Like Whitton, NDE researchers have also uncovered evidence that our lives are planned beforehand, at least to some extent, and we each play a role in the creation of this plan. This is apparent in several aspects of the experience. Frequently after arriving in the world of light, NDEers are told that "it is not their time yet." As Ring points out, this remark clearly implies the existence of some kind of "life plan.” It is also clear that NDEers play a role in the formulation of these destinies, for they are often given the choice whether to return or stay. There are even instances of NDEers being told that it is their time and still being allowed to return. Moody cites a case in which a man started to cry when he realized he was dead because he was afraid his wife wouldn't be able to raise their nephew without him. On hearing this the being told him that since he wasn't asking for himself he would be allowed to return. In another case a woman argued that she hadn't danced enough yet. Her remark caused the being of light to give a hearty laugh and she, too, was given permission to return to physical life.
That our future is at least partially sketched out is also evident in a phenomenon Ring calls the "personal flashforward." On occasion, during the vision of knowledge, NDEers are shown glimpses of their own future. In one particularly striking case a child NDEer was told various specifics about his future, including the fact that he would be married at age twenty-eight and would have two children. He was even shown his adult self and his future children sitting in a room of the house he would eventually be living in, and as he gazed at the room he noticed something very strange on the wall, something that his mind could not grasp. Decades later and after each of these predictions had come to pass, he found himself in the very scene he had witnessed as a child and realized that the strange object on the wall was a "forced-air heater," a kind of heater that had not yet been invented at the time of his NDE.
In another equally astonishing personal flashforward a female NDEer was shown a photograph of Moody, told his full name, and told that when the time was right she would tell him about her experience. The year was 1971 and Moody had not yet published Life after Life, so his name and picture meant nothing to the woman. However, the time became "right" four years later when Moody and his family unwittingly moved to the very street on which the woman lived. That Halloween Moody's son was out trick-or-treating and knocked on the woman's door. After hearing the boy's name, the woman told him to tell his father she had to talk to him, and when Moody obliged she related her remarkable story.
Some NDEs even support Loye's proposal that several holographic parallel universes, or time tracks, exist. On occasion NDEers are shown personal flashforwards and told that the future they have witnessed will come to pass only if they continue on their current path. In one unique instance an NDEer was shown a completely different history of the earth, a history that would have developed if "certain events" had not taken place around the time of the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras three thousand years ago. The vision revealed that if these events, the precise nature of which the woman does not disclose, had failed to take place, we would now be living in a world of peace and harmony marked "by the absence of religious wars and of a Christ figure.” Such experiences suggest that the laws of time and space operative in a holographic universe may be very strange indeed.
Even NDEers who do not experience direct evidence of the role they play in their own destiny often come back with a firm understanding of the holographic interconnectedness of all things. As a sixty-two-year-old businessman who had an NDE during a cardiac arrest puts it "One thing I learned was that we are all part of one big, living universe. If we think we can hurt another person or another living thing without hurting ourselves we are sadly mistaken. I look at a forest or a flower or a bird now, and say, 'That is me, part of me.' We are connected with all things and if we send love along those connections, then we are happy.”
Michael Talbot
"Hold on," Zac paused. "If that first guy was shown his future in a near-death experience, then returned to Earth and ended up in the future he'd been shown, did showing him his future cause his future to turn out that way? Couldn't he have seen his future, then deliberately not gotten married by twenty-eight, just to prove the prophecy wrong?"
"That's an interesting question," I said. "Do you think you can outrun destiny?"
"I don't believe in destiny."
"You'll change your mind by the end of this story."
"Is that a prophecy?"
"Yes," I smiled. "Think about it this way. The observer and the observed are the same thing, right?"
"Yeah…"
"Then this algorithm would know exactly what the observer will think when he is shown the prophecy. It will anticipate his desire to outrun destiny."
"By trying to outrun his destiny, the boy will inevitably run straight into his destiny," I said. "It's a retrocausal loop. Once the prophecy has been made, the puzzle piece corresponding with the future manifestation of the prophecy has been put in place. Therefore, other potential futures can't be accessed."
"But what happened to free will?" Zac asked. "God has been yapping on about free will, and now you tell me that it's all predetermined?"
"I never said it's predetermined."
"You just said its destiny. Destiny is predetermined. I can't outrun it. Therefore, I don't have free will."
"Free will and destiny are not at odds with each other. You choose your destiny with your free will," I said.
"Then it's not destiny, because you could have made a different choice and ended up somewhere else."
"You're wrong, but I'll explain why later. In the meantime, here's what God says about life planning. It's eerily similar to the NDE accounts."
Do you mean a soul chooses what kind of life it will experience ahead of time?
No, that would defeat the purpose of the encounter. The purpose is to create your experience — and thus, create your Self — in the glorious moment of Now. You do not, therefore, choose the life you will experience ahead of time.
You may, however, select the persons, places, and events — the conditions and circumstances, the challenges and obstacles, the opportunities and options — with which to create your experience. You may select the colors for your palette, the tools for your chest, the machinery for your shop. What you create with these is your business. That is the business of life.
Your potential is unlimited in all that you’ve chosen to do. Do not assume that a soul which has incarnated in a body which you call limited has not reached its full potential, for you do not know what that soul was trying to do. You do not understand its agenda. You are unclear as to its intent.
Therefore bless every person and condition, and give thanks. Thus you affirm the perfection of God’s creation — and show your faith in it. For nothing happens by accident in God’s world, and there is no such thing as coincidence. Nor is the world buffeted by random choice, or something you call fate.
If a snowflake is utterly perfect in its design, do you not think the same could be said about something as magnificent as your life?
Neale Donald Walsch
"Do you think we planned to meet each other in this life?" Zac asked.
"Yeah."
"Really?"
"Definitely. You serve a very important purpose in my plan."
"Your plan?"
"Yeah. My soul's plan."
"How do you know what your soul's plan is?"
"The prophecy," I smiled.
"What prophecy?" he asked suspiciously.
"Let's keep reading, shall we?"
