Richard P

First, let me start by saying it has taken me forty-five years to write this. My near-death experience is true. This really happened to me and was a classic experience, remarkably similar to reports others have shared. This is the one event that changed my life, and my memory of it gets clearer as I get older. Perhaps this is because as each day passes, I am one day closer to death. My experience has made my life so much richer and given me a unique way of looking at everything. There is immense love, calming peace, and abundant joy in our lives if we just know how to recognize it. When we physically die, there will be even more happiness than we can imagine waiting for us on the other side. The Party The day was October 18, 1979, and this event happened at my cousin's house. We carpooled to work together, hung out, and had parties there. This was near where I grew up and rode dirt bikes in eastern North Carolina. On this day, we were having an oyster roast with some friends. I had just turned 21 on September 29, so I bought a fifth of whiskey to bring. I am not sure what caused the episode because I never finished the first drink. He said it happened because I crashed my motorcycle after drinking some bad whiskey. He said the whiskey did not taste right and later poured it all out. I remembered feeling very weird and out of sorts, as if I was about to pass out. The last thing I recall was telling a friend at the party that I did not feel right. Evidently, I must have decided to ride my dirt bike, but I never made it out of the yard. I have no memory of the accident or what happened in the moments prior. The Tunnel Suddenly, I was traveling into the tunnel. I was the most scared I had ever been because it was absolutely clear what was happening. I sensed a feeling of dread and thought I was going to hell because I had been drinking. I was really very scared of what was happening. It was that reverent fear and awe of God's greatness that C.S. Lewis referred to as numinous. I prayed, "God help me, I don't want to die." Then there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and I emerged on the other side. Some people explain that this experience could be our very first memory of being born. The tunnel is the birth canal, and the light is in the delivery room. My son said that one of his college professors debunks the whole theory as hallucinations that come from a gland in the brain that produces N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a chemical that triggers this mind movie at birth and again as a biological process when we die. On a podcast, Joe Rogan discussed how the drug DMT can produce similar experiences, making the user believe they went to a heaven-like place. So, was this induced by my mind, or did I clearly have a close encounter with heaven? Until recently, I never would have questioned this because what I saw and felt was absolutely a near-death experience. I went way past anything any drug could do and saw divinity. There was a real effort to get me back and make sure I was not there for an exceedingly long time. My Spirit Guides At first, I was in this very beautiful place with a lake and mountains in the distance. I was standing with someone like a grandfather figure and maybe even Jesus, but I did not recognize them. There was a light shining from behind the mountain range, and I could feel heavenly love and a deep sense of being home. Others were standing around me, and I clearly recognized one as a classmate from high school; she had died of cancer while we were still in school. I was pulled up and stood before more beings. I was with an older woman, and she was the one in charge. She did not introduce herself, but I later called her Laura. Some events were hurried, like a blur, while others are very clear. I italicized the parts of the conversations that were very clear. Laura began frantically examining me, front and back, much like a trauma doctor would in the emergency room or like the opening of the TV show M.A.S.H. when the doctors first assess the wounded. I was still very scared and was pleading and begging Laura not to let me die. I absolutely thought I was going to be judged and sent to hell, so I began trying to convince Laura that I was a Christian. I said, "I could not die because I was not ready." I confessed to her, "I had been drinking and smoking pot." I commented, "I knew God did not have any patience with a drunk." Laura said very clearly, "You are not drunk, and smoking will not keep you from going to heaven." She definitely did not mention the word 'pot'; that I am very sure of. I told her emphatically, "I knew the ten commandments like, thou shall not kill." Laura turned to the others seated to her left, like a council, and sounding much like Judge Judy on television today, very clearly said, "Well, there are a lot of people in heaven who have killed people." She then insisted that I was not hurt that badly and that I was to return. It's important to remember this next comment; I will address it later. She told the council to "turn him away from the light." Yes, she most certainly said "the light." Then events started happening very quickly, and Laura began conversing with the council. I am not sure what they were saying. That was the blurry part, but Laura made it clear, "I had to go back, right now!" I had a skin disease that my dermatologist said was an allergic reaction to something. I had these red spots all over my body that looked like measles. I believe that is what Laura was examining so intensely. The spots would turn into welts that itched and were unsightly. These spots bothered me terribly both mentally and physically. I regained Laura's attention and asked her, "If I am going back, then I would like to know how to get rid of this skin problem." She said in a very hurried voice, "When I quit smoking and drinking, it would eventually clear up." I asked her, "Will I be able to remember this when I get back?" The next conversation is what I remember more clearly than anything. Laura told me very sternly, "What you must remember is do not commit adultery!" She was putting an emphasis on adultery as if this was very pertinent for me and was more important than anything else, except for the fact that again she repeated, "I had to go back right now!" God’s Love As I was being guided away from the light, I stopped and turned around, looked back towards Laura and the light, and I asked, "Wait, what is adultery?" I did not know the exact meaning of the word. I was young and unmarried and wanted to make sure I understood since this was so especially important. Laura replied, "Adultery is breaking God's love." Today I believe that is breaking the connection with God or loving anything more than God. I was then sort of in a maze or corridor but had a clear view of the light, even though the source of it was still emanating from behind a mountain. The light was the brightest, purest; I recall thinking how white this light was. The light was not like the sun's light; it was more like it had substance. It was pouring out and then enveloping me as something I could actually touch and feel. Then Laura took me and we stood directly in front of the mountain and the light, and she said, "It's something to behold, isn't it." Then I could feel the most intense, indescribable feeling of unconditional love, peace, and joy coming from the light that our words will never ever be able to convey. The feeling was so overwhelming that it cannot be explained in a way one could ever understand. It is absurd to even try and put a number on its intensity. But if asked on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most love one could possibly have the capacity to withstand, this would be a million, billion, trillion, centillion to the million billion trillion centillion times power (unmeasurable, infinite). That is not even beginning to come close to describing the feeling of love, peace, and joy that I felt. As the Bible says in Philippians 4:7, "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding..." I then told Laura that I now wanted to stay. "I really did not want to go back to the pain and suffering, death and dying, rotten sloppy world." I wanted to stay in the perfect light. Laura then slowed down and patiently informed me, "That my life was not over." It sounded like a cliché, but in a calm, compassionate voice, she told me, "It was not my time to die." We discussed how my family would not understand nor could explain what happened and that I really was going back now. The Future I was escorted out into darkness, and a door closed to the light. I believe this is the duality of light and darkness. Then I could see events and places that I would experience in the future. Many years later, at the age of 67, with meditation, I started to understand this as not future events but instead a part of the divine experience that would shape my life in the most profound way. In this place, time had no meaning, and it felt like I could understand eternity. I was alone now and could still feel the same intensity of love and peace (especially peace as being totally separate from love) and joy. I could go on forever talking about what took place here. Some examples are: first, I was standing on a strange-looking rock. Later in my life, I found that exact rock on a beach that I referred to as my holy ground. Next, I saw great numbers streaming towards me, coming from infinity, and then the Microsoft Windows logo. This was years before Bill Gates's Microsoft Windows came out. All my life I could not remember or understand what all the numbers meant. I thought that they were just a part of my future career as a numbers guy. My job soon required me to enter lots of numbers into the computer. Then on December 20, 2025, I had the realization that these numbers were the Fibonacci sequence numbers where each number is the sum of the previous two (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144…) and the golden ratio of 1.61. The ratio is the arrangement of how everything in nature and the universe is designed. Its pattern shows up in everything from pinecones to hurricanes to galaxies. I now believe this is where we get intuition, synchronicity, and all our clairs, like clairsentience, clairaudience, and all the clear knowings that we experience. My personal example is being in the right place at the right time. Then I felt the peace and said to myself, "Here comes the peace." I felt the full understanding of what peace truly is. The eternal bliss and calmness was more profound than the love I felt, and I absolutely understood the peace that passeth all understanding. The peace was real and powerful, floating above the water like a misty wave on the ocean. Peace energy I could touch and see, and it was eternal. Peace filled my spirit, and its energy was a part of my spiritual being. Then I saw the stars in the heavens and a complex map with coordinates of the night sky. I later took up astronomy and studied complicated star charts, much like the ones in the book "Peterson Field Guide to Stars and Planets" or astronomy software like Stellarium with all the azimuths and celestial grids. At the age of 67, I began to understand that this was a map of our universal conscious awareness. If that sounds too woo-woo, then I will just say that I am aware that we are all a part of the universe and its greatness. It is vast and full of wonder. I'll use the nursery rhyme: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder where you are," not what you are. Then a voice spoke to me, and it said, "Go back." Suddenly, I was whooshed back into my body. I was traveling very fast over a great distance, as if coming from the edge of the universe in an instant. It was the life energy going back into my body. This energy felt like a huge wave of charged plasma flowing, gushing, pouring life and spirit back into the empty vessel that was my body. The spirit energy, I believe, creates heat, allowing our body temperature its 98.6 degrees. In the summertime, when it is 98 or 99 degrees outside, it is quite hot. If you have ever been with someone when they die and their spirit leaves the body, their body temperature quickly becomes room temperature. I could actually see and feel what felt like electrically charged spirit energy going back down into my body, bringing me life again. “I-Am” Back My cousin and my buddies were putting my lifeless body into a car when I came to. The first thing I remember is him saying, "He's okay." Then the next thing I asked was, "How long was I there?" Not what happened or where am I, but how long was I there. The others asked, "How long were you where?" I told them that I went away from here. He, who was still very shaken up, said, "Yes, we know, you were not breathing and had no heartbeat." I insisted that he tell me how long I was out. He hesitantly said, "I don't know; maybe a couple of minutes." I said, "It felt like a couple of years or even a couple of hundred years or more." It still felt like I was going to pass out again. I wanted to go back to heaven or wherever that place was I had just been, and even very seriously considered that as a real possibility. But I remembered what Laura told me about my life not being over, so I fought the pain coming from whatever accident had just happened and stayed conscious. I now knew there is a beautiful place with the perfect light that is generating love, peace, and joy, where I experienced infinite knowing and universal consciousness, and I was not afraid to die. For many years, I had some depression because I could not figure out what my purpose in life was. Then after years of meditation, I finally realized that this experience was a gift, and I felt so grateful for having had this special experience. I became enlightened to the spiritual part of my life. Like the saying, we are not a human body having a spiritual experience, but a spirit being having a human experience. By the way, when I finally quit drinking and smoking, my skin condition completely cleared up very quickly. Epilogue In one of our Sunday school classes, the minister said he asked a group of high school students to describe the Trinity. Today I can still remember those feelings of love, peace, and joy, and my memory of the experience grows clearer. So, with that, I will attempt to give you my firsthand hypothesis of the Trinity; it goes like this. It is really quite simple and still extremely complicated. There is love: the love that comes from God the Father. Next, there is peace: the peace that comes from Jesus Christ, the Son; and then there is joy: the joy that comes from experiencing and being the Holy Spirit. That we are the third part of the Trinity, a spirit or Holy Ghost that cannot die. Father, Son, Holy Ghost is love, peace, and joy. The three in one are each three separate forces and yet they can each be experienced as one, at least that is how I understand it. To readdress the light, many others and I believe that the light is God, but then why did Laura very clearly say, "Turn him away from the light," and not say away from God? In some guided meditation practices I have listened to, they call the light by many names, such as divine light of infinite intelligence or healing light of the universe. I heard during a video from someone communicating with spirit guides that the angels do call God "the light." I did not actually see the origin of the light as it was coming from behind a mountain. But I do know that the longer I stayed in the white light, the harder it was to leave. I often wonder what lies behind that mountain. Had I seen the source of the light directly, would I have been able to even come back at all? But how does one know if the light is God, or is it the light emanating from something else that generates the love, peace, and joy? Like a trinity generator created by God. So, in conclusion, I am left with some truths that convince me that instead of being a DMT-induced mind movie or hallucination, I absolutely know what I felt was much more than that. After several minutes of having no vital signs and then the white light, I am convinced the experience was a brief glimpse of heaven. When I was there, I was more aware of what was happening to me as being real; it was more real and clear than what I feel in the most aware conscious state. Meeting Laura, my spirit guides, and seeing that deceased classmate was something I could never have imagined. I would have never in a million years believed that there are people in heaven that have killed people. I firmly followed the most important thing I was told to remember, which was do not commit adultery. I just hope I fully understand what it means to not break God's love. Something funny my wife asked me; she questioned if I am certain I heard that one right and was it not idolatry instead of adultery. She has trouble fully rationalizing my experience since she believes it could have been induced by DMT or drugs and alcohol. But no, this was the most sobering thing that has ever happened to me. These events that happened over forty years ago are clearer today than they were on the day this occurred. It's hard for me to believe that the infinite feelings of unconditional love, peace, and joy could come from some gland in the brain. Just like seeing the future, then whooshing back into my body while friends are trying to revive me, were not caused by taking a shot of bad whiskey or smoking some marijuana. The sequence of these divine events stemming from that accident were all no coincidence. I was really in this place, and quoting Buddha, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you realize why." The saying that "Love makes the world go around" is absolutely true in the way that God's love produces the powerful forces that control the heavens and is in each and every one of us. If someone asks me whether I believe in hell, all I can say is this; if hell is as bad as heaven is good, then we absolutely do not want to go to hell. But why would a God with that much love punish and torment anything? Since this experience, I understand the power of God's love, and it's ever present all around us. We should thank God in every way for blessing us with his gift of love. Our time here on earth is so special and very short. I am in no hurry for this life to be over because, as I was told, there is a reason for being here. However, I do look forward to that great day that's coming when I will be back in heaven again. So, even if this glimpse of heaven was a chemically induced transition from life to death, either way, I know that I left my human body. Knowing now that heaven is real, and death is another great adventure, I am living the richest, happiest, fullest, most abundant life made possible by God's light.