This is what happened to me. I had been very ill with TWAR, which is a bacterial lung disease, for a couple of years when this happened. I could neither walk nor be active for more than a maximum of 10 minutes or so, without then getting a fever for three weeks afterwards. Always exhausted. Difficult to breathe. Constant feeling of suffocation.

The disease works so that the cilia in the lungs, which are supposed to transport away debris, mucus and things that shouldn't be there, are broken down. So, you get similar symptoms to those who have COPD. All sleep, which was very short, took place in a sitting position. At its worst, it sounded and felt like I was suffocating. Since the illness kept me mostly awake, it became less stressful to sleep sitting up in my own room. I was awakened after short moments of sleep, usually by a wheezing from my airways.

One October evening about 10 years ago, despite medication, I couldn't breathe. In the panic that followed, I took the wrong medicine and my breathing stopped working. I was filled with terror, anxiety, unable to call for help. It was the scariest moment of my life. It felt like I was fighting for my life. I wanted to live. Then the heart stopped. There was complete silence in my chest, and I gave up.

This very act of giving up one's life is so unthinkable, when you are there. An impossible decision. But the only decision that remains to be made. Everything became still. You don't think about how the heart feels when it's always beating inside the chest, so for a very brief moment the silence was shocking. However, I had time to think that "now it's over."

Then suddenly, everything changed. The room became incredibly real. Vibrant. The ceiling became vibrantly bright. A gigantic face then began to appear on the ceiling and completely mesmerized me. It smiled lovingly and warmly at me.

I felt a security I had never felt before. The face became larger and brighter. It sank towards me, or perhaps I floated up towards it. Anyway, I was no longer in my body.

Suddenly I found myself in a vibrantly alive and incredibly bright landscape. Brighter than anything I've ever experienced. The colors in this landscape felt so beautiful and like I had never seen a color before. Everything felt alive and so conscious somehow. The degree of reality was so much stronger that everything I experience now as Johnny, which feels like a blurry blur. Everything there was extremely surreal. Everything was alive! Everything had a vibrating life force. Flowers, grass, trees – EVERYTHING.

I experienced a sense of home that was of such a magnitude that it is impossible to explain. As if my whole life had been a dream from which I have now woken up. Everything was so much more real and so homey. It felt like I had always been here. A bit like a gigantic shout of happiness. “Of course! Yes! This is how it is!” Like Ronja Rövardotter's spring cry, but infinitely stronger.

I had come HOME and was so happy that even that is impossible to explain. How do you describe a happiness that is a million times stronger than when you had your first child? It doesn't work.

I thought nothing of the fact that the heart had just stopped. Nothing about the fact that I also recently had an incredible amount of suffering. The life I had lived was more of a dream from the night that had been. Now I was just filled with everything. I vibrated with the same life as my surroundings. I looked like usual. My vision was as usual, forward in a field of vision. But so incredibly sharp.

In connection with this, there was a light figure on my right side. It was a person, that was clear. The figure of light shone so brightly from within the body that it was not possible to see facial features or anything else. He knew everything about me and I really mean everything. The ugliest thing I thought and the nicest thing I did. ALL.

His voice was soft, pleasant, very deep and had a bit of a humorous tone. I heard the voice within me, not through hearing. He was so incredibly disarming in his dialogue and it felt like a laugh was never far away. As if he was extremely happy to meet exactly me. He radiated a wisdom beyond all understanding. Knew everything about everything. He was older than the universe and yet so close and alive. Had such a great sense of humor. I felt so incredibly loved. I was already happy before he came, but now the feeling of happiness was running away like a whole herd of pure, beautiful happiness.

I felt his love for me and for the first time in my life, I felt an immense love for myself. It just happened. In a sense, I hitchhiked with him in his feeling for me. Everything dark, hard, regrets, disappointments were just… poof…. away. It was so easy to let go of all the darkness.

A little in front of me, three other figures of light appeared a little distance away. They were also attentively facing me and the light figure.

He then asked what I had done with my life. Here he became more serious or more focused; like, now it's important. He moved slightly to the right behind me so that we were looking in the same direction.

Then everything that happened in my life was replayed. I lived it again. I was 57 years old when this happened, so my experience is that it was 57 years that passed, but it was in an instant. I got to see every moment from within myself and also from the other's perspective. I was the other. By being the other, I mean I really was that person. Felt everything that person felt, both physically, but above all, emotionally.

At important moments in my life, the process slowed down. The figure of light was always by my side. It was so incredibly painful at times and I felt a great pain of cowardice, selfishness and self-absorption. I could see how, in my own longing for love that I could not give myself, I blamed my surroundings.

I reacted particularly strongly in a scene where those of us in our primary school class bullied a girl who was in an incredibly vulnerable situation. I wanted to fit in well with the strong, cool individuals in the class. So, I said the same thing as them. In the review, I was at first in me, and alternately, I was inside her. Felt her suffering, pain, and that it was hate that we drowned her in. How we blackened her. Hurt her. It was possible to feel how bleeding wounds in her self-esteem were created, how we annihilated her.

I was her in the same sense that I am now Johnny. At the same time, a strange happiness arose within me, to be admitted among the strong. The adrenaline. To actually want to hurt the other. Everything was allowed. It hurts so much to write this, to remember it. The scenes included smells, sounds, all.

So now her suffering is in me. The pain is sometimes unbearable. The pain then was unbearable and there was no protection from it. No filter that slowed down the experience at all. So now I knew what I had done. But the bright loving light from the light figure was there all the time. My pain over the ugly evil became too great and I cried and felt extremely desperate. In despair, I sobbed that I had failed. I understood what I had done.

When my suffering became unbearable, the pace of the flow slowed down and stood still for a while. At the same time, I felt such strong love from the light figure and the three light figures in front of me. The love grew stronger until I reached a kind of equilibrium inside. As my pain was healed by love until I could both feel the pain and love at the same time, the light figure continued to speak.

The light figure said with an almost humorous warmth in his voice that nothing was wrong. Everything was perfect. As it should be. I was swimming in love and understanding from his side. I was human and as such it is impossible to do everything right.

Everything was about learning. That love and its consequences mean everything. The inner healing that took place then inside me cannot be explained. I felt such strong love for the girl. All the ones I hurt. Their suffering was now mine, too. I was so liberated, happy. I felt such love for the insecure, cowardly, closed-minded person I used to be.

But, I also felt the same love for all those who accidentally or even intentionally hurt me. I was also them in the experience. The light figure's love was as all-encompassingly strong to those who hurt me, as to those I hurt. Here and exactly then I was changed. Something in me changed from broken to whole. Not that a single event I did was taken away from me. But that the love I knew for me and my life contained and accepted what was wrong as well as what was good.

But things that I might have felt very satisfied with, such as conscious and, in my eyes, good actions often didn't mean much. While small, inconspicuous actions, where I only comforted as a reflex, gained great importance. It was about what I had felt more than what I had thought.

I saw all the love that I have received in my life. My wife's love and loyalty, my children's and my relationships, friends, clients who have lined my path since I was born. I then saw that my life had in fact been bright, happy, wonderful. That I had in fact been blessed, protected. That much that could have happened was prevented by figures of light.

But, inside me, at times, I walked around with a self-pity. Feeling sorry for myself, sometimes stuck in the dark, I had occasionally missed seeing all the love that had been there all along. I saw all the love that ever existed in my life. That it was the strongest.

My life was reevaluated right then and there. So all the pain became instead a dynamic experience of love. A peace then took over. Calm. Rest. The figure of light shared my silence and harmony. It could have been a hundred years or a second. It was just as big all the same.

Little by little in our dialogue, my experience changed in such a way that I became more and more aware. Then he asked me if I had any questions. I became so happy, feeling an incredible anticipation. I asked about everything. I mean everything! All! War, disease, environmental destruction, evil and everything I have reflected on during my life.

In step with the questions, it was as if I became even more changed, understood even more, until after an incredibly long time it felt like I understood everything. Which was that everything is as it should be. Everything will be fine. I had a pearly, happy laugh that filled my insides as I understood how it all connected. The same liberating laughter was present in the figure of light. I understood that it was so.

Then it was as if I became increasingly lighter. My body gradually became more and more brilliant. Not compared to the light figure. The difference was the same. I changed shape. Major. It was like my atoms were sliding apart. Understand more. Saw more and more context I didn't understand.

The experiences now came faster and faster. The communication contained more and more. I became less and less Johnny, as I am now. Became more something else. More like a ball of consciousness. Vision was spherical. Everything was equally sharp. Near and far away were exactly as sharp. Then and now happened at the same time. Someone or something that has always existed.

This was my full consciousness. In this situation, I am not Johnny at all. My whole life disappeared into a part of me where all my existence was. All my lives in all time. The entire history of the universe, the future of humanity. Everything was contained in my mind.

I experienced a connectedness with everything. Everything was connected. It was completely logical, true. It was like I swelled even more, got bigger. Everything was getting brighter. I became one with the universe. My experience was that we had endless time together. Everything was eternal.

If I were to summarize it, I would probably say that the universe and everything that exists is created by a feeling, love. So existence is, in a sense, a feeling-given substance. A dilemma for us humans is that we have many emotions, the majority of which perhaps come from the animal within us.

So we mix up the basic feeling of existence, love, with physical feelings of fight, flight, stress, fear, anger, and urges such as sexuality, etc. These feelings concern our physical body and material possessions. Here is a large part of humanity's problem. We believe in an emotion that is strong, such as hate or contempt, and are guided by it and then completely lose touch with the emotion that is our true self, love.

So when politics, inventions, environmental responsibility are driven by love, then our world here in matter becomes a physical image of our origin. Because then we are part of the creative force that is our origin. I followed human history from now to really far in the future. The short version is that everything will work out eventually.

But now humanity has painted itself into a corner, so to speak. We have lost touch with our inner true nature which is love. We instead see the world materialistically and without love. It will be a bumpy road in the near future. But when we eventually realize that research, politics, the environment and all human activity needs to be guided by the following question: Am I doing this out of love? It will change. As humanity gradually realizes this, darkness turns to light.

What I knew then was an ocean of knowledge, insight. Now I try to explain it with a brain that holds only a drop of water.

Then the light figure suddenly says that I should go back, that I would get well. I would go on with my life. Until then, I had thought nothing of family, children. So, when I was asked to return, total surprise! Now I'm home! I didn't understand what he was talking about.

Then, it was immediately like being sucked through a narrow hose at extreme speed and I was lying in my body in the fetal position. The sun shone in through the blinds. At first completely shocked, dazed, I then had the happiest morning I have ever experienced. Breathing now worked as it should. I had not been able to lie down for several years without coughing, coughing. I ran happily down to my wife as I felt that now I must tell everyone how it really is. Everything will be fine. No one in the whole world needs to worry about anything.

But my wife was sad when she realized what had happened. Not happy like me. After a few confusing weeks, I started to learn what I know now. That even if I know how it will be, it is impossible to explain. It's like describing a destination but only getting to use two letters in the story. It has been extremely difficult to live with at times.

Now 10 years have passed. I am permanently changed by the experience. A part of who I was there in the light always remains. So, I'm like a double exposure. An eternal self that knows, and an ordinary person like you who often neither wants to nor can know. An impossible mix.

So, I do like most others who have experienced this. I try to show a little of the love that was my home and normal state for eternity. Trying to help others, become a better person. To be a better person. But I'm about as good or less good than everyone else. But, rest assured that everything will be fine in the end.

But nothing in my NDE was what I thought I knew before. I didn't realize how incredibly big the difference in reality was. Also, didn't understand what it's like when time no longer exists. Didn't understand that we all fit into a kind of collective loving consciousness. What it is to be completely loved. To swim around in love. To breathe love. But it doesn't really matter. Everyone gets there eventually.