen “afterwards”, because we’ll find out when the time comes anyway. I don’t agree. While it’s true that in the midst of experience we can evaluate and understand our lives in the light of Love and Wisdom, it’s too late to change them…
In this dimension, for example, we can truly understand what the word “love” means in its absolute sense. But “becoming love” implies having realized it within oneself, and therefore having gone through more or less happy, more or less painful experiences to learn to love “truly” and to concretize this state of love within oneself.
Living love every day
Love invites discernment, listening, dedication, patience, respect and forgiveness. It’s an invitation to show treasures of generosity and tenderness, in short, to transcend oneself. It is not an abstract concept. It’s by experiencing it in all its dimensions, by living it to the full, that it becomes part of us. The same applies to all aspects of life.
And it’s on Earth, in the school of material life, that we are offered the opportunities to grow. The obstacles we encounter allow our qualities to blossom and manifest themselves. They are, in a way, the equivalent for us of what a hurdle is for a horse. Without it, he couldn’t surpass himself. We need to realize, deep down, what we’ve become aware of.
Living to evolve and grow
“The human being can only evolve when incarnated,” said a great initiate. When he dies, he takes to the spiritual world not his baggage of knowledge, but what he has become. For knowledge enables us to “become”, but the concretization of this knowledge enables us to “Be”.
To believe that it’s enough to die in order to receive all that the suprasensible world could give us, even when we’ve neglected to prepare for it here on earth, is a completely false belief. For each world has its own particular mission. What man can acquire in his earthly incarnation, he cannot obtain in any other world.
So it’s wrong to say that it’s enough to focus exclusively on your earthly existence, and that there will always be time to see what happens later. Because what happens then depends precisely on how we have prepared ourselves here on earth. It’s all connected.
For example, all the qualities and potentialities we inherit at birth are the result of the forces we have brought with us from the life between our last death and our new birth. But these forces of realization have themselves been generated by the achievements (or lack of them) that we have realized within ourselves during our previous incarnation, and which are waiting for a new manifestation to become more efficient or to be purified.
The realizations of our last earthly life, and the thoughts, words and deeds that embody them, populate our minds at the moment of transition, and thus determine our future.
where your treasure is, there your heart will be too
Everything that feeds our consciousness, everything we value or depend on: money, power, fame, passions, desires, fears, frustrations, but also generosity, sincerity, respect, sincere love, courage, wisdom, etc., all this is “Us”.
And it’s with this baggage of achievements and non-achievements, preserved in some fold of universal memory, that we’ll have to take to the road again until we become “ourselves” in the most absolute sense of the word.
I also think that knowing that death is just one episode in a long life helps us to accept it better when the time comes. And discovering that life has a purpose, that of realizing the best in us, allows us to go through it with our eyes open, aware. This helps us ward off deceptive appearances and artificial paradises that could lead us astray from this goal and our star.
NDEs are first and foremost about life
One NDEr said: “NDE testimonies try to reassure people about their fear of DEATH instead of making them aware of their responsibilities regarding the meaning of LIFE! Now I know that every thought, every word, every action I commit on this Earth has consequences for me and for others, here, now and for a long time to come…”
Many people confess to having been strongly shaken by the question I was asked at the heart of my NDE: “How did you love, what did you do for others?” This question acted as an “eye-opener” and reoriented their lives towards greater fraternity, awareness and responsibility. A gentleman said to me only recently: “I attended one of your conferences over twenty years ago, and I’ll never forget the impact those words had on my heart. The question you asked radically transformed my life.”
A decisive life review
As far as I’m concerned, it was the review of my life, followed by the realization of its content, that was the most decisive factor in my experience. The reason I’m passing this one on today is, of course, to bear witness to the survival of the soul. But above all, it’s about raising awareness of the meaning and true values of life, and of the need for an inner, individual and collective transformation of humanity. It’s urgent, because only this transformation can save the world.
I think the wonder of the experience initially attracts a lot of people. We then invite them, through a succession of increasingly profound awarenesses, to carry out the inner work of purification that is, in my opinion, the central message of the Experience.
The end-of-life approach invites us to focus on the essential
The person who knows he’s nearing the end of his life has no use for idle chatter. She enters into her inner self, her authenticity, and wishes to have “real” exchanges with those around her. And even if she hasn’t been drawn to any particular religion or philosophy in her life, she may, at this crucial time in her life, feel the need to be enlightened about the real questions that may arise from the depths of her being.
A little child said to me: “But you shouldn’t have any more faults, Grandma, since you’ve been to heaven!”-Yes, but there’s a big difference between seeing the Light from heaven and becoming as beautiful as She is. Just because you get in the water doesn’t mean you can swim. You have to learn to swim. We don’t have to learn to become Light, because we’re already there.
But we must learn to remove all the obstacles that separate us from Her. And it doesn’t just happen. You have to train yourself every day to change your character, to purify your thoughts and feelings, to become more patient. Little by little, with a great deal of perseverance, we discover that we have changed and that we have brought a little more light into our hearts and lives, a little more freedom. That’s right, clean your thoughts.
Love all parts of yourself
You have to love yourself, you have to accept all the parts that make up you, even the darkest ones. They are so only because they are not illuminated by light and warmed by love. It’s only by discovering the ignorance and suffering they mask – and which are at the root of all our torments – that we can love and forgive ourselves. And it’s only by understanding, loving and forgiving that we are transformed.
Before I came back, I knew “who” I really was. A being appeared before me and all I wanted to do was melt into him, because I knew that this being was me. You see, it’s as if you were a ray of sunlight and suddenly realized that this ray coming from the sun IS also the sun. It makes you want to melt into its light, its strength, its warmth. You want to become the whole sun. That’s what happened to me. I was irresistibly drawn to this being and longed to become “What” he was. He exuded so much strength, love, wisdom and peace, he was so much the whole of me, the most beautiful part of me, me in all my splendor, that I wanted to unite with him forever.
“What we are is perfect
“What we really are is perfect, and we come to Earth with a small seed of perfection in our hearts, so that it can germinate and transform the thorns in our hearts into beautiful flowers. Never forget that the real you is beautiful. That he’s so strong and so powerful that by thinking of him, by binding yourself to him, you can get through the worst difficulties, the worst trials of life. Never think you’re a weak fisherman. You have within you the Strength of Love and the Light of Wisdom.
Why suffering? Why evil?
Why all this suffering if there is a loving God? Obviously, if we conceive of God as a being who sits atop his Olympus and calls the shots, we can’t accept all the injustice and suffering that reigns on this Earth. It’s revolting, of course…
But if God is the universal intelligence that animates all creation (as I intimately felt during my experience), we know that a divine, pure and unalterable particle exists in all that “Is”. This universal Essence, this Soul, penetrates everything and is endowed with consciousness that varies, of course, according to the kingdoms. She is the potter who needs the clay to make her work.
But matter vibrates at lower frequencies and, when man becomes incarnate, he becomes weighed down and in a way “impure”, not because he has sinned, but because his divine essence must express itself through these different rhythms or frequencies of varying density (physical, emotional and mental), and the synthesis of these energies doesn’t allow him to express the best of himself.
Free will
His soul’s response to all life’s stimuli, as well as his free will, has shaped the character he has developed since the beginning of creation. It is this character or ego – not to be confused with one’s true divine Essence – that is at the root of most of the perversions and suffering in this world.
It’s not God, it’s the unfulfilled, unrecognized part of God in every being that creates this world of inconsistencies. Our job is, in a way, to “spiritualize” matter by raising our consciousness and transforming our character so that God can express Himself freely within us. The experience of evil on Earth, the sages tell us, takes us through the hell of misfortune. But this earthly hell teaches us a lesson, as a discrimination is gradually made between what causes suffering and the good that avoids it. Life after life, they add, the way to heaven appears to us to be the only valid one. This is how Wisdom is formed in every human being.
Simply being
“Being” is a state of consciousness that can be experienced on Earth, and you don’t have to die to experience it. If we could live in the present moment, in all its fullness, that is, free from the attachments and regrets of the past and the expectations of the future, simply experiencing, like a young child, the joy of being, it would be heaven on Earth. But to experience the happiness of being in the present moment, we need to have found the Source within ourselves…
What a pity that a veil separates those who leave from those who stay! Yet I know there’s no separation. Our human consciousness is too material, too dense to see that our life continues after the transition.
Death does not exist
There’s no such thing as death, life goes on, and despite all the hardships and suffering we’ve encountered, some of which bring us to our knees, we discover, at the end of life, that it was worth living. For it has given us the opportunity to extract, from the depths of our trials, the gold that lies within us: Love. The one that will bring you together. Yes, knowing that life goes on and that we’ll meet up again one day changes the whole meaning of life.
What about suicide?
Your daughter [qui s’est suicidée] has been welcomed by divine Love. Never doubt this. It is a love that fills, restores and heals all the wounds of life that have led a human being to lose the taste for existence. It’s a love that enlightens and strengthens, and I’m sure that his greatest joy now would be for you to feel it, this Love. May your heart become a nest, a haven of peace in which your daughter can rest and draw strength and oxygen to continue her evolution.
Based on my experience and the teachings of spiritual science, I believe that the person who has ended his or her life is initially deeply disturbed to realize that he or she is still living. And, above all, he suffers from feeling the pain his gesture has caused in the hearts of his loved ones, and from discovering the future repercussions it will have in his life and in theirs.
What I know is that in this Light, I’ve understood everything. I wasn’t judged. It’s the light of my soul that has assessed my personality and noted its beauties, but also its weaknesses. It was also in this Light that I became aware of my true dimension, of “What” I really am, of this magnificent being that each of us Is, on the absolute plane.
There are many homes in the afterlife
If we knew that, we’d be able to get through life with courage! I’ve come back to life, but I now know from personal experience, as well as from the teachings of all spiritual traditions, that the soul goes to one of the “houses” corresponding to its state of consciousness. This is to extract the lesson of his last life and prepare himself, after many stages and a certain purification, for a new mission. It will enable him to apply the lessons he has learned and make amends for his mistakes.
In these abodes of soul regeneration, disembodied entities prepare, it is said, for a future rebirth on Earth or in an equivalent dimension. And it will be with a consciousness enriched by the new understanding acquired between two incarnations, and fortified by divine blessings, that they will pursue their mission.
Listen to your inner voice
But, you might ask, won’t they remember? Yes, they will. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they will feel a vague reminiscence of their past. This will manifest itself as a “voice of conscience”, urging them to resist any temptations that may come their way again. In the meantime, we can help them a lot through prayer, that energy of love.
We don’t really fail, not to the point of being forever separated from God. His Love is immense… But we delay the moment of the “wedding” and come back again to take up the necklace and accomplish what was not previously understood and realized. It’s a waste of time and a great pain for the soul to return. This is not God’s love. We are the ones who deliberately distance ourselves from him.
Back to the Source
When this emanation, this soul, leaves Earth at the end of a full life, it returns to its Source. But when she is incarnated again, her true spiritual identity still exists on the soul plane, and can be contacted by all those who knew her on Earth and have returned to “the Land”. We are here in the presence of souls, of the most subtle part of our being, of that which is eternal. In comparison, our embodied body represents a finger of the immense Being that we are. But the finger is not the Being… We are infinitely “bigger”, more “multidimensional”, than our appearance suggests. That’s why we always find each other.
In fact, it’s only an imprint of us that reincarnates, and it’s only a tiny part of our total being that takes on a body again… It’s only one vibratory frequency among all those that characterize the “great wave” that we are. When we die, we open up to our total dimension.
We are never separated from those we love or have loved
We’re never apart. At this very moment, the tip of your soul is consciously communing with that of your grandmother. What a pity that our earthly conscience is so impervious and doesn’t remember these contacts! Unless we work on our inner purification and, thanks to him, our vibrations become more refined…
Spiritual teachings state that there is only one soul in the universe: universal consciousness. In every living being there is an inseparable segment of this cosmic soul, and this segment constitutes the human soul, which never ceases to be part of the cosmic soul. The universal soul is not limited in its power of division; in other words, it can segment itself ad infinitum and continually give birth to new souls. We can compare it to electricity, which can power a multitude of electric lights at the same time. Some can be added, some taken away.
But where do you find the strength and impetus to begin this work and, above all, to continue it? By applying ourselves to it every day, by being vigilant to the thoughts we emit, to the emotions we feel, by trying to repair the damage that has been done, by trying to transform our faults into qualities before they set off other cogs, by trying to love ourselves. By being aware of what’s at stake. Every little victory adds to our inner strength. And above all, by exercising our free will with discernment when a new choice is presented to us. Where will this choice lead me and all those around me?
You have a “life mission
We all have a “mission” in life and, with a few exceptions, it’s not easy to discover. Most of the time, it’s only revealed in small steps, and not always in the way our ego would like. You often have to be in the middle of your life to get a glimpse of what it’s like. It can be expressed through a fulfilling profession, but not always. It can be discovered through a hobby. This mission can also involve bringing joy and special help to those around us, building bridges, expressing beauty and tenderness through our own qualities, arousing the desire to “Be”, and so on. This can be as simple as performing a particular act in one’s own life or in the lives of others, an act for which one has been specially incarnated.
In general, it allows us to offer humanity our talents, our special qualities. The more our quest becomes a priority, the more our “mission” looms on the horizon and the more the opportunities to achieve it fall into place, waiting for us to be ready and for favorable circumstances to allow it.
Being in the fullness
For me, “BEING” represents the fullness of the state in which I bathed when I entered the Light. In this state, it was as if I had laid down my earthly burden. I was filled with absolute love, immense peace and wisdom, so far removed from the worries and turmoil of this earth! I was overwhelmed! I became aware of “being and having always been”, of having always existed. I lost my blinders and discovered that I was infinitely “more” than I thought. I was Love and I was Life! I was at one with the universe. I was in him and he was in me. I WAS!
I would say that BEING represents our original state, stripped of all our human miseries: selfishness, jealousy, fears, covetousness, passions and so on. This is our true essence, our SELF. It’s not about the best of ourselves, but about being in the SELF.
Jean Klein explains that the lower “I”, the ego, can be compared to an ice floe in the ocean of the SELF. It insists on remaining something unique, something different from seawater. The ego wants to be taken seriously and clings to its false identity. He forgets, or doesn’t yet know, that he is of the same substance as the sea water from which he was drawn and into which he silently, inexorably returns. The ego is, in fact, “an isolation in the continuum” according to Vedic tradition. When it melts, the SELF is revealed. Meditation is the process of applying heat.
Discover the divine in you
Self-awareness is about discovering our Being, discovering the divine within us: the SELF, and freeing it from all the emotional and mental embarrassments that make up the ego. It’s a shift in the center of gravity. As American therapist Dennis Boyes points out, the term “spiritual work” is a misnomer, because it’s always psychological work. The spiritual needs no work; it has always been perfect. It’s the psyche that stands in the way of the presence of the SELF, the Divine within. In the midst of my NDE, I realized that it’s not believing in God that saves us, but realizing Him within us, in our most intimate fibres.
Illuminated or realized?
It’s important to realize that the experience of Being – which is what some NDEs are – and the transformation to which it invites are two distinct things. To simple experience (enlightenment), which is transitory, we need to add knowledge and years of vigilance and practice (meditation, prayer, introspection) to arrive one day, at the end of the road, at realization, at its concretization within us. Being realized is different from being enlightened.
I felt this experience to be universal, infinitely beyond any religious expression, while at the same time being the active force that expresses itself in each of them.
The person who commits to the path is the one who suffers from a “lack of being” and for whom the Self speaks louder than the ego, the one whose call to the absolute is powerful.
Choose Life
“Being ready” means that the superficial pleasures of life no longer satisfy us, that something is missing from our happiness despite the abundance in which we can live, despite the respect with which we are surrounded, and despite the abilities and qualities that are ours. Somewhere, we feel incomplete. A vacuum has set in. This can even be accompanied by a neurosis which, according to Dürckheim, is nothing more than the sign of a life that has taken place outside our innermost being. And I wonder: isn’t burn-out, which claims so many victims, the consequence of a life that is no longer rooted in Life?
The important thing is to be aware of the psychological mechanisms on which we depend and which condition our lives. And also meditation and prayer, both of which create bridges linking us to the divine. Become transparent to be transparent! Prepare the ground and don’t force or demand anything. Spiritual experience cannot be conquered; it is always a grace.
What’s at stake in such research? Rediscover the fullness of who you ARE. Walking in the Light. And there are no words to describe it. I experienced a moment of eternity, and its indelible imprint will remain with me forever. Rediscover love, life and freedom!
One big “I Am
My experience has enabled me to understand that there is only one great soul in the universe, an “I Am” that rests in a multitude of forms that experience life, and that when we forgive a being for the mistakes it has made and the suffering it has inflicted, we are also forgiving ourselves.
Everyone returns for :
- become aware of your dark side and transform it into light;
- learn to love beyond the emotional human love that seeks only pleasure and ease;
- develop your inner strength, release the life within you and help others to do the same;
- discover who he IS.
I entrusted my life to the universe, accepting whatever might eventually be offered to me, and I “helped” myself by respecting my intuitions.
Let us drive you
I’ve experienced how necessary it is to mobilize all one’s energies. But not against adversity, not by exhausting ourselves fighting, refusing “what is”. But, on the contrary, with the help we are given when we align ourselves with Creative Energy and our consciousness thus becomes the channel of Its infinite possibilities.
It’s not a question of passively waiting for everything to come our way, but of opening ourselves up to the possibilities that might present themselves to us, listening to our intuitions and acting accordingly. Otherwise, our own desires, tainted by fear and rejection, risk short-circuiting the divine plans that concern us.
To radiate is to let the Spirit you are shine through.
Be what you really are
Healthy people can be sick of not being who they really are. In Buddhist language, we’d probably say that man is sick of the distance he has taken with his true nature. Dürckheim speaks of the distance that separates us from our essential Being. The symptoms of this illness are inner disorder and lack of calm, as well as a feeling of insecurity that leads to existential anguish, and he was also very insistent on this point: a lack of joie de vivre.
In the near future,” said Richard Moss, “it will be honoring each other, working to restore and protect the environment, that will define a spiritual being. Otherwise the Earth will drive us to extinction, because we won’t have learned how to be human.”
“Where there is a firm will to love and do good, there is automatically a path that opens up to prepare a better future”. Father Pedro
To find out more :
The link to her book on Amazon or Fnac
One of his YouTube videos
See also the article on Nicole Dron’s first book “45 seconds of eternity”.
