When I woke up I was told they thought I died because I stopped breathing. Biggest emergency that day.
I remember a corkscrew or spiraling light that I was going through.

She was very frail and ill. My sister Sue and I were in the hospital room with her. There was no window near her bed. Sue and I both saw a glowing light on her face and a peaceful smile on her lips. We felt that she was being called away.

Than my father walked into the room and the light was gone. He couldn't let her go. About five years later, he died of a broken leg (weird, I know) and then she could go - about a month after he died.

Both times that I was recovering from hernia operations, my blood pressure dropped dramatically. It happened in post-op each time, but not during the operations.

The first time it happened, about 20 years ago, I was simply told about the severe hypotension. The nurse didn't seem overly concerned, though. I remained very weak long after the nurse said that I should've "recovered by now", and it was hard to keep my head from flopping down as their staff was wheeling me out of the hospital to my parents (who were the transportation).

The second time it happened, about 10 years ago, the nurses in the post-op room mentioned my extreme hypotension and that they were worried about losing me. On that occasion, I felt COMPLETE BLISS before the screams of a nurse finally penetrated my mind. It was like her yelling was barely heard initially, increasing in volume until it reached maximum volume and annoyance for me. I briefly opened my eyes at that point, but quickly closed them again while hoping to return to the wonderful feelings. That's when the yelling nurse continued being loud, tapping my cheeks, and scolding me for "being bad" in regard to closing my eyes. So a return to the bliss was totally impossible. That hospital kept me for "observation" for many hours after I assured them I was fine now, so my poor niece (transportation) finally got me out of there by early evening instead of the morning as she'd anticipated.

I never died, however -- i.e., I never lost brain function. So I attribute the intense feelings of joy to my own brain, but I don't know why my brain reacted to the hypotension that way.

Two of them, in the 1970s. They were two of the most profound experiences I have had in my life.

One of them was a straight out-of-body experience. I had been taking lessons at the School of Metaphysics. I told them I would like to have those kinds of experiences, and they said sure, we can show you how to have them and control them. And whaddaya know, after a few months of lessons, I did have one. But when I realized what was happening, I totally freaked out at the utter weirdness of it, and snapped back into my body immediately. But for just a couple of seconds, I was out of my body -- sort of. It was more like my astral body was superimposed on my physical body, like a double-image on an old black-and-white TV. That imagery illustrates what the sensation was like, and as I said, it ended almost as soon as it began, because of my total freak-out reaction.

The other one involved an orange tabby cat I had at the time. People who live with cats know that some of those critters are really smart. You can tell. I have always lived with cats and this one was I think the smartest one I've ever lived with. He was snoozing lightly and purring beside me on my bed one morning as I was waking up, just at that never-never land of fringe consciousness when you're not exactly asleep and not exactly awake either. I was aware of the cat beside me, though, and suddenly I had the thought, I wonder what it's like to be a cat? And then suddenly, I was finding out. I think what was happening was that my astral body was momentarily touching, or perhaps subsumed within, his. My consciousness was feeling what being a cat feels like. And wow, was it weird. For me to try to describe those sensations would be like trying to describe color to somebody who's been blind from birth, but, well, there were components to that cat's consciousness that you would expect a cat to have. For example, I read somewhere once about cats that the author was claiming that even the tamest domestic house cat is "always stalking the jungle's edge" and that predatory, feral nature was definitely there. Cats have been domesticated more recently than dogs have, and it follows that they are instinctively closer to those wild beginnings.

Both of these profound experiences happened in the early spring of 1977, March or April. They both happened when I was on the periphery of wakefulness, so the obvious objection from the skeptic would be that I was imagining these experiences, or just coming out of a dream. The problem with that objection is that these experiences and the sensations I was experiencing were so completely out of the ken of normal human experience that I cannot believe they were anything other than completely real. Nobody could have possibly imagined or dreamed these sensations. I know they were exactly what they seemed to be, I know this with every fiber of my being, but they were also completely subjective experiences, so that their legitimacy is a proven fact only to the person who had the experiences, which was, of course, me.

-- Ron

being asleep and awake. No one ever believes this stuff until it happens to them (at least in my family). We are all atheists but this doesn't have to do with religion, not to me anyway. I think it is something with physics, energy and who knows what else. But if you ever personally experience these things you KNOW they are 100% real.

"There are things between Heaven and Earth, Horatio,..."

And I mean, exactly.

The only detail I can add is that I freaked out when I felt my astral shoulder pulling away from my body. After I calmed down, I laughed and laughed and laughed, because upon receiving exactly what I had wanted for so long, my own fear aborted the experience. I gave up then on ever trying again (even though I hadn't been 'trying' on that occasion), one, because I now had first-hand experience that it was real--even though I had already believed so--and two, because I accepted that I was my own worst adversary on some things. It was a profound, life-altering experience, to be sure.

For me to try to describe those sensations would be like trying to describe color to somebody who's been blind from birth, but, well, there were components to that cat's consciousness that you would expect a cat to have. For example, I read somewhere once about cats that the author was claiming that even the tamest domestic house cat is "always stalking the jungle's edge" and that predatory, feral nature was definitely there.

This is so interesting!!!

I can appreciate how there are no words to describe much of what you experienced. I have had many experiences myself where I think if I talked or wrote for days I would still not be able to communicate all that I understood from just a very brief part of my experience.

I think that author might have a point about the domestic house cat always stalking the jungle's edge. I live on a property where it's safe to let a cat be indoor/outdoor, and I once had one that went in and out. I noticed that when this cat spent a lot of time outdoors, she would exhibit feral behaviors for a time when she came back indoors. It would take a while to get her to come back around to being a housecat. She had been adopted at 8 weeks with no outdoor time in her young life.

On the other hand, and this is really far out there but then this forum is "creative speculation"... I have communicated with every cat of mine who has crossed over. This is a lot of communication, because it wasn't just my cats, also the cats and dogs of my friends and relatives.

Two, maybe three of the communications, lead me to believe that when cats get on the other side, they are able to communicate at our level of intelligence. (Or better, as you will see from my story which follows about the Photoshop.) In one case I had a cat tell me (right after she crossed over) that she wouldn't be visiting me much because she and I had had many lifetimes together and I knew the score. She said it takes a lot of energy to manifest and I should just understand that.

However, she did manifest to me once after that and it was to express a funny line that I used to say to her. It was so supremely witty that I laughed for days.

In another situation, I used to play around with Photoshop and I would take a pic of my face and my cat's face and put one on top of the other. Then I would put her on my lap and show her my work, pointing out her face and my face. I know that sounds nuts but people do crazy things with their animals. I never dreamed there would be a time when she would later make a reference to this practice, let alone make that reference after died.

After this cat crossed over, she came through in a photograph where she had done an even better Photoshop job than I had. As I looked at the photo, I could see the bottom half of her face was mine and the top was her face. Her "Photoshop" was better than mine because the two faces were melded, where mine was my face and then her face on top of my hair.

I was so stunned when I realized this that I went through every picture I had of myself, wondering where this lower half of my face had come from. I don't take many photographs, so there wasn't much to look for. There was no photo on my computer that had this particular smile in it.

So where did it come from?

Furthermore, in that picture my cat was accompanied by another, larger cat. This cat was about five times the size of my cat and had glowing gold eyes. All this happened years ago, like over a decade ago. I have always wondered about the larger cat. Who was it? Did it help my cat to manifest to me in the photograph?

Interestingly enough, last month or so I was looking at the magazine Fortean Times, and they had a cover story on such a black cat! The cat is described in the article as having glowing, gold eyes.

I can't say that I've ever had any communications from cats from that other realm, but I did have one experience that was kind of like that. I said that those two out-of-body experiences I had in the 1970s were two of the most profound experiences I've ever had, but now I'll tell you about another one, also involving a cat.

I had an orange tabby cat whom I adopted in December 1984 from the Central Missouri Humane Society. They said he was four months old when I adopted him, and I had him for 17 years and four months, which was the longest time of any pet I've ever had. He had cancer in his jaw and the veterinarian got most of it, but she said she couldn't get it all without removing his entire jaw. The cancer will come back, she said, and when the time comes for me to perform a certain melancholy duty, "you will know it," she said.

Well, surprisingly, he lasted a few years after that, but one day, that predicted melancholy time came. It was, coincidentally, IRS income tax day, that's why I remember the exact date, April 15, 2002. I got up that Monday morning and gave him something to eat. Soft food always by then, because I knew trying to eat hard food must have been very painful for the little guy. He chowed down for a couple of minutes and then settled in to one of his perches for a nap.

It was at that moment, when he was settling in, that he looked me right in the eye, and I looked him right in the eye. Who was it who said that the eyes are windows into the soul? At that moment my feline buddy and I were looking into each other's souls, and there was a nonverbal communication that passed between us. I cannot put that communication into words because it was nonverbal, but the realization suddenly hit me, this is that melancholy time the veterinarian told me to look out for. Right now.

I called the veterinary clinic and they asked me how long it would take me to get there. About 30 minutes, I said. We'll be ready, they said. At the office the veterinarian, the same one who had operated on his jaw a few years earlier, said that yes, I picked the right time for this sad, bittersweet event. She told me to pet him and talk to him while the lethal chemicals were doing their thing. "Let your voice be the last thing he hears," she said.

I had been kind of numb emotionally until then, but when she said that, the realization suddenly hit me like the proverbial wall of bricks that I would never see the little guy again, that he would never again jump up into my lap and get in my way while I was trying to work at the computer, that I would never again stand at the front door trying to coax him inside for the night so I could go to bed, that none of those things involving my little feline buddy and me would ever happen again. I'm afraid I lost it then. As I gently stroked the top of his head and tried to talk to him, I couldn't say anything, I could only whimper and sniffle. The veterinarian's assistant handed me a tissue.

About a half hour later, back at my house, something really weird happened. My brother, who was living with me in my house then, was just getting out of the shower. He gave me a questioning look and I answered, "Yes, the cat's dead." He said, "That's funny, I thought I just heard him in my bedroom." And at almost the same moment he said that, I heard it too. You live with an animal for more than 17 years, you know that animal's voice and you can recognize the things that animal says. I swear to God, that was my cat's meow coming from my brother's bedroom. I've often wondered if it could have been some other cat meowing from outside, but no, this was clear and had none of that muffled sound it would have had coming through the wall from outside the house. And I've never heard that sound coming from that bedroom at any other time in the 39 years I've lived in this house, before or since.

I have always believed, that was my little feline guy stopping by here to say goodbye on his way to wherever good cats and dogs go in the afterlife. I always will believe that.

And that day really was one of the most profound and unforgettable experiences of my life.

Who was it who said, if there are no animals in heaven, I don't want to go to heaven, I want to go wherever they go? Might have been Will Rogers, maybe somebody else.

-- Ron

The first one used to go under my bed, open the closet with her nose and nudge the bedroom door open. For about 10 days after she died at our home I heard and felt her presence. My friend who was into metaphysics and loved my dog also felt the vibrations of my dog under her bed too, but her bed was on the floor.

My second baby died a year ago and I saw her about a week after she died, in one of those awake/sleep times. I picked her up and then saw my dad who suddenly died the year before. I have heard her whine, bark, shake her head at different locations in our apt. I love when it happens!!!!! I miss her so much and I have/seen on You Tube many people describe their NDEs and often the people will see their deceased cats and dogs and they will be reunited when they really die.

I'm not kidding. My mom and I almost died giving birth to me.

I went to a rebirthing ritual which is a very deep meditation with a person facilitating it .
I had a profound experience,and remembered my birth.
Asked mom some questions, about my birth and didn't tell her why,said I was just curious. her answers fit what I remembered, exactly. I was blown away.

Bleeding ulcer. Dark, dark black stool. Was pumping dry.

I remember arriving at the hospital but very little else for the next two days.

Surgery, cat scan and lots of blood but I don't remember any of it.

Girlfriend told me.

They operated down the throat, endoscopy, cryo, clips.

Woke up for a few minutes and realized I might be about to die.

Was slightly pissed off about it.

Realized that I had no control about it so stopped worrying.

Worried less than two minutes, maybe less than one.

Thought about not going back to sleep to stay alive. Went back to sleep not knowing if I was going to wake up.

One blessing was that there was no one in the room to give me any advice.

I had an ongoing delusion that had a complicated, developing story line during that time.

One suicide attempt at 17. The second attempt I ended up puking out the pills in time. But the second NDE was in 2019. I had an infection growing on my intestines. It burst and spread into my body. I was an hour away from sepsis and possibly dying from it.

When I was 18. Changed my life.

They appear to be real:

I have read and seen scientists using various methods to copy or imitate what happens when people "say" they have had this experience. The thing is the scientists are certain visions and coming up with excuses as to why this is all science related and people are not experiencing what they think they are while "dead".

This guy is saying the opposite, the experiences are very real and probably really common except that people forget what happened since the drugs doctors give them screws up their memory.

There is a whole international group who studies this and interviews people who have has NDE all over the world. Children, people of various religions and cultures and languages all describe the same thing and this has been going on for a zillion years.

I don't think we will ever know what goes on and why. Scientists are working with limited tools at our current level/dimension. What ever happens is WAY beyond our best scientific knowledge.

They saved her by putting her on ice, or something like that. I don't recall the whole story.
When I asked years later, my brother said she had no recollection of afterlife experiences, but maybe that's because her brain took years before it functioned normally.

We visited her in the hospital about a week afterward, and asked her if we should change channels (she had on some show I know she didn't like). She replied, "Oh hi. How are you?" We'd been there for 1/2 an hour.

When I told my own doctor about her dying and being brought back, he told me that Kaiser would probably interview her to see if she had any experiences with the afterlife. He said they usually do. My brother told me they never did ask her questions about that. But again, she was so far gone for a couple years, they probably didn't bother.

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My dad was a religious man. He was in the hospital for a heart attack. During the time there, he died and they brought him back. He told me the only thing he recalled was falling asleep, and then waking up to tubes being shoved down his nose and throat. He seemed disappointed that he didn't recall an afterlife experience.

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Personally, I've always been able to have out of body experiences when sleeping if I want. They are very interesting, and one thing I've found is that after a night of an out of body experience, I feel like I've slept deeper than ever. Lots of energy.

The NDE videos on You Tube are very convincing and you can tell these people are NOT making it up and most of them wanted to stay in the light and not come back since it was tons better than anything in their lives on Earth. Most hospital and hospice workers have no doubt since they have seen and heard about it throughout their careers.

I had an OBE when I was a kid and no one believed me. I flew around the ceiling while we had a bunch of guests visiting. I have had several experiences with movement, sights and sounds during the time between being awake and asleep. I have had both of my dogs and my dad visit me. My dad did before I knew he had died....the night before I found out. I can't wait to be with them.

Compared to life on Earth, those with NDE say there is no comparison, not even close. I am an atheist but when you experience these types of things first hand, you KNOW they are real. Something happens after you die, I am sure of that. It may be completely meta-physical and beyond our understanding but I think scientists should take this more seriously. It is about time they are taking UFOs seriously now. Maybe NDEs will be next. If Kaiser does this, then I have hope we will be getting closer to accepting this as a reality.

so I'm not sure Kaiser still does it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_for_Near-Death_Studies

Some of the videos I have seen on you tube mention this group.

A code was called and he was taken to another unit. Three weeks later he was back on my unit and the first thing he said to me was, "Oh, you were the one who called for help when I stopped breathing. You looked so scared." And he told me about his experience.

that is pretty hard to deny, especially when they provide so much detail. Scientists don't understand them so they don't accept them as real experiences.

But this man was quite literally purple. He had COPD. His wife ran out of his room calling for help, and I went running in. I realized right away that the phone was on the other side of the bed so I would have to scramble around to call a code blue. So instead I yelled "doctor"! and a whole group of staff came running in. The patient remembered me calling out "doctor".

After the code got started I took his wife down the hall and sat with her. I assumed he was dead. So it was quite a shock when I saw him again. He had been "coded" before and had experienced the NDE before. He said he was no longer afraid to die.

This was in the days before everyone entering the hospital had to sign advanced directives. I don't know if a patient with end stage COPD would get coded now because they wouldn't be expected to live for long. But it was a different era.

A great team of DRs, nurses, therapist and aids help put me back together.

Most NDEs have that along with a lot of other things they see and feel.