I was alone in my university bedroom. It was the end of my first term. I had starved myself. Like all anorexics, I had no idea that I was ill, and had run around for weeks fueled by nervous energy rather than physical energy. That evening I suddenly felt the energy leave me and I crawled toward the bed to lie down. I was terrified of sleep because I heard myself thinking the words from Shakespeare's Richard II, "methinks that if I sleep I never wake again." I knew I was going to die. Shortly after I found myself exiting my body by floating through the top of my head. It was like being born, but entering another world through the head.

A powerful male being with a cloak and helmet was behind me, arms outstretched. From his fingers came a magnetic force which was pulling me out of my body. I saw my lifeless body lying on the bed. I started screaming mentally, "I don't want to die. I'm only eighteen!" I floated across the campus until I became aware of another world, superimposed on the physical world. There was a boundary of parkland floating a few feet above the real grass. At the boundary a group of grey cloaked figures were in a huddle. I sense they were discussing me. After a time of waiting there, I heard one of them say, "Someone is coming to help you." I gently floated back into my physical body.

A few minutes later I heard physical footsteps and a note was pushed under my door. It was from a fellow student offering to give me a lift in his car back to Manchester, two hundred miles away. I knew that I had just enough energy to crawl into his car. The next day my parents collected me from Manchester, and I began the process of recovering from anorexia.

I know that the grey robed beings sent the fellow to me as the only way to save my life. Incidentally, years later when the film "Star Wars" came out, I saw a cinema poster and almost fainted in the street because I recognised Darth Vader as the evil figure who had pulled me out of my body. I understand George Lucas had an NDE. Perhaps we met the same being?

Two years later I had another NDE when I accidentally committed suicide by taking an overdose as the result of a broken love affair. This time it was a much more pleasant experience. I was gently removed from my body by an angel.

I went up to a hugely bright light. Just as I collided with it, it turned into Jesus. Not the soppy Jesus meek and mild I had been brought up with, but a being of immense power. I shattered into thousands of pieces of coloured glass. Each one of them so totally and completely loved that I cannot describe it.

I knew when I came back that I had a purpose to fulfill (although I couldn't remember what). This experience left me with a strange psychic ability where for about six months I was almost permanently clairvoyant and seeing spirit guides. It was as if the barrier between the two worlds had been opened and not closed. It was difficult to live with and, although I told no one, the university tutors realised there was something wrong with me. I would have failed my degree because I only wrote gibberish on the exam paper, but (spirit help?) I was given a degree anyway.

This has allowed me to earn my living as a part-time supply teacher, while my real interests were in visiting gurus in India and trying to make sense of the world. I trained as a hypnotist and hope that I have helped some people to feel better about themselves. I have worked with anorexics, knowing their psychology from the inside, and hope that I have saved a few lives. Perhaps that was why...I was given my life back twice.