The first book by a respected journalist on Nearing Death Awareness—similar to Near-Death Experience—this “fascinating” ( Kirkus Reviews ) exploration brings “humor, sympathy, and keen critical intelligence to a topic that is all too often off-limits” (Ptolemy Tompkins, collaborator with Eben Alexander on Proof of Heaven ). People everywhere carry with them extraordinary, deeply comforting experiences that arrived at the moment when they most needed relief: when they lost a loved one. These experiences can include clear messages from beyond, profound and vividly beautiful visions, mysterious connections and spiritual awareness, foreknowledge of a loved one’s passing—all of which evade explanation by science and logic. Most people keep these transcendent experiences secret for fear they will be discounted by hyperrational scrutiny. Yet these very common occurrences have the power to console, comfort, and even transform our understanding of life and death. Prompted by her family’s surprising, profound experiences around the death of her father and her sister, reporter Patricia Pearson sets out on an open-minded inquiry, a rare journalistic investigation of Nearing Death Awareness, which Anne Rice praises as “substantive, eloquent, and worthwhile.” Opening Heaven’s Door offers deeply affecting stories of messages from the dying and the dead in a fascinating work of investigative journalism, pointing to new scientific explanations that give these luminous moments the importance felt by those who experience them. Pearson also delves into out-of-body and near-death experiences, examining stories and research to make sense of these related but distinct categories. Challenging current assumptions about what we know and what we are still unable to explain, Opening Heaven’s Door will forever alter your perceptions of the nature of life and death. “A wide-ranging account of discoveries and evolving understanding about life, death, the afterlife, and the true dimensions of consciousness. Numerous firsthand accounts, observations and results of scientific research provide a readable primer on psi phenomena, significantly expanding our understanding of the realities of our existence." ― Light of Consciousness “The word is out: you don’t die when you die. That’s the message from around 15 million Americans who have experienced a near-death experience, as Pearson’s sparkling prose shows in this enormously engaging book.” -- ―Larry Dossey, MD, author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters Patricia Pearson’s work has appeared in The New Yorker , The New York Times , and Business Week , among other publications. A former member of USA TODAY ’s Op-Ed Board of Contributors, she gave a recent TEDx talk, “Why Ghosts are Good for You,” which points to research showing the importance of NDAs in helping people cope with grief. She is based in Toronto, Canada. Opening Heaven’s Door CHAPTER 1 An Unexpected Vision My father died in his blue-striped pajamas on a soft bed in a silent house. He wasn’t ailing. At three or four in the morning, he gave out a sigh, loud enough to wake my mother, who sleepily assumed that he was having a bad dream. A sigh, a moan, a final breath escaping. She leaned over to rub his back, and then retreated into her own cozy haze of unconsciousness. Morning arrived a few hours later as a thin suffusion of northern March light. She roused herself and walked around the prone form of her husband of fifty-four years to go to the bathroom. Downstairs to the humdrum rituals of the kitchen. Brewing coffee, easing her teased-apart English muffin halves into the toaster, listening to the radio, on which I was being interviewed about a brand-new book. Her youngest of five children, I was providing commentary about a lawsuit brought by a man who had suffered incalculable psychological damage from finding a dead fly in his bottle of water. “Did he have grounds?” the host was asking me. Was it possible for a life to unravel at the prospect of one dead fly? My mother spread her muffin with marmalade, thought ahead to her day. Some meetings, a luncheon, an outing with her granddaughter Rachel, who was visiting for March break. She didn’t wonder why Geoffrey, my father, still remained in their bed. No heightened sense of vigilance for a healthy man who’d just turned eighty. In families, attention is directed toward crisis, and during the early spring of 2008, we were all transfixed by my sister Katharine’s health. It was she, not my father, who faced death. Vivacious Katharine, an uncommonly lovely woman—mother and sister and daughter—was anguished by the wildfire spread of metastatic breast cancer. Katharine’s fate had become the family’s “extreme reality,” as Virginia Woolf once put it. My father played his role most unexpectedly. “Rachel,” said my mother, shaking my niece’s slack shoulder where she lay snoozing in the guest room, after Mum