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THE NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE: A STAIRCASE TO HEAVEN? 327end of a tunnel. I knew this because I could see a light at the end;that's how I knew it was there. I was vertical and I was beingdrawn towards the opening. I know it wasn't a dream, dreams don'thappen that way. I never once imagined it was a dream. 5THE LIGHTAt the moment of death, the Ground Luminosity or ClearLight dawns in all its splendor. The Tibetan Book of the Deadsays: "O son/daughter of an enlightened family ... your Rigpais inseparable luminosity and emptiness and dwells as a greatexpanse of light; beyond birth or death, it is, in fact, the Buddhaof Unchanging Light."Melvin Morse, who has specialized in the research of neardeathexperiences in children, remarks: "Nearly every neardeathexperience of children (and about one-fourth of those ofadults) has in it an element of light. They all report that thelight appears at the final stages of the near-death experience,after they have had an out-of-body experience or have travelledup the tunnel." 6One of the best descriptions of the approach to the lightwas reported by Margot Grey:Then gradually you realize that way, far off in the distance, anunmeasurable distance, you may be reaching the end of the tunnel,as you can see a white light, but it's so far away I can only compareit to looking up into the sky and in the distance seeing asingle star, but visually you must remember that you are lookingthrough a tunnel, and this light would fill the end of the tunnel.You concentrate on this speck of light because as you are propelledforward you anticipate reaching this lightGradually, as you travel towards it at an extreme speed it getslarger and larger. The whole process on reflection only seems to takeabout one minute. As you gradually draw nearer to this extremelybrilliant light there is no sensation of an abrupt end of the tunnel, butrather more of a merging into the light By now, the tunnel is behindyou and before you is this magnificent, beautiful blue-white lightThe brilliance is so bright, brighter than a light that would immediatelyblind you, but absolutely does not hurt your eyes at all. 7Many near-death experiencers describe the light itself:My description of the light was—well, it was not a light, but theabsence of darkness, total and complete ... Well, you think of light