Doctor Dies, Returns with Knowledge of the Other Side | Rod Chelberg

My name is Rod Shelberg and I'm a retired medical doctor and I'm really honored to be on your show and to give you my story. A little bit about me, I've spent 28 years as a medical doctor. I trained in internal medicine and adult internal crisis medicine. And after that, I became a regular GP doing internal medicine and ICU medicine. Later in my life, I did 14 years as an emergency room physician and I dealt with a lot of trauma, a lot of death and dying, but a lot of people also did well. Following this, I became the medical director for four nursing homes in Bangor, as well as the medical director for the hospice program here. So in this time span of 28 years, I've treated about 70,000 people and I have personally witnessed hundreds of death and been at the bedside. I've had moments of my medical career had ended in 2016 when I had a massive stroke that took out my right side. I decided during that time that I wasn't going to die and the divine led me to health. The stroke took away my medical career, but it gave me the opportunity to say that I now work for God. And in that process, I wrote a book and started lecturing and created a program to help people transcend that this concept that death is a finality, but it's actually a transition of we are one form of energy during the drying process, I make you very comfortable and then you realize I am divine light. So that's a little bit about me. I was in second grade and I was suffering from a massive kidney infection and I was treated with penicillin, an antibiotic. Unfortunately, I had an allergic reaction to it and I stopped breathing. That was in second grade. What happened is I started to see darkness all around me and this fear of death encompassed me. I started to float out of my body and then I went down this long black tunnel. As I went down that tunnel, peace descended upon me and I became more and more confident and comfortable. I felt peace. Then I saw a beautiful white light in front of me and I was drawn to it. And I said, I'm going home, I'm being called home. It was a very pleasant sensation. Halfway there, the doctors had resuscitated me and I started to breathe again and I was brought back immediately into my body. So I never went into this beautiful white light and I woke up. I thought it was a dream. I didn't pay any attention to it. But what happened in that experience is I was given three gifts. I was given the gift of seeing colors on people's hearts, red, green, and blue. I was given the gift of learning to astral travel and I was given the gift of learning divine meditation where I could get so quiet in my mind that I could see and feel the presence of God. So the near-death experience was wonderful and I was blessed in that I was given three gifts. So the initial reaction I had was the fear of death. I was raised Catholic and worried that I'm dying. It's an innate fear in all of us. We believe we're bodies and that that life is gonna end, that that's it, you're done. I was terrified and it's like I went through a rising up and I had to see above that concept and then look at my body and say, that's not me. And you get to a point where you disconnect from that fear. I disconnected from time and space. I disconnected from my thought as a body. And I can tell you this in retrospect, as a child, I was just scared and wondering what the heck this was but I knew I was dying and I was terrified. My body sort of rotated upright, so I'm perpendicular to my body and I'm being drawn and I'm being pulled, like gravity pulls you down and I'm feeling this attraction of peace and joy and love and there's this white light that shines away all of my fears. It shines away the concept that I am a body, there's more to me. And I become, in essence, a thought and I call it now a thought of love. That's our true essence is we are a thought of love in the mind of God. This body is stripped away, our concepts are stripped away, time and space is stripped away and we're left with our divine essence of who we truly are. So I went through this long dark tunnel and the farther I went into it, the light kept getting brighter and brighter, shining on me, shining away my thoughts, my illusions and reminding me that I am, in fact, a divine being and now I can say I'm a divine being having a human experience. Analogous to you, the driver of a car and the car thinks it's real, but it's not. You're the driver, the car breaks down and dies, you step out. That fear is our ego mind that we sense. It's our world, it's our family. I'm very attached to that. Now that's being pulled away from me what I consider to be reality and it's terrifying. What's going to happen to me? Where's mom and dad? I'm alone are my thoughts. As I go down this tunnel, it's you are not alone, you are love and you are returning to your divine essence. You are a thought of love in the mind of the divine. That's who you are, please come home. In this experience, my initial reaction was that death was death, that's it, you're done. There's no God, this is it. That feeling was so powerful, so engulfing. It's terrifying, it's the only word I can say about it. As I rotated and changed my perspective, then I saw that the reality that we call death is not real. If that makes any sense, then I said, I am not this body anymore, I am now a divine being. And the fear went away. The fear is associated with the body and the concepts. You look at someone who's dying, you're going, oh, they've died. And we assume that's final. You don't assume or know about, it's a transition of one form of energy into a higher form of energy. You return to your divine essence. As I went from my fearful state, I was stuck, if you will. But that love poured into me and revealed itself as light. And it washed away all my fears. And I felt joy and peace, I'm going home. We're stuck sometimes with death is final. In the ground, goodbye, that's it, he was a nice person. And we mourn that. But what if you're wrong? What if you could see with spiritual vision that your loved ones are still there and how beautiful it is and how happy it is? That's what I was going to. But I didn't get all the way there. I wish I did, but I came back. When I was a child and I had these three gifts of seeing colors, astral projection, and meditation, I didn't do anything with them because my friends didn't see them. And I said, don't you see colors on people's hearts? No. Can't you float around the farm and look at people? No. I said, yeah. I just shut that down. I shut those divine gifts down because I wanted to fit in and not be the odd kid on the block, like there's something wrong with him. And I shut those gifts down all the way until I went into medical school. And it was during my late medical school fourth year in internal medicine residency that those gifts started to come back to me. And it came back as, quote, visions and voices. And I wrote about this in my book, When God Calls, Say Yes. For the purpose of this talk, I can tell you that you can recreate this near-death experience by meditating. I learned that by learning to quiet my mind, and it took two years of practice, that I could learn to leave this body behind, astral project, out-of-body experience, whatever you want to call it, and go home and go into this infinite white light of love. And I made it inside this beautiful sphere of infinite dimensions, this beautiful white light, and all you feel is love, peace, and joy. There's no more concept of rod. There's no more fear. There's no concept of time or body. So you can have a near-death experience by meditating. It's just you don't have to go through the suffocation or dying or trauma. It's a much easier way to do this. But you learn there's more to life than what your human eyes and senses are showing you. You get to this is a desire and a commitment to know the divine, to know that there's more than life. In humanity, we have several different forms of religions and therefore several different gods. That's not what I'm talking about. In your heart, there's divine love. The meditation I used, I had no formal training. I would read spiritual literature in the morning, have a cup of coffee, which I'm not supposed to do, I guess, sit down in a chair and get very comfortable and close my eyes and just say to myself, Father, reveal yourself. I want to feel you. I want to know you. I never asked for anything specific. My mantra was always peace, or a thought would come and I'd just bring peace and I'd stay centered on this. Eventually, I started to have the experiences of the divine is always calling me home. And I said yes, yes to this loving presence. Then God reaches out, the divine reaches out and pulls you in to the heart. You can't do it humanly. You can only go so far. But then, if you stay open in your mind and willing to practice, I do many meditations, I do half hour formal meditations, but I open myself to the mind that what if there's more to life? And what if there's a divine presence that's calling me home? And I say yes. I let go of the fear. The divine will take you and bring you in and hold you. There's a bigger question. And that is, how do you deal with your loved one who's dying? The medical side of it, when people were dying, I was the guy that would turn off the life support, tell the family, they're not gonna make it. They're failing left and right. Okay, so family leaves a room and I turn off the ventilator and all the life support and I help the family. What I do and I've always done is I invite that divine presence to come in and let him handle it, let God handle it. It's not my job. I like to hold my patient's hand and I hold it to my chest like this. And my last act as a doctor was always to say, our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It's important that whoever's leaving, I know that they're gonna go home to heaven because I asked. If somebody asks on behalf of you, you're going home. So that's always my last act as a doctor. I bring in compassion and love and understanding. I bring in peace to the room. The bigger thing for you as a family member is to say, I'm gonna surrender now and realize that my loved one is leaving this world and it is so important that they leave the world in peace and not fear. I use medications to take that fear response and knock it down, but I don't give them so much they can't talk. I don't, you know, snow them. And I've had several patients, one man I extubated and he said, how long do I have to live? And I said, half an hour. He said, thank you. And he brought his family around and said, I just wanna tell you how much I love you. I'm comfortable. I see this beautiful light and I know where I'm going and I'm at peace. He died half an hour later, just his family in love. It's very important that peace is brought into this situation. Compassion is brought into this transition and a belief and a knowing comes to you that there's more to this. You're taken care of, you feel this love. There's another lady in a nursing home who was dying and the family was frantic and I went to the bedside and they said, we have to do something. And I explained, if they go to the hospital, they're gonna do all sorts of things. And I said, that's not her wishes. So I did what I call a Hail Mary pass. I gave her three medicines. I said, it's an antibiotic, steroids, inhalers. But if she doesn't turn around tomorrow, she's not gonna make it. And what I'm getting at is there's the other side of this question is you and your memories of this experience. So this woman didn't make it. I turned off the life support and she passed away. And the family was so grateful because they knew that everything that could be done to save her, I did. I told them that I was a critical care doctor for years. There's nothing they're going to do. So that brought them peace and they were able to process it. And the Christ energy, the love energy stayed with them all night long. It was a beautiful transition. She just looked and smiled and she was gone. And the family felt such relief knowing that they did the very best they could. But now mom's gone and she's at peace. That's what we're doing. So what do you do is not to react to the fear and go, oh my God, do something. It's to relax and let the divine come in and bring you peace. That's the important thing. Doctors can do it, but it's also important that you do it. And as a hospice volunteer, I know you did it. The more you relax and let go of the appearance of a body that's dying and you start to say there's more to this, there's life energy, there's love, that's being released. And you ask for the divine to help you first. I've had people that are very upset at the dying process and threatening me with lawsuits and even manslaughter, second degree murder. You're not doing everything, you know? And it's just like, okay, I'm going to hold you in peace and love and I'm not going to react to your anger and upset because that's your process. And I'm going to hold you in compassion and say, you know, that's okay. If you want to sue me, that's fine. I'm not going to buy into it. And eventually there'll be like several family members and one by one, it's the most interesting thing. It's like dominoes effects. The first one feels peace, but then the next one feels peace. And eventually the very troubled person at the end, it's like, I let go. Okay, the peace comes and it comes because you held peace and I held peace. You're a peacemaker. You're a light. You're a bright light that allows love to flow through you. And eventually it gets through all the resistance of people. A loved one in many times will not die until there's peace in the room. It's the most amazing thing. One lady hung on for a week while a granddaughter had to process, she's dying. I can't accept that. What am I going to do? And that person was alive. I stopped all the life support, kept her comfortable, but she didn't die. And I thought this is making me look bad because I said she was going to die. But in truth, the parent was holding on until that granddaughter had peace. Once she had peace, she left. She just stopped. There was a last sigh and it was just joy. That's what we do is bring in the joy and the love and the compassion. Those are the memories we're left with. There's a lot of fear surrounding death. Society doesn't like it. It says you have to look like 20 year old perfect every day even though you're 90 years old. You can't die, God forbid. In the medical profession, we see that as a failure. We have to do hip replacements on 90 year old patients. We did everything we could. Okay, it's okay to die at home. That's the purpose of hospice. To die in a hospital in a sterile environment with all the noise and the alarms and it's chaotic, wouldn't you rather be at home, your loved ones, your memories? You raised your kids there. There's a lot of positive energy in a home which is not in a hospital. It's the sterile environment. Don't touch. Oh, we can't talk about it. And it's like, I don't want to be contaminated. It's weird things that we embrace and think about. I loved hospice. I would much rather somebody was in hospice than in a nursing home. And in hospice, we keep somebody in their house and we go to them, provide a lot of care. That fear, we have chaplains that come in and talk with people. The doctors talk to people. We alleviate their fear. That's a block to love's presence. So we alleviate the fear and then they start to go, oh, I have nothing to worry about. Death is a natural part of life. We love birth, but death is like, it's permanent, it's terminal. But guess what? It's not. And with practice, you get comfortable, very comfortable with helping someone to leave. You want to give them love and help them to sit up, their spiritual body sit up, like I did in my near-death experience. Laying down, I was terrified. What changed? I changed my perspective. I sat up. You don't want to hold that person down with fear. You want to say, I'm going to help them set up so they can see that beautiful light. And then that beautiful light's going to come and pull them home. And you're going to watch that. I call that process birthing someone into heaven. So I'm going to help you and I'm going to hold you in love and help you to sit up and go home. My first experience of this was in the ER. It was a very profound, mystical experience. An 80-year-old woman was coming in by ambulance who was in asystole, which means her heart had stopped. She came into the emergency room and I ran the code for 20 minutes. She died. So I called the code. Then everybody left. And I asked, I held her hand to my chest and I said, loving father, take this lady home. My last act. And in that instant, the lights in the whole ER room lit up into scintillating white light. And the red aura, like in a bead shape of love, came on my right side. The lady's aura turned perfectly white and she sat upright in bed. And I can see her perfectly, but she's pure white. And she says to me, thank you. She merges with this beautiful aura and they go off and these beautiful golden doors open up and they go into that. That was my start, my very first mystical experience of birthing someone into heaven. That story has been repeated many times for me. And it's such a blessing and a gift to say, that one made it, they're going home. They're not coming back. It's love. The more you can relax and be at peace and not be afraid and say, this is natural, in your mind saying, I'm gonna help them to lift up and then the divine is gonna come and take them. The physical body is going to end. There's no doubt about it. But the spiritual body is pure life energy, which is eternal. We have a concept of birth and death. We love the birth part, the death part, not so good. It's just, we've been taught fear. So we learn to let go of the fear and be at peace. The divine comes into us, brings us peace and then brings peace to the patient, to your loved one. Then they can go home. So your last act is to say, if nothing else, I offer you peace and I offer you gratitude and thankfulness. When you're having a near death experience, realize that it's God talking to you and giving you the option. Do you wanna stay or do you wanna go home? And if you choose to go back, and it is a choice, that you will be given gifts that will mature later in life. That's one message. Second, if you've had a near death experience and you're very depressed and upset, you can transcend that by learning meditation and recreating that through the art of meditation. That is how you heal those trauma memories. They are very real, they're fear. And the third is, God is always calling you home. Are you listening? There is more to life than this body. So I listened and I learned meditation and then I could hear God. And finally, I was then able to bring that beautiful message back to the side of somebody who's dying and bring them the peace of God. And in the dying process, in my mind saying, you're going that way. You're not gonna get stuck in this idea of fear and loss and grief. There's more to life than what meets the eye. You transition from one form of energy, a low density, into a very high, fast, loving energy. The people that I've seen crossed over, every single one of them was filled with light and joy and happiness. That's where you're going. Keep that in mind. Your loved one is not gone. Their body's gone, but they are not. They have gone home.