These NDE accounts were submitted to our website and are published here anonymously. Minor edits have been made to protect the identity of the experiencer and others who may have been involved with the experience. Note to researchers and authors: IANDS cannot grant permission to publish quotations from these NDE accounts because we have not received permission from the NDE authors to do so. However, we advise authors who wish to use quotations from these accounts to follow the Fair Use Doctrine. See our Copyright Policy for more information. We recommend adopting this practice for quotations from our web site before you have written your book or article.
I attended a meeting for work in October 1996 at Aruba in the Caribbean Sea. The meeting was scheduled for a week and one afternoon during free time, I chose a "Sea Ventures Snorkeling Cruise" in a very large boat. The Captain recommended we wear life vests, but I jumped into the sea with just a snorkel and frog shoes. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon and the boat dropped anchor about 200 meters from the shore.
My first clear personal direct encounter with God as I see it was when I attended a service of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum just before Christmas of 2009. The subject was "The Birth of Light" and I clearly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit: subtle yet absolutely unmistakable. In 1983 I had been baptised in a rather liberal Baptist church in England, but the effect, ecstatic at the time, had not stayed.
When I was 5, my sister who was 7, was lost in a snow storm on the family ranch and subsequently died of hypothermia. My mother died two days later of a broken heart.
Twenty three years ago, I was running late for work; there were freezing conditions and my car slipped off of a bridge. My body left the vehicle, landing on frozen ground. Due to the temperatures, loss of blood was minimal but I was out-of-body/NDE for three days.
In 2008 I was a practicing cardiac-anesthesiologist. I was Chief of Anesthesiology at a heart hospital, and derived my identity and happiness from the work I did and my family. But in August of that year - everything was turned upside down when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. A routine surgery to treat it, in the same month, led to complications that left me incontinent and in excruciating pain due to scar formation. Due to these complications I was forced back into surgery a further three times between Aug and Dec 2008.
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