I have written a dozen books on near-death experiences (NDEs), four of which are New York Times bestsellers. I’m devoted to the subject, and as a result, I am constantly in contact with researchers in the field of NDE studies and those who have had the experience.
Dr. Rajiv Parti, MD and the Lessons of His Near-Death Experience
By Paul Perry
Near-death experiences, NDEs, are extraordinary. The idea of leaving one’s body at the point of death, traveling to a Heavenly realm, and seeing beloved relatives who have passed is truly the hero’s journey of our modern age. People who could have died are now kept alive with technology and medicine that didn’t exist just a few years ago. Because of those advances, the threshold of death is pushed back, NDEs become deeper, and the stories become richer.
These stories may eventually answer mankind’s greatest question: What happens when we die?
This brings us to Dr. Rajiv Parti, former chief of anesthesiology at Bakersfield Heart Hospital. His is most likely the best NDE I have ever heard, not just for the experience itself but for the transformation it led to.
In 2008, Rajiv Parti, MD, was Chief of Anesthesiology at Heart Hospital in Bakersfield, California. He derived his identity and happiness from the incredible wealth and prestige his job gave him. He lived in a mansion, had several luxury cars, and could purchase almost any material goods he wanted.
For some reason, this made him feel invincible.
In August of that year – everything changed. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A routine surgery to treat it in the same month led to complications that left him incontinent and in excruciating pain. He was forced back into surgery three times between Aug and Dec 2008.
The cancer was gone now, but he was living in pain, impotent, incontinent, and wearing diapers. He was prescribed pain meds and soon learned firsthand that his body had a quick dependency on pain medication. He became an addict and, within time, was diagnosed with depression, too.
On December 14, 2010, he went to UCLA Medical Center for the surgical placement of an artificial urinary sphincter. In the days after this surgery, he became very sick, running a fever of 104-105. He could not urinate, and his pelvic area was red and swollen. Heavy antibiotics were prescribed, but he was not getting better.
Ten days later, on Christmas Eve 2010, Dr Parti was admitted to the emergency ward of the UCLA Hospital for severe infection and fever. Emergency surgery was called for immediately to drain the pelvic region of infection and remove the artificial sphincter. His last waking memory had been the searing pain of a catheter being inserted in him to drain his urinary bladder.
His next memory was of no longer being in his body. He had been given anesthesia, but instead of being “put out” in the traditional sense, Dr. Parti was outside of his body.
It was here, dying and heavily anesthetized, that he “woke up.”
Although deeply asleep from anesthesia, he was very aware that his consciousness had separated from his body. From a vantage point near the ceiling, he could see the surgeon cut him, and then all of the operating room personnel reacted as the odor of the pus from his infected abdomen seeped throughout the room. He saw a nurse apply eucalyptus-scented water to the surgical masks of everyone operating. He even heard the anesthesiologist tell a joke so dirty that he blushed when he later told it to the anesthesiologist in the recovery room.
Dr. Parti’s senses became so acute in this out-of-body state that he could hear, see, and smell things outside the operating room. He then left the operating room and drifted toward familiar voices in India, where he could hear his mother and sister discussing dinner preparations for that night. They finally decided to have rice, vegetables, yogurt, and legumes. He could see that it was foggy and frigid that night, and since there was no central heating in the house, they were bundled up to protect themselves from the cold. A small electric heater glowed, helping to take the chill out of the room.
Rather than being fearful, Dr. Parti became euphoric. People are never far away, he thought. He felt his presence spreading around the world, a feeling of oneness with the world and everyone in it.
Fear found its way into the situation. He felt pulled into a bleak darkness, one filled with the screams and sounds of fighting.
His awareness drifted from the physical world of the operating theater in Los Angeles and the kitchen conversation in India to a place where a great wildfire was raging. He could see lightning in dark clouds and smell the odor of burning meat. He realized that an unseen force was pulling him into Hell, leaving him “amid souls who were screaming and suffering.”
What is my Karma, he wondered. What did I do in my life or past life to deserve this punishment?
In the middle of this horror, Dr. Parti began to have a strong awareness that his life was very materialistic: His life was always about him. So much so that when he met new people, Dr. Parti asked himself, “What can I get from this person?”
The truth dawned on him there in Hell: that his life on earth was without love. He was not practicing compassion or forgiveness towards himself or others. He also had an unsavory tendency to be harsh towards people he perceived to be lower than him in social or professional status. He felt deeply sorry for the lack of kindness in his behavior, wishing he could have done certain things in his life differently. As soon as he had that realization, Hell faded away.
There is much more to the NDE than I have space to cover here. You can read it in its complete form in our book, DYING TO WAKE UP: A Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back(Atria Books). As Raymond Moody, MD, the father of near-death studies, wrote in this book’s foreword, “(Dr. Parti’s NDE) is one of the most astounding and complete near-death experiences I have heard in almost fifty years of investigating this phenomenon. It is powerful even to a veteran researcher like myself…. (it is) one of transcendence and transformation.”
These two elements, transcendence and transformation, interest me most in near-death experiences. In the research I have done and studied, I rarely meet a person whose NDE hasn’t transformed. These people become kinder, gentler versions of the person they were before their NDE. Sometimes, this change is so complete that they are no longer recognizable. That has been the case with Dr. Parti. His brush with death opened a new world to him – an otherworld if you will – that replaced the materialistic world he had so carefully constructed.
Now, he is following the words his late father told him when they reunited during the near-death experience: “If you keep your consciousness clear and be truthful to yourself, the universe and the divine will take care of you.”
Raj has changed his medical specialty from anesthesiology to mind-based healing, using the principles of healing taught to him by those he met on the other side. His goal? “To become a healer of the soul, especially the disease of the soul, of the energy body, addiction, depression, chronic pain, and cancer.”
He is now accomplishing his final transformation. He and his wife, Arpana, have moved to Soquel, California, where he will soon open a clinic dedicated to consciousness-based healing. He has truly become transformed by the light.
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