I agree we definitely don’t have the whole story. 

As for any death, it’s my personal spiritual belief that we took part in planning it before we came into this life.  Maybe we don’t plan every little detail like date and time, but I think in general we plan major events in our lives.  Even if it’s something horrific like a murder.

As for mass deaths throughout history, I also believe we take part in planning that or deciding that that’s what we’ll experience.  I believe that for everything really, I guess.  Again, I don’t think we plan every day, or every detail.  And I also believe we have free will and can make last-minute decisions and changes if it suits us.  I don’t have any answers though. 

When I had my NDE I know for a fact that I chose to stay even though I was fully aware it meant dying and my kids would be without me.  I also know how angry I was when I was told “go back to the physical” and I was forced back into my body.  I literally can remember how angry I was.  But of course it didn’t take long for me to be so grateful and thankful that I was still here, still living and experiencing, and of course still here with my kids. 

I think that a higher part of my being knew that that time wasn’t my time to go.  It wasn’t my planned time.  However, the me in that moment was in such awe that I wanted to stay, but I didn’t know better because I wasn’t able to see the bigger picture of my life’s plan.  So I’m grateful that that momentary wish was overridden by bigger plans.  I believe it’s my spiritual being who is in charge of those plans, and that it does have all the answers even though I don’t know what they are or why they are. 

If such a thing is true and we have multiple aspects to our greater being--in a spiritual sense beyond this physical body--then imagine that those other parts of our greater self hold some interest in our individual lives here. But, these other aspects can't quite get through, can't express, through our individual self in this lifetime.

We have free will, but we also have unknown, and vast, untapped resources in the greater being that we are. It seems that we do have a purpose in this life, for learning, for experience...experience is the source of our learning.

I have this vague framework of an idea that sits in my mind, and has been there for many years. It told me that something momentous would happen around my 40th year, 20 years ago. It also foreshadowed situations I would navigate through which are culminating right now.

Now, I cannot properly describe these "feelings" (which come in simple pictures) because they sound ridiculous even to myself.

But if there are greater (or "other") parts of my being that are held back from fully expressing while my aspect (my person in this lifetime) is inhabiting this physical body--they might be able to show through at times like a shadow on a screen. A wisp of an idea. Deja vu, premonitions...

In any case, we have resources that are beyond those in this physical world. The self that came here has a purpose, and it may be that our wants and needs here in the physical moment are not all there is.

I state a lot of things as if they are fact. For me, they are. Life itself is limitless, and it is possible that this life we experience is simply a dream that our greater self is remembering. There are times when creativity arises out of an unknown place and pulls me up and through a situation. I feel that I am not the conscious controller of this creativity and it arises on its own volition, sometimes when my own energy sources are spent.