Betty Eadie, Shedding Light on her Visit to Heaven

Betty Eadie, Shedding 'Light' on her Visit to Heaven
By Leslie Miller
USA Today

Betty Eadie isn't highly educated or cultured; she never even set out to be a writer.

But she had an amazing experience - she says she died and went to heaven, and came back to tell about it. And now that she's finally got it down on paper, Eadie doesn't appear at all surprised to have created a publishing sensation.

"It's considered a phenomenon," she says of the grassroots success of Embraced By The Light (Gold Leaf Press, $14.95).

The story of her detailed near-death experience has been on The New York Times best-seller list all summer, Bantam recently bought paperback rights for $1.5 million.

Eadie gets calls about people who buy one copy, then return for 10 or 15 more; she's caused traffic jams in Utah, where cars backed up on the highway en route to hear her speak.

Here's what Eadie says happened that night in 1973 when, as a 31-year-old mother of seven, she lay in the hospital after a hysterectomy.

She found herself floating out of her body, weightless and glowing, was guided into a dark tunnel and flew toward a bright light that radiated unconditional love.

She met Jesus, angels and other spirit-beings, some preparing for life-times on Earth. Her questions were telepathically answered, she was shown around and reviewed her life. But she had died before her time and her work was not yet done; she was told she must return to Earth. Once she accepted this, she found herself suddenly back in her hospital bed.

Eadie isn't surprised people are skeptical. "Are you sure you weren't hallucinating?" is the question she seems to get the most.

"It wasn't something I could possibly conjure up," she insists.

If people call her crazy - well, her Nebraska childhood prepared her for that. Her white father and Sioux mother split when she was 4, sending her to religious boarding school, where "I was raised a half-breed, heathen, a sinner . . . there isn't too much more people can say that's gonna put you down."

It wasn't until five years after her "journey," finally ready to write about it, that Eadie decided to question her doctor, he confirmed they had "lost her for a while," she says.

Talking to her, it's clear Eadie feels she was "chosen" for the experience, what's unclear to her is why.

"There was a purpose, but I was told I am not to dwell upon it, the purpose would be fulfilled," she says.

"We're assuming the book has something to do with it."

Her book has all the hallmarks of the classic near-death experience: being out-of-body, entering a tunnel, a light filled with love. But Eadie goes a step further: she clearly and repeatedly identifies the light as "my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Which puts her book in a kind of marketing no-man's-land.

When it first came out, stores shelved it with other near-death books under "new age," along with astrology, reincarnation, abduction by space aliens. Christians "would not put it in their stores," she says.

Eadie appears disgusted by these turf battles - a Seattle housewife turned hypnotherapist, she seems a hybrid of both camps; the "lessons" she recieved contain elements of new age and Christian thought.

We choose our earthly lives, she says, echoing a common new-age theme. "People in dire circumstances are actually very divine and glorious beings who selected humble experiences" to help others grow.

The importance of prayer. "God promised He would not intervene" in our lives without permission; praying signals God that it's OK.

But the bottom line is simple: love. Eadie can't help it that "Christians think it's new age," new-agers think it's Christian.

"It would be easy if I wanted to be popular, I could have left Him as just a being of light. But I had to tell it as it is - when I die. I want to go back to wherever I went, and I wouldn't jeopardize my chance of returning there for anybody or anything. It doesn't matter how the book sells."

She needn't have worried. Christians - her main audience, she says - are finding it and spreading the word.

People say she'll make a lot of money; she plans to use royalties to help Native Americans, "to bring back the pride and respect I believe my people have lost."

As for her sudden celebrity, "I don't take credit for it . . . I'm nothing," she says.

"It's just what they're seeking that attracts them to me. They want to hug someone they know Christ has hugged. They're hungering after the knowledge of God."