In October of 2003, during my junior year of high school, I had what can only be described as a near death experience. What you will read here are the events leading up to it, the near death experience itself, and my thoughts on it afterward.

This is my testimony. Everything stated here is exactly how I recall it.

Enjoy.

Background

I had just finished reading I: Reality and Subjectivity, the third book in Dr. David R. Hawkins’ trilogy. This is relevant here because the books fundamentally altered my belief systems. Not only did I read the books, but I understood the books and had several realizations about life.

The world completely changed as a result of these realizations. Or, more accurately, my perception of the world completely changed. It was no longer a dark and cruel place to be in. Instead, it was extremely beautiful and lively.

All of my fearful, angry, and depressive thoughts all but disappeared. I was in the moment, every moment. Everything, and I mean everything, seemed so beautiful. The people, the walls, the floor. Everywhere I looked, all I saw was God and beauty.

It literally felt like I saw God everywhere. Like God was right next to me. God was in the walls. God was in the people. All the time. Everywhere I looked. It all had the ‘God feeling’ to it.

I was constantly in an extreme state of bliss that is literally indescribable. The beauty of life was incredibly overwhelming. At times the bliss would become orgasmic. It would intensify greatly, like I was having a spiritual orgasm. During these moments it felt like the universe would slow down just to let me observe its magnificence. I was stunned by it so much that I always had to stop all of my physical activities just to take it all in. Luckily this never happened while driving.

This extreme state of bliss lasted for several days. During this time period I also had a recurring thought of “I am Jesus Christ”. This seemed like utter nonsense at the time. Why was I having this thought? Obviously, I am not Jesus Christ. I mostly ignored and blocked out this thought.

For purposes of completeness I’ll also mention a few other things. I was sleeping extremely deeply at night. I would wake up every morning and it would take me a few seconds just to remember who I was. There was absolutely no recall of dreams. When I went to sleep everything was complete oblivion. The two days leading up to the experience it also felt like death was stalking me. I had no reason to be afraid. There was never any kind of thread to the physical body. But yet, I had this deep fear of death that seemed to be surfacing.

The Near Death Experience

I always pray before I go to sleep at night. My prayer usually goes something like this. I am thankful for life. I am thankful for all the things I have. I am thankful for my health. I am thankful for…etc. I always thought it was kind of silly to actually pray for something.

But this time was different. This time I actually prayed for something. I prayed to God to help me let go of my ego, so that I could be closer to Him. Then I went to sleep.

That night I woke up. I wasn’t in my room. I wasn’t in my bed. I wasn’t even in my body. This is where it gets a little difficult to explain things.

I was in a black void with limited perceptual abilities. I was unaware of my body. There was no sight, smell, taste, touch, or hearing. There was a feeling, or knowingess, that I was in eternity. All directions spread out to infinity. It is a state that I never experienced during my life, and have never experienced since.

All communication occurred using telepathy. Out of the blackness I sensed three entities approach. I sensed that they were dead and/or from a spiritual realm. One of them seemed to ’step forward’ from the other two and identify Himself as Jesus Christ. He communicated to me the number 2100, which was connected with the consciousness level from the chart in Power vs Force. Before he could tell me what it meant I felt myself rising. I felt my spiritual frequency rising and going up. It was as though I was on an elevator that was going faster and faster and faster.

While on this elevator I could still think, but before my thoughts materialized they were destroyed. It was kind of like being deaf and yelling. I knew that I was thinking, yet I could not hear my own thoughts because they were destroyed. All was just the rising of this spiritual frequency.

Eventually I began to come to the top of whatever this ‘elevator’ was. It started slowing down slightly. But then there appeared something. I can only describe it as a ball of truly infinite energy and truly infinite power.

As I approached it I felt pieces of my existence begin to disappear. I felt like the core of my being was dying, in a very literal sense of the word. This was not physical death. At this point I was completely unaware that I ever even had a physical body. This was the core and essence of my very being. It felt as though my soul were being taken from me. And as it began to slip away the sheer terror of death took hold of me. I clung to myself as though my very life depended upon it, and then I went unconscious. This was by far the most terrifying experience I have ever had.

I awoke in my bed cold and sweaty. My hands were gripping my arms. When I removed them I had red marks on my arms that lasted for a few days. Apparently I had been grasping my arms pretty tight! I looked at the time. It was around 2:00 AM. For the next couple of weeks I woke up at around 2:00 AM every night…

Personal Reflection

I have told this story to a number of people. There are always a few things in common with the responses I get. First, everyone thinks they know exactly what happened and what I should do about it. Second, everyone disagrees with each other. And third, what everyone says is always a reflection of their own belief system.

If I tell this to a Christian, I know exactly what kind of response I will get. You have sinned. A demon attacked you. Jesus saved you. Spend a lot of time praying. Go to church. Make sure you remember to tithe.

If I tell this to an atheist, I know exactly the response I’ll get. You were hallucinating. Jesus is not real. Nor was he ever real. There is no other reality. There is no such thing as eternity. Here are some drugs that you should take. They’ll help you see clearly.

If I tell this to a Buddhist, I know exactly the response I’ll get. It was a near enlightenment experience. You should of walked through the veil of death. You were so close, and then you ran away. You will return there someday, only to make the decision again. Next time, make the right choice.

So if there is anything that this experience has taught me, it is this. Everyone sees what they believe. Whatever you believe in, whatever you expect, that is what you will see. That is how you will interpret the world, that is how you will understand the world, and that is how you will see the wo
rld.

Of course I also have my own take on this, which I won’t go into detail about here.

This post is already long enough.

The intellect is an intriguing mechanism. It can discover patters, solve problems, predict the future, and correct its past mistakes. It can learn complex language, generate abstract thoughts, and it can safely guide you through this world.

But despite all of its greatness, there will always come a time in every intellectual person’s life, when they realize it’s limits. When, for one reason or another, they realize that it cannot take them past the road they are currently on.

In a way, this is actually a very gradual transition. At first, people think they know everything. With time though, they realize that they know less and less. And finally, they realize they know nothing at all.

This article is about the fork in the road, which everyone reaches if they travel far enough on their journey. It is only one fork of many. I like to call it the intellectual fork. It’s especially good for eating chicken with.

The Intellectual Lens

There was a time when I saw the world through an intellectual lens. A filter, of the sorts. I believed that everything had to make sense, that people had logical reasons for doing things, and that the world was deterministic in nature.

I loved learning about how things worked. Chemistry, physics, computers, math, these things utterly fascinated me. I aced all of my classes, and excelled at all mental activities. I was the definition of a left-brained person.

The world, as I saw it through my lens of thinkingness, made perfect sense. That is, until I discovered something…

The Unraveling

In the logical world, everything is derived from something else. You know that A is true because B and C are true. You know that D must not be true because A is true, etc, etc. The world is kind of like a tree with many branches and leaves. The outermost leaves are derived from the most amount of previous derived knowledge. The limbs are derived from the least amount of knowledge.

But what you discover about this tree, is that it has no roots. When you follow the tree of ‘knowledge’ back to the trunk, and follow that to the ground, you realize that it isn’t supported by anything. Everything that you believe that you know is supported by…nothing at all.

Why is this? Because you can’t answer the most fundamental questions about life. You can describe everything, label everything, but you will never understand the fundamental question of why. You will never know, with a 100% certainty, that the next moment will be like the last. You will never know, with 100% certainty, that in the next moment the laws of physics will continue to accurately describe your physical world, that gravity will still point down, and that oxygen and hydrogen will combine to form water.

It is because the world is not deterministic, as many scientists would like to believe. You cannot predict the future with 100% accuracy. Why? Because it does not exist yet. The world is constantly unfolding and being created into the future. Even this article is being created, from my mind and my hands, and transferred into this computer. Even I do not know the exact words that will be in the next sentence, or the next paragraph, or the next page. And this, my friend, is why science will always fail to take a person to their ultimate destination. Because, in reality, it has no roots.

Where To Go From Here

When you intellectually understand something, you have managed to build a bridge. You have managed to create a concept, in your mind, and link it to all your other concepts, to describe some part of reality. You have built a new leaf on your tree.

While this kind of understanding can still be useful for wandering around in this world, there is a different kind of understanding that will replace it. An understanding where you realize new things about reality that were always there, but were simply outside of your awareness. An understanding where you grow your entire self, not just your intellect.

A kind of spiritual understanding, if you will. Where you’re focus is on uncovering and removing barriers to your awareness. Where you open yourself up to infinite possibilities, instead of being chained down to your feeble intellect which thinks it knows everything..