Steve's near-death experience transformed his life

Steve also shared his experience with Kenneth Ring’s class on NDEs. Ring explains: “In 1975, when Steve was twenty-four, he underwent oral surgery in which some impacted wisdom teeth were to be removed. Before the procedure, Steve was injected with a sedative in his left arm and was later given sodium pentothal. That did not seem to take, and the surgeon, with some exasperation, then injected a total of four cartridges. After the surgery was completed—some two hours later!—Steve was taken to a windowless, postoperative recovery room and, while there, had his experience.

I awakened from the surgery, blinded by a river of white light. I thought it was an aftereffect of the general anesthesia. I thought it was odd that it pushed beyond my optic nerve and went through my entire body. I immediately rose to my feet and looked at the nurse who had helped me up.

She wasn’t a nurse. She was clothed in light, extraordinarily beautiful and loving. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I almost cry when I think about it. The light that shone from the center of her was gloriously beautiful. I looked back and down at my body, still lying on the recovery couch under a blanket. Here I was, standing beside a being of light, looking at my body.

Before I reasoned it through, she intercepted my thoughts. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not dead. You’re quite alive. Your heart is still beating. Look!’ I looked. I could see the chambers emptying and filling with blood. I could see the vascular system and the life-sustaining materials working their way through the entire body.

She had a veil of energy at her back, which separated her world from mine. She said, ‘It’s a one-way path. If you go through there, you can’t come back here. Your life will be over, and you won’t have done the things you need to do.’ Brilliant shards of light in all colors danced around the opening. They appeared and disappeared, as if the light energy was being fragmented and shattered at the contact point between two worlds at different energy levels.

She showed me some details about my children [who were not yet born] and revealed a view of another woman even more lovely and desirable—the wife I was married to. She then said it was time to return, that my breathing had stabilized, and that my nervous system was able to work on its own. I saw her light begin to withdraw from me as she retreated from my view. This light persisted for two or three seconds as I awakened, while my wife was holding my face in her hands.

The NDE changed Steve’s life. I felt tremendously ignorant. I started buying books. I filled up notebooks on histories of different nations, on archeology, and on philosophies. I found I could memorize and play a Bach prelude and fugue with only a few hours of preparation, whereas before I had to struggle for weeks to learn a piece of music.

My family found my changed viewpoint unbearable. My ability to see the future, and my tendency to react and answer the private thoughts and intentions of my father’s business associates, rather than their outward, polished manners, was very disturbing to everyone.

I can’t watch TV cop shows. I think it’s obscene to show a killing without remorse. My teenagers and I have a running battle about their TV selections.

I love God more than anything. But I almost can’t go to church. I can’t relate to the shame and guilt in the lessons. The discussions on guilt and sin don’t hold any relevance for me, and don’t make me happy. They don’t fit into any of the experiences I’ve had. I tried opening these subjects gently and cautiously with local church leaders, but they didn’t respond well.”

 

Kenneth Ring and Evelyn Elsaesser Valarino, Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience (Insight Books, 1998; Moment Point Press, 2006), 36-40.

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