Transcription
1976, the Soviet Union. Dr. George Rodinia was hit by a car and pronounced dead at the scene. His body lay in a morgue for 3 days, cold, lifeless, left without medical care. But when the pathologist made his first incision, the body responded. George was still alive, and he came back with a story to tell. What he saw on the other side changed him. The devout atheist would spend the rest of his life committed to understanding God.
Dr. Rodinia was a Soviet research neurologist, born in Georgia when it was part of the USSR. He was openly critical of the Soviet government and had no interest in spiritual matters. He had no belief in the soul or in God. He was a scientist.
"As a psychiatrist, as a neuropathologist, for me, God never existed. I never believed in God. I never believed in uh Bible. I never thought about uh God or Bible or or divinity."
After a violent encounter with death, Rodinia saw things he couldn't imagine. They changed everything that he thought he knew. While waiting for a cab, George was run down by a car that veered onto the sidewalk. He was run over twice. This was no accident.
"I became in big trouble with KGB uh because my work. I worked on adenosin triphosphat neurotransmitter in our brain and with the conjunction of oxytocin I discovered several things and I was a scientist and uh KGB didn't want me to go. So that's why they decided to kill me. That's how I got into another dimension of my life. I was standing on uh on the sidewalk ready to depart to uh New York waiting for a cab uh when car run on sidewalk and uh hit me. I flew 10 m and I fell and then run. The car runs over me."
He was rushed to the hospital, but they were too late. Rescue efforts failed. Two physicians, friends, and colleagues declared him dead. He was moved to the morgue. His body appeared lifeless, but his consciousness somehow remained. And in that state, Rodinia was not alone.
What could have possibly been happening physically or metaphysically that allowed this to occur? To explore that question, we turn to the extensive recorded spiritual experiences of the scientist and inventor Emanuel Swedenborg. Over three decades, Swedenborg mapped out the overarching structure of spiritual reality, a framework that may help us interpret experiences like Rodinia's. "Our life in the world is barely like a moment compared to our life after death, which is eternal."
Rodinia's experience began in total darkness. He felt no pain, nothing physical at all, only an awareness of his existence, suspended in complete darkness. He later described as "blacker than black."
"I was afraid of this darkness. I was afraid of being there. But more afraid was that I was somewhere without my body. You know, I was scared to death. But I was already dead. And this that was the amazing feeling to understand that you are but you are not. If you think you are. If I think I thought I am. But if I am and if I think why cannot I think positively what's happening around me and I began to think about light."
When Dr. Rodinia's thoughts shifted to positive, his surroundings responded. This aligns with something Swedenborg experienced in his spiritual travels. Thought shapes our reality. Dr. Dr. Rodinia thought about positivity. That positivity is light. That's when he was enveloped by bright, shiny, strong light. The light almost overwhelmed him. But soon he felt comforted by it, held and loved and calmed. And then his vision changed again. He saw molecules, atoms, protons, neutrons flying everywhere. Chaotic but beautiful in its symmetry, its order and wholeness. Wordlessly, he understood that this was the universal form of life and realized he had no need of a body. In fact, his body was limiting him. He was freer in this state. Time disappeared, and he simply was.
"Everything in the physical world comes from the divine through the spiritual world. The whole physical world is a theater that portrays the spiritual world. All things in the physical world are arranged in a design and sequence according to the purposes they serve." Dr. Rodinia was part of this vast divine design, a manifestation of a spiritual reality.
From there, Rodinia entered what many NDE survivors call a life review. He was watching his life in a totally immersive movie, one where time did not exist, where past and present collided, and where he knew what everyone he interacted with was thinking and feeling.
"Seeing myself, my body, seeing my birth, uh my parents, um my wife, uh my child, my friends, um I saw their thoughts. I saw what they were thinking, how they uh how how how their thought moved from one to another dimension. It was incredible experience. I saw all my life. But it's in that dimension which cannot be described. This was holographical view of uh being inside of your life and then being as a um as a viewer participating the play of theater which happening there but it is you and you know that you are this."
Swedenborg claimed that nothing we experience is ever lost, that every thought and intention is preserved within us. "I saw some books with writing in them like earthly writing. They had come from the memories of people who had written them that not a single word was missing that had been in the book they had written in the world. All the least details could be retrieved from the memory of someone else. Even things the person had forgotten in the world. The details of what we have thought, intended, said, and done. Even what we have heard and seen are inscribed on our inner or spiritual memory. There is no way to erase anything there. Since everything is written at once on our spirit itself."
Rodinia felt no judgment as he watched his life. He felt peaceful. He felt a sense of wholeness with the universe, an incredible sense of love and belonging. And then suddenly, agonizing pain. Someone was slicing into his stomach. In the morgue, the autopsy had begun. There was one problem. The subject was not actually dead. At the moment a knife hit his abdomen, George opened his eyes. Imagine being that pathologist. The autopsy, of course, was stopped immediately, and Dr. Rodinia was moved into the hospital. He would spend 9 months there, slowly recovering from the accident, coming back into full health. But while his body may have returned to its former state, his mind never would. Dr. Rodinia was a changed man.
Dr. George Rodinia was an atheist when the car hit him. He came away transformed. And he didn't just adopt new beliefs. He rebuilt his whole life around them. But he insisted he did not have all the answers.
"Many people have asked me what I believe in, how my NDE changed my life. All I can say is that I now believe in the God of the universe. God, I believe, is even more than the light because God is also darkness. God is everything that exists. Everything. And that is beyond our ability to comprehend it all. So I don't believe in any one religion's idea of what God is or is not. It is all the same God. And that God showed me that the universe in which we live is a beautiful and marvelous mystery that is connected together forever and for always. He said, 'What matters most is love. How we love others and how deeply we engage with life.'"
In an interview with the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation, Dr. Rodinia reflected on his faith and what he learned about the nature of God. "Anyone who has had such an experience of God, who has felt such a profound sense of connection with the reality knows that there is only one truly significant work to do in life, and that is love. To love nature, to love people, to love animals, to love creation itself just because it is to serve God's creation with a warm and loving hand of generosity and compassion. That is the only meaningful existence."
Swedenborg reached the same conclusion that heaven is within us to the extent that we allow it to shape us. "Living goodness or a desire for goodness is introduced into us by the Lord along an inner path without our slightest awareness. Whatever we do freely is wedded to us. But what we are forced to do is not. Faith can be accepted only out of a desire for it. All the pleasures of heaven are united to forms of service and dwell within them because forms of service are the good effects of the love and thoughtfulness that angels are immersed in."
Dr. Rodinia died in October of 2004. His story, an attempted assassination by the KGB, waking up mid-autopsy, a radical conversion, and a move from Soviet Georgia to the USA is a fantastic one. Whether we accept his account or not, it leaves us with a meaningful possibility. The world we wake up to after death may simply reflect who we've become. And that means who we are now truly matters.
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