Ekaterina A NDE

Experience Description

When I turned sixteen I got sick with a very rare disease, pheochromocytoma (a kind of tumor). A whole year passed away before the doctors understood what I was sick with and decided to operate me.

On the operating table they put me under anesthetic which took effect quite suddenly. In this moment I was hanging above the operating room, exactly under the big lamps. Although I was at about two meters high, everything seemed to be like in a cathedral and the ceiling was at least six meters high. Soon the main surgeon peeped in the room and said in surprise, 'Ah, the girl is already asleep!' I was watching the liveliness in the operating room. Various doctors, trainees and students were coming to watch because the operation was extremely rare. In my home country one or two persons get sick with this disease yearly and nine from ten people die without diagnosis. So it turned out that I had big luck.

While I was hanging over my body in expectation of the beginning of the operation, I perceived the world quite differently. I felt big relief, pacification and inner peace. I watched the sleeping body below and I knew that it's me, yet actually it's not me. As though my body was a machine, borrowed for a while, with which I'm to do some matters. I was understanding that my personality consists of several parts, one of which I left in this moment (and which represented sex, age, nationality, outward appearance), but I was continuing to inhabit the others. I was feeling no pity toward the stretched on several machines body, neither was I feeling attachment to it, as though it was a worn and taken off article of clothing.

All the time while I was watching the operating room, I was feeling the emotions of individual people as well as the emotions which overwhelmed everyone.

Soon the operating team of three surgeons gathered together. The main surgeon was an elderly professor at the age of sixty-seven at that time, who had done such an operation in his youth. Among all others there was no one with experience in my rare disease.

The moment before they started, all participants and observers were affected by the great tension and expectation, admixed with excitement and fear. For several seconds everybody was silent and doing nothing. After that the main surgeon made an incision of the skin. The tumor was located in the left adrenal gland and my body was turned on its right side and tied together. I was watching the gradual cutting of the tissues, more and more deeply, until the moment in which the adrenal gland was not exposed. The tension grew up incredibly, for a while the professor was observing the gland and was not touching it. Nobody knew what could happen, they were expecting the touch to release a big amount of hormones. In principle the gland is small and on it could be seen a little excrescence. It was supposed that this was the tumor and the initial intention of the doctors was to cut it. Later it turned out that the whole core of the gland was transformed into tumor, which had torn the wrapper of the gland a little bit and came out on the surface. Finally the professor decided to cut and I felt the great tension of the many people in the operating room.

In the moment, in which the scalpel touched the gland, the fears of all were justified. That very instant, continued one millisecond, stretched, as though the time slowed suddenly. Simultaneously many things happened. I felt the wave of panic, which swept away everyone. At the same moment a high shriek was heard from the device that was measuring the heart rate. I felt the impulse of the beginning of a with-the-speed-of-lightening movement, energy, with which everyone from the operating team rushed to do something. Time stretched so much that it looked as a picture, in which the people, intertwined hands, were handing one another various things and were trying to do something. In this moment I felt a powerful suction from my back (the place where the lamps were), so powerful that I couldn't resist it, although I tried to. In the same moment in which I was sucked, the time set out at full speed, as though it wanted to make it up and the chaos and panic below, as well as the screams, were indescribable, but this also continued for less than a second. In the next moment I was floating at full speed through an absolutely dark tunnel, in which there were some gleams, and way ahead in the tunnel a yellow dot was shining. The dot came quickly near and the tunnel threw me away, in the same way a man falls from the edge of a water slide in the pool, in some strange place. It was empty, the feeling of above, below and sideways was relative, there was no floor, but I was not flying. The air was shining in milk-yellow, something similar of the densest fog, in which you've ever got into, lit up from yellow fog lights, but one could see through it.

Instantly in front of me appeared five shining in yellow human figures. One of them was the main. I felt it was a woman, but I didn't know any of them. I wanted to look at her face features, but the more I stared, the more I couldn't see anything. When I gave up, I felt the features of her face, in the same way when you try to see something with your peripheral vision. The group was radiating a warm welcome and we were communicating with thoughts. They took me to a strange place in the middle of the yellow fog, three perfect spheres were situated in a way that they were forming equilateral triangle, and in the middle of it there was one more sphere, but bigger than the other three. I asked what that was and I didn't receive an answer, but I felt a change. At the beginning I couldn't understand what kind of change it was, but I noticed how the yellow fog was gradually darkening. I felt I was moving. The yellow became dark blue, then black and I saw the stars. It was so - wide! I understood that if I turned I would see the Earth. I turned and I was stunned by the delightful sight. The Earth was wonderful and so near. I felt she was alive, as though the planet itself is a being. As I admired for a while, I looked around and I noticed hundreds of small objects, which were spinning around it. They were in general two types. The first ones were ugly, mean, distorted, assembled from infinite number of parts and they appeared ridiculous and antediluvian. The second type appeared shining, cast from the finest materials and were inhabited. Around and in them there were living beings. The beings were at least three or four types. In close proximity to me there was a device with beings, two and half to three meters high, who were watching me.

I asked them, 'Who are you?' They replied, 'Your friends.' I asked them, 'What are you doing?' At that moment something happened and instead, to reply, they pointed to the Earth, which was on my left side. I turned towards it and I saw a blue ray of light, similar to laser, which was traveling through the cosmos. It was strange that it had a beginning and an end, like a train, and not as a ray of light, whose beginning and end cannot be seen. The ray reached the Earth, went through it and continued through the cosmos. The Earth began to glow in a wonderful blue halo. I felt that a grand significant event has happened, which is good. I felt a big liveliness on Earth, like an awakened beehive. I felt the spiritedness, happiness, pacification and enthusiasm simultaneously, which were gushing out of the beings on Earth. In this moment I felt how the gravity pulled me back to Earth. I managed only to wave the high beings goodbye and they returned with a smile (the feeling of a smile is more accurate). I flew towards the Earth and it was a little bit strange and quite exciting, and in a moment, while I was traveling at very high speed, I found myself in the yellow fog, without falling and landing. Generally the space in that place was quite relative and the feeling of time was obscure.

The group was staying aside and I was watching how two boys at the age of seven and fourteen were welcoming me. The boys took me to another strange place, a natural picture, which was like a model in the yellow fog, but when you enter the model, everything is quite true and real. I found myself in the middle of a hilly area by the side of a moderately big lake. It was early autumn. We sat down on the shore of the lake and were watching nature. The leaves of the trees became yellow, then fell off, it rained, turned foggy. This continued for a long time. The rain stopped and it snowed. The lake froze. It snowed for a very long time. Then the snowfall stopped and for years and years everything was frozen. It was an extremely long winter. Finally drops and brooks ran, and the lake deafeningly started to crackle while the ice was melting. I wondered very much because I've never heard such a crackle in my life. The spring came, everything bloomed, then came the sweltering summer with many insects and it became again an early autumn. Until now, I don't understand the meaning of this yearly cycle of the seasons. Then the kids pointed a way at the right side of the lake, which was passing under a hill, and on the way a very tall person was walking, a real giant, slightly stooping and about 1.80 meters high. (Probably it sounds funny, but this is how I perceived him.) The man was between forty to forty-five years old and was leading a horse with a cart. He was returning from a two or three day journey to a neighboring city, where he went to sell something. He was walking thoughtfully and despondently and he was watching his legs. It grew dark.

Suddenly, as though I was this man, I was watching the world through his eyes. He had a small woman and eight kids, and the last kid was newborn. He was a poor peasant, who hardly supported his family, but among all peasants he was considered to be in the middle class. His native language was German, but he also spoke French well. He was living outside of the city and cultivated the earth. I understood all of this when I started watching through his eyes. He went round the hill and in front of him a vast plane revealed itself, in the middle of which was an ugly, gray, depressive city, from our point of view, small. The historical time was the Middle Ages. He reached the city and entered. The picture that I saw from his eyes was so startling, that it can't be seen even in the most bravely staged and realistic Hollywood movie about the Middle Ages. The streets were two meters narrow. They were covered with a half meter of mud and animal and human excrements. An old woman looking like a witch, without teeth, ugly, dirty and nasty, jammed into my face something disgusting, that she was trying to sell me. On one of the crossings, about 1.5 meters wide, there were staying dirty kids without pairs of pants and they were looking wide-eyed at me, they seemed to be mental defective. I was making my way through the crowd until I reached the center of the city. On the square were gathered all the citizens. They were staying behind a cordon of soldiers, dressed in funny chain-armors and armed with swords. The tallest people were about 1.60 meters high. In the middle of the square four gallows were erected. The people who were about to be hanged had ropes around their necks. In this moment, the man, through which eyes I was looking, saw that on the gallows was staying his own fourteen year old son (one of the kids that was accompanying me). In this moment they were hanged. The man (I) left the reins of the horse, roared and rushed off to the gallows. One of the knights intercepted him and pierced him right in the heart. The man fell down on the earth and died and then I started to watch the events as an invisible among the crowd.

As the crowd saw all that, it went mad, tore the cordon and a terrible slaughter fell. In the crowd was the wife of the killed and the mother of the hanged boy, together with one of her kids, who was seven years old, but looked like a three or four year old. The crowd took the kid off his mother and then one of the soldiers in armor saw him and without a reason he took out his sword and cut off the head of the kid. This was the other kid who was accompanying me. Suddenly I found myself on the shore of the lake, I was in shock, my consciousness was twisted, I was catching glimpses from what I just saw, I was crying and shivering (although I hadn't a physical body, this is how I felt it). The kids were soothing me for a very long time, until I came to my senses. When I regained consciousness, they got me out of the model and I found myself in the yellow fog. The group was there and was waiting for me.

Then suddenly it grew dark, as though somebody turned off the light of the fog. I became very frightened, but I became more frightened when I saw that the people in my group panicked. I panicked also. I started shouting, 'What is going on? What is going on?' The others were only looking at me horrified. I felt that in that very moment something bad will happen to me that my destiny was to be determined. Nobody answered me, everyone was staying horrified. Then I heard a voice from far away, very far away, 'Calm down! Everything will be fine, everything is alright!' I listened to the voice and I calmed down a little bit. After a while it became bright again and I saw how the group recovered its breath with a huge relief. (Later when I told this to my parents, my mother started crying and said that during the whole operation she was speaking inwardly to me the same words). Then the kids took me aside and we had a serious conversation about the things that were coming in my life, and they warned me that I will forget what we were talking about. It was a long conversation and when it was over we said goodbye to each other and I was on the operating table. I felt how they were sewing me, but I couldn't say anything, not even move or show that I am awake and it hurts. In front of my eyes the kids were waving from far away in the yellow fog and were repeating that soon we will meet again.

Today I know that one of the tasks that we were discussing at that time and I had forgotten, is now completed. It is a personal one and that's why I won't tell it. I know also that in that day I had to die and I shouldn't return to Earth again. But beings with high spiritual power redeemed me, but only this, in that day I had to go in a dark and unpleasant place for a long time, you can call it hell, if you like. It didn't matter that I was still a kid, the bad deeds, which I had done before, had to lead me in a place, where I can redeem them, before I go back again to the Earth and to have the opportunity to live as a human being, but with a heavy destiny. Now I know for which deeds was determined this retribution, but this is another long story.

After this experience of the physical death I woke up instantly as a new person.

With time, I changed a lot and today I have different understanding about the world and about that which I have and don't have to do. I realized that I have a big need for spiritual growth and enlightenment, and this was the only way and goal, and that without that, life does not have a meaning and is a wasted time. After the operation I had the ability to look forward in time as well as backward and I remembered many past lives. To my regret, I was left very disappointed from my low consciousness in the past. I also realized that the extra-sensory perceptions are a normal thing for every human, but they should not be used because they limit the soul to the low levels of the spiritual worlds. To all who have read to here I want to say: to die is not something special, much more special and important is to live and beside consciousness of the role and purpose of your life. The last thing that I want to say is that I don't doubt in the existence of God as a wise power and his essence is entirely love, compassion and forgiveness. He never refuses anything which is asked for, but most he gives to those, who want to get near him.

Background Information:

Gender: Female

NDE Elements:

At the time of your experience, was there an associated life-threatening event? Yes Illness. Surgery-related Clinical death (cessation of breathing or heart function or brain function) Very risky surgical procedure.

How do you consider the content of your experience? Mixed

The experience included: Out of body experience

Did you feel separated from your body? Yes I clearly left my body and existed outside it

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

Were your thoughts speeded up? Faster than usual

Did time seem to speed up or slow down? Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning

Were your senses more vivid than usual? Incredibly more vivid

Did you seem to be aware of things going on elsewhere? Yes, and the facts have been checked out

Did you pass into or through a tunnel? Yes

The experience included: Presence of deceased persons

Did you see any beings in your experience? I actually saw them

Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased (or alive) beings? Yes

The experience included: Light

Did you see, or feel surrounded by, a brilliant light? A light clearly of mystical or other-worldly origin

Did you see an unearthly light? Yes

The experience included: A landscape or city

Did you seem to enter some other, unearthly world? A clearly mystical or unearthly realm

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 united or one with the world

Did you suddenly seem to understand everything? Everything about the universe

The experience included: Life review

Did scenes from your past come back to you? My past flashed before me, out of my control

The experience included: Vision of the future

Did scenes from the future come to you? Scenes from the world's future

Did you come to a border or point of no return? I came to a barrier that I was not permitted to cross; or was sent back against my will

God, Spiritual and Religion:

What was your religion prior to your experience? Liberal

Have your religious practices changed since your experience? Uncertain

What is your religion now? Liberal

Did you have a change in your values and beliefs because of your experience? Uncertain

The experience included: Presence of unearthly beings

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

Did you see deceased or religious spirits? I actually saw them

Concerning our Earthly lives other than Religion:

During your experience, did you gain special knowledge or information about your purpose? Uncertain

Have your relationships changed specifically because of your experience? Yes

After the NDE:

Was the experience difficult to express in words? Yes

Do you have any psychic, non-ordinary or other special gifts after your experience that you did not have before the experience? Uncertain

Have you ever shared this experience with others? Yes

Did you have any knowledge of near death experience (NDE) prior to your experience? Uncertain

What did you believe about the reality of your experience shortly (days to weeks) after it happened? Experience was definitely real

What do you believe about the reality of your experience now? Experience was definitely real

At any time in your life, has anything ever reproduced any part of the experience? No