Rhonda M STE

Experience Description

I had been caring for my terminally ill mother prior to her death. After her passing, I was exhausted physically and mentally. I was also still trying to hold onto my job, cope with the loss of my mom, and the lack of help from my family. I believed I was coming down with something viral and had laid down on top of my bed to rest for a little bit. This was on a Friday afternoon, 4 days after mom died and a day after burying her. I woke up Monday morning after I had this experience, thinking it was still Friday. It seemed to have lasted just a moment in time, but I had been "out" three nights and two days.

At the time, I had worked in aerospace electronics and had held a high security clearance for 10 years. I did not use recreational substances and was not taking on any medications. I was not a religious person and even rejected it based on the intense religious fighting within my family. I considered myself open-minded but was rather conservative in political and social views. My mom rejected the cleric that was sent in to comfort her in her last moments. She prefered to keep her faith private, in the Lutheran tradition. She had been punished and scorned as an ethnic German by Hebrew Americans after she emigrated to America after WW2 as a reluctant war bride. She became a naturalized citizen in 1950. Her contempt for religious zeal had been passed to me and my brothers, but I alone had refused to take sides of one belief over another. Of my three brothers, one had become a reborn Christian zealot, one was agnostic, one was Jewish, as was the man my mother had been forced to marry. No one in my family (except my mom) made an effort to be religiously observant, or attempted to follow a covenant unless it was for personal gain or prestige, i.e., getting Sundays off work, or using faith to gain proximity to power by affinity.

My mom had hints of clairvoyant ability. We could wordlessly 'communicate' from a distance. One witnessed example of this was about 9 years prior, when my mom had taken a trip by bus from Scottsdale to Laughlin, Nevada. I had gone to sleep at a friend's house. Usually my mom got home about 7-8 at night. This was in the days without cell phones. She wouldn't have known where to call anyway since I was not home. I woke up at 1am from a dead-sleep and knew something was wrong with my mom. I had an irresistible, intensely focused urge to get in the car and find her. I woke up knowing she was not home. I called her house anyways and she didn't answer. I was so rattled that I woke up my friend and asked her to come with me. We drove into Scottsdale from Tempe. I did not know what place her bus picked her up from, or left from, or what line it was, but drove directly to the Safari Inn on Scottsdale Road in Old Town. I was drawn to this location despite never having been there before. I saw a big tour bus in front with people lingering around. I knew my mom was inside. I parked and ran inside. Sure enough, my mom was in the lobby with about 25-30 other people who had just been driven back from the middle of the Arizona desert where the bus had been broken down for hours. She saw me and smiled. She didn't ask me how I knew, or why I was there at 1:30am. She shrugged and mentioned how she wanted to get her wig off because it had been so hot in the bus after it broke down on the highway. She said that she was probably going to be more careful of which company she went with next time. She told me to go on and go back to wherever I came from. I asked if she was sure she was ok, because my feeling of trouble had not yet been shaken off. She said Yes, her car was outside and they were waiting for bags. Then she shooed me off again. I went back to Tempe with my friend, who witnessed it all, and said it was unbelievable. I asked my mom days after about that because my friend thought it was so weird. I didn't know that other people didn't have that connection. Mom and I had that all our lives, although physically and emotionally, we were not otherwise very close.

Getting back to the Friday afternoon after her burial, I had laid down to rest. Although not usually accustomed to naps, I was compelled to do so out of sheer exhaustion and probably sleep deprivation. I reiterate, I was not a religious person. What I experienced, and what I remembered when I awoke, was not rationalized through a religious filter. I was not in great grief over the loss of my mom, and considered her passing as relief of her physical pain from 6 months of fighting blood cancer. I was not in the habit of prayer. I believed that once you die, you are dead; no ghosts, no spooky stuff, no devil, God, Jesus, Buddha or any other entity was in my thinking. If anything, I had considered the physical properties of materials and considered that great emotional suffering could create energies that leave an imprint. Sensitive individuals might interpret the impring as ghosts or an unearthly presence when it may well have been a physics phenomenon not yet completely understood.

I recall being compelled to sleep, and lying down "just for a moment." I saw myself on the bed as I was looking down from the ceiling. This was not as in a dream, but as an awareness as if I was awake and looking down. I had the sensatation of floating, like going fast over a hilly road in a car and are weightless for a moment. But this feeling was a sustained sensation. Looking down, I thought I needed to change my clothes. I wondered where my three cats were, as they usually hung out wherever I was, especially in the bed. Then "things" didn't matter anymore. It was like being up there, maybe like 15 feet above my bed. Suddenly the needs are realities of the world dropped away.

Instantly, I was rising up through an endless dark void. As I rose up, it was like being in a rocket ship. The higher up I went, concerns such as fashion, friends, job, money, and all the important things I cared about in life were stripped away. Actually, they fell away like shells from around my consciousness until there was only my awareness. I had no artifice of identity, ego, or any earthly concerns. I was not having any form of experience or sensation that would have connected me in this 'self' to the one in the physical one back in the bed. This was the foremost life-altering experience, as this was a realization that all I have on earth stays here and means nothing. I am energy and part of a collective. I am a dispersed being. Although I am an individual, I am also connected in this other place - which is everyplace - but not in the physical world. After that "de-shelling" of my consciousness (or thoughts, or reality, whatever you want to call it). I found myself in darkness. I was not afraid, and I was not alone. It was not complete darkness, as we detect with our eyes. This was a place that our bodily senses don't work in, because I was no longer in our physical world on Earth. I had no body; just a sense of being, and absolute peace and harmony.

I was not happy, sad, scared, or awed. I felt an absence of emotion and sensation, and an awareness of others who were present. I had instant knowledge that I was there, that I was like them, and they were there like me. It was like I was one tablespoon of sea water and poured into the sea. I knew I was and individual, but now I was a part of the whole. Sounds crazy - but that's the feeling. In this void, I would describe it as shades of black. I had the fuzzy awareness of the top third of the hooded, robed beings with two-thirds in blackness all around like space. There were no words, just instant awareness. There was a 'main' being without gender it seemed. I got the awareness that they did not want me to be afraid, and that I saw them like this so I would not be afraid. I let them know I was not afraid. They 'told' me that they knew me and two of the beings were relatives of mine who had gone back to this place before I had been born. I don't remember who they said they were and didn't feel like I knew them, but perhaps that I knew OF them from my physical body's experience. One was there to watch over me in the physical world, like a protective entity. I felt a loving sensation, or a deep affinity, which was beautiful without all the earthly feelings that had been 'shelled' on the way there. I was told there was a 'newer' person there, like a baby that hadn't been born into my physical family. There was also a being there who was not connected to me, or the other beings who knew me, or connected to my physical being. The main being said that "one" (there was no word to describe one from another) was learning and I felt that being's energy as weaker than the others. My mom, and others in my family who died were not there.

I "asked" if I was dead. I understood that I was not dead. I was there because I had the sincere desire to know of the things of the physical place and the things not in the physical place. Here, I was everywhere, which makes no sense in the physical place of earth but makes perfect sense when you are there. I was becoming aware of knowledge I used to know from before my physical body, and that I had been there and back lots of times, as they all do in that place. I understood that only two things mattered in the physical place. Love and knowledge had to be experienced in the physical world because there was no way to have sensation in that place. We go to the physical world and suffer for the benefit of love and knowledge, while the rest is irrelevant. We are all connected. It is best to be kind in the physical place because most suffering gets in the way of understanding love and knowledge. But suffering and pain are also necessary, as we grow through different physical forms here. At first, we don't get to choose. Then as our energy becomes stronger, we can choose where we go here as we are born.

The main being said I learned enough about knowledge, now I was to go back and learn about love. The information about 'love' is not what we think of here in the physical world. Love is not sexual or possessive, but spiritual. Love is more like endless compassion, without judgment. I was to go back and learn about love. I was not alone; they were with me and guiding me and I would know I had the capability to communicate through this "tone of thought" that we were presently communicating with.

I understood there was no "god," but the energy of us all in that place that some call God. This energy is within us, even in this physical world. But once we are in the physical world, we cannot easily remember, or acknowledge, and struggle with learning love through religion. I understood this in the physical place was the acknowledgement, but I needed to know love. I felt like I was "remembering' more about this place and wanted to stay there. I was drawn to the closeness and affinity that I could not feel in this physical place. I wanted to stay but the others urged me to go back, like they were happy for me to go and do more here. It was like you wishing someone well and to enjoy a vacation here in the physical place. There were other things, or knowledge that were exchanged, but I can't recall them, except for thinking they have no relevance in the physical place.

Then I was over my bed. I saw my cats next to me and I woke up. I was much in the position as I saw myself from above, and bewildered for having such a bizarre dream.

It was such a real and disturbing experience, that it changed my perspective on relationships, love, sex, etc. I no longer judge people or think of good and evil the same way. I came back from this 'dream' knowing that lesser evolved beings from the other place have less control and are more impulsive, wanting to get to this physical place because they become more powerful through being here. Earth is where we grow energy.

I thought this was a long dream and was surprised to find I was asleep for a couple days. I thought if it was real, and I was "up there meeting god" my mom would have been there. But she wasn't. I didn't see any dead people I knew in life. They moved on. I think when you run into someone and you think you know them, but have never met, this might be the case. Our physical beings here can't understand what happens there, but there is residual awareness, different for all due to development of the energy and the physical abilities of the body.

I now consider it a true experience but have not spoken about my experience because my scientist friends and academics would think I was nuts, and my religious friends would burn me as a heretic. I understand them both and accept they are struggling to understand a physical world mainly for things that do not matter. This place is like an amusement park to experience things we can't in the other place. The price of admission is birth and death, and the ride is unpredictable. There is very little that can affect this physical world from the other side, but very powerful, older beings can do so. But most of us are here for the purpose to grow our energy through this physical experience.

I went from not believing it was real to understanding and comprehending (and having a life-changing epiphany as a result) because I had an urge to go out and buy books at a library sale. This was about 10 years ago. I found several books that looked interesting and purchased them for a few dollars. I only read only one book and only up to one page in the book. The book was called "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot. It said, "We are where for two things, love and knowledge." I could not read on as I dropped the book into a box and tossed the box. I was in a state of interchangeable panic, fear, disbelief, and denial. How could that coincidence be? Could someone else besides me have such an exactly worded experience of truth? How did they know? Where they from the other place and did they remember?

I take it now that the experience I had was real, and I am not the only one who knows we came from and go to another place. I have thought about getting another copy of the book and reading it again all the way through.

I now live my life as compassionately as I can. I struggle with the sensations and feelings of this physical body that work against love in its compassionate form. I do the best I can, day by day. I fear life more than death, but try to navigate through loving my fellow humans. I find I am amused by the trappings of excess I see in my fellow human beings. Money really can't buy love, but being here and going through that lesson time and again is part of why we are here. The physical world is not controlled by those in the other place, but by the beings here. We will never have perfection here, or there. We will have more energy or less energy as we are building, ebbing and eventually being renewed into different forms of energy. And that's my story.

Background Information:

Date NDE Occurred: April 5, 1992

NDE Elements:

At the time of your experience, was there an associated life-threatening event? Uncertain physical and emotional exhaustion due to recent care of terminally ill mother I had been caring for my terminally ill mother prior to her death. After her passing, I was exhausted physically and mentally, still trying to hold onto my job, and cope with the loss of my mom and the lack of help from my family. I believed I was coming down with something viral and had laid down fully clothed on top of my bed to rest on a Friday afternoon, 4 days after mom died. I woke up Monday morning after I had this experience. It seemed to have lasted just a moment in time.

How do you consider the content of your experience? Stay about the same

Did you feel separated from your body? Yes non-physical entity, no physical shape or sensation after leaving the physical place. A being of energy, not even like human or humanoid, like those I saw (a form that was easy for my consciousness, still attached to my physical existence, but in the other non-physical place, to accept). A bunch of energy that was intelligent, but not possible in this physical world we exist in.

At what time during the experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness? My physical body was asleep, by the looks of it when I was over it. And I "awoke" a few days later.

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

Please compare your hearing during the experience to your everyday hearing that you had immediately prior to the time of the experience. No. sounds are in this world, because we have ears that can sense it. In that place there is No body and No senses like we have here. it is 'tone' of understanding - transfer of energy and instant understanding and knowledge - impossible to fully describe in comprehensible terms here. We lack the language.

Did you encounter or become aware of any deceased (or alive) beings? Yes There was one main being, a couple other that knew me, I didn't know (or remember them), young being that had not been born into my family and an observer being who was there to learn. It was a dark place (No physical body, no physical senses) if one wants to compare it to vision, but they seemed as hooded beings of energy. That presence was so that I could understand it with my partly-earth-tethered- consciousness. Communication was simply awareness and tones of thought and understanding.

Did you see an unearthly light? No

What emotions did you feel during the experience? peace, harmony, an absence of emotion - some residual fear, but most was stripped away during the accent there to that other place

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

God, Spiritual and Religion:

Have your religious practices changed since your experience? I know I am not alone; I know this body and being there in the physical place is temporary, that religion is the (collective)physical body's way to understand what our energy already knows, but these bodies cannot comprehend with our biological senses. Things here do not matter, pain is to be expected, and only growing our energy in kindness and compassion helps us in the next place. I believe the many deities in the world are humankind's attempt to describe the beings in the other place throughout time and development of our physical species.

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

Concerning our Earthly lives other than Religion:

What life changes occurred in your life after your experience? I don't have contempt for religion, I realize people are trying to understand the other place, and what this body doesn't allow them to remember. But it's all about love and knowledge.

After the NDE:

Was the experience difficult to express in words? Uncertain The exchange of information, or awareness exchanged has No equal verbiage in our place here. like a fish in a fishbowl who has never walked, how could it relate the experience if it was suddenly able to drive a car?

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? Uncertain

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