Proof the supernatural is a thing

Ian Norton in Jerusalem, 20 years after his miraculous escape from addiction Photo: Source

Near-death experiences are only one kind of mystical experience that open us up to how close the supernatural realm is in our life. Accounts of two other kinds of experiences have appeared in the past few days, provided by a writer, Rod Dreher, who is gathering personal narratives of people who have encountered something beyond the material world. (Dreher's work is here, but probably behind a paywall).  

The first narrative is from a British man, Ian Norton, who went to Israel 30 years ago as a heroin addict in search of more powerful drugs. After about 10 years of being put into rehab and himself trying end his drug dependency, he was one day sitting on a bank of the river Jordan, reading the verses in the gospel of Matthew about Jesus approaching John the Baptist and asking for John to baptise him in that same river.

Matthew relates the incident this way in Chapter 3:13-17:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”

Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented.

As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Norton had not read the Bible before, let alone these verses. But he felt that the devil held him in a kind of slavery and he wanted to be free of the addiction. Norton tells what happened:

I was anticipating the pains to start, and the pains were starting, from not having any heroin, no food, no money, no anything. I was like, this is it, I’ve got to break through this addiction. I had worked with doctors in Tel Aviv, but nothing was resolved. I had a hole in my life that was being filled by heroin. So I was sitting by the Jordan, waiting for the pains to begin, and they were starting to increase. I was reading Matthew for the first time in my life. I got to that point where Jesus was coming to John the Baptist.

And then the event that changed his life:

Reading that part, this cloud just appeared. It was all around, coming closer and closer. It crossed the water first, and as it came nearer to me, it was becoming more and more condensed, more concentrated. At first you could just see it. Then it was something you could taste, and you could touch — and I realized that it had wrapped itself around me. It encompassed me, and pressed in. It held me. All I can say about it is that it was total purity, and peace. These wonderful things I had never felt before were just pressing in all around me, and holding me in this state of pure love.

After four days of being held there like that, without anything, it dissipated — and I was free from the struggle with heroin, just like that. 

I came to Jerusalem, but I was still fairly weak. Morally I was flying, but physically I was weak. I had a lot to recover from. I was sitting on the street with a “hungry and homeless” sign, begging. Believers were coming up to me, sharing their testimony with me while I was begging. Soon after that, I was met by a pastor from a Messianic Jewish congregation in Jerusalem. I went to live on the premises, and I gave my life to Yeshua Jesus then, twenty-something years ago. I was baptized in that place.

Today, Norton is still clean and is working in a gift shop in Jerusalem. He told the writer something of his understanding of the character of that much-storied city:

The first thing you feel when you get here is separation. The thing that separates us from our Creator, in Jesus, are the attachments we hold to the world. I was born in London, and coming out of London, everything is so worldly. Even if you’re born again, and you’ve given your life to Yeshua Jesus, there’s still that struggle with the things of the world pulling you back to it. You come to Jerusalem, and everything is God-focused. You’re wrapped in that spirit here. Everything is focused on continuing that journey towards him. Once you’re separated from the things you hold dear, you’re open to the Spirit calling on your heart.

That certainly something people from the West in particular, but all developing countries, too, can learn. With material wealth and the culture of "busyness", everyone is in danger of losing awareness of, and access to,  "that which is ‘invisible’ and ‘everywhere’ at any point in time, provided you make the choice to see what is plain to the eye of the spirit". See this essay on how film maker Andrei Tarkovsky sought to show "how we go through our 'life on earth', which is a journey of spirit more than anything else". From that essay on the cinematic power of the Russian director:

No matter under what ideological baggage we attempt to hide, whether we call ourselves religious or non-religious, or whatever fancy label we invent to suit our whims, Tarkovsky makes us aware of our individual responsibility towards life around us in the deepest sense possible. That type of responsibility can only be spiritual because it is a commitment that transcends the limits that time imposes on human beings.

Though Tarkovsky’s movies are deeply religious – it is in the spiritual sense that we need to analyze his work, especially in a time-period where both religion and spirituality have been discredited by “Modern mass culture, aimed at the ‘consumer’, the civilisation of prosthetics…crippling people’s souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”

A message about past suffering 

A second narrative that Dreher relates comes from a man who was sexually abused as a boy by a Catholic priest: 

My friend Michael, who is now dead, became a chronic alcoholic who compulsively sought out sex with men, often priests. Eventually, as an older man, he found sobriety.

He told me about how back in 2002, I think it was, a priest from somewhere in the Balkans came through New York. This priest was purported to have some sort of mystical gifts of healing. The priest said Mass at a big parish in Queens. Michael went to the Mass, though the priest spoke no English. He was hoping for a miracle. Michael said he waited in line to get the priest’s blessing, and made sure that he was one of the last ones. He didn’t want to be greedy.

He knelt to receive the blessing, then began making his way toward the exit. Before he got to the door, an English-speaking assistant of the Balkan priest ran to him, took him by the arm, and said, “Father wants me to tell you that the Holy Virgin saw your suffering there, at the hands of that priest. She was there with you, and suffered too.”

When Michael told me that, he was crying. Those words had been so healing to him.  

The gift of knowledge the priest had is part of the world of wisdom that God opens up for some individuals so that they can serve their fellows. In these cases, of course, we are expected to be wary until the fruits of their ministry can be observed as being clearly uplifting. 

Conclusion on near-death episodes

American psychiatrist Bruce Greyson has spent decades talking to people about near-death experiences. His book on the subject provides their stories and it covers the conjectures of scientists as to what makes these experiences possible. An interviewer asks him for his best conclusion:

Greyson knows that events in near-death experiences are impossible to corroborate. “We can’t do research on a deity,” he says, drily. But still, he finds it tough to dismiss wackier theories, even if the data isn’t there. When I ask him what his current logical understanding is, he looks resigned. “It seems most likely to me that the mind is somehow separate to the brain,” he says, “and, if that’s true, maybe it can function when the brain dies.” Then he adds, “But if the mind is not there in the brain, where is it? And what is it?”

“I grew up without any kind of a spiritual background. And I’m still not sure I understand what spiritual means. I am convinced now, after doing this for 40, 50 years, that there is more to life than just our physical bodies. I recognise that there is a non-physical part of us." 

One of Greyson's working hypotheses is that these experiences are the beginning of the afterlife. As evidence he tells how the lives of those whom he has studied have changed radically. In other words, the patient has responded by choosing to live in a different manner. A key element in the change is that they are not afraid to die, and they regard every moment as precious, impelling them to have heightened respect for the natural world and the people with they have contact. 

Therefore, there is evidence available to us that we are transcendent beings, able to rise above our material or physical circumstances. We sometimes hear such accounts from those close to us. We shouldn't close our minds to the spiritual dimension involved. If we undervalue our spiritual capabilities, if we ignore the God who made us to be restless until we are face-to-face with him, then, as one writer put it, we will tend to "undervalue one another, underlive our lives, and underachieve our destiny".

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