Near Death Experience: My NDE Was Both A Blessing And A Curse | Beyond Death

Welcome to Beyond Death, where we examine near-death experiences from people who say they died, visited the other side, and came back. Today's NDE comes from Herbert M, who has a very unusual near-death experience, and his unique take-on near-death experiences following his return. Let's get into it. Over some few years, as a group of friends, I had met with Vietnam veterans troubled by post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. My contribution to these men was one of support, listening to their stories as they became available. Part of the relationship we held was one of helping them to develop storytelling skills, and to develop an environment of some spiritual dimensions within which to enable them to regain their individual sense of spirituality. I introduced them to Native American ceremony, to establish common spiritual grounds without specific denomination, as these men had varied backgrounds in faith practices and denominations. As a matter of common humanity, it was necessary to establish a denomination-free environment. It seemed to be a common factor in combat veterans, afflicted by PTSD, to have either rejected the faith practices in their background or more commonly, to have rejected and felt rejected by their faith as a result of the causalities of armed combat. As the others in our group who met with these good men and women, the veterans, we each offered friendship, empathy, and affection to them. My own practice was that of fasting on the Saturdays we did meet. This helped me to prepare myself to literally walk in blood with these wonderful people. On Saturday, November 14, 1992, we would meet a schedule with a small group that we have been meeting with for some five years. For some reason, the veterans called in and variously excuse themselves for that day. A good friend, Virgil C., the owner of the place where we met and held our Saturday sweats, decided to continue on with the ceremony, for ourselves, and our own needs. Some 45 minutes into the sweat ceremony, I had a feeling of heaviness and some discomfort within the left side of the chest, as if heat was accumulating there. Also, leaning on the colder ground seemed to relieve some of this pressure. I did have a mildly upset stomach, but I could attribute this to being on a fast. However, I asked to step outside and regain some breath. I felt some need to relieve the heat in my left side. Once outside, with a beautiful view of San Pablo Bay, in the silence of the night, I just wanted to relax, to let loose. The bay waters seemed filled with bubbles of light that danced and moved, sometimes against the currents, in a kind of dance. I was very attracted to the unusual spectacle, but did not seek for any meaning or significance to it. It was just beautiful, and as I told my friend of this, he just agreed, only later would he tell me that he never saw anything. We returned to the sweat lodge to complete the ceremony. The only out of place event that gave me some pause, was that each time I would close my eyes to relax, I had the feeling of being somewhere else, on a journey across some field. But again, I dismissed it to tiredness and fasting. At the end of a third round of the sweat, the tightness in my chest begged me to end. I asked my friend for his opinion, and he agreed. We completed the ceremony according to tradition, a matter of respect, and left for his house, where we would enjoy a light dinner. By now my stomach was really upset, but as I was fasting, I just did not attend to it. I took a piece of candy, and as I ate it, my stomach settled down. I thought this confirmed that my discomfort was due to a long fast, which I was just breaking. I felt a little lightheaded, but nothing of concern. As we sat down to dinner, salami sandwiches and coffee. I suddenly got dizzy. My chest did not hurt. I felt as if I was being strangled, but I could breathe far more air than before. It felt as if my breastbone was being separated and torn apart. Now, I did feel concern. My friend asked me if I was having a heart attack, and no, to speak truth. I felt no numbness of the arm or jaw, and those symptoms commonly listed. Of course, what he saw and what I felt must have been very different things. But I did find myself very concerned and asked him to take me to the local emergency services at Kaiser Permanent's hospital in Richmond. Some 20 minutes away. He did, and I am grateful that he did so. As we left the house, I tried speaking to him. Using some humor, he looked so very worried, and I did not want to impose upon him the discomforts of what I still thought were the results of my fasting throughout that day. Then I became aware of exiting the car through the window, and watching my friend and a carcass fast fading down the street. The empty body beside my friends seemed to be me. I just thought it odd, as other events were beginning to take place. These I must reserve to myself until I can make good sense of them. After moving through the surrounding landscape, I found myself in the same place that had been in my thoughts during the ceremony. Open, broken, hilly grounds, with a path that led upward to the side of a nearby mountain. The path became a cobblestone path that, at the entrance of a tunnel, forked into the tunnel, and also veered right toward a place of dirty lights where much noise was made. Two steps later, or so it seemed, I had covered a few hundred yards to the edge of a canyon that caused me great fear, just a disagreeable, incomprehensibly ugly place, full of ashes, barred wire, and burning torches that burnt with the yellow-green color of sulfur. Something inside of me held me back, and I found myself within the tunnel, where I could see, through the walls, a feel full of stone people. An inner voice quietly said that these are they who wait for the reality of intellect, eyes lost in the distance, waiting for life as idea to become reality, as life went before them, free to be what it is. At the end of the tunnel, or the top of the stairs, there was a sliver of light, and there is where I went. I think I had an inkling of my own death at that moment, but I knew that I could not cross a threshold I could not see. As I turned to climb down the stairs, I fell backward, and found myself on the other side of a gate that was not there. There was no way out. The place was an endless field, full of grass and flowers of all colors, and trees that sang quiet songs, and they were all welcoming me. Me? Who the hell am I that they would do this? I thought, why do they welcome me? I took a path that continued toward a place where bright lights shone, some kind of a structure, full of people, by the thousands, and they all cheered and welcomed me. I knew that I am not any kind of a hero or person of importance, but they were rejoicing in that I had come. Then, out of the bright lights came members of my family, many dear people that we had lost over time, my grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins, and even those whom I only knew in pictures, and my childhood friends and their relatives, and they all came to greet and welcome me. I could not make sense of what was going on, but I did suspect. I think that I knew I was dying. Then there were some beings whose muscles were not flesh but flame. Fire contained within the shape of legs, arms, and so on, and full of light. They greeted me, and after they all left, only two remained. One that looked at me, someone I knew or am bound to know, some one of extreme importance to my life, but it left, climbed above the trees, and waited there. The other being was behind me. I turned to my family, but they had become quiet. A whole world had become very silent. Then I became aware of a kind of light, shining with the brightness that is more than all the suns in the universe. White, bright, and crystalline, and very much alive, it stood before me. Somehow I knew that I could not come into that light, so I turned back, then up, then down, and there was no hiding from the light that took me into itself. I now knew that I was dead, and that whatever else were to be, it would so be now. This most holy being in spirit, the one whom no word can name or describe, took me into his arms, and bid me welcome. Then he asked, "Are you done?" I instantly knew I was dead, and now was called to account for my small and unimportant life, and I could not lie. In an instant that will last forever, I saw my life, from conception to death, as one single and whole event, not as separate parts of a jigsaw puzzle, but as a complete and inseparable whole. And I knew that my life was complete, I was done. The light, this most holy spirit, took me into itself, in an embrace that will hawk me to the end of my days and beyond. For an endless instant, I knew love, and I knew myself loved beyond words and descriptions, just infinitely loved, and I saw through the eyes of [BLANK_AUDIO] spirit, what spirit sees. There is no mind to understand that vision. It just is. Then the voice asked, "Is there anything you would like to do?" I did say that I would like a few minutes to set my family at ease, to leave no remorse nor regret for them. Just for a few minutes to say one final I love you, always have, always will, no matter what, our struggles, stupid fights, angry little moments. Nothing ever kept us from being loving to each other. The one who is above all names released me from his embrace and said, "Go." I said, "No." And I was terrified. I had said no to what I hold most secret. I knew that there is no life I could want anymore without him. My desire for him was much greater than my petty little fear. The light said, "Go." And I said, "No." The light said, "Go." And I began to feel a separation, the distancing. But as gift, there was that which the light gave me to see. Perhaps what lies within my own heart and soul is to what the faith I embrace promises. And I also saw that there is a point or a place beyond which one may not cross. For to do so, it makes everything else final. Some of these things of vision and feeling I have kept to myself. I know that I cannot explain them, more give them meaning. And I cannot look for answers from others because their explanations eventually become empty speculation. And this is very painful. I think to understand that to be human is to be more, much more than we have allowed ourselves to be, and that there is so much possibility we deny ourselves as we become locked into being rational, into being limited by rational proof. This NDE thing is at once a blessing and a curse. As a minister, although minor clergy, I have had to reconcile as much as possible with tradition and teaching as my denomination expresses. And the truth is that there is almost no one whom one may query to seek out the terms through which to approach an answer. For 10 years, I left the ministry embracing the quest for an answer. Unfortunately, is not just an answer, and there is no answer to be really had. I have lived in a Native American reservation, sought saints and holy people of other ways, and found mostly emptiness and speculation in the name of faith. I found myself embracing solitude rather than wasting time retelling a story. NDE is not a mandate, not a commissioning to holiness. I can, as any other human being, make a claim to holiness without ever being touched by the sacred, and the mindless repeating of story. A story that cannot ever be fully told is loathed to me. I am a simple, uninteresting, semi-rational, ordinary, human being. My wife sometimes doubts that, and I am constantly making mistakes, laughing about them, or apologizing, and still in search of an answer. As far as I know, I was conscious of where I was, who I was with, and what we were doing. The innitbi-sweat ceremony does keep you very much aware of that. Notes from Beyond Death. I have included a link to Herbert M's near death experience in the description for those that would like to do more research. It is immediately followed by a brief question, and answer portion Herbert took time to take part in. Let me know your thoughts about this NDE in the comments below. Until next time, stay blessed.