Betty Eadie
Encyclopedia
Betty Eadie (born 1942) is a prominent American
author
of several books on near-death experiences (NDEs). Her best-known book is the #1 New York Times bestselling book, Embraced by the Light (1992). It describes her near-death experience. It is arguably the most detailed near-death account on record. It was followed by two other works: The Awakening Heart (1996), also a best-seller, and The Ripple Effect (1999), published independently.
and on the Rosebud Indian Reservation
in South Dakota
. Part Native American
, she grew up in troubled family circumstances, dropped out of high school
to care for a sister, then returned to complete it, and later pursued a college degree. She works today in counseling
and hypnotherapy
with volunteer work and speaks to gatherings about her experiences.
or gravity, and was met by three angelic beings
who spoke with her about her prior existence and hitherto suppressed memories in order to participate in earthly experience. She traveled to terrestrial locations such as her home merely by thinking about them, returned to her hospital, and then passed on through a dark tunnel-like medium in which she reported sensing other beings in a transitory preparatory stage.
Exiting the tunnel, she approached an intense white light and met in heaven
with the embrace of Jesus Christ, in which encounter she reported a strong sense of love
and a high-speed transfer of answers to her many questions. Possessing a corporeal identity of an ethereal kind, she visited numerous places and persons and phenomena such as natural settings and garden
s beyond the character of the conventionally material and was taken on a tour of sorts to lengthy learning experiences she said felt equivalent to weeks or months.
In addition to discussing traditional Christian subjects such as prayer
, creation, and the Garden of Eden
, she reported visiting a library of the mind in which it became possible to know anything or anyone in history or the present in minute and unambiguous detail, as well as being able to observe individuals on Earth and being taken to distant reaches and civilizations of the universe.
Warned initially upon arrival that she had died prematurely, she was at last told she must return in order to fulfill the personal mission allocated her, though its specific character, like numerous other details, were removed from her memory, in order, she said she was told, to prevent difficulties in her fulfilling it. Protesting, she was made to understand the reason behind the necessity for her return and reluctantly agreed to do so, though exacting a promise that she would not be made to stay on earth longer than necessary. Her return to material corporeality she reported as extremely heavy-feeling and unpleasant, initially intermittent in phases, and accompanied not long after by a demon
ic visitation cut short by an angelic reappearance.
Her doctor reportedly verified her clinical death on a return visit to the hospital, attributing it to a hemorrhage during a nurses' shift change, and took great interest in her recollections. Independent verification of the length of her decease was not possible, but she speculated it could have lasted up to four hours based on her memory of certain details preceding and following it.
Some elements of her account seem on their face inconsistent, such as the idea of an elaborately interdependent universal plan and the human ability to fail at it, but this for example she attributed to the permissible scope of free will
within a larger divine control.
. She slowly became involved in near-death groups and studies and gave talks, going on subsequently to write her account in book form, meeting with runaway success.
While her account incorporated elements of traditional Christianity, it also met with a certain degree of resistance as well, largely to its teaching (as she reported she was given it) that some denominations might approximate truth better than others but that different teachings were more appropriate for certain individuals at their given stage of spiritual development, and that therefore judgment should not be passed on them for where they were. Unlike many fundamentalist Christians, and despite her own strict Catholic upbringing as accounted in her book, after receiving her near-death experience, Eadie in Embraced by the Light refers to God as "he" instead of "He" and insists that all religions are necessary for each person, claiming that each religion is necessary for each person because of their different levels of spiritual enlightenment, contrary to the views shared by many Christians worldwide that only Christianity is the one true valid religion. Curiously, Eadie also claims that after her encounter with Jesus, she learned that Christ and God were in fact two separate entities, a view conflicting with that of her Protestant-taught tradition of the Holy Trinity. In addition, unlike many other Near-Death Experiencers, Eadie claims that reincarnation
does not truly exist, and everyone only has one chance on Earth at life.
She taught similar withholding of censure on individuals for things like atheism
and homosexuality
and rejected a common traditional image of hell
as an eternity of suffering, suggesting that her life review
experience, in which she was made to live and feel the full positive and negative consequences of her cumulative actions in intense detail, including their effects on all around her, were a more than adequate equivalent and probably what the term truly signified.
She also stressed that her key lesson was that life's purpose was to learn love and to grow through the exercise of free will, including making mistakes. Other teachings she said she was given included the idea that there were few if any true accidents, that human lives and paths were chosen, agreed to, and prepared for in advance, with memory of such details suppressed and veiled. Suicide
she said she was told was wrong because it deprived people of opportunities to learn and grow, and that there was always hope in life.
Because of their appeal to the innate human desire for an understanding of afterlife, her works led to a strong reader response which she initially attempted to answer in detail but became forced to limit. To meet some of this demand, she developed a website
for general information and inspirational materials, as well as distribution of her books and related materials.
During a 2004 interview on Coast to Coast AM
radio with George Noory
, she said she was disappointed following her first book's publication that she was not permitted to return to the Celestial realm, but that while she could not presently know the full scope of her earthly purpose, she understood a film based on Embraced would also follow.
Her husband, Joe, worked in aerospace
computing
. Together they have eight children, and as of 2011, fifteen grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
of several books on near-death experiences (NDEs). Her best-known book is the #1 New York Times bestselling book, Embraced by the Light (1992). It describes her near-death experience. It is arguably the most detailed near-death account on record. It was followed by two other works: The Awakening Heart (1996), also a best-seller, and The Ripple Effect (1999), published independently.
Early life and career
Eadie was raised in NebraskaNebraska
Nebraska is a state on the Great Plains of the Midwestern United States. The state's capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha, on the Missouri River....
and on the Rosebud Indian Reservation
Rosebud Indian Reservation
The Rosebud Indian Reservation is an Indian reservation in South Dakota, United States. It is the home of the federally recognized Sicangu Oyate, also known as Sicangu Lakota, the Upper Brulé Sioux Nation, and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe , a branch of the Lakota people...
in South Dakota
South Dakota
South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux American Indian tribes. Once a part of Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889. The state has an area of and an estimated population of just over...
. Part Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
, she grew up in troubled family circumstances, dropped out of high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
to care for a sister, then returned to complete it, and later pursued a college degree. She works today in counseling
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
and hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is a therapy that is undertaken with a subject in hypnosis.The word "hypnosis" is an abbreviation of James Braid's term "neuro-hypnotism", meaning "sleep of the nervous system"....
with volunteer work and speaks to gatherings about her experiences.
NDE account
In her NDE account, she reports many phenomena similar to other NDE accounts and others unique to her own story. In 1973 at the age of 31, while recovering from a surgical operation, she reported she first felt herself fading to lifelessness, then felt a surge of energy followed by a "pop" and feeling of release, then a sense of freedom and movement unhindered by inertiaInertia
Inertia is the resistance of any physical object to a change in its state of motion or rest, or the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. It is proportional to an object's mass. The principle of inertia is one of the fundamental principles of classical physics which are used to...
or gravity, and was met by three angelic beings
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
who spoke with her about her prior existence and hitherto suppressed memories in order to participate in earthly experience. She traveled to terrestrial locations such as her home merely by thinking about them, returned to her hospital, and then passed on through a dark tunnel-like medium in which she reported sensing other beings in a transitory preparatory stage.
Exiting the tunnel, she approached an intense white light and met in heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
with the embrace of Jesus Christ, in which encounter she reported a strong sense of love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
and a high-speed transfer of answers to her many questions. Possessing a corporeal identity of an ethereal kind, she visited numerous places and persons and phenomena such as natural settings and garden
Garden
A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...
s beyond the character of the conventionally material and was taken on a tour of sorts to lengthy learning experiences she said felt equivalent to weeks or months.
In addition to discussing traditional Christian subjects such as prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
, creation, and the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
, she reported visiting a library of the mind in which it became possible to know anything or anyone in history or the present in minute and unambiguous detail, as well as being able to observe individuals on Earth and being taken to distant reaches and civilizations of the universe.
Warned initially upon arrival that she had died prematurely, she was at last told she must return in order to fulfill the personal mission allocated her, though its specific character, like numerous other details, were removed from her memory, in order, she said she was told, to prevent difficulties in her fulfilling it. Protesting, she was made to understand the reason behind the necessity for her return and reluctantly agreed to do so, though exacting a promise that she would not be made to stay on earth longer than necessary. Her return to material corporeality she reported as extremely heavy-feeling and unpleasant, initially intermittent in phases, and accompanied not long after by a demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
ic visitation cut short by an angelic reappearance.
Her doctor reportedly verified her clinical death on a return visit to the hospital, attributing it to a hemorrhage during a nurses' shift change, and took great interest in her recollections. Independent verification of the length of her decease was not possible, but she speculated it could have lasted up to four hours based on her memory of certain details preceding and following it.
Some elements of her account seem on their face inconsistent, such as the idea of an elaborately interdependent universal plan and the human ability to fail at it, but this for example she attributed to the permissible scope of free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
within a larger divine control.
After
Subsequent to her experience, she spoke of it very little and suffered a long-term depression, which she attributed to the anticlimactic nature of returning to corporeality after experiencing the heaven of afterlifeAfterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
. She slowly became involved in near-death groups and studies and gave talks, going on subsequently to write her account in book form, meeting with runaway success.
While her account incorporated elements of traditional Christianity, it also met with a certain degree of resistance as well, largely to its teaching (as she reported she was given it) that some denominations might approximate truth better than others but that different teachings were more appropriate for certain individuals at their given stage of spiritual development, and that therefore judgment should not be passed on them for where they were. Unlike many fundamentalist Christians, and despite her own strict Catholic upbringing as accounted in her book, after receiving her near-death experience, Eadie in Embraced by the Light refers to God as "he" instead of "He" and insists that all religions are necessary for each person, claiming that each religion is necessary for each person because of their different levels of spiritual enlightenment, contrary to the views shared by many Christians worldwide that only Christianity is the one true valid religion. Curiously, Eadie also claims that after her encounter with Jesus, she learned that Christ and God were in fact two separate entities, a view conflicting with that of her Protestant-taught tradition of the Holy Trinity. In addition, unlike many other Near-Death Experiencers, Eadie claims that reincarnation
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
does not truly exist, and everyone only has one chance on Earth at life.
She taught similar withholding of censure on individuals for things like atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
and homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
and rejected a common traditional image of hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
as an eternity of suffering, suggesting that her life review
Life review
A life review is a phenomenon widely reported as occurring during near-death experiences, in which a person rapidly sees much or the totality of his or her life history in chronological sequence and in extreme detail. It is often referred to by people having experienced this phenomenon as having...
experience, in which she was made to live and feel the full positive and negative consequences of her cumulative actions in intense detail, including their effects on all around her, were a more than adequate equivalent and probably what the term truly signified.
She also stressed that her key lesson was that life's purpose was to learn love and to grow through the exercise of free will, including making mistakes. Other teachings she said she was given included the idea that there were few if any true accidents, that human lives and paths were chosen, agreed to, and prepared for in advance, with memory of such details suppressed and veiled. Suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
she said she was told was wrong because it deprived people of opportunities to learn and grow, and that there was always hope in life.
Sequels
The Awakening Heart amplified on and discussed many of the ideas brought out in the narrative of her first book, with a few additional technical details. The Ripple Effect pursued these further, incorporating discussion of the numerous letters she began to receive in response from readers, as well as discussing other NDE contacts she later developed. The third book she published through her private publishing company, Onjinjinkta Press. A fourth work was assembled, Prayers and Devotions for Daily Living.Because of their appeal to the innate human desire for an understanding of afterlife, her works led to a strong reader response which she initially attempted to answer in detail but became forced to limit. To meet some of this demand, she developed a website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
for general information and inspirational materials, as well as distribution of her books and related materials.
During a 2004 interview on Coast to Coast AM
Coast to Coast AM
Coast to Coast AM is a North American late-night syndicated radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics, but most frequently ones that relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories. It was created by Art Bell and is distributed by Premiere Radio Networks. The program currently...
radio with George Noory
George Noory
George Ralph Noory is a Lebanese-American radio talk show host.As of 2010, he is the weekday host of the late-night radio talk show Coast to Coast AM. He is heard across the United States and Canada on many AM and FM stations as well as on XM Satellite Radio. His show is one of the most listened...
, she said she was disappointed following her first book's publication that she was not permitted to return to the Celestial realm, but that while she could not presently know the full scope of her earthly purpose, she understood a film based on Embraced would also follow.
Her husband, Joe, worked in aerospace
Aerospace
Aerospace comprises the atmosphere of Earth and surrounding space. Typically the term is used to refer to the industry that researches, designs, manufactures, operates, and maintains vehicles moving through air and space...
computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
. Together they have eight children, and as of 2011, fifteen grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren.