Preface

The following case study is excerpted from Scientific Evidence of the Existence of the Soul, the pioneering work by Dr. Benito F. Reyes, first written and published in the Philippines in 1948 when Dr. Reyes was a professor at the Far Eastern University in Manila. This book is now in its 3rd revised edition, available from World University in Ojai. At the time it was written, the term Near-Death Experience (NDE) had not yet been coined and so the term "resurrection" is used instead. However, this is a classic Near-Death Experience with an additional evidential development.

John Griffin

The resurrection of Sotera Flandez, mother of Delfin Batacan, one-time professor at the Far Eastern University in Manila, is not a lone example of the claims of resurrection in the Philippines. There are many.

This, however, is the only case I personally know about in which the parties concerned are people of integrity and who are willing to testify to the veracity of the occurrence. Furthermore, this seems to be the only case where the element of coincidence is highly improbable because of a confirmatory event at the end of the story.

Professor Batacan wrote the complete and unexpurgated story of the death and resurrection of his mother for me, thus:

My mother, Sotera Flandez, was a school teacher. So was my father. Among those who took their three R's under her was one-time minority floor leader and Senator Cipriano P. Primicias.

Mother had a weak heart. When my father's condition grew worse, the whole family left Manila and we moved to Alcala, Pangasinan, where my mother's folks had a house. A few days before father died, mother was transferred to my auntie's place, about a hundred yards away.

On May 27, 1919 my father died. Mother wasn't told about it until the day of the burial. When she found out what happened she tried to bear her sorrow admirably. She steeled herself and was able to survive the constant threats of her weak heart until July 16th of the same year when at a little before twilight she passed away. Or so we thought.

There was the usual nocturnal vigil. Her amigas or friends, co-teachers and fellow-alumnae of La Concordia College, were all there.

I was seven then and as far as I can remember I had been reared in the town's convent. My brother Abelardo (now Airport Engineer of the Bureau of Aeronautics) was five and our sister, Avelina, was three.

Our Tia Martina, mother's only sister, had mother dressed in her favorite terno and on her outstretched palms auntie placed mother's prayer book on her right hand and her book of novenas on her left. I remember this very vividly because I asked Tia Martina why.

I forgot to say that before mother's heart was supposed to have stopped, Rev. Augustin del Rosario was summoned and he administered to her the extreme unction. On the morning of the 17th as mother lay there in her matrimonial bed, visitors and friends kept vigil; the carpenters were putting the finishing touches to her coffin, the carro or carriage was being readied with black satin ribbons and all. I was sitting close to mother's right. Several of her friends were in the hall. My Tia Martina had just left her chair on mother's left. It was a little past eleven (Dr. Jose Amphil Diaz glanced at his watch) when I noticed mother's prayer book being clutched by the fingers of her right hand. I looked at her left hand and there was a simultaneous and rhythmic movement of her fingers. Several of the people in the hall also saw what I saw. I was stunned. Not from fright. No, from joy! Why, Mother was alive! She wasn't dead!

"Nabiag ni Teray...!" (Ilocano for "Teray is alive!"). The shouting went up. There was consternation, with those frightened scampering for the nearest exit. The brave stayed. By this time Tia Martina had rushed to the deathbed (now merely a bedside) and kept on calling mother's name: "Teray! Teray!" I kept on saying: "Nanay! Nanay!" ("Mother! Mother!")

Mother was now clutching her books. Suddenly she opened her mouth and said: "M...a...m." Her voice was weak, hesitant, supulchral. My auntie asked for "Water and spoon please." Again, mother's lips parted, saying, "Mam...Man." Tia Martina tremblingly poured the teaspoonful of water into mother's mouth. Slowly. One teaspoon. Two. Three teaspoons.

"Teray," my auntie kept on calling.

"Nanay," I kept on saying.

"Teray," her friends and classmates now joined the chorus of pleading voices.

Then she opened her eyes. She gazed at me (her eldest). She closed them again for a brief instant and then opened them and this time it looked to me as if she never wanted to close them again. "Hijo!" she cried as I hugged her. She gripped her sister's hand and said "Manang!" (an Ilocano term for elder sister). She looked at the curious faces now converged all around her bed, some unbelieving, some frightened, all happy.

"Where are my other children?" She queried. Abelardo and Avelina were fetched. Her next question was: "Why am I dressed like this? And why are there so many people?" Tia Martina made the explanations as best she could.

Then when she was asked where she had been, it was mother's turn to tell her story. It was a long story. Briefly, it may be summed up, thus:

She went to a happy land, full of gladness and sunshine. There was a kindly old man with snow-white hair and snow-white beard. The road to and from that joyful place was a straight white road with clean white pebbles on the side and fresh green grass lining the way. She passed crystal clear brooks and streams. On the way, she saw her classmates at La Concordia, namely, Carmen, Pilaring, Rita, and others. She also saw my father. He was holding a broom. He was happy and contented. She said the old man didn't want her to leave. She said she insisted, pleading that she merely wanted to see her children again and to leave word with her Manang Martina on what to do with her two boys when she would return to the happy land. She said she was going to bring her daughter Avelina when she came back. The old man granted her request. So she was allowed to visit her folks. Her story dealt with a strange and unknown land, the people she met and saw have all been long dead.

She seemed visibly tired, and in between her labored breathing she kept continually glancing at the faces of those around her. Then she went on to explain why she tried to convince the "old man" with the snow-white beard to let her come back to see her children once more and to tell her sister Martina what to do with them. She promised the "old man" she was going back. Definitely. And she was to take her daughter Avelina with her. When my Tia Martina and mother's college-mates protested, she said very calmly: "My two dear boys are enough for Manang Martina.

"Why did you have to promise the "old Man" that you were going back?" they asked her.

"Only with that promise would he allow me to return," she explained.

And mother kept talking of things and places and persons not of this world.

On the following morning she felt very much exhausted from uninterrupted story-telling. We, her dear children, were at her bedside. She kissed me first, then my brother Abelardo. Then she pressed close to her daughter, my sister Avelina.

She said a few more things to my aunt Martina on how to care for us "two boys."

Then she looked about the pale and ashen faces that watched her, now intently, intensely, and said:

"I am very tired. I must sleep now."

It was 6:30 a.m., July 18, 1919.

And mother was dead. This time, really dead. The score of doctors who by now had flocked to our house made sure of that. True to her word my sister Avelina followed her to complete her promise to the "old man."

My sister died August 19, a month and a day later

Analysis and Interpretation

Was Sotera Flandez really dead the first time, or was she only in a comatose state? It is not easy to tell because there is no sufficient basis for a decision.

The expected and usual argument of the dogmatic materialist would be that Sotera was not really dead as otherwise she would not have reawakened. In other words, she was only in a coma, a condition "of absolute unconsciousness" during which the brain is totally refractory to excitation."

This type of reasoning is, of course, thoroughly fallacious: Sotera was not really dead the first time since she woke up; therefore, the second time, she was really dead, because then, she did not wake up.

When is a person dead, then? When he does not wake up. And when does he not wake up? When he is dead. In logical parlance, we call this error in reasoning circulos in probando, or arguing in a circle.

Whether or not Sotera was really dead the first time is not essential to me. It is not my aim to prove the reality of resurrection. It is my purpose to prove the existence of the soul.

One thing is certain in our case. Sotera entered into a state of absolute unconsciousness, whether of death or of coma. Death, as far as materialistic science is concerned, is an absolute state of unconsciousness; so is coma as far as physiology is concerned.

If Sotera was in a state of absolute unconsciousness, how explain her experience on the "other side" which she related after waking up? How explain her "journey" to the happy land? How explain her meeting and conversation with the "kindly old man with snow-white hair and snow-white beard?" How explain her request to return to the family temporarily with the promise to go back to the "happy land" after seeing her children? In other words, how explain her state of consciousness during all the time she was supposed to be dead or in a coma, that is, in a state of absolute unconsciousness?

Either we force our minds to accept the contradiction, that is, regard Sotera as both dead and not dead, unconscious and conscious at the same time, or admit the other more consistent, more coherent, more logical theory: namely, that the soul of Sotera, the real being, had withdrawn from the body, either through death or through coma, and had actually experienced the after-death plane, the higher dimensional world of svapna [a Sanskrit term describing a conscious state in a higher dimension which usually occurs when the body is "asleep," distinct from the limited conscious state in the physical world, and with transphysical capabilities and experiences].

To avoid illogicality, and confusion that may arise if we regard Sotera as being constituted only of her body, we have to agree to the following propositions:

1. That Sotera was all the time conscious on the other side, while her body was absolutely unconscious (dead or comatose, it does not matter) down here, as it were;

2. That if she were conscious on the other side, as her experience there clearly shows, she must be a conscious something, an experient, a soul, existing and energizing on the other side while her body on this side was completely inert in a state of absolute unconsciousness.

3. That death, therefore, is not, as is often supposed, really an annihilation, a destruction, but merely the withdrawal of consciousness or the soul from the body and its transfocalization into the after-death plane where it continues its life and experience in an unbroken state of self-consciousness.

Suppose, on the other hand, the objection should be raised that all the so-called experience of Sotera on the other side were really only hallucination, would it destroy our argument? For two valid reasons, it would not. On the contrary it would strengthen our position.

First, hallucination is a condition of consciousness. There can be no hallucination in a state of absolute unconsciousness. Therefore, the objection really proves that Sotera was actually conscious during all the time her body was in a state of unconsciousness. Who was having hallucinations? Who was conscious when Sotera was either actually "dead" or simply comatose? Our answer: the soul. The answer of materialism: either none or a contradiction.

Second, the experience of Sotera on the other side, if it were hallucination, was a most outstanding hallucination.

It was too serious, too solemn, too completely clear and veracious to be hallucinatory. Because she woke up, she told people that she came back to earth, not only to give her last instructions but also to tell them that she was taking her daughter, Avelina, to the other side. Everybody remonstrated. But she told them calmly that she would take Avelina with her. Sotera finally died on July 18, 1919.

Thirty-one days later, on August 19, 1919, three-year-old Avelina also died.

Hallucination or actual experience? Let the reader judge for himself. When events become too coincidental, they cease to be accidental. So says the scientific Law of Probability.

Copyright 2001, World University in Ojai