AngelicView: This is a profound STE (Spiritually Transformative Event). What is an STE, you ask? Well, it could be an OBE, an NDE, a dream… really any kind of spiritual event that transformed the experiencer’s thoughts or way of life. Sometimes, it’s what they call the experiences that don’t really fit into a category. And many times, they’re my favorite ones.

In this case, the person feels as if he was in a lucid dream (when you’re dreaming and you know you’re dreaming, and so you can control your actions or events in the dream) when he said the words, “I just want to die. I just want to die.” Well, it seems as if the Universe gave him this experience because it seems to go into an NDE-like experience from there.

The experience began as a dream. My dreams have always been vivid and some have been lucid. I had been having lucid dreams before my NDE, though at the time I didn’t know what they were. (It’s also worth mentioning that I had no idea what an NDE was. I had never heard of them and had never heard of the term OBE. I was 11 years old and had grown up with no exposure to these subjects.) 

As to lucid dreams, I simply knew that I could occasionally “wake up” in my dream and do whatever I wanted. This, perhaps, gives me a unique perspective (inasmuch as NDEs are compared to dreams). 

It’s also important to mention that my grandfather had just died (three days before my birthday) and that in the weeks following I often found myself imagining my own death. I was not suicidal, but I recall that I often imagined my death in a childlike way (I guess). 

Here is how my experience begins:

 I remember dreaming that I was on a grassy hillside. The rise of the hill was on my right and descended to my left. I recall that my dream became lucid. I lay down. I remember, clearly, saying that I just wanted to die. I kept repeating it to myself: “I just want to die. I just want to die.” Figures appeared. They surrounding me, looking down at me. They said to me: “No you don’t.” I said: “Yes, I do. I just want to die.” 

At that point, I saw myself looking at one of the town gas stations. I was still dreaming. I saw a circle. I saw a line go through the circle, bisecting it. The instant that the line bisected the circle, everything changed. 

Everything. 

My whole consciousness shifted. I was no longer dreaming. I know that there’s no way that I can convincingly communicate the shift that occurred. No skeptic would have any reason to be convinced by my experience, but that’s not the point I’m writing this. This is simply to share. 

During an ordinary dream, I don’t control the imagery. I don’t know why I “saw” the corner gas station, but I think this sort of unpredictability is normal in dreams. This was *not* an OBE. 

During a *lucid* dream, I know that I’m dreaming and can often control the imagery, but there is still an element of consciousness that is asleep (or fooled). For example, If I see a friend during a lucid dream, I sometimes tell them to remember the dream so we can talk about it the next day. I forget that they aren’t real. 

The shift of consciousness that occurred during my NDE was the same as when one *wakes up*. For a brief instance, I saw myself on the bridge of the USS Enterprise (because I loved Star Trek as a child) and then that surrounding faded away. I felt as though I was in an enclosed sphere, or space, whose walls glowed. I immediately wondered if I had died.  

(I’ve always wondered why I saw the bridge of the Enterprise (and not Jesus), and I think it’s because it symbolically spoke to me in a more immediate and meaningful way than if I had met a figure like Jesus. What did it symbolize? – that I was no longer on Earth.)  

I was fully conscious. I knew that I should be sleeping. I knew that I was no longer dreaming. I thought that I had died. I was surprised that it was so sudden and easy. Most significant of all, I had 360 degree, 3-deminsional vision. This is not something I had ever imagined, heard of or experienced. This, alone, told me that I was experiencing something I had never experienced before.  

I often read that skeptics, and even the accepting, can’t imagine how one can see without a physical apparatus (or how the blind can see). Based on my own direct experience, I can explain how this is possible. My own experience was that I was not “seeing”. I answer others (who have asked me the same question) that the soul doesn’t “see”. The soul, or our consciousness, is in all things and *is* all things. I wasn’t seeing, so much as *being* what it was that I wanted to perceive. If I wanted to look at a pine tree, I wasn’t actually “seeing” the pine tree, I *was* or *became* the pine tree from whatever perspective I chose to “see” it. I could see it as a tree or at the molecular level. Since *I* was also the tree, there was no limitation as concerns my ability to “perceive” or “know” the tree. In fact, this is a better way of putting it. The soul (or the nub of consciousness that we become once we leave our bodies) doesn’t “see” things — we “know” things. If we want to see a pine tree, we “know” it. We don’t see it. Concepts like “near” or “far” are meaningless to the “soul” because we are one with all things and all things are one with us. We see things distant with the same perfect clarity as the things that are nearby because there is no such thing as near or far. We don’t “see” the spectrum of visible light, we “know” the spectrum of visible light because this facet of the universe is no different from any other.  

I could see in all directions at once: front, back, left, right, up and down. Strangest of all is that I could focus in all those directions at once – something that even now I have a hard time imagining. The faint glow that surrounded me faded away and I was in a black void. 

I was momentarily lost, then saw a faint pinprick of light grow steadily “closer” or larger. I was drawn toward it, or it toward me. I had no sense of relative motion. The light was beautiful, white, and just profoundly beautiful. I remember the moment it enveloped me. I experienced pure and unconditional love. I can’t even write this without tears. I won’t be any better at expressing that love than any other NDE’r. I knew, wherever I was, that I never wanted to leave it. I didn’t think in terms of “going back”, only that I didn’t want to leave. 

I was also shown, or made to understand, everything that had ever happened or would happen and it all made perfect, beautiful and flawless sense. Like so many others, I just remember how obvious it all seemed and how perfect. The experience of being in the light is pure jubilation, joy, understanding and love. 

I next found myself standing on a path. There was grass to either side and a small tree ahead of me. The path went around the tree to the right. I couldn’t see what was beyond. There was darkness above, to my left, my right, and ahead of me. I remember feeling lost. At  this point I started walking on the path and calling for my grandfather (who had just died). When I reached the tree (more like a sapling) I felt something push against me. 

At the next moment I was being “sucked” back into my body. I’ll never forget that experience. I describe it as akin to a genie being put back into a bottle. I went from a complete, weightless, oneness with the universe and all else that contained the universe, to the bottle of my body. The experience really *was* like being sucked back into a small enclosure. 

I immediately sat up. I remember this with perfect clarity. I looked out my bedroom window and saw the first, faint, dark purple hint of morning.

~ The experience of being able to focus in all directions at once is not something I can presently imagine. Also, the experience of being encompassed by the light was indescribably powerful.

~ I could “see” in all directions at once and focus on all those directions simultaneously.

~ Bliss. I thought that I must have died. When the Light enveloped me, returning to my “life on earth” couldn’t have been further from my thoughts.

~ The Light didn’t feel as though it had a personality or identity. It simply *was*. It *is*. It is Love and complete knowledge. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. I don’t know how else to describe this *experience* that was the Light.

~ There was no sense of “a God” or “supreme being”, though I jokingly like to say that I “met God”. In reality, I experienced complete oneness. This oneness was four dimensional (in a sense) because I also experienced *Time* as a oneness and not as something that is linear. Time, for lack of a better analogy, was like a block of wood that I could look at, examine and turn around. (AngelicView: Interesting description.) As to God — my experience of Oneness left me with the knowledge that all is God and God is in all things. To speak of “a” God or “a” Supreme Being is to imply a separateness that doesn’t reflect my experience. 

~ The Light’s embrace, that pure inexhaustible experience of Love, was something I immediately understood as the fabric of all existence.

~ I was eleven years old. Nothing in the experience was consistent with anything I knew or had been taught.

~ The NDE has influenced every day of my life since. I love reading NDEs. To me they’re like Postcards from Home. I never tire of them. I’m not religious. I don’t belong to any religion. I’m not even sure I would call myself spiritual. I love life. Life is what it is. If we live life to the fullest, compassionately and with Love, then we are living spiritually.

~  I have had many wonderful dreams since the experience, including communicating with deceased loved ones. I constantly feel guidance during my life. If I ask a question, of a spiritual nature, I always receive an answer. I once asked how we could be both separate and one. I was shown a vision of an infinitely multifaceted diamond with Light inside it. All the tiny points of Light broadcast by the facets of the diamond were our individual souls, separate but also *of* the Light itself.

~ There was no question but that I experienced something real. The experience of consciousness separate from anything I had ever *physically* experienced, the panoramic vision for example, deeply and profoundly affected me. I experienced consciousness outside my physical body and beyond the capabilities of my normal senses. I knew it was real.

~ Since that experience, I have read hundreds of NDE’s. Each NDE is like a postcard from home. I know what these other NDEr’s experienced and I can’t help tear up, sometimes, when I read their testimony. I do wish that I had seen some of the beautiful landscapes described by others; but I think I’ve experienced these landscapes, later, in dreams.

~ I feel less attached to life. I don’t fear death. Life, at all costs, is indescribably less important to me. But the experience also makes me want to enjoy life as a gift and temporary experience, rather than as my only moment of desperate consciousness in a cold and indifferent universe.

~ When I was embraced by the Light, I was shown that everything had happened for a reason and that everything which was *going* to happen would be for a reason. The universe made perfect and beautiful sense.

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