Barbara Harris Whitfield is the author of many books, including The Natural Soul, Full Circle: The Near Death Experience and Beyond, Spiritual Awakenings: Insights of the NDE and Other Doorways to Our Soul, and Final Passage: Sharing the Journey as This Life Ends. She is a therapist in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia. She has been on the board of Directors for the Kundalini Research Network and was on the faculty of Rutgers University’s Institute on Alcohol and Drug Studies for 12 years. She also spent six years researching the aftereffects of the near-death experience at the University of Connecticut Medical School. She is a consulting editor and contributor for the Journal of Near-Death Studies.
In this video from 2016, she describes her own near death experience that took place more than forty years ago, including a feeling of being embraced by the divine and also including a detailed review of her life up until that moment. That was a transformative experience that set the pattern for the rest of her life. As a result she became associated with researchers Kenneth Ring and Bruce Greyson at the University of Connecticut. There she discovered the correlation between near-death experience and early life trauma. She likens her particular path to “the hero’s journey” as described by the mythologist, Joseph Campbell.