"Ain't No Saint" with Howard Storm

Howard doesn't know this, but he's one of my favorite people. Because after my near-death experience, uh, you know, one of the things that you do is you go out and you look for people that you perhaps trust or, or, uh, have, you know, something to share with you that, that tends to validate that what you experienced was real. And, uh, that's what, uh, Howard did for me. He helped me experience or understand that my experience was real. Uh, it was a very confusing time for me. And, um, so, uh, his story was something that I just ran across, and I think I actually saw him on television. Howard's been interviewed on, I believe, Oprah, perhaps The Today Show. There's, there's quite a few places that he's been, uh, telling his story. And so, um, he doesn't know that, but I just wanted to mention that up front.

But, uh, before his near-death experience that he shared with so many people, uh, Howard was a professor of art at Northern Kentucky University. And, uh, I'm pulling this from online. It, and it says, by his own admission, he was not a very pleasant man. Uh, before his experience, he was an avowed atheist. Uh, he was hostile to every form of religion and those who practiced it. Um, he would get very angry and control people around him and apparently didn't find much joy in anything. Um, and he, before his experience, he didn't, uh, have any faith in anything that you couldn't touch, see, feel, or measure. Is that right, Howard? Yes. Okay. And, uh, he considered all belief systems associated with religion to be fantasies for people to deceive themselves with. Um, and beyond what science said, there was nothing else.

But then on June 1st, 1985, at the age of 38, Howard Storm had a near-death experience due to a medical condition. And many people consider his experience to be one of the most profound. It started out very negatively, and, uh, it turned around, uh, within his experience. So he, and he's a wonderful storyteller, telling exactly what happened with that. Um, and his life was so immensely changed. And I think we can all understand that have had NDEs, we can understand, uh, how that happens. But his life was so changed that he resigned as a professor and he devoted his time to seminary to become a minister. And that's what he's been doing. Um, and he's also maintained his passion for painting, which has taken another direction, as you might imagine. And he paints with a God state of mind, which raises his paintings to a whole nother level. And I, I, I invite you to go take a look at those on his website because they are very beautiful. But today, we have Howard with us, and we're just thrilled to death that he's here to tell his story and let us ask questions. And, uh, it's, it's wonderful to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. And so, so, uh, again, we're thrilled that you're with us, Howard. And I'm gonna turn it back to Cyrus just, uh, to ask you some questions and to get started.

Well, thanks, Kathy. Um, and Howard is quickly also becoming one of my favorite people after our two long conversations that we've had. And I hope, I hope this, uh, this interview is as just spontaneous and lovely a conversation as the ones that we had individually for the sake of everyone that's here on the call. But welcome, Howard. Uh, and thank you so very much for being with us.

Thank you. And I think the best place to start is just, you know, Kathy kind of alluded to it in your bio, but who were you? Um, maybe begin by taking us through, uh, Howard Storm, the, the young man or the child, and leading up to being an art professor and everything in between.

First of all, I want to thank Kathy and Cyrus for the nice introduction. I hope that I can live up to the build-up because I, um, I really consider myself to be an ordinary person. I don't, I think of myself as that exceptional. But anyways, I grew up in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, born in 1946. I like to say I was what my dad did when he got home from World War II from serving in the Navy in the Pacific for three years. And, uh, he made a boy. I had two older sisters. And, um, early life was pretty fun, as I recall it. And then my father got a promotion. And, um, he ran, he ran our household as if we were in the Navy. It was very, very strict. If any of you, uh, understand, we had to eat square. We had to eat a square meal, that would be naval academy style. If you don't know what I'm talking about, talk to someone who went to the naval academy. And with my father's promotion, he became, uh, so involved with his work, and he became, um, meaner. As a child, we were taken to church, and I liked Sunday school very much. But when I was, uh, 15 years old, I was having a terrible relationship with my father and other things, and getting interested in philosophy. And I had a long conversation with my pastor, who was a Harvard Divinity School graduate. And I asked him what he believed. And what I found out was he didn't believe anything that he was professing. And he and I were very close, my pastor and I. And with that, um, I never spoke to him again, and I never went to church again. I realized that church, as I was experiencing through my family and through my pastor, was all a big lie. It was all a bunch of hypocrites, and I didn't want to have any part of it. And I don't think that that's an unusual experience with a lot of young people. I've talked to many people that have become disillusioned with their, uh, church experience because of such a disconnect between the nice things that are said in church and how they experience the people of the church. Most unfortunate. Anyhow, um, I was an artist. And my understanding of being an artist was, is that you had to be absolutely obsessed with your career, and that's all that mattered. And if any of you have ever, um, not all artists are like that, but many artists are extreme egotists, very narcissistic, and thoroughly unpleasant people. But I'm 100% devoted to their art, whether it be visual arts or music, whatever. And so, um, when I went to, uh, art school, I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, got my undergraduate degree. University of California, Berkeley, got my, um, master's, and then my MFA. Um, that was sort of the prevailing attitude. No interest in being a nice person or anything. My life was my time in the studio and pursuing my career. Secondarily, uh, I had to make a living, so I was a college professor. And I was a department head for, um, over a third of the time I was at the university. At the university for 20 years, and for seven and a half years, I was the department head. And, uh, independent. So I'm growing and doing very well. Um, you've all heard the analogy of herding cats. Well, that's, that's what I was doing with a bunch of prima donnas who all thought they were, uh, you know, the greatest things in the world. It was, um, not an easy job trying to keep that show on the road. And, uh, my wife and my kids were very secondary to my consideration. I'm, of course, now looking back, I deeply regret that. I think that was a terrible mistake. But at the time, um, you know, I had, I had time for them in my, um, very sparse spare time. Other than that, they were a bother, a distraction from the great artist that I was, or thought I was, or hoped to be, whatever. So egotistical, self-centered, manipulative, and very successful. I was a tenured full professor at the age of 26. I was winning awards and prizes, and I had a couple of galleries representing my work, selling my work, and I thought I was on the road to fame and fortune.

Howard, what did you, would you say there is anything that you believed at that point in your life?

I believed in science. I still do. Um, I had a lot of, uh, friends that were all like-minded. Matter of fact, all of my friends were fellow faculty at the university, from history, political science, etc. And, uh, we were all like-minded. And I thought, um, they affirmed, uh, me and my beliefs because we all believed the same thing. And we all had utter contempt for, um, people that we considered to be idiots who thought otherwise.

So then what happened on June 1st, 1985?

I was leading a group of art students on an art tour of Europe. It was a three-week tour. And, um, I pushed them pretty hard because I wanted to, uh, I wanted them to, for, for all of them, with the exception of myself, it was their first time outside of the country, their first time in Europe. And, um, I wanted them to get, uh, as much out of it as possible. So we were going morning, noon, and night. And it was the, um, last day of the tour. The next day, this is a three-week tour, the next day we were going to, uh, back to Amsterdam to Schiphol Airport to fly home. And I had a full schedule planned. At 11 o'clock that morning, June 1st, 1985, I'm trying to get the my students going because I was facing a little bit of a rebellion. They were all being very lazy. I'd already been out, been to a de la Cruz home and studio. Um, I had a perforation of the duodenum, which is, uh, what I miss. You have a large stomach and then a small stomach. Small stomach is where your gastric juices come in, and then after that, of course, that then goes into your intestines. And I didn't know what was happening. I was sitting there talking to, uh, one of my students, Monica Shona, and next thing I knew, I was on the floor, screaming, thrashing, cussing, yelling in absolute panic and terror because I was having the most acute pain that I'd ever experienced in my life. And, um, my wife called the receptionist at the hotel, and he called an emergency medical service. And the doctor came very quickly, I think within five or ten minutes. The doctor appeared. He got me off the floor with a great deal of difficulty. He knew, he examined me, and he knew immediately what was wrong and told me that, um, I had to have surgery immediately or I would die. He called an ambulance, and I was taken to, [Music] the big public general hospital. Restaurant. This was publicly. And, um, they took me to emergency. There were two doctors there. Did x-ray, medical history. Um, they were very nice. I think they were very thorough. Told me that I had to have surgery immediately. If I didn't have surgery within an hour, that I would be dead. Um, when I've talked to doctors in the U.S. and I've talked to a number of them because I've always been interested in the subject, they told me that my life expectancy at best was a few hours. And they sent me off to the surgical hospital. Cochon. And it was a Saturday. And unbeknownst, I'm sure to the doctors at emergency, there was no surgeon on duty or available at the surgical hospital. So the little technicality, I wasn't admitted into the hospital. What happened was, I was put in a room and put on a bed. The bed had no blanket, no top sheet, no pillow, just me and my wife in this room with a very, very wonderful, um, 68-year-old Frenchman whose name was Michel Floren. I have been given nothing. The doctors explained to me that, um, they couldn't give me anything because it would interfere with the, um, anesthetics and things that I would be given by the surgeon. So the pain was becoming more and more acute. The pain that sent me to the floor thrashing was just getting worse and worse. So, um, you know how when you talk to a doctor and say, well, describe the pain on a one to ten? I was out of ten, and now I was going, it was going off the charts. And, uh, I was left there about, uh, once an hour, a nurse would come in and ask me how I was doing. And, uh, I would tell her in my poor French that I was dying. And then I needed a doctor. And she would tell me that there was no doctor available and that as soon as they got one, he would see me. This happened at 11 a.m. in the morning. The beginning of this. I was at the hospital at probably around 11:30. I was in the surgical hospital before noon. And as the day progressed, um, I was fighting a battle, uh, to stay alive. It was really quite simple. And what that, what that boiled down to was I was trying to breathe because it was incredibly difficult to breathe because when you breathe, you agitate your diaphragm. When you agitate your diaphragm, I was agitating the hydrochloric acid and the bacteria and the enzymes and all the good digestive stuff that was migrating into my abdominal cavity, which was spreading. So the pain, which had originally been a point in the center of my abdomen, became an area which ultimately grew to be from my groin to my shoulder blades. The pain was that basically my whole abdominal area, and it was really, really hard to breathe. Um, I didn't want to die because I knew for absolute certainty that when you die, you're dead, and that's the end. It's like a light switch, on, off. And, um, I didn't believe in life after death. And, um, I'm 38 years old now. You know, one of the things that kept coming, this can't be happening. How can this be happening? I'm just, you know, everything that I've worked so hard for and wanted, it's, it's coming into, into grasp, you know, I'm getting there, you know, and, um, this just cannot possibly be happening to me. Of course, I knew that it was happening, and, um, I was under no illusion that this, uh, wasn't real. I knew it was real. And, uh, so I was focused on trying to breathe in and then exhale. In order to do that, I have, I die. I'm everywhere. And not do that, you know, I mean, to breathe was like hitting myself with a hammer. Does that make any sense to you? It was like, you know, um, so that was my battle. I was, I had no conversation with my wife, no conversation with Mr. Floren. I couldn't talk. Um, many times I thought, I need to think about something else and get my mind off this. You know, it wouldn't be so bad, but unfortunately, it had my full attention, and it wasn't going to allow me to think about anything else. So I couldn't think of anything. Um, at 8:30 that night, okay, you're following the numbers here from 11 to 8:30. I've been given nothing. Um, every doctor I've talked to since said it's a miracle you're alive. You never should have survived it. Um, it did have real consequences, which I'll describe later in terms of I was septic for months afterwards and stuff like that, but that's another story. Um, the nurse came into the room and said, they're unable to locate a doctor and try to get one the next day, which would have been Sunday. And she left the room. Hardly. And I knew right then that that was, um, the end of the story. It was over, you know. Um, I know I couldn't, I knew I couldn't do this anymore. What I'm talking about is breathe and stay alive. So I told my wife that I loved her. Told my parents, sisters. And then I, she was crying like I'd never seen anybody cry before. And I closed my eyes and stopped trying to breathe, and I went right away unconscious.

I don't know how long I was unconscious. Of course, you know, people always ask me, you know, like, yeah, oh, I've been going, you know. And I awoke, and I felt better than I'd ever felt in my whole life. And of course, I was aesthetically happy at feeling good. The pain was completely gone. And I did a reality check by, I started at the top of my head and I felt my head and my face, and I worked my way down all the way down to my toes. And I was like, wow, this is really good. Because I mean, all my sensations were like, somewhere so much more acute than they ever been. And just to give you some examples, my vision was, um, amazing. I mean, I feel the vision had greatly expanded. Um, I had a great depth of field. In other words, I could focus near and far simultaneously. Everything was so vivid. With my sense of smell, I could smell my roommate, Mr. Floren, uh, very strongly. And he didn't smell so good, but I liked him, so I didn't, I didn't mind. But, um, he had leaked a lot. Uh, I was, uh, fascinated with the linoleum floor that I was standing on because I could, although it would appear to be perfectly smooth, I could feel all the little details in the linoleum, which I've never been able to do since then. But at the time, it was really quite fascinating. And as I'm beginning to examine my surroundings, I noticed that there was, um, a lump in the bed that I had been occupying. Its head was turned away from me. And I bent over that thing in the bed, and to my horror, it looked a lot like me. But being a rational human being, I knew that it wasn't me because I knew that that was a piece of, uh, meat. It wasn't a living thing. And I knew it couldn't be me because, like, you can't be standing over yourself looking at yourself. That's not, that's not possible. And I couldn't figure out why it looked like me because it was somebody else that looked an awful lot like me, but it's not me. And they were dead, and I was alive. Um, and I couldn't, I couldn't accept that that was me in the bed, although there was a part of me that was terrified that it was me in the bed. Does that make any sense of it? So I tried to communicate with my wife and Mr. Floren to my, um, great frustration, which became extreme anger. Neither of them responded to me. And I couldn't understand why they wouldn't respond to me because, uh, first I was talking to them, then I was yelling and screaming at them and cussing them. Um, I could explain my wife's, uh, indifference to me because in the past, when she was really mad at me, she used to, uh, give me the silent treatment. So that's how I explained her not acknowledging my presence there. But Monsieur Floren had been so kind, and we'd only met that day, and I couldn't figure out why Mr. Floren would not acknowledge me. So I'm in a state of confusion and agitation and real anger when I heard people outside the room calling me by name in perfect English. Now, to state the obvious, everybody in the French hospital spoke French, and those that spoke English had a very strong French accent. And I thought it was really weird that these people spoke English with no accent outside the room calling me. And they were saying, you've got to come now, Howard. Hurry up. Come with us. And I said, I'm sick. I need a doctor. I'm supposed to see a doctor. I've been waiting a long time. They said, we know all about you. We've been waiting for you a long time. We know everything about you, and you have to come with us now. So I assumed that these people were hospital personnel. And although they didn't say it, it seemed like they were going to take me to the doctor. And I wanted to see a doctor. Although I didn't have any pain anymore, I, you know, I knew that there had been something terribly wrong with me. And so I left the room with a great deal of reluctance because the room was bright and well-lit with fluorescent ceiling lights, and the hallway was a gloomy and gray and darkish and very, very, um, hazy, like a really bad black and white TV picture, very snowy. And that was weird. And the people that were in the hallway stayed out of the shaft of light of the room. And I also thought that was strange. They were men and women. Um, I'm not quite sure how many there were, maybe like about eight of them or so. And, um, they appeared to be dressed in hospital clothing, which means, uh, V-neck shirts with short sleeves and, uh, sort of baggy pants and stuff like that. But they, um, so I went out in the room, and they, um, started to lead me what at first I thought was the hallway. And I came to realize it was impossibly long because we walked and walked and walked what felt like hours and hours and hours. And we never went up or down. We never hit any architectural features. And after a while, I became aware there's, I never had any sense of walls or any architectural features whatsoever, just this flat plane that we're walking on. And as we walked, instead of being officious, they started to get kind of nasty. And when I would ask them questions like, how much further? Where are we going? What's the name of the doctor? Things like that, their response was, shut up, you'll find out, don't ask questions, you don't need to know, keep moving, stuff like that. In time, they started to, uh, talk about me in ways that was terrifying to me. And I don't like to go into too much detail about this. I want to get to the good parts. So I'm, I'm moving through this really rapidly. And then, uh, I told them that I wasn't going to go with them any further, which was a bluff on my part because we were in complete darkness, and I had absolutely no idea up, down, right, left, anything. I was just, you know, completely in this darkness. And could have lost. But I said I wasn't gonna with them any further, that I was gonna go back. And I said, no, you've got to go forward. So they started pushing, pulling at me. And I fought with them and and pulled. I was a tackle lineman. I knew how to, uh, you know, I knew how to, uh, hurt people and I knew how to take it. You know, I'd learned that in football. And I fought real well. The only problem was this group had grown into a very large number of people. Of course, I don't know how many because it was completely dark, but there were a lot of them, possibly hundreds. I don't have no idea. And so it started off punching, hitting, pulling, kicking. And then it should degenerated into them ripping, tearing, biting, and not degenerated into them becoming invasive into me through my orifices, all of them. And eventually, I was degraded to the point where I was all torn up and lying on the ground, unresponsive anymore, which was greatly displeasing to them. And people were, I'm kicking me around, trying to get me to respond. But I was no longer capable of responding. And I do want to, um, add that the emotional, psychological pain was much greater than the physical pain. The physical pain was just total, but the emotional pain was beyond my ability to deal with. Their comprehension was just overwhelming. And in that state, I heard a voice. I don't know whose voice it was or where it came from, but it said, pray to God. And I thought, I don't believe in God. I pray. And the voice said, pray to God again. And I thought, I don't know how to pray. I can't pray. And the voice said, a little more insistently, pray to God. And I thought, okay, when I was a little boy, I went to Sunday school, and we learned prayers. And I'm trying to remember something. And I'm going through all the things that I had memorized as a child, like the Pledge of Allegiance, and, um, um, I'd memorize Shylock's speech from The Merchant of Venice, "The quality of mercy is not strained." At Trump. Anyways, I was remembering all these, um, things. And finally, I came upon a couple of phrases that were prayers, like "The Lord is my shepherd." I remembered that. I remembered "Our Father who art in heaven." So it's like, yeah, that's praying. So I said those things real loud. The people around me became very angry in language that unlike anything anybody's ever heard in this world, because it was so obscene, so incredibly foul. That I, I've never wanted to remember the stuff that they said. They were saying basically three things: there is no God, nobody can hear you, and we're gonna make things much worse for you if you don't stop immediately. Along with their threats, they were backing off me because they found my feeble mentions of God to be quite unbearable. I started making up stuff about God, which was, um, nothing I would ever want to repeat because it was very crude. But anyways, I was, I was throwing God's stuff at them in my own crude way. And they were screaming and yelling at me to stop and retreating back into the darkness. Eventually, I realized that the only thing I could hear anymore was myself, and I couldn't hear them. And I don't know how far away they were, but they were far enough away that I had no sense of them. And in that place, I went over my life, and I came to the conclusion that I had, uh, flunked the course. I was a, I was a teacher. So I thought about my relationship with my parents, my sisters, my wife, my kids, my friends, my students, my career as an artist, and stuff like that. And I realized that it was all good. I'm just giving myself F's and D's on my report card of life. And I knew I had absolutely no reason, no understanding of what life was about or why I had been born in the first place. Since everything that I had tried to achieve, as I examined it from this point of view, was a complete waste, a complete failure. And this prospect of being in this place forever, and somehow, um, being a part of this world of domination and hatred and torment and despair, and most importantly, hopelessness, was something that I really didn't want to be a part of. But I knew no way out. And I was deeper and deeper into that despair when my mind latched upon a scene of my childhood, maybe like eight or nine years old or something, in a Sunday school class singing "Jesus Loves Me." And when I visually saw that in my imagination and heard that, um, most importantly, I felt what I'd felt as a child. There was this like Superman guy named Jesus who cared about me. And when I was a little kid, I used to pray to him, and he used to chase the monsters away and get me out of scary situations. So without, um, any kind of faith or belief or anything, with just that little bitty hope, um, I called out to him. And, um, I said, I yelled into the darkness, um, Jesus, please save me. And with that, a tiny light appeared in the darkness. And I was fixated on that little speck of light, and it got brighter and brighter very rapidly. And it came over me. It was impossibly brilliant white light. And out of that light emerged hands and arms which reached down and touched me. And when he touched me, for the first time, I could see that I was just, um, gore. That's all I was, was just gore. And when he touched me, all of that dissolved away, and I was intact. When he touched me, I was filled with a love that is impossible to describe because it's so much greater than anything, um, that I've ever experienced under the category of love before. And it was love maxed up to a thousand or a million times, so intense. And his hands went under my back, and he gently lifted me up as if I were weightless for him. Yeah. And he put his arms around me and held me very securely against himself. And I put my arms around him and held him as tightly as I possibly could because I never wanted to let go of him ever. This was 35 years ago, and I'm still hanging on to him as best I know how. Um, and in addition to his love that he was filling me with his love, I, I knew that I was known. And that I try and tell people this because it's hard to understand, but I knew that he liked me. I knew that he cared about me. I mean, I knew that he knew me personally. And I was, as I was basking in this great love, I realized that we were traveling upward. And I was crying very hard out of joy. And as we were traveling through space, I was thinking, I, I want to stop crying so I can see where we're going. And finally, I got enough composure to look in the direction that we were headed at a very rapid rate. Galaxy, a huge galaxy of stars. I quickly realized that all the stars, what I thought were stars, were actually beings, and they were all in motion, and they were all going to and fro. And, um, there were billions of them. And it's quite fascinating. And then it all came to me that we were going towards where God was, and that was heaven. And I thought, he's made a terrible mistake. I'm garbage, and he should put me back where he found me. When I thought that, he put his voice in my head and he said, we don't make mistakes. You belong here. And I thought, how do you know what I thought? I didn't say that. And he said, I know everything you've ever thought. When he said that, I thought, I'm not real happy about that because there's lots of things that I've thought that I don't want you to know that I've thought. And immediately started to do an inventory of some of the things that I'd thought about that I didn't want to know that I thought about. A lot of that had to do with women's anatomy, my favorite parts, which pretty much was from top to bottom. But anyways, he laughed and laughed and laughed. And he thought it was so funny. I didn't, I didn't get what he was laughing at. Later, later on, I understood. It's like, you know, trying to, um, not think, to think about the things that you don't want to think about is, um, kind of silly, you know, because if you, you know, you're going to think about those things, you know, by, by thinking about the things you don't want to think about. So that's, I mean, that's what I was laughing about. Um, he realized what I was doing was not, you know, very productive. But anyways, when he laughed, I was like, oh, wow, he's okay. You know, he's okay. You know, he thinks I'm funny. He laughs because I didn't know. I had no idea if his character, personality. And like all of a sudden, here he is, laughing away, you know, thinking, we're having a good time here. We stopped, and we began to converse. And the way we conversed was everything I thought he responded to. And he was very kind, very patient, very friendly. Then he said he had people that he wanted me to meet. And so he made musical tones, he called out into that space, and a group of what I refer to as angels, other luminous beings, came and surrounded us. And he said that they had recorded my life, and that they wanted to show me my life. And so, being the egotist that I was, I'm, oh, great, let's, yeah, let's all talk about my life, you know, oh, wow, it'll be fun. So we started off, and of course, um, you know, my mom and dad were so happy to have a little baby boy, and, you know, I got lots of attention, especially from my mother, um, growing up and things like that. And I saw how my life went south. And, um, I saw how my relationship with my father went bad. And it was so, um, different than the way I had remembered because I was thought of myself as this poor, innocent victim. And I could, um, in these scenes from my life, I could experience what other people were experiencing and what my motivations weren't, things like that. So, um, I didn't see myself as so much the innocent victim anymore as that, as my father, uh, inappropriately dealt with me. Um, I resented it, and I had my own little kid way of representing him and withdrawing my, who was estrangement, which I had never acknowledged. I went through my, they went through my whole life. There are many times when I told them, I didn't want to see this, I don't like it, don't show it to me. And they said, no, you need to see this. And, um, I didn't want to, but they wanted me to see it anyways. And as we were watching this, they shared their feelings about what we were seeing. And it was, um, disturbing for me to know that I was disappointing them and upsetting them with the way that I was living my life. And the things that I thought were important in my life, they, um, made it very clear to me, sometimes even told me that the things that I thought important were not important. And what was important to them was how I'd interact with other people. So, um, in conclusion, I realized that what they considered important was how we love one another. And that's all they considered important. In every, every thing else, careers, wealth, position, money, power, honors, awards, you know, blah, blah, blah, they considered to be basically nothing. Those are nothing. And those are the only things that I thought that mattered. Um, so I neglected what they considered important and it emphasized everything that they thought was unimportant.

Is Jesus still, uh, still with you at this point? And is he expressing kind of?

I'm, I'm still in his arms the whole time. Yeah. So at the conclusion of this, he said, do you have any questions? And I said, I have a million questions. Said, ask whatever you want. So I asked him everything that I could think of to ask him at that time. And everything I asked him, he answered patiently and carefully. Sometimes he would have to rephrase it because I couldn't quite understand his answers. And he took me places and he showed me things. We went into the past. We went into the future. [Music] We went into other inhabited worlds. We went, we, we had a grand old time. I, um, learned pretty early to not ask about, uh, bad stuff, really bad stuff, because when I did, he took me there and showed me them. Like, for example, I asked him about the Holocaust. So we went to a concentration camp, a death camp, and experienced what was on there. And that was a huge mistake. I don't even want to do that again. Um, I asked him about the crucifixion, and we went there, and that was a big mistake. Don't want to do that again. Um, so I tried, I tried to keep my, uh, questions, uh, away from negative things. So I didn't, I didn't ask him about hell or the devil or any of that stuff. I, I knew, um, enough about that that I didn't really have any more questions. You know, I, I consider myself an authority on those things and still do.

Did he, did he talk to you about those things when you asked, or no, bring you about what about the Holocaust? You know, did he?

No, he took me to the Holocaust. And he, and I stood in the Holocaust while they were unloading a train and sending people to the death chambers. And I saw the children being pulled away from their brains. I experienced, we experienced it vicariously. It's horrible. He showed me his response to my questions. So often he showed me things rather than telling me about them. He showed them to me. So sorry.

No, thank you. So you steered away from those things?

Yeah. We're so it was wonderful. And, uh, because I was, uh, so unsophisticated in terms of and stuff, they didn't, uh, lots of questions that I would ask now. But, um, I asked him important theological questions in my own crude way, like, why is there evil? Why does God allow him? Stuff like that. So, which he answered in ways that I could understand. And, um, unfortunately, I didn't ask him any questions about the Blessed Virgin Mary, which Catholics always asked me, did you ask him about her? And I know I wasn't even aware of her at the time. But anyhow, eventually we got to the place where I couldn't think of any more questions. And I said, I want to go. He had given me a tour of heaven, although I had not been admitted to heaven. And I said, I want to go to heaven. I want to be there forever. And he said, um, you're not ready. You're not ready for it. You wouldn't fit in. You need to go back into the world and try and live the way that we've hopefully you've understand the way you're supposed to live, and then you'd be ready to go to heaven. So he and I had a huge argument. And I argued as forcefully as I possibly could with every reason I could think of why he shouldn't send me back to this world. And everything I came up with, he very kindly and patiently, um, countered with why it was in my best interest to come back here. And my presumptions about this world were not valid. Well, I'll give you like an example. Um, I said, why would you send me back in the world? The world is full of evil, ugly, horrible people. Why would you put me back there? And he said, there are such people in the world, but there's also good, loving, kind people in the world. And I said, well, I don't, I don't know who are they? He said, you attract what's in your heart. He said, if you're angry and mean and run to people, you will attract those kind of people to you. If you're loving and kind and care about other people, you'll attract those kind of people. And like, yeah, whatever. Well, guess what? He was 100% right. Um, I almost always find myself in the company of beautiful, loving, kind, wonderful people. Um, and even when I'm with people that may appear to be nasty, I, I find goodness and love and kindness in them. Even though I mean, like I've done prison ministry and stuff like that, and, um, I've fallen in love with those guys. They're great guys. When I try and tell people how loving and kind and good these guys, but by the way, my last experience was at a maximum security prison. These are all bad boys, you know, they all lived in solitary. And the great guys. People tend to look at me like I'm crazy. And I'm trying to explain to them that no, they, they've done bad stuff, but they're really good. They want to be, they want to be good. They just, you know, they've just screwed up, you know, big time. Um, and that's part of what I was trying to do with the ministry was like, you know, maybe you should try sort of different, uh, responses to things, you know, rather than getting angry and punching people in the face and beating the crap out of them, you know, there's another way to deal with people. So eventually, I couldn't think of any more arguments about why I couldn't come back here. And I agreed to come back. And when I did that, he sent me back. And I was like, slammed back into the body, back in the bed, back in the pain. He had forewarned me that that's how it was going to be. And immediately on coming back, the nurse who had been in the room at 8:30, this was now around nine o'clock, came into the room and said, the doctors arrived at the hospital and we're going to prepare you for surgery. And they evicted my wife from the hospital room, and they prepped me for surgery, which I had around 10 o'clock that night. And just real quickly, I'll go through this. Um, the next morning when I woke up, I knew that what had happened to me, the most of my life, in a way, it was like, kind of to me, it was more important than the day I was born because now I finally figured out what life was about, what I was here for. So I realized that I was going to have to, um, rethink and rebuild my 38 years of life, which is like not so easy to do because what am I going to change? What am I, how am I going to do things differently? Um, I really didn't know. And I was, I'm trying to do all that. And then I wanted to tell everybody about heaven and hell and God and Jesus and all that stuff. And, um, absolutely no one wanted it. My mother, well, make a long story short, God told me I had to go back to the U.S. because I wasn't going to get well in the hospital. So I left that hospital and flew home and went to my local hospital. And I was immediately put on critical. I had, uh, double pneumonia, two collapsed lungs. My SGOT, my SGAT, and my bilirubin were like, um, off the charts. In other words, my liver functions were not good. And I was extremely septic. Um, I looked very quickly, became to look like a woman like seven or eight months pregnant, meaning my belly swelled up so big that eventually it burst like a ripe watermelon, and all this incredibly nasty smelling green stuff came pouring out of me. Um, I was very, very septic. I was in the hospital for several months, most of the time on critical. And everybody that came into the room, I would want to tell them about God and how much Jesus loves them and stuff like that. And everybody, everybody thought I was a lunatic and a madman. Um, and I knew that, I mean, I knew that they weren't. I knew they were laughing at me. I found out later from a nurse who had been one of my nurses that I was, she told me that I was the joke of the hospital. And people would come from all over the hospital, come into my room because I was, um, so amusing. Everybody was laughing about me. And it's okay. Um, eventually, I mean, you're, you're presumably in awful pain and very sick, and people are, you know, laughing at you and rejecting your experience. How, how do you feel? Do you still feel uplifted by the experience you had?

Yes. And I felt very, very lonely. And I couldn't understand why, why would I be alive when nobody believed me? Because I was trying to tell them something really important. The good news was is that the angels who I had met in my experience would come to me pretty much every day, and sometimes several times a day, and tell me that, hang in there, you're gonna get better sooner or later. You just have to go through this, and you're gonna be okay. You know, there's a purpose for your life, and you'll find it out someday. So they were keeping me going despite the fact that, uh, I was very, very discouraged that nobody believed me. And it wasn't until months later, after I got out of the hospital, that I started to meet people that actually, um, when I would tell them what I'd experienced, would go, yeah, right. Yeah, that's, that's the way it is. The first one was a Catholic nun who had been a student of mine in 1973. I called her up, and she came, and I told her my story. The next group was a, next people that believed me was a Catholic Bible study that was meeting at an old friend of mine's house that had been a neighbor. And I went there, and they asked me to tell me, tell them what had happened. I told them, and they, and the priest with them, all like, yeah, sure, true. Then I got invited by a psychologist to go to an IANDS group that met at a Swedenborgian church, and they were all real interested in what I had to say. And nobody laughed at me, and nobody told me I was crazy. So I began to find people that validated my experience. Unfortunately, my wife and kids and my family never did. So, uh, for a long while, I was pretty lonely. The thing that made the biggest impact on my life is when I became truly ambulatory. I went to a church, local church. An old artist friend of mine called me up and invited me to go to her church, which turned out to be the same as what I had been raised in. I was raised as a Congregationalist, which had morphed into the United Church of Christ. And so there was one a mile away from my house. So I went there.

Although they were pretty much ordinary people and I didn't actually talk about my experience, I was loved and accepted there and became very, very active in the church. I felt that I found a place where I could be real and be myself because they were seeking God and I was seeking God and trying to find ways to, um, know God better and to do God's will. And that's what they were all about, more or less. And, uh, so I became very active in the church and eventually felt that that was what I was called to do.

So, um, in 1988, I, um, began seminary so that I could become a full-time ordained pastor. So I went to United Methodist Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, commuted there 70 miles each way and worked full-time and passed to the church as a student. Eventually, in 1992, I graduated from seminary and was ordained and became a full-time pastor, which is what I've done up until very recently when I retired. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I, uh, I'm here. You said the first was, um, the nun who kind of, um, you know, said it made sense, um, and you might say more about her. But also, I'm, you know, near-death experiences are, of course, with this group, with NDEs, and they're a well-documented phenomenon now. And I wonder, you know, it's one thing to have someone say it makes sense, your experience, your encounter with Jesus. But then realizing that other people had had near-death experiences. When, when, how did that happen? And how did that impact your making sense of it?

That was the NDEs group. And I know, uh, you know, since that time, I, you know, I went to national meetings and stuff like that. I was very interested. I read a lot about a lot of things and I've met a lot of, um, NDErs, some of whom are well-known and some of whom have never talked about their experience except telling me about it. Because, um, I don't know, I can't say this is universally true, but generally, every near-death experiencer I've met has been told that they have been met with, um, uh, ridicule and disbelief. And, um, it's very, very, uh, painful.

I, I would like to make a little editorial. You know, healthcare professionals should listen to what people have to say without judgment. You know, um, if it doesn't matter what religion or what their background is, none of that's important. I don't believe in religion, okay? Um, you may find that strange, but I, I believe in a relationship with God. And no one has a right to judge another person's transformative mystical experience, which I, I would put NDEs under the category of transformative mystical experiences. And why can't, if a person comes in and complains about, um, a severe pain in their shoulder or in their knee or in their belly, you wouldn't make fun of them. You wouldn't dispute it, right? You take it seriously. You know, if a person tells you, you know, like, "Doctor, you are a nurse, you wouldn't believe it, but you, you know, guess what happened to me? You know, I left my body and I went into this other world and, you know, talked with the angels or met God or whatever." Um, you just listen and affirm them.

They're saying something that's self-destructive or destructive to other people. You know, as a pastor, when, uh, people would come in and tell me that they were on it to kill themselves, it was my legal duty and it was my pastoral duty, and I did it every time. As I talked them into going to the hospital with me where I would sign them in to the psych ward for a three-day exam. But by law where I am, and I think it's universally true throughout the United States, that's what you have to do if someone's threatening to harm themselves. Um, but I've never heard of near-death experiences wanting to do harm to themselves or to anyone else. But anyways, why can't we listen to these without judgment?

I thank God for, um, Dr. George Ritchie, because he's the one that opened up the understanding of near-death experiences. And he had introduced a young man to that. His name was Raymond Moody. And at that time, Dr. George Ritchie hadn't written his book, "Returned from Tomorrow," but, uh, Raymond Moody beat him to the punch and wrote "Life After Life." Um, and he was the one that coined the term "near-death experience," and he's become quite famous. Um, I had the privilege of knowing Dr. Ritchie, and he was a truly great man. Um, I hope that some of you got to meet him before he died a few years ago, because he was really, truly a super fine human being. I loved him, and he and I bonded immediately. Um, anyways, so the, the topic of NDEs is opening up. We now know that there are tens of millions of near-death experiences all over the world, and people have gone and studied them. I highly recommend the book by John Burke called "Imagine Heaven," which he's studied over a thousand near-death experiences. And, um, I like his take on it. Um, he's also a good guy. Anyways, and I've, I've met some, uh, real kindred spirits. And I would like, for example, highly recommend Dr. Mary Neal, who's a neurosurgeon. Um, I've had the privilege of knowing her a little bit personally, and she's the real deal and absolutely authentic. And her NDE is incredible. I mean, it's just amazing. It was just like miraculous thing after miraculous thing after. And she's, and she's, she's, uh, um, she's a sign. I mean, she's, she's the most dry, scientific person you ever want to meet, and she just tells it like it is what happened to her and all the incredible things that, um.

Yeah, that's actually a good segue way to a question I wanted to ask. And I appreciate you particularly, um, giving the directive to healthcare professionals about listening to their patients. I mean, that's a major part of the work we try to do with the institute is help healthcare professionals deal with the and speak to the humans that are their patients and clients. But you, you said earlier, just briefly, that you used to believe in science. You still do. How did this, how did you reconcile this experience with your former beliefs? And how have you just made sense of it, um, from a metaphysical kind of, "What is reality? What, what's going on here?" point of view?

I'm sure all of you have heard this before. This is something I didn't know. We're spiritual beings having a material experience. We're not material beings imagining a spiritual experience. That, um, in theoretical physics, for example, and I, this isn't, I'm making, I'm not making this stuff up. This is real science here. Um, there actually isn't any matter or energy. Those are all, uh, vibrational states of space. And all of this emanated from a point indescribably tiny that happened a number of billions of years ago, also known as the Big Bang. Another where it's in a one space was created, and that space took on the forms of energy and matter. As you all, I'm sure, are aware, that scientists say that 97% of everything that is is unknown. They call it dark matter, and they have the foggiest idea what it is. There's dark matter and there's dark energy, and they don't know what that stuff is. But like, what we know about the world is 3% of what's out there. This is science. It's not me.

And, um, I heard a, uh, theoretical physicist from Israel, who was an MIT doctorate, saying, "Every theoretical physicist in the world knows that all the laws of the physical universe existed before the Big Bang." And so, um, he said, "We call that God." You can call it whatever you want, but, um, you know, that the, the intelligence behind the physical universe that makes the whole thing work existed before the physical universe was created. He said, "Every scientist in the world knows that," whether they consider themselves to be a theist or a non-theist, they all know that. Um, so I think it's very easy to reconcile science with religion. Like, for example, I, I heard that geneticists have determined that every single human being on this planet came from the same mother and father. Hey, brothers and sisters, guess what? We're all brothers and sisters. We're all related. We all came from the same mama and papa, you know, um, several thousand years ago. This group of like, uh, wandering nomad shepherds, um, were informed of that, and they made up a story called the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve, which happened to be like, uh, telling the truth of where we came from. I mean, you know, I don't, I, I think the Garden of Eden was probably in some place like Kenya, but whatever. Um, you know, we all can, anyway. So you go on and on. So it, so yeah, I can see, you know, I can hear that you've done a lot of exploration yourself, um, you know, in reconciling your experience with, with your scientific orientation.

When you speak to people about your experience, though, I mean, obviously you had a really hard time in the beginning and people rejected it. And now you've had some experiences talking to healthcare professionals, scientifically minded people. What have you learned, um, you know, about the most effective ways to broach the conversation with people that are going to be resistant and tend to deny these kinds of experiences?

First of all, one of the things I, I learned the hard way because I, I did it all wrong and I, I aimed at so many people. It's like, I don't impose my beliefs on anybody ever. I only talk about it if I'm invited to talk about it. And I really, um, have the opportunity to talk to people that don't want to hear what I have to say. But I was talking at a Mennonite church in Columbus, Ohio, about 80 people there. And, you know, they were all very warm and receptive. And there was a guy that, um, I had met before, and he challenged me and said, "I'm an atheist, and you know, I don't, all this God stuff." But so I, um, proceeded to compliment him on being an atheist. And I said, "Being an atheist," I said, "that's the most, I said, "I used to be. When it's the most wonderful position to be in because you get to be your own God and you get to decide what's true and what's not true and what's right and what's wrong. And, and you get to change your mind at will. And, um, being your own God is like a really great way to be." That's what I told him. And he got really angry. Um, he didn't like it at all. And, um, I, um, thought what I was telling him was, uh, good stuff because I totally get being an atheist. I, I was one. I, I get it. It's, um, it's a fun position to be because you do whatever you want to do.

Well, that's similarly a good segue into, you know, in the "do what you want to do" kind of moral conversation. You said the angels said, and I think maybe this will be one of my last questions before we go to Q&A, but the angels said that, you know, "Don't worry, you'll figure out why you've come back and what you're supposed to do with it." Um, have you, yeah, would you?

I asked Jesus what he wanted me to do if I were to come back in this world. And I tried to tell him the things that I wanted to do. And he told me not to do those things. He said, "What he wanted me to do was love the person I was with." And I said, "Okay, yeah, but what do you want me to do?" Because I totally dismissed that as like, you know, "Yeah, whatever." You know? And so for 35 years, I've been trying to figure out how to love the person that I'm with. And I have failed. I have succeeded. But the important thing is that I'm actually intentionally trying to understand and do that. And I just want to say, and you all know this as well as I do, that when you're with lovely people, it's easy to love them. When you're with sweet, wonderful, loving people, it's easy to love them back and to be loved and receive their love and to give them up. When you're with disagreeable people, or more, more accurately, when you're with people that are hurting and suffering, and I'm talking not just physically, I'm talking about psychologically, maybe, you know, from past traumas and stuff like that, maybe it's not so easy to love them.

I have the most wonderful wife who was horribly abused during her entire childhood by her stepfather. When I say "most horribly abused," I mean that. And I don't want to say any more about it because I don't want to talk about her. She's not here, you know, and she has triggers. There are things in her life that, um, upset her and make her defensive and angry and things like that. And I have to respect that and understand that and understand and not, um, react because that's her stuff. And I married her. And, you know, what, um, she knows that I've got triggers too, and she has to respect that and understand it. And I'm trying to be patient with, with my things, my stuff. So that's, that's how we learn how to love the person that we're with is to appreciate them, you know, as they are.

And by the person that you're with, do you mean, you know, your life partner? Or do you mean whoever, whoever you're with? In them?

No, I mean the guy, the guy that, uh, the guy that you meet casually. I, I glanced off a car parking, and the guy came out, and he threatened to do me bodily harm. And I was trying really hard to, um, love him. And he was very angry. He had a cane, and he was, um, he wanted to beat me. Um, and I was trying to calm him down. Eventually, my prayer was answered, and his wife came out and took him inside the store. And then she came and sought me out and tried to apologize to him. And I told her it was okay. You know? And anyways, and we, I had a nice reconciliation with the, with the wife. Um, I did not attempt to go see them again because apparently, you know, somehow I had pushed his button, and he went into rage. I was, I mean, the only thing I could do with him, which I wasn't, uh, equipped to do, it was to give him a sedative. Coming down. But I tried. Like my old self, I would have taken him out. I could, I could have taken him, how to beat the crap out of him.

Is there, I hear, as you say, "beat the crap out of them." There's like, there's still, you know, you still get angry at people, presumably. And feel, you know, in the midst of that kind of mandate to love, you still feel all sorts of human anger and frustration. And?

Yeah, I'm still human. And I feel. The important thing is not what we feel. You know, I mean, I'll give you, I'll give you an example that I like to use. You know, driving on the interstate, you know, in this heavy traffic, and some nitwit just weaving in and out of the traffic going 90 miles an hour, and everybody else is going, you know, 65, 70, right? And that nitwit is endangering everybody. And then they endanger. And New York's react is, you know, I mean, I have a Toyota, so it's not like I can, um, ram anybody. If I ram someone, I would do, I would be, I would be self-destructed because my Toyota ain't that substantial, you know? My fantasy is always to be driving like an armored personnel carrier, or even better yet, a tank, um, so that I could just like punish these people. I mean, this is like, this is all happening in a split second, you know? Like, "You bastard, you don't teach you." And I realized like, "I'm not gonna, with my little Toyota, ain't gonna teach anybody anything." So, you know what I do? I get, I get them real good. I start praying for them. Because then I go into, you know, that person driving that crazy, endangering everybody, not just themselves, but everybody. There's something really wrong. I mean, maybe they just got fired from their job. Maybe they just found out that their wife is fooling around with another guy. Maybe they just found out that they've got a terminal disease. I mean, I don't know what happened to them, but something is really wrong to cause them to behave that way because that's insane what they're doing. And so I start praying for them. And that's my way of, um, responding to him. It's not, it's not, you know, being a human being. I mean, we, we are fight or flight. That's, that's our first thing. But like, you can move past that. You don't have to stay in fight or flight. You can go into prayer and being concerned for that person. Like, and this is all happening within a second, you know? You can go through that whole process. So like, that's what I like to process into.

Um, I had, I was doing working. I'll give one more example. I was working in a soup kitchen. I ran a soup kitchen for, um, five and a half years in Cincinnati. And one day, um, a fight broke out. And I got pulled out. Tonight. So without thinking, I stepped in front of the guy with the knife. And he had his knife up against my belly, and he was screaming and yelling at me and threatening my life with a, um, with a good-sized knife in my stomach. And I started to pray for him and speaking softly. And eventually, he put the knife, I put the knife down and quieted down and apologized and left. And then I started sweating, probably profusely, because they're going like, "I am what an idiot. I could have been killed." I was like, "Why did I do that?" You know? It was like, I, I mean, I was just like, I wasn't thinking when I stepped in front of that knife. I just responded the way, um, you know, the Holy Spirit guided me to do it. But it, thank God, it worked out. Worked out well.

Yeah, you're here with us today. I, I know I said I would go to Q&A and we'll do that in a moment, but we just talked about so much when we spoke individually. And one thing that I really wanted you to share, um, here is when I asked you, you know, I kind of, I think I asked, "What God?" You said that part of, part of sharing your experience, part of the kind of impulse to share, even though it was so often rejected, is you feel this compulsion to help people connect with God. And I asked you, um, "How do people connect with God?" And so I wonder if you'd share that.

I've been asked that a lot, and I've tried to get it down to a simple thing. And I have, I have suggested this to people in person, and they've done it, and it's been successful. But most of the time, it's been through emails and fun conversations, and I don't know the results. I'd like to think that the results are successful always, but I don't know that. And what I tell people to do is to go find your sacred spot, which means where you feel real peace and wholeness. Which might be by the ocean, by a lake, by a river, might be in the forest, it might be in a church, it could be in, um, you know, in the comfort of your bed, whatever feels really safe and good. And I think nature is really important, but I don't want to impose that on anyone. Um, I also think going into an empty church is a good place to go. But what, so I suggest all these things to people. I said, "Go there and then tell God everything about your life." And I know that, um, traditionally, this sounds like confession, but I, when I tell people, I said, "Tell God everything, good, everything bad, tell God all your secrets." And I said, "Don't worry, because God already knows all your secrets. He just wants to hear it from me and wants to hear it from you. God wants you to hear it from you." Um, that's why you need to, um, put it out there like laying all the cards out on the table. And I said, "If it takes, you know, a few hours to do that, that's okay. Whatever it takes, just tell him everything." When you've exhausted your, your whole understanding of your life, tell God that, um, what you're seeking is His love, and that's all you want is love. You don't want anything else but God's love. And then sit there and wait for God to fill your heart with His love. I said, "That might take a little while, or it may happen rapidly, but it will happen, and you'll know it." And I, and I tell them, "If you're having trouble staying focused on that, um, light a candle or, you know, stare at something inspiring." Like if you're in a church, look at, look at the cross. Or if you're in nature, look at the reflection of the light on the water, whatever. Um, use that as your focal point and just stay open to receiving God's love. And I said, "And, um, I believe that you'll receive that God's love, and that you'll know that you know." Beautiful.

Well, there's a million more questions I could ask you, but I gotta concede it at this point. Um, first, I'd just like to thank you so much for your, your, your time and your vulnerability, um, and just your person. Uh, and I think with that, I'm gonna, I'm gonna open the floor. I'm sure a lot of people, um, have questions for you as well. So the way we're gonna do that, all right.

So Howard, you mentioned that Jesus had shown you about the future. What can you tell us about what you have seen in the future?

He, he gave me two different scenarios. And he made it really clear to me that God very much wants this world to be radically different than it is now. Um, what he showed me what the world will be like is like a paradise. It's like heaven on earth where everybody lives in peace and harmony. And the primary focus of everybody in the whole world is children and loving one another. And because of their connection with God, people have amazing abilities. Like, for example, someone has an accident or an illness, the group gets together and lays hands on them and prays over them, and they're healed immediately. Everybody in the world is telepathically connected. And everybody in the world controls the weather and they create exactly the right kind of weather that they need for the welfare of the community, and of course, most importantly, for the welfare of the, uh, plants and animals. Um, so the really beautiful world. And God wants that world to come about. And the way that it's going to come about is that everybody has to, um, love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love their neighbors themselves, which is real different than the way the world is operating now. But it could happen, and it's what God wants.

The other way that we're going to get there is that there will be chaos due to, um, a complete failure of the electrical network. And the consequence of that will be, you know, of course, there'll be no more transportation, there'll be no more means, which means no more shipping of food, there'll be, um, no more banking, there'll be no more, uh, telecommunications, etc. And as a consequence, um, utter chaos in which gangs will take over all of the world. Gangs will murder, rape, and pillage their way into oblivion. And the remnant that's left will create the utopian world that Jesus showed me. Um, God does not prefer that way of happening. You know, and if you're talking in terms of biblical terms, that would be like the tribulation. But after that, there will be a beautiful and wonderful heaven on earth that will take place. So we can get about it, uh, one way or another. I would prefer, uh, God's way, which is that, um, we convince people that we need to stop hating one another and exploiting one another and dominating one another. Instead, create, um, a world of, uh, um, love for one another. It's, it's so doable if we all just made up our minds to do it.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. What do you think, dude?

Sorry, I could never figure out how to mute myself.

Yeah, I, I think, uh, I, I completely agree. I concur. Um, I always think that it's incredibly simple, and I don't know why we complicate it, but, um, yeah, it really is very simple. Thank you, Howard. Thank you for sharing. I agree with you. Lucy. Thank you, Lucy.

Mary Catherine? Yes. Hi. Thank you so much for telling us your story. And I, I have actually about four questions.

We could all have, uh, many more than that. Do you, your wife was your wife with you in the room at the time that you became unconscious? And did she offer how long she thought you had been unconscious?

No, she doesn't really have an idea of it. She, she was a wreck, an emotional wreck. Yeah. Sure.

And then, um, I, I was wondering, you said that she and your son did not, uh, understand or appreciate your experience. And are you, how did, how was that sort of reconciled? Are you still married to the same woman? Um, what, how did that affect your relationship with her?

My ex-wife is an attorney, and one of her specialties was divorce. So after a long period of time, she decided she couldn't, um, tolerate my lunacy anymore. And so she divorced me. And, um, she did a really good job of poisoning my son and daughter. Yeah. Yeah.

So did, how long did that take before the divorce?

Well, to her credit, 20 years. Oh, really? 20 years beyond. So in 2005, right? Oh, very good. Yeah. You're a smart lady.

And so during that time, how, uh, did she ridicule you? Did she roll her eyes a lot? Or how, how did she? What was your reception?

The more successful, successful she was as an attorney. Like, here, I'll give you a quote. This was a couple decades ago when she said this. She said, "I built $350 an hour. I was pastoring, making very, I was making $600 a month. Okay? She said, "You don't make anything. You don't even work for a living. You're in nothing. And my time is worth $350 an hour, and I run with all the big dogs, and the people you run with are a bunch of idiots." Yeah. That's, I, I could give you more, but that's, that's a quote.

I heard that more than once, I'm sure. Uh, that's horrifying. And, uh, but, uh, that specifically related to the near-death experience? What, how did she, what did she have? Did she say? Did she repeatedly say, "Hey, you're crazy"? Or did she ever connect with it at all?

No, she told me it didn't happen. Okay. Yeah. All right.

And then I was also wondering, uh, that when you were with God, did he, uh, tell you specific behaviors that you should have to, you know, tomorrow? And did he ask you to specifically ask you to go out and be a disciple for him?

No, no, not at all. He just told me, "People like us." Yesterday, trying to figure out what that means. And, you know, not to be too biblical here, but, you know, uh, 1 Corinthians 13. "Love is patient, love is kind, love is not rude or boastful." You know, that's, that's what I've been trying to do. You know, as, as a pastor, I've read that passage a lot at weddings and stuff. And every time, every time I read it, I'm like, "Convicted. Like, oh, I should be doing this better." You know, it could be a lot more. You know, I, I miss the patience. When I came into this world, you know, I've never had much patience. So that was basically all, all he said in regards to how he wanted you to behave? That was very simple. Boil down to that one, yeah. Those two words.

And then I was also wondering, do you ever find yourself in situations presently that, I'm sure you were filled with so much information during your NDE. You know, do you find yourself in situations that kind of take you back to it and remind you of what you had been told by God to do? Or, or, yeah.

Important question. Very well. But I hope you interview when I'm asking. Yes. And that's, that's one of the reasons why I like church so much, so meaningful to me. Because like, um, well, let me give you one example. Uh, one time, um, my organist for the prelude played a Bach piece. And like, I was going right back into my whole God thing with this piece of Bach. And so when she finished the prelude, my job was to stand up and do the welcome. "Good morning. Welcome to United Church Christ." You know, I didn't, I didn't get up. I had tears pouring out of my eyes of joy. And I'm sitting there. And the organist, who was close by me, said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm done." And she said, "What are you talking about? Get up and do your job." And I said, "I can't. We've already done it. We've already had church." And she said, "Will you get up and do your job?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah. I'm supposed to do something here." And I felt like anything, anything I did would diminish the experience of hearing that Bach piece. Um, I mean, I've got a million stories like that where I just get so zapped, you know? Um, these little things. And they, and then I have, and then I have to like, "All right, I got stuff to do. Like, you know, I got places to go, people to see, you know, responsibilities. I can't, I can't sit here and indulge myself."

When I'll end it with this. So I went down to a monastery in Kentucky, which is a, uh, Trappist, you know, they're Benedictine, really cool guys. It's called the Abbey of Gethsemane. And, uh, I told the monk that I wanted to become a monk. I wanted to join. And he said, "That's nice. Let me ask you something. Are you married?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Do you have children?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Go home and take care of your wife and children. That's what you're supposed to do. You can't be a monk." I just got rejected. I just, because like, being with the, being with the monks, a life of prayer and contemplation, you know, occasionally milking the cows, you know, that sounded just about perfect for me, you know? And frankly, I think I, I would have been quite happy doing that. But not to be.

Thank you. Thank you, Mary Catherine, for all your great questions. Uh, Elizabeth, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. First of all, I want to say thank you very much for sharing your story with us. Fascinating. As someone who's had an NDE, I, I can't hear enough of them. So thank you for that. Um, I wanted to add a little bit about the ex-spouse. My, my husband, when I had my NDE, um, was less than accepting of it. And we ended up divorced nine years after my NDE. And, and we had three children, and they were very young. I was 28 when I had the NDE. And, um, he actually used my story in court to get children. And fortunately, that didn't work. But interestingly enough, now it's been 32 years, and we both ended up remarried to other people. And he, my ex-husband, had an NDE. Well, that's real interesting. And, um, so I got one hell of an apology. [Laughter] And we are very good friends, and he is friends with my husband. And, um, it's great. So like I always say, people that, um, ridicule and don't understand, well, they're going to find out. They're going to find out. It's going to happen. So that's all I wanted to add.

Thank you, Elizabeth. That was really nice for me to hear that. God.

Elizabeth, I haven't heard about it. When did that happen?

Since you put, since you published your book? Yeah. Actually, John, I had that in the book, and it was edited out because they felt like that was more, more about my personal life and not about the NDE. But I felt like that did have a lot to do with it.

Well, yeah, it didn't, it didn't make the cut. So, so all the editors at HarperCollins took out a joke out of my book that I thought was precisely on. But yeah, challenges of writing.

Does anybody else have a, um, questions for Howard? Yes.

Howard, um, you and I had a visit a couple of years ago on the phone. Um, I wrote, HarperCollins published a book that I, that I wrote. You're the Episcopalian priest, right? Right, right. And, uh, I helped Elizabeth Crone, who's on the screen with us here, to understand what had happened to her. And one of the things that I helped her with was to realize that she had some after-effects from her NDE, such as electromagnetic field running batteries, which is why she, she was on her third Fitbit. Do you, do you have any of these abilities yourself? Auras? And, and the hearing thoughts? And the electromagnetic field?

Yes. I don't like to talk about it too much because it sounds like bragging. And I, I think that, um, I've been given gifts that were, um, for the building up of other people. I'll give you one example. All right. I went on a medical mission trip to the Amazon. It was, um, I was the evangelist. And there were 20, 29 Americans plus a bunch of, um, Peruvian doctors, pharmacists, nurses. All the Americans from medical except me. And so we would go to villages that had not been visited, small villages. This is the Western Amazon. We started off in Iquitos, Peru. And, um, on the last village that we visited, whose name was Nuevo Esperanza, no, yeah. They invited us to stay after dark to worship with them, which we had not done in any of the other villages because, like, we were eager to get out of the jungle before it got dark. And we decided that we would do that. Um, we met with them, and they started singing and dancing. And then they came up to me and asked me to preach a sermon. I speak, oh, maybe a dozen words of Spanish. No, me gusta, you know, you know. Um, so I got up and I preached for half an hour in Spanish. And everybody told me it was a wonderful sermon. And I have no idea how I did that because I still can't speak Spanish.

Then the people asked for prayers of healing. The nurse started to get around a person along with the members of the village. There were about a hundred of them. And they would lay hands on and pray for them. And the doctors would come up to me and go, like, "Pastor, you're not going to believe it. This person hasn't walked his entire adult life. His legs are all withered. We prayed for him. Now he's over there dancing around like crazy. That woman over there, another team of doctors covered that woman over there was stone deaf, and now she can hear perfectly. That man was blind, and now he's..." I mean, everybody in the village was healed of like, real serious conditions. Tumors disappeared. Big, gigantic tumors on people would like just sort of go away. And all the doctors are coming up and asking me, "What's going on here?" And I'm saying, "Just go with it. Just go with it. No, don't doubt it. You know." Um, I know that the reason why that was happening was because of the faith of the people, the faith of the villagers, and the faith of the medical team and stuff like that. And it was so funny. They were asking me for explanations. And that's like, "Don't do that. Don't question it. Just keep praying." You know, it was absolutely amazing. So, um, we didn't do that. God did it. But God works through people of faith, not in circumstances of doubt.

I, uh, I want to be aware of time. That we've, um, just because I got the question from someone who had to leave, will, you know, will the recording be shared? So if you do have to leave, yes, we will be sending out the recording. So any of the questions that you miss, um, we, you can, you can hear them later. And I know we have at least a couple more. So Jean Smith has a question. Gene, can you unmute yourself?

Yes, my name is Gene. I have never had a near-death experience. What has happened to me, I'm as a Catholic, and I'm in the renewal movement. I have a very, I'm very drawn to the mystics and, of course, Mary and the apparitions. And, um, I went to a near-death experience, I think it was, it was for counselors, I'm a counselor for counselors and psychologists on the spiritual, supernatural, and the near-death experience. The first time I had heard talks about it. Um, and so if, so then I, you know, I've just kind of delved into it, listened, and that's why I joined today because it's so very, um, just part of kind of the world I live in right now. Uh, as a, as a Catholic, and I'm with a group called the Marian Servants. So, where was this leading me? Oh, I did, I had a dream. I, I call it my apocalyptic dream. It was so very, very vivid. That I call that my near-death experience. It's so very vivid. I won't even go into it, but it just gave me a glimpse into it. To me, it was purgatory. And there, you know, the purgatory is, is, it is part of Catholic. But what I wanted to ask you, have you come across any Marian apparitions? Or how do you feel about Mary? We really feel, uh, that she has, she has a message today. And that's why there's been so many apparitions, uh, as of late, in all different parts of the world. And her message is of, uh, of getting our lives right and getting that last chance. Something that you spoke about is we can do it this way, or if this can happen. It's almost like Mary's saying, "Let's get, let's do it the right way, the way Jesus wants us to do it. Get our lives right."

I'm a Protestant ordained Protestant pastor who is 100% all about reverence for Mary. And I've had my own Mary experiences. And my wife, who was raised in a more conservative Protestant tradition than I was, basically a Baptist sort of upbringing, chief fell in love with Mary in Central America on mission trips from the people there. All have Our Lady of Guadalupe in their homes. Everybody, everybody in Belize, in the village I was in, they all have Our Lady of Guadalupe. And my wife started to investigate Our Lady of Guadalupe and fell in love with her. And we've got Mary's stuff all over the house, including hanging off her rear view mirror. She's got a picture of Mary, and she reads future Protestants that are all about Mary.

Thank you. Thank you, Howard. Thank you, Gene, for your question. Um, and I think this might be the last one from Pat.

Hey, Howard. Hi. I just got a comment to make and then a question. Uh, kind of similar to your experience. The, the, the strongest message I got in my NDE was that we're overthinking things. And that, you know, we just need to love God and love each other, and everything else is gonna take. Amen. It was pretty simple. And it was, it wasn't, I didn't feel like the message was directed just to me because the message was, "We're overthinking things." So I felt like it was a message, you know, to be shared. But a question I had for you is, uh, the insights that you got, you know, you, you mentioned that you, uh, you're in the, the message you got was to, uh, to love. But could you share a couple other, a couple other messages that you think that might apply to all of us that you got from your NDE?

Well, a really big message that I got that I find a lot of denial of in this world is that, um, we reap what we sow. In other words, that there's consequences to our actions. Um, I have many friends and I've met many people that say there is no hell. Everybody goes to heaven. You know, it's all good. I, one of my best friends, who happens to be a doctor, says there's no such thing as evil. It's not an illusion. It's all good and stuff like that. And, um, I don't agree with that, you know. Um, when I raised my children, I tried to tell them to not put their hand on the stove. You know, I tried to tell them that they need to look both ways before they cross the street, etc., etc., etc., etc. You know, raising my children was trying to get to them to realize that there's good behavior and bad behavior. My kids, maybe I ever did it, were well-behaved in public. You know, they behaved well at restaurants and grocery stores. I'm sure all of you have seen it where children, um, are just terrorists in public with their parents. And, um, and like it's the parents' fault because they didn't, you know, raise their kids properly. You know, molesting children, molesting women, raping, murder, theft, lying, stuff like that. It's not okay. It's not okay. And I'm talking about moral law, natural law, spiritual law. Those things are not okay. They actually have consequences. And those things make you possibly, I'm not, I'm not the judge of anyone. Only God judges. So I can't say, but those things very possibly are things that are, um, make you inappropriate to go to heaven. Um, if heaven is full of every kind of behavior, um, then I personally, I don't want to go there. But heaven's not that way. Heaven is full of love and goodness and kindness. And that's what we're here in this world for. I have a bumper sticker on my window right there. I could almost touch it. Um, it was sent to me by a gay friend of mine in Florida. He made it for me. It says, "Life is a classroom. Love is the lesson." If you don't get it, and everybody, you know, according to their each according to their own ability and understanding, if you don't get that, um, the probability that you're going to reject heaven is, you're going to get to go to a place that ain't fun. And people don't want to hear that. People, I'm not talking about, I'm talking about Christians. I'm talking about pastors. And, you know, and I'm talking about, you know, spiritual secrets. They just don't want to hear that stuff.

And is that a place that isn't fun? The place that you went to? And do you think the people who end up there similarly have a chance to be saved?

Yes, absolutely. I think they have to be the, um, I, you know, one, since Dr. Spock, you know, we don't, we tend not to beat children anymore in submission. We use "time out." You know, kids get to, you know, go to your room or sit in the corner and stuff like that. I think that, um, uh, our Catholic woman friend who talked about purgatory, I think that, um, a lot of people are in that separation from God for the purposes of progression. And of course, that's where the word purgatory comes from. It means to be purified, to be made pure. And so I think a lot of people are experiencing that. I don't believe, first of all, the word "eternity" never appears in the Bible. There's no such word in the Bible. That's a mistranslation. Um, what the Bible says is that for a period of time. And I think people, as people, can be separated from God for a period of time. And I also think that there's the possibility that some people may just be headed for annihilation, um, which you can find scriptures to assert that if you want to. Whatever. I don't know. You know, I'm not God. But I think God is loving and merciful. And if there's any way of bringing out the good in someone, uh, God's going to find it. And it may be. I thank God for what happened to me. And I'm talking about the, the negative experience, the hellish experience, the, whatever you want to call it, because I needed, um, as they say in AA, if any of you are familiar with AA, um, no one's ever going to achieve sobriety until they hit the gutter. I've been told that by AA people many times. God knew that I had hit the gutter. I had, I had to hit the lowest of the low before I could wake up. And I considered that experience my wake-up call. So I thank God for it. Don't want to do it again, though. And I don't want anybody else to do it.

Um, well, um, we have another question. And I just, I can't help but allow this rich conversation to continue. So Mary Catherine, um, go ahead.

Yes. Hi. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm hogging the questions. Um, I wondered if you had any, uh, did you feel like the voice that when you were in the dark hallway that was telling you to pray, did that sound like the same voice as Jesus or God when they, when they spoke to you later?

It may well have been. I don't, honestly, I don't know. And I, um, you know, it was of good, and it was of other. And that's all I need to know. You know what I mean? It doesn't make sense. Yes. I'm, I'm struggling. I'm trying to, I sort of have this, uh, feeling or belief that, you know, that you could be a bad person all through life, and then when you die, that being a loving God, God doesn't abandon you, but he gives you an opportunity at that point. Yeah. And I'm sort of looking for validation.

Oh, I, I quite agree with you. You know, I was on, uh, a ladder this morning taking down some paintings from an art show at my church. Lives. And then, God told me to be careful and go slow down the ladder because I was getting so focused on getting these paintings down, I was starting to rush. And I'm an old man, and my balance is lousy, and I got, um, neuropathy in my feet and stuff like that. And God said, "Slow down. Be careful." And I'm like, "Okay." I mean, you know, I believe God is like a mother and a father. It's like my, my mom going, "You know, I told you to take it easy. You're not gonna hurt yourself." Is that voice?

Yes. Yes. So you, so you, in retrospect, you sort of reflect on it as though God, we're telling you, we're presenting you an opportunity to rectify your past?

One of my favorite, uh, stories in the Bible is Jesus and the lost sheep. And I sort of feel that maybe that was the voice of the good shepherd calling the, uh, the sheep that had gone way astray, you know?

Thank you. Yes. Well, thank you, Mary Catherine, for all your excellent questions. And thank you, Howard, so much for, um, fielding so many questions, um, taking maybe more time than we originally anticipated. Very much appreciate your, your patience, um, and your love and your vulnerability. Um, I, uh, we're gonna, we're gonna take a short break after this, and for, let's say, five minutes. And for those who want to stay for a, um, our, our monthly circle of support and sharing for near-death experiencers and others, um, that will continue on until 5 Central. But I certainly need a bathroom break and maybe just, uh, pause, um, a pause. Um, but once again, for, you know, for those who have been here this whole time, thank you for joining us. Um, thanks for being part of this community. Um, we'll have lots more, um, wonderful speakers and continue to try to grow and support, um, and listen to the stories that are out there. Um, so thank you all for joining. And once again, can we all just give a big thank you to Howard?

Thank you. And I thank you all. Thank you all.