Many children who've had near-death experiences have spiritual guides

and specific goals that stay with them throughout their adult lives.

Children describe angels, Light Beings, other spiritual entities and

even voices guiding them through their brief journeys into the beyond.

Many of them say they were given a special mission to perform when they

returned to this world, according to Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen

Steiger, authors of Children of the Light (Signet, New York, 1995).

Both authors had near-death experiences (NDE) when they were children.

Of the nearly 30,000 respondents to their Steiger Questionaire of

Mystical Paranormal and UFO Experiences, 64 percent said they had

undergone NDEs - and some 82 percent had them before age 12.

One person in their book, Bonnie, a high school councelor, had an NDE at

age 11 while in a four week coma following the injection of antibiotics.

Bonnie says angels had helped her during the ordeal, and she later

established a rapport with one of the angles while meditating at age 17.

To this day, she says she receives regular messages from this angelic

being.

Thomas, a professional artist, was in a coma for three days following an

automobile accident at age 19. During his NDE, he remembers feeling safe

in the company of "majestic figures in lavender-robes and hoods who had

kind and gentle eyes." These lavender figures have continued to appear

during his adult years, especially when he is troubled, he says.

One woman, Jean, tells of a severe case of food poisoning that sent her

into a coma at age five. "I remember that a beautifully robed entity, who at

the time I believed to be Jesus, told me I was being sent back to my mother

and father because I had to perform a special mission of helping people, she

says. Jean is now a psychiatric social worker.

Research shows that about one-third of people who face death in a

hospital or clinical setting have an NDE, according to the authors. But

in children, that figure jumps to 75 percent. Lillian Nestler agrees. After

interviewing 120 children who've cheated death, she's found 83 had NDEs.

A boy named Jimmy recalled a nice man' who wore a purple robe waiting

for him at the end of a tunnel of light," says Lillian, 49. "Then there was cute

little Jessica. She was all excited when she told me about the angels who

made her feel okay before sending her back to her mommy and daddy."

Source Of Information: SUN - February 6, 1996, posted by John Winston

(johnfwin@mlode.com)

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Lisa Baker TAB CORRESPONDENT March 6, 1996

On an August day in 1947, 11-year-old Brad Steiger nearly died of

multiple skull fractures after being caught in the metallic blades of a

piece of machinery on his family's Iowa farm. He felt his "essential

self" drift away from his body. He watched his sister run for help and

realized he was simultaneously in his father's arms being carried from

the field, and above himself, observing.

While "out" of his body he was shown a geometric design of colors and

seemed to see the patterns inherent in all of life. He came back to his

body just as the surgeons were about to operate.

Although he did not understand it, he felt he had been shown a plan of

the universe, and that he had a mission "to testify to others that the

human spirit is eternal and that we are not alone in the cosmic scheme

of things."

In their new book, "Children of the Light," Steiger and his wife Sherry

Hansen Steiger present a broad spectrum of cases of near-death

experiences in children. Steiger, college lecturer and author of over

130 books on various topics, says his own experience led him into this

topic of research, which he has pursued since he was a teenager.

His wife and co-author began her career training in nursing, later

switched to child and family counseling, and is an ordained Baptist

minister. She has had six near-death experiences herself, three of them

before the age of 10. She says she often hears children she counsels

tell of dreams and memories pertaining to near-death experiences that

they have been afraid to share with anyone else. Her shared experience

of such phenomena adds a therapeutic advantage to her counseling.

"We need to pay attention to the individual mystical experience," says

Steiger. He says children need to be able to share these experiences as

part of the context of their lives, and not be made to feel weird or

expected to be holy. He says it's helpful if a parent knows of their

child's near-death experience to tell the child's teachers, so that

child may share the experience with peers in a way that is validating

without overemphasizing it.

The book contains testimonials about childhood near-death experiences

from the Steigers' interviews and questionnaires, as well as historical

cases documented by earlier researchers. The modern respondents

represent all walks of life including psychologists, an architect, an

artist, an investment banker and a teacher. They cover topics ranging

from near-death experiences and spontaneous healing by prayer, to

visitations from angels and incidents of clairvoyance.

Children report being taken on a tour of heaven, seeing angels, colorful

geometric patterns, and dead relatives and pets. One 9-year-old boy,

after 36 hours in a life-threatening fever, reported seeing his sister

during a tour of heaven. It was she who told him he had to come back to

life. His father assured him he couldn't have seen her there as she was

safely away at college. The following morning they found out that the

daughter had died the night before in a car crash.

Such stories are common, says Steiger Hansen. One of her professors at

the Chicago Theological Seminary once told of a girl who was dying and

reported seeing her brother right in front of her in the hospital,

telling her it was "OK."

When told of this after her death her parents were stunned. They had

never told her she had had a brother who died years before she was born.

"Children know when they're going to die," says Hansen Steiger. She

feels they are more open to precognitive insights about death because

their minds are less cluttered with worries than an adult's. Besides,

she adds, "Children have no reason to lie. Why, at the moment of death,

would a child make something up?"

Hansen Steiger speaks both from observation as a counselor and

researcher, and from personal experience. She survived pneumonia in

infancy, rheumatic fever at age 6, an accidental overdose of ether

during a tonsillectomy at age 9, a shark attack, a hole in her heart and

a near-fatal kidney infection in her 20s and 30s. She has seen the same

geometric pattern of colors as her husband and many others have

reported. Like most other near-death survivors, she has come away with a

conviction that "We have a spiritual life that continues after physical

death."

Hansen Steiger has also survived the death of her own child. Her son

died in 1974 at the age of 9 when the jeep she was driving skidded off

the road in a blizzard. In the split second before the accident she

recalls, "I felt my son -- with a different intensity than one would say

'oh, I can see him look at me.' I felt him, like pierce me, look at me

and say 'Mama, it's OK. Mommy, I love you.' ... It was like he knew."

She feels he probably didn't even say the words physically, but that it

was a spiritual or telepathic communication.

Both of the Steigers, and the people they interview, say more and more

people will be living through near-death experiences as our medical

technology continues to improve. They feel that reports of these NDEs

must be greeted with acceptance and integrated into a holistic

perspective on life -- encompassing body, mind and spirit. Says Steiger,

"If spirit and technology are going to have the balance that we must

have on the earth plane, then we need to be cognizant of both."