Incredible Journey Author’s Near-Death Experience Brings An Enlightened View Of Life

Dannion Brinkley has been through hell and gone to heaven. Twice.

The best-selling author of “Saved by the Light” (Villard Books, 161 pages, $16) was just 25 in 1975 when a bolt of lightning zapped him while he was talking on the telephone. The high voltage charge traveled through the phone line with a force that slammed him into the ceiling. When Brinkley landed on his bed, he bent the frame. His shoes were still smoking when his wife found him and started trying to revive him.

He would later recall that “it felt like a freight train traveling at full speed had roared in through the window and hit me on the left side of my neck.”

Brinkley was clinically dead for 28 minutes. A sheet was pulled over his head after emergency room personnel determined there was nothing more that could be done.

In his book, Brinkley vividly chronicles the incredible journey he took during his near-death experience. Like other accounts, there were the bright white lights and the feelings of peace and love.

But Brinkley, who will be in Spokane Saturday to lead a seminar, also recounts what he calls a panoramic life review. As the old saying goes, his life passed before his eyes.

“I saw everyone who I had ever hurt and felt the pain and humiliation that I had inflicted on them,” said Brinkley in a recent telephone interview. “I was a complete jerk growing up, a real bully. Strength was power and I just kept trying to see how much damage I could do.”

After reliving his life from his victims’ perspective, Brinkley said he then traveled to a place he calls the cities of light, where he met with 13 spiritual figures. They showed him visions of the future. Many of the events he saw at that time, including the fall of the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf War, have since come true.

These spiritual beings he encountered told him to return to earth and make a difference, teach people to learn to love themselves and others.

“Someone was asking me the other day why I thought I was chosen. It seems awful strange to me,” Brinkley said. “Maybe they had run out of messiahs and they were scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

In the 20 years since his first near-death experience, Brinkley has dedicated himself to working with terminally ill patients through hospice programs, to teaching people to get in touch with their spiritual side and not to fear death.

“That experience changed me forever,” he said. “I’m trying to change the world one person at a time. I really want to reach people who grew up with me. Maybe they can take and use what I’ve been through because this is an age where our moms and dads will be dying and we can’t afford not to be the best informed we can be about death.”

But shortly after his first near-death experience happened, Brinkley said he felt like a freak. In the late ‘70s, people who talked about neardeath experiences were dismissed as kooks.

In 1976, Brinkley met Dr. Raymond Moody, a physician who penned a ground-breaking book on the near-death phenomenon.

“He was the first person in the medical world to give it credence. He even gave it a name, ‘the near-death experience,”’ Brinkley said.

Brinkley has worked with Moody over the years, a relationship that eventually inspired him to write “Saved by the Light,” which he coauthored with Paul Perry. It was Brinkley’s second brush with death, following heart surgery, that prompted him to share his experience through the book.

Moody calls Brinkley’s experience “the most amazing and complete near-death experience of the 20,000 I have encountered.”

Others have obviously found the tale compelling. After debuting last spring, “Saved by the Light” spent more than 25 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The book is now available in more than 20 countries, and Brinkley has become a fixture on the talk show circuit, appearing on “Oprah,” among others.

He is at work on his second book, which he calls the “further adventures of a lunatic.”

The soft-spoken Brinkley said he realizes skeptics may find much of his story hard to swallow.

“When I first recovered, I felt like an insane fundamentalist preacher, telling my story to anyone who would listen,” he said. “But I don’t set myself up as a messiah or a prophet. I’m just one guy from South Carolina trying to do something based on what I experienced.”

He said he convinces cynics of his special abilities by reading their minds, a gift he said was imparted during his near-death experience.

Brinkley said he wants to reach as many people as possible because “the future is in our own hands.”

“We are at the greatest juncture in history ever,” he said. Brinkley said every person has a responsibility to do something about the sorry state of the world.

“There are things we have control of - like wars, hunger and disease,” he said. “We can do something about that.”

As for expanding our spiritual horizons, Brinkley suggests making a life review part of our everyday routine, taking stock of how we treat people in our lives. In other words, putting the Golden Rule to work.

“If you took time every morning, it would naturally touch your spiritual self,” he said.

Brinkley said he is encouraged by the New Age movement and predicted that before the end of the century, mankind will experience a collective raising of consciousness.

“It appears that every 30 or 40 years, our spiritual side gains a foothold. The last time it happened was in the ‘60s,” Brinkley said. “But this time, it will be different. We’re moving into a time when our consciousness will be raised whether we want it to or not.”

That may sound ominous, but Brinkley remains hopeful.

“We all have the power within us to change,” he said.

MEMO: This is a sidebar that appeared with this story: Brinkley lecture Dannion Brinkley, author of the best-selling book “Saved by the Light,” will speak from 1 until 5 p.m. Saturday at the Crescent Court Ballroom in downtown Spokane. Advance tickets are $30; $35 at the door. In Spokane, tickets are available at Good Vibrations, Open Door Metaphysical Bookstore, Second Star Books, New Dawn Books, Suntree Books, Ponderosa Books and Unity Bookstore. In Colville, at The Good Medicine Way; in Coeur d’alene, Celebration Books; and the Dolphin House in Sandpoint. For additional information, call 624-1873.