Betty (Jean) Eadie (born 1942) is a prominent American author of several books on near-death experiences (NDEs). Her best-known book is the number 1 New York Times bestselling book Embraced by the Light, (1992) describing her NDE. It was followed by The Awakening Heart (1996), which was also a best-seller. The Ripple Effect (1999) and Embraced by the Light: Prayers and Devotions for Daily Living (2001) were both published independently.
Early life and career
Eadie was born in Valentine, Nebraska to “a full-blooded Sioux Indian” mother and Scotch-Irish father, and was primarily raised on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When she was four years old, Eadie's parents separated and she was placed in St. Francis Indian School, an American Indian boarding school, along with six of her siblings. While in high school, she dropped out to care for a younger sister. She later studied to receive her diploma while on bed rest during her final pregnancy, and eventually pursued a college degree. She spent time variously in churches affiliated with Catholicism, Methodism, and for a time the LDS Church in Seattle, though in numerous public talks she subsequently declared herself non-denominational.
After her NDE, Betty began volunteering her time at a cancer research center comforting dying patients and their families. She then studied hypnotherapy, graduating at the top of her class, and later opened her own clinic. After Embraced by the Light was published, Eadie gave up her hypnotherapy practice and began traveling extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Ireland, speaking on death and the afterlife.
After four decades of NDE studies, Eadie continues to collect and evaluate near-death accounts, as well as giving speeches and lectures.
NDE account
In her NDE account, Eadie reports many phenomena similar to other NDE accounts, such as going through a dark tunnel, seeing a bright light and experiencing a Life review, as well as other features unique to her story. In 1973, at age 31, Eadie was recovering from a surgical operation. Eadie reported that she first felt herself fading to lifelessness, then felt a surge of energy followed by a "pop" and feeling of release, a sense of freedom and movement unhindered by inertia or gravity. She was met by three angelic beings who spoke with her about her prior existence and hitherto suppressed memories in order to participate in earthly experience. She traveled to terrestrial locations such as her home merely by thinking about them, returned to her hospital, and then passed on through a dark tunnel-like medium in which she reported sensing other beings in a transitory preparatory stage.
Exiting the tunnel, Eadie approached an intense white light and met in heaven the embrace of Jesus Christ. During this encounter, she reported a strong sense of love and a high-speed transfer of answers to her many questions. Possessing a corporeal identity of an ethereal kind, she visited numerous places, persons, and phenomena such as natural settings and gardens beyond the character of the conventionally material, and was taken on a tour of sorts of learning experiences that she said felt equivalent to weeks or months.
In addition to discussing traditional Christian subjects such as prayer, creation, and the Garden of Eden, Eadie reported visiting a library of the mind. Here it became possible to know anything or anyone in history or the present, in minute and unambiguous detail, as well as being able to observe individuals on Earth and being taken to distant reaches and civilizations of the universe.
Warned initially upon arrival that she had died prematurely, Eadie was at last told she must return in order to fulfill the personal mission allocated her. Its specific character, like numerous other details, were removed from her memory, in order, she said she was told, to prevent difficulties in her fulfilling it. Upon protesting, she was made to understand the reason behind the necessity for her return and reluctantly agreed to do so. She exacted a promise that she would not be made to stay on Earth longer than necessary. She reported her return to material corporeality as extremely heavy-feeling and unpleasant, initially intermittent in phases, and accompanied not long after by a demonic visitation that was cut short by an angelic reappearance.