Andrew C Probable NDE

Experience Description

Events February 18 – 22, 2018

I will begin with a brief description of who I was before my experience, and how I came to my transformation.

In February 2018 I was not in good shape. To most people around me I might have seemed relatively normal—perhaps jaded and wry, but only my wife really understood how depressed and physically beat up I was for so many years.

I had been working to finish a capstone project of my career for far too long, and not feeling very good about who I was or my future prospects as a designer and construction worker. Not one day went by that I did not contemplate suicide. I was either too cowardly to get there or not satisfied with the details of my exit. I wanted it to be clean.

I never got to find out if I could actually go through with it.

On the evening of February 18th 2018 I wanted to be alone. It was my birthday and I was at the nadir of my personal social distancing.

Some friends of my wife--who I now think of as friends, invited us over for a movie night at their house. I did not want to go. Movie night was becoming a regular thing for these other people, and at the time I was becoming deeply anti-social.

I still am, but I am working on that. It is one thing I learned from my experience.

I ended up getting angry about not wanting to go, and left in my car without a destination. My wife went to the party and I started getting text messages to come join them. I told them to leave me alone and parked in a place where no one would find me. I had a sleeping bag in the car so I slept there in isolation.

When I woke up in the morning the sun was out and the day was beautiful February winter, but something was very wrong with me. I was extremely nauseous and shaking uncontrollably. I had a fever.

My car wouldn’t start. I had drained the battery by listening to the radio overnight. Older cars can play the radio all day long. With the new touch-screens on car radios, they drain the battery. Lesson learned.

I called my wife and she came to get me. I was convulsing so badly that I could barely tell her where I was.

Once home I collapsed to the living room couch with a bucket to vomit in and presumed I had the flu.

If I had the flu, it wasn’t a normal one. For the next several days I basically evacuated my entire digestive system while simultaneously being unable to eat or drink anything, not even ice chips. I had a fever that caused me to lose control of my body temperature. My temperature would drop below normal then spike up to 103+ inside of an hour. I would move between writhing on the couch in feverish sweat, and contracting over the toilet with dry-heaves and diarrhea. No stuffy nose or clogged sinus, no chest congestion.

By February 22nd I was exhausted and very weak. I was dehydrated beyond thirsty, beyond what should allow for life. I wasn’t getting better, and I knew a person cannot reach that level of dehydration without dying. My wife was trying to get me to go to the hospital, but I knew I would end up in ICU and would rather die than create huge medical bills. We have good insurance, but any trip to ICU is a 35k bill, and even with good insurance it is still more money than I wanted to spend to avoid dying.

That evening looked normal around here. My wife and daughter were making dinner when I retreated from the couch to the bathroom for the last time. The contractions wouldn’t stop and after a while I knew that I was about to die.

I crawled outside to the edge of my driveway and my side yard. I didn’t want whatever mess that would be created when my muscles released to happen inside the house or on the pavement. I was very conscious of this fact for some reason and it took all of my energy to move what was becoming my corpse to the spot where my experience took place.

Once there I continued to have contractions from my core until I reached a point of submission.

I thought to myself 'I don’t care if I live or die, I just want this suffering to end'.

In that exact moment everything changed completely and I was no longer suffering.

I realized that I was dead but it didn’t scare me. It was more of a 'ok, so what happens next' kind of thing. It was completely dark and I was immobile. I felt as if I was suspended in a viscous fluid, like a piece of fruit in a jello mold.

In this place there was no sense of time or space at all. I am claustrophobic, but I was oddly calm and accepting of my static condition.

Then there was a reddish light to the blackness and I felt similar to the feeling you have when your bare foot gets stuck in mud and you pull it out. It felt like that, but in every cell of my body. I would describe the feeling as unpleasant, but not painful—more woozy--like pulling a band-aid slowly off a scabbed-over wound.

For just a moment I could see my garage door and then a phantasmagoria formed and I moved into the visual layer that had appeared between the garage door and my corpse or point of perspective.

I did not see my corpse. I was moving directly away from it into the void/portal that had formed in front of me.

Once that happened I was in a space of apparent infinite void. It looked a lot like space does in images, or if you are ever lucky enough to be out in the high desert on a clear new moon night. Vast. Boundless. Black.

In the field of view to my right and far off in the distance was a very bright white light that had the quality of agency even though it did not move while I was there. I could sense that it had agency. I don’t know if I communicated with it. If I did, I don’t know in what way yet—I may know in time, and maybe it’s influence is subtle—parceled yet continuous. Momentary and infinite.

One thing about this experience is that I learn more from it all day, every day.

To my left and close to me in front of me, was an entity that I cannot describe easily. It had an abstract shape that would constantly change. The closest thing I can use to describe it is a combination of three things.

To describe the movement I would say to imagine thin satin fabric in a strong breeze—like how the surface of a flag changes in wind. Constant slightly chaotic fluid waves, and not flapping. Also, it was at least three dimensional. It wasn’t just a surface or image. It could have been a hologram. Other than the colors, this entity could be represented visually with a well-constructed hologram program. Emotively it would be difficult to represent. I am not sure of it’s function, but it has one. Somehow I know that.

The visual physical texture was sponge-like but made from lots of fibers of an unknown translucent, apparently living material.

Also, this entity was psychedelic. The colors are not colors I have ever seen on earth and cannot recreate in Photoshop. Additionally, the colors would shift and change constantly like the skin of a cuttlefish.

I might have been there for eternity. Time was not a thing at all—at least not from the scale my brain can comprehend.

It felt really good to be there. I have never felt that good before or since.

It wasn’t feeling good--like comes from peak experiences in mortal life.

It was the feeling, for lack of better words, of unconditional love.

It changed me completely in an instant.

From my right side a choice was presented to me with a question attached. Who or what presented the choice I did not see. It was a non-verbal communication. It was 'known' to me.

'You can stay here or you can go back—either way the outcome will be the same'

I chose to go back. The question? Why? Why will the outcome be the same and is this a good or a bad thing? I don’t seek any answer to this question. Maybe my work is the answer.

My choice was selfish, but I had no fear of either choice. I felt as if I was communicating with truth.

Some people have said that they returned because they had young children or other people to take care of. I do.

I returned because I knew the physical relics of my life would be difficult for my family to process in my death.

I didn’t want them to be embarrassed for my hoarding disorganization. I had been accidentally selfish for years and could clearly see that truth from this perspective. It would take too much time and energy, physically and emotionally for my family to process the mess of my physical life.

I felt the need to clean it up before I die forever.

Grace came to me.

I instantly found myself curled in a ball on my knees where I last left me. When this happened there was a whisking noise and I was clearly physically transformed back into my corpse.

I stood up in the freezing night air and walked back inside, barefoot and now perfectly healthy albeit the most tired I had ever been in my life. My fever was gone and I was hungry and thirsty.

There is one other time I felt close to such exhaustion, and that was also after an experience that falls under the category of noumena. A story for a different narrative.

The way I can think of my level of exhaustion from the experience that might be relatable for people is how an astronaut who has been in space for a while must feel when they come back to earth—like gravity is extra strong. Like the totality of me, physically and spiritually, weighed double from normal.

In the kitchen I found my wife and daughter who joined me while I made a grilled cheese sandwich and had ¼ of it with a glass of water. I was happy, and in a way I had never felt before. Really feeling honest happiness. Happiness without ego.

I was also just starting to realize that I had just been somewhere else in a very real way.

I went to bed. Several hours later I woke up to the longest fart I have ever passed. I was laughing as it continued for more than a minute or two.

This tube that is my body was completely evacuated at the time I got the signal to exit life. Now the first little bit of food in my new self was moving into the intestines from my stomach. A funny visual.

Beautiful and miraculous.

I was tired for about a month, but my psychology began to change so completely that I wasn’t overly concerned with my physical condition at first. I went back to work, and soon my big project was at the point of significant completion. At that point I more or less retired from construction and began to focus on embracing the potential for my 'second chance' to live as a human.

What has happened since then is the subject of a lot of my blog posts. Most of it is centered in the expansion of creativity and empathy.

Significant since my experience are:

Contentedness.

A change in my tastes for food.

Revulsion to alcohol.

Lack of anxiety.

Lack of ego.

Distanced control of emotions. My emotions now inform my self, not become myself.

Generally better luck and better use/awareness of intuition.

A huge surge and consistency of creativity.

More superstitious (not paranoid), like I am never alone.

On June 14th 2018 just after 9am I felt an emotion I assume was Joy. I have felt it occasionally since then. Before that morning I had only felt it in a very tempered way when watching my daughter learn in real time. Nothing else ever evoked joy.

Now I feel it more frequently and in a strong way.

As the months went by I began to look at all of life in a much more clear way than I ever had before. I felt, and still mostly feel as if I am synchronized with the vibration and intention of consciousness or God or however one wants to look at the fact that we are each part of something infinite, and not separate from each other and the totality of existence.

I don’t feel as connected to it in mortal form as I did wherever it was that my consciousness went, but sometimes I feel close.

I would say that I was absolutely transformed in my moment of submission. Each day since then trickles closer, in my rivulets of presence and intention, to where I was on February 22, 2018. Each day has me focused on the work of what I feel I was allowed to continue to life for. Each day has me focused to some extent, on preparing for mortal death. Little by little.

My existence is as a creative empathetic, and I strayed far from that in pursuit of my ego for most of my adult life.

In what might have been a vision or near-death, I found myself again. I reverted to who I was when I was 8 years old, but without fear and with the wisdom of my past failures.

As I move forward I am focused on using my energy to help and nurture the idea of empathy, and the creativity that channels through me (and I believe this to be true—my creativity is not my own, I am simply a conduit) will be my tool to do so. I am not sure how to thank the source of creativity but I am grateful for my gift and even more grateful to continue to be blessed with it. I am doing my best work ever these days.

In day to day life the experience is present in everything I do. It guides every decision I make in subtle echoes of higher awareness. I am more conscious.

I cannot be sure if what I experienced was a near-death experience. In a spectrum of types of consciousness I have experienced over my life I consider my experience truth.

The spectrum starts with dreams and then moves to at least one vision I have had, then there is mortal life and now, for me, one moment of something I cannot explain but know to be true, and more real than mortal life. Less limited.

One more thing of note that I did not know how to process conceptually in the weeks following my experience, was a strange lack of coordination when using my normally great fine motor skills. I had to focus on things like handling silverware and tying shoes for a while, like my visual cortex wasn’t well connected to my central nervous system and physical machine. I was thinking 'stroke', but I am sure that isn’t what the issue was. I had no other symptoms of a stroke.

My reflexes have also never been faster or more accurate. So much so that other people notice and find it remarkable.

One idea I read about this by accident (I wasn’t trying to find the answer), is that when the soul re-enters the body, it takes a while to 'settle in' to every nook and cranny it had been in before. A good analogy might be if you pulled a sweaty hand from a lined glove and the liner came out with it. Now stuff your fingers back in and try to get the wrinkles out as you go…anyhow, everything is fine now physically.

Background Information:

Gender: Male

Date NDE Occurred: 02 22 2018

NDE Elements:

At the time of your experience, was there an associated life-threatening event? Uncertain Illness Other Not sure. Extreme dehydration/asphyxiation I was the sickest I have ever been.

How do you consider the content of your experience? Entirely pleasant

Did you feel separated from your body? No I lost awareness of my body

How did your highest level of consciousness and alertness during the experience compare to your normal everyday consciousness and alertness? More consciousness and alertness than normal. I was very aware of my life force being different from my body.

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness? When I realized I was dead.

Were your thoughts speeded up? No

Did time seem to speed up or slow down? Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning Time was not relevant.

Were your senses More vivid than usual? More vivid than usual

Please compare your vision during the experience to your everyday vision that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience. It was better. I could see colors and textures that I don't see in mortal reality.

Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience. I don't recall hearing anything except the whisking sound as I was returned to my body.

Did you seem to be aware of things going on elsewhere, as if by ESP? No

Did you pass into or through a tunnel? No

Did you see any beings in your experience? No

Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased (or alive) beings? No

Did you see, or feel surrounded by, a brilliant light? An unusually bright light

Did you see an unearthly light? Yes Two lights. One, in the distance, on the right side of my field of view was a very bright light. The othre light was the constantly changing fibrous, fabric like hyperbolic texture to the left in the foreground. Something like the skin of a transparent cuttlefish.

Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world? A clearly mystical or unearthly realm It was a space of infinite quality without time or truly tangible form.

What emotions did you feel during the experience? Guilt, shame, embarrassment, love.

Did you have a feeling of peace or pleasantness? Incredible peace or pleasantness

Did you have a feeling of joy? Happiness

Did you feel a sense of harmony or unity with the universe? I felt no longer in conflict with nature

Did you suddenly seem to understand everything? No

Did scenes from your past come back to you? No

Did scenes from the future come to you? No

Did you come to a border or point of no return? I came to a definite conscious decision to return to life I was asked by the entity if I would stay or return to my life. I chose my life.

God, Spiritual and Religion:

What was your religion prior to your experience? Unaffiliated- Agnostic

Have your religious practices changed since your experience? Yes I am exploring many ideas that was not interested in before transformation.

What is your religion now? Unaffiliated- Agnostic

Did your experience include features consistent with your earthly beliefs? Content that was both consistent and not consistent with the beliefs you had at the time of your experience I have been a life long agnostic, but studied consciousness as an anthropology major, so I wasn't particularly surprised by any of it.

Did you have a change in your values and beliefs because of your experience? Yes I am certain that there is something that is truth,and it feels as if that is the same thing as love and possibly God. I spend a lot more time thinking about this idea and others of spiritual/philosophical nature. I have always valued honesty as the highest of qualities, but now I feel that I have a much deeper understanding of it's connection to empathy and the totality of consciousness.

Did you seem to encounter a mystical being or presence, or hear an unidentifiable voice? I encountered a definite being, or a voice clearly of mystical or unearthly origin I communicated with an entity. I don't know that I would say I heard a voice.

Did you see deceased or religious spirits? No

Did you encounter or become aware of any beings who previously lived on earth who are described by name in religions (for example: Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, etc.)? No

During your experience, did you gain information about premortal existence? No

During your experience, did you gain information about universal connection or oneness? No

During your experience, did you gain information about the existence of God? No

Concerning our Earthly lives other than Religion:

During your experience, did you gain special knowledge or information about your purpose? No

During your experience, did you gain information about the meaning of life? No

During your experience, did you gain information about an afterlife? An afterlife definitely exists Yes I was asked if I wanted to stay there. I don't know where there was but it isn't this existence in this form.

Did you gain information about how to live our lives? No

During your experience, did you gain information about life's difficulties, challenges and hardships? No

During your experience, did you gain information about love? Yes I felt it. That was new to me. Just knowing it is real is life changing.

What life changes occurred in your life after your experience? Large changes in my life I am happy, and aware of my selfishness--my ego.

Have your relationships changed specifically because of your experience? Yes My relationships with everyone are much better. Communication is more clear, and I find greater empathy while simultaneously remaining a distanced presence in everything I do. I have an entirely different view of love now.

After the NDE:

Was the experience difficult to express in words? Yes Noumena don't have language to be communicated. Once they are phenomena they are metaphors, not truth.

How accurately do you remember the experience in comparison to other life events that occurred around the time of the experience? I remember the experience more accurately than other life events that occurred around the time of the experience. This is the thing I remember best in my life as a whole.

Do you have any psychic, non-ordinary or other special gifts after your experience that you did not have before the experience? Uncertain I am noticing that my luck is better and decisions are easier--usually with a positive result. I am certainly more present.

Are there one or several parts of your experience that are especially meaningful or significant to you? I have been quite surprised about the depth of my spiritual transformation. It feels like it is the right path, but I don't know where it is going, and it makes me question my convictions or general operations a lot, so I guess I am finding out what it means to have 'faith' guiding you. It seems to be working and I am the happiest I have ever been.

In terms of the exact moment of the experience I would say that all of it was the most remarkable thing I have experienced in my life, but my favorite part was feeling love.

Have you ever shared this experience with others? Yes I waited 14 months to begin to explain what I experienced. I did a test run on my old college roommate, his wife and my aunt to see if I could communicate even a fragment of what I experienced. I was about as clumsy as I expected, but I think I got the idea that I may have experienced an extra-terrestrial dimension associated with death. They listened politely and I have not really talked to them about it since.

Next I told another old roommate and his wife and I had about the same reaction.

Then I told my older sister. When I finished my narrative she gasped under her breath saying 'you made a deal with the Devil'.

I was surprised to learn that she believed in the devil as such. She is a practicing Episcopalian by faith.

After her I told my mother. My mother is the Arch Deacon in the Episcopal Church in the state of Vermont. She works with sick and dying people as a large part of her job. I thought she might have some insight for me. She did not, and essentially told me that I must have hallucinated my experience, it is a false memory of no importance and to put it out of my mind.

Nothing to learn here...

Eventually I told my wife and daughter, about 18 months after the experience. My wife, a neuroscience mathematical researcher, is pretty dismissive of the possibility of my experience being a real, not dreamed, experience. She attributes my instantaneous recovery from the illness to be like some circcut breaker of survival tripped and my body chemically cured in that moment I thought I might have transformed.

She may be right.

Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? No

What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened? Experience was probably real I was exhausted in the minutes and hours after I recovered/returned to this realm. I was hungry and mostly focused on that fact. I felt a bit foggy like I was hung over, but not painful and also very lucid in my minds eye. I knew everything was entirely different, but not how much yet.

In the coming weeks my tastes in food comedy and music started to change. I quit drinking alcohol completely with relative ease and have no addictive desire toward it.

June 14, 2018 just after 9 am I felt joy for the first time in my life. I assume it was joy, I had never felt it before.

What do you believe about the reality of your experience now? Experience was definitely real As I have expanded in creativity since my transformation I have began to slowly allow myself to explore the fact that I am not alone in my experience. My worry at first was that by thinking and talking about it I was either cheapening my experience or jinxing the possibility that I would continue to feel good. I was worried that my memory of the experience would become polluted by other information--that holes in my experience could get carelessly plugged by things I heard other people describe.

More than two years later it might as well have happened this morning. I remember it better than some trail work I did this afternoon. While doing the trail work I was simply moving soil and thinking how grateful I am to be alive. That feeling does not fade, and nor does the detail of the experience. Still hyper-real.

The most real thing I have ever experienced. Truth?

At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience? Yes When I was 22 I passed out for a couple of seconds due to a convergence of malnourishment, nicotine, and psilocybin in my body. In that moment I had a vision of the next six months of my life that more or less played out. When I had the vision my 'self' was in a space that I could describe as abstract and infinite, and there was an entity that appeared as a transparent energy field of azure hues, constant movement and hyperbolically shaped--again like ruffled fabric blowing in a breeze. It made a sniffling sound in my presence. This fabric entity may be related to what I saw in the more recent experience. In both cases it was to my left in the foreground of the space I find myself in. The space itself was different in the two experiences. The space when I was 22 was well lit but nondescript, like inside a modernist building but not really having form.

At the time this occurred I had recently met my soul mate, who would be come my wife. That was one part of the vision. The other two parts were becoming a carpenter and buying my first house (at 23--unheard of in 1995).

Is there anything else that you would like to add about your experience? I have written a 7 part series about a week long bicycle trip I took last summer. I use the narrative of the trip to explore how the my life up to the transformation, the experience itself and how I have explored life since have helped me to become a much happier, healthier and less selfish person.

Are there any other questions that we could ask to help you communicate your experience? You did a great job of compiling these questions. I feel as if I learned something by answering them, and that is part of the point too...no? I don't know if any questions about coincidence are helpful. I notice it much more now.