Transcription
[Music] [Music] During childbirth, I had what is now called a near-death experience. I felt my soul, which I guess is as good a name as any. I felt my soul rise up from my chest, through my head, and out through the top of my head. I felt it. I felt the movement of it, and I heard the sound of it. It went whoosh.
And then I found myself in a dark space where I didn't know what was going on. I knew something was not normal, but I hadn't a clue what it was. And suddenly, I found myself standing in a gray mist. And and I, and I realized that what's going on is I have died. I have died, but I'm still alive. And I was so thankful that my heart was about to burst because I always hoped there was life after death, but I hadn't a clue. And here I was. Here I was. I knew I had died, and yet I was alive.
And I started pouring out thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to God that that's the way it was set up, that we actually do continue on. And as I poured out all these feelings of love and thanksgiving, the gray mist turned into an enormous, brilliant white light. And it was not a static light, like a spotlight on a stage would be. It was a dynamic light. In some way, things were going on. Power was going on in the light. I hadn't a clue what it was all about until the light came toward me and drew me in also.
And there was a point at which the light and I became one, or at least that's the way it felt to me. And the light consisted of a love that I cannot even describe, no matter how hard I try. There are no words to describe this kind of light, this kind of love. The love said to me, without any words, "You are my beloved soul. I love you with all of my heart. I love you without condition. You are precious to me beyond belief." This is what I was getting from just being immersed with the light.
And as I said, it was dynamic. It was, it was not, it was not peaceful. It wasn't unpeaceful, but it was a dynamic situation between the light and me. And I began to become very ecstatic. Uh, the force, the power of this light was such that whatever it is in me that responds, just kept getting higher and higher and higher and higher. And there was a point at which I could feel myself being cradled in the light. And it was, that's where some peace, I think, maybe was part of it, because it was the most wonderful, peaceful feeling I had ever felt. And I just let myself, actually, I'll use the word float, float in this for a while, this love and light.
But that wasn't the end of it. Suddenly, what, what I think of as a block of knowledge came into my being. And I began to know things that I didn't know before. It was being fed into me as if I were a receiving station. I had no thoughts of my own at all while this was going on. And what was being transmitted to me was that I was an immortal being, that I had always existed, I always would exist. I was eternal. I was indestructible. There's nothing that ever really could happen to me to wipe me off the face of the earth or any other place. And I knew that that was true. I didn't doubt anything that the light was giving me because somewhere inside me, I knew the light was. I didn't think, "Oh, the light is God." I didn't think that. I just felt the light was from God. I had feelings, not thoughts. And I knew that anything the light was giving me was the absolute truth.
And I just kind of floated with this knowledge of my indestructibility, my eternalness for a little while, feeling that I was being cradled and loved beyond any belief system that had ever crossed my way. And then suddenly, a second block of knowledge descended upon me. And what I knew within that block of knowledge was that the world is perfect. And when I say world, I mean the totality, the all-ness, the everything. It's perfect. And I remember distinctly the very words that did come in, and it was that the world operates according to a perfect plan, and the plan is working itself out in its perfection. And I knew that that was true. I knew that all of this was true.
And, and I, and I lived with, with this feeling for a while, knowing that all the things that we think are cruel and horrible, and, and all the wars that are going on, knowing that somehow this is part of the perfect plan. It's part of what God is working out. And that I didn't personally have to worry about it, although back on earth, you want to do something about it. And that's because we live here on earth for the moment. But in reality, I didn't have to worry about a thing. It was all planned out and perfect.
So for a while again, I just stayed in that light. And actually, the ecstasy, the bliss didn't ever level out. It just continued, continued, and continued until I reached a point where I had my very first thought of the whole thing. And that was, "I don't know how much more of this I could stand before I shatter." And the minute I had that thought, the intensity of the light began to diminish. The intensity of my own ecstasy also began to diminish. Everything just moved down to where I could handle it.
And suddenly, I thought, "I don't know what's going on. I don't know where I am. I can't remember what's happened. I don't know whether I've been in this light for five minutes or five years or a hundred years." I just momentarily had my mind blown. And that was only allowed to go for about five seconds. And then I found myself standing in this incredibly, awesomely beautiful green meadow. And it had a light that was rather golden, um, prettier than our light here on earth, but not the great white light that I had been one with.
And, and I stood there looking at things that I had never seen before, color-wise. I had never seen many of the colors that these growing plants were. They were in the colors that I know. And everything in this meadow was beautifully colored, bushes, flowering plants. And it was, it was just the essence of what beautiful is. I could see a light shining from each of the growing things, not being shown on them from an outside source, but actually coming from inside them, the life of the plant, I guess. And it came through as this lovely light. So for a while, I just took in all of this beauty and, and, and felt glorious. And I guess is a good word.
Finally, I looked up and saw at a distance of, I would guess maybe 500 yards, I saw a low hill. And standing on that hill were maybe 18, 19, 20 people at the most. I didn't count, but I kind of made a general assessment. And these people were in robes, very simple robes, nothing at all elaborate, just robes. And they were in all these many colors. There were actually a couple, two or three in white. The rest were clothed in these awesome colors. And they seemed to be standing around in little groups, waiting, waiting for something. I now think of them as helpers. I think they were waiting for people like me who had kind of accidentally stumbled in.
Maybe the minute I had the thought of, "I want to, I want to be over there, I want to talk with these people," I was there. I didn't have to walk the 500 yards or climb the little rise. I would simply standing there. And a group of three or four men moved toward me. One man was the one I had all my conversation with. He was really about that much taller than the other men. Um, I would say if I had to guess, he might have been about 60, 65 years old. He had a bald head. He had white hair over the sides and around the back. He had the most beautiful face I have ever seen on any human being. It encompassed all of wisdom, all of compassion, all of love and understanding. I knew the very second I looked at him that anything he told me would be truth. I had no clue who he was. Nothing inside me thought it was Jesus, God, Peter, Paul. He, he was nameless, but he was a spiritual authority of some sort who was going to be someone I could completely believe without a second thought. His robe was purple.
And I must tell you, we didn't talk with words. We, I only had to have the germ of what I was going to say, and he received it immediately. Didn't even have to think out the individual words. And, and the first thing I said to him was, "I know what has happened. I understand. I know that I have died." And he said, again, you know, without words, he transmitted to me mentally, I guess that's correct, "Yes, yes. But you will not be staying here because it isn't time for you to be here yet."
And I said, "Oh, well, there's something I want to ask you. I've encountered nothing, nothing but beauty, love that I didn't even know existed. Everything since I crossed over to this place has been perfect and beautiful and totally loving. What about my sins?" And I was only 23. I hadn't accumulated a lot, but I knew about "love thy neighbor" and "don't tell lies" and that kind of thing. And always figured, I guess you have to pay for them. I remember my first feeling of having broken a commandment. I fell off my bicycle and from somewhere, I don't know where, because I never heard this at home, I said, "Jesus," as I fell. And I lay there under my bike and thought, "I have taken the Lord's name in vain." And I waited for whatever thunder was going to come down upon me. And nothing did. And finally, I got up and thought, "Oh, I guess it doesn't apply to kids," because I was only about seven. So I had a concept of sin. And I said to him, "What about my sins?"
And he said to me, "There are no sins, not the way you think of them on earth." He said, "The only thing that matters here is what you think." And he asked me a question. He said, "What is in your heart?" And in some way that I cannot ever understand or describe, I was enabled for a few seconds to look into my soul, I guess, the deepest part of me. They say the, the heart is the gateway to the soul. I think that's where I went. I saw what the core of me was, and it was love. It was perfect love. It was the same thing that I had been immersed in with the light. That was the core of me. And I knew it wasn't just the core of me. It was the core of human beings. It was the way in which we are created in the image of God. That's the part we are. That, that piece of God ourselves, that is who we really are. And I remember thinking, "Of course, of course, I used to know that. How did I ever forget that?"
And then I asked him, "Well, since I, since I can't stay, since I have to go back, can you tell me what everything is all about? Everything, the whole of creation, what is it all about?" And he did tell me. And I'm sorry to tell you, I can't tell you. He told me, and it was so simple. It wasn't more than three or four sentences. I comprehended that totally. And I said, "Can I take all this back with me? Since I can't stay, can I take everything that I have learned back? Because there are so many people I want to tell this to." And he said, "You may take everything back with you except the answer to the last question, and that you aren't going to be able to remember." And of course, that was the one about what is it all about.
At that point, everything became blackness again. I heard an incredibly loud and unpleasant, irritating sound, which sounded like somebody had grabbed an oven door and decided to just slam it as hard and as loudly as they could. And it was just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And it was soon over. And then there was silence. And then I heard in my ear an electronic click, which I always wondered afterwards what was that about. And I've read a few times in the passing years of people who in their NDE, at the end, heard the click and felt their bodies going, their spiritual body lining up with their physical body and clicked in. I didn't, I didn't feel all that, but I heard the click. So I was indeed back.
And I woke up to find that my doctor was killing me. She had her, her fist, and she was doing things on my sternum that just felt like, what I, you know, what are you doing to me? I had had a baby before, and nobody did anything like that to me. And I said to her, "I don't mean to be rude, but I wish you would stop that." And she said, "All right, I will," with a little smile, very little smile on her face. I didn't have a clue about external heart massage, so I didn't know then that that's what she was doing. I found out later that's what she was doing. She was a good friend of my mother's. And I thought, "I cannot tell her what has happened to me. I can't ask her any questions. I don't dare, because she will think I have had a postpartum breakdown of some kind." And Mother and Daddy will think that. And, uh, I didn't think my husband would think that, interestingly enough. But I thought, "I will just cause rebels out or just, oh, and I know I'm just fine." So I didn't ask her anything.
And I truly, from then on, don't remember very much when I was back on earth, the first maybe half hour, because things were being done to me, you know, I, I was getting a shot, somebody was kneading my tummy. [Music] I just, I was more out of it than in, not in the spiritual world, just out of it in the physical world. I did, I did have, have her say to me, you know, when she came in the room, "How are you feeling?" "I'm feeling fine. You gave me a little bit of a hard time for a while, but everything is just fine now, and you're fine. The baby's fine." She said the same thing to my husband when she came out in the hall with him. I think she went a little farther. She said, "I thought I'd lost her for a minute, but everything is, is just fine, and so is the baby." And he didn't ask any questions because he didn't want to hear any bad news. I asked him, "What, what did you ask? What the hard time was?" He said, "No, I, I wanted to hear the part about you were fine and the baby was fine." And that's as much information as he was interested in. So I was never able to talk to her about it.
And I lived with the experience for 23 years before Raymond Moody wrote his book. I can't even describe to you what it was like to read that book. I cried my way all the way through it, copious tears. I knew for the first time that I was not the only person on earth to have had this experience, which he called the near-death experience. And for 23 years, I thought I was. And what was I supposed to do with it? And it was just me. I, I wasn't Mother Teresa. I didn't even know about her then, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. And ultimately, I did know. I was supposed to get the word out. But not back then. The time was simply not right. I think my experience would have been derided, ridiculed. I, there was nothing inside me that felt the time was right to start trying to talk to people about it. I, maybe I told my husband the entire thing. And bless him, he said to me, "Honey, I don't understand that any more than you do, but I know if you say it happened and it's true, I know it's true." And that was good enough for me. [Music] You