When I had my experience... I was a true atheist... true atheist.
I didn't believe in any kind of religion. I didn't believe in anything. I thought this was all foo-foo.
I am an engineer. I was up on a bucket truck, we were running some electrical lines.
We were running late. We started to kind of try to hurry up. We decided, I'm gonna stay up on the bucket.
We're not gonna go up and down, and you just be careful with the trees and navigate delicately.
The guy that was with me, my partner, was more worried about electrocuting me...
...up on top, so he was more worried about looking up and he just kind of bumped into a tree.
I hit the bucket and I broke all my ribs... on my right side. I was sent to an emergency room, of course.
There was some issues with my ribs they weren't healing properly.
I was sitting in an emergency room waiting, and I know the nurse said, "Here, if you need anything push this button."
And I sat on that bed and I was really struggling to breathe at one point.
I thought about pushing the button, but because I grew up in the South Bronx, and we're supposed to be these tough men.
I said, "No, I could... I could manage this. I could get through this. I always do." I waited about 45 minutes
and when I finally pushed the button... uh the nurse came in and she just looked at me
and she just hit the cold blue.
That was the beginning of my experience of dying.
And I had uh... a series of emotions, because I... I.. was suffocating, so it was kind of slow.
I'll tell you what my first emotion was, when everybody ran into the room my first emotion was shame.
To strip me down so quickly that I just felt shame. After I had that sense of shame I started to feel...
you know, "What if this is real? What if something's really happening here?" and...
"What's going to go up... What's going to happen to my family?"
Because I... never expected anything like this.
So you're totally unprepared, and I'm thinking, "How are they going to manage?"
And that created a tremendous lump.
I started thinking... about God. "You know what, if you get me through this event... I will change."
"I'll change my way being I'll be a better person. You won't regret it," kind of thing.
I'm waiting... nothing happens, and then I felt this sense of anger. Like, "I knew he wasn't real."
And then... I got this tremendous sense of fear.
And... because I thought, when I die there's nowhere for me to go, I didn't believe in anything.
That I would just be shut off like a light bulb, and just turn into nothingness.
So I became very fearful, and I wanted so badly to ask somebody to hold my hand.
And then I started thinking, "Well, I can't ask for help because my father would be ashamed of me."
Because I'm supposed to be tough. I gotta tough this out. So I stiffened.
And...
I waited...
for death.
I started to hear the IV, and it sounded like raindrops hitting on a tin roof.
So it was like, splash splash splash. I looked at the wallpaper, and I'll never forget this because...
my eyes were so acute that I could see the grain...
in the wallpaper, and there's this sense of wonder happening within me at the same time as I know
I'm dying and I'm scared. Terrified might be a better word. And then I noticed this shadow
by the door, and it just stood there. And then I started thinking, "You know what? I've had such
a hard and difficult life... maybe it's okay to kind of let go. Maybe there's no shame in this.
I'm not quitting. I'm not giving up. I'm just realizing that there's nothing I could do to...
to stem this chain of events," right? I can't stop it. I kind of said, "It's okay... it's okay to die."
And the minute I said that, or thought that.
This shadow just moved.
And it just moved around everybody in that room.
and... in my mind I could see its hand reaching out to me, and it just touched my toe.
and the minute it touched my toe, I just felt this tremendous sense of relief.
and relaxation, and peace, and love, and calm. And I wasn't struggling to breathe anymore.
I was... in bliss, and I felt this breeze...
This really warm breeze, just blowing.
And... I visualized, because...
I got long hair. I'm thinking, "Wow my hair must be blowing in the breeze. This is kind of like... amazing!"
And then I felt myself kind of being lifted. Lifted until I found myself in the corner of the room.
And I was observing the effort by the CPR team, the group that was there trying to save my life.
And I looked at them, and I could see there was a doctor right over me just
pumping, pumping, pumping. And I could see there was a lot of stress in her face.
And uh... I looked at myself... and I said, "That's me, and I'm dead."
"But if that's me, then who am I?"
This is the first thoughts that came to me, incredibly enough.
And then I just heard this voice... right next to me say...
"Think of your body as a car... and that car has like five million miles on it and there's...
nothing we could do to fix it anymore. So... you... know, you have to now say goodbye to your body."
And I thought, "Wow... I just kind of said it was okay to die now I'm standing here." Because I feel like
I'm standing there right? I don't know what I look like. I don't know what form I'm in, but I know I'm...
I'm in some form of existence, and I look at myself and... something very strange happened.
For the first time... in my life... I loved and appreciated who I was... and who I've been.
And I was so grateful for that body, that vessel, for giving me the opportunity to live the life that I lived.
And I think that's something we rarely do.
Take that one second to say, "I'm not flawed."
"I'm the way I'm supposed to be", because we look... we're always looking for what's wrong with us.
We never really appreciate what we have that's good about us. And... I started to get these memories...
Of what I call everyday benign things. So somebody smiling, my little brother... me holding his hand.
A kiss. Simple things you know... a child looking at you this amazing love in their eyes, your children.
Because those are things that happen every day. Just taking in a breath of air, how insane and
how amazing that is, right?
So... I had this insane appreciation for who I had been, and who I was.
And then the voice said to me, "Okay now it's time for us to move on." And we started walking.
Now I never saw this presence, so I don't know what it was... it felt... feminine.
And then... I could see this huge hole in the ground, like a big black hole.
And we're kind of walking right into it, and we walk right into it, and then I feel like I'm falling.
And it was a bit of a painful experience because I feel like something was being ripped off of me.
And it felt like I was falling forever, and when I finally hit what I would call ground...
it kind of ended for a second, and then... she kind of said, "You gotta keep going."
And there was another one. And I went into that hole, and I fell, and I kept falling, and I felt this thing just...
ripping things off of me. When I hit the bottom... The first thing I saw was this massive color.
And the color was just moving and it had so much life in it that I became... instantly amazed.
My expectation when I died was that I would encounter nothing and become nothing.
Now I'm beginning to see things that...
...were mind-boggling, in the sense that this color was alive! It was living, and it was moving, and
it was talking to me. And it was talking to me like millions of voices, so it sounded like chatter like...[static noise]
but... somehow... there was some kind of comprehension. Comprehension happening at a level, that even there
I couldn't really understand. And then it just opened up and I saw this amazing forest.
Now I grew up in New York City so... that to me is quite striking, because I saw these mountains...
and I could see this... the shadow that the clouds make on the mountains, and they were so dark and contrasty.
And I could see these wild herds of animal just running, and I found that I was kind of hovering.
I saw this amazing vista, and I'm looking up and I'm seeing that mountain, and I'm
realizing that I'm flying so I said, "Oh my gosh I'm flying!
and I heard this voice just say to me... "That's normal here."
And then I... I thought about my children, and this was the the only aspect of when
I was transitioning that was a bit painful to me. So I said, "What's going to happen to my kids?"
and that voice said to me, "Don't worry, you could see them from here"
and when I heard that... that was like the most amazing thing that I have ever heard!
and I said "Oh wow this is amazing!" So... it took all my fears away, and then I just started flying. And I started...
moving over this landscape... and... and looking down and... feeling of course...
an amazing sense of peace, and calm, and tranquility. That uh... comes with it, and this...
deep sense of love.
There's no way to really describe it. You've heard that probably a hundred times, but...
...there really isn't. But I continued on my journey and I went over the mountaintops.
And I could see snow on the top and I was like, "Wow so amazed!" I was really awed more than anything.
And then I looked out into the horizon and I could see the sun, but I saw the sun as if I'm looking
through a telescope and I could see the flares coming out of it, and I felt that this wind, that
I was feeling was... you know... given birth there. And it was this warm air that was just coming to me.
and that's why I was able to fly. That's what was giving me this lift this warm air.
And I'm thinking all these things, and... I look down and I see this amazing cove, and I see a beach.
And I see a man in the water. He's like... knee deep in the water. And he's got six children...
holding on to his right hand in a string, right? In a line. And one child on his left hand.
And I said, "Wow that's pretty amazing! Let me go down and see what that's all about."
So I moved down, and maybe I'm about 10 feet? 15 feet away? And he turns around.
That was my father.
It was amazing to see him, but what was more amazing was that, me and my father
had a very, very hard... relationship.
We used to... bump heads tremendously.
And he used to drink.
And he was quite abusive.
and uh...
Even though I was the seventh of eight children, I became like my mother's protector.
And so... we had a lot of clashes, and... I don't ever remember saying to my father in life that, "I love you"
or... he to me.
And his ways were very strict, so we couldn't hug, That wasn't what men do.
It was like very... he had this image of men being like...
Empty. Without a soul, without... feelings... without...
Wow... what an opportunity to say to my father... what I could never say to him in life.
And so... we had this exchange that was very emotional to me.
but... I understood that he loved me.
And I think he understood that I loved him.
So... it kind of... reunited us in a strange way. Not only did we meet there, but it...
...from a more spiritual perspective we... we became one.
Anyway... after all this amazing... time, he looks at me he says, "Look you have to go back."
I'm looking at him, and I said, "I don't think so, I really like it here."
He's like, "No, you got to go back it's not your time." And I'm looking at him like... "No... I... I want to stay."
And uh.... Then I felt this tugging. Like in my chest, but coming from my back.
And I started being pulled, and I went back into my body. I opened my eyes and the doctor that was doing CPR.
She kind of got surprised, and she kind of lifted her head back a little.
And then I went right back to my father, and I was in this space again.
And he's looking at me says, "No, you really don't get it. You have to go back."
And he said, "Look, this is what we're going to do." So we kind of started to structure a deal... in heaven.
He said to me, "Look, when it's your time... I promise I will come and get you."
And I looked at him, and I'm thinking, "Wow... what an amazing deal that is! I how could I say no?"
and so... I accepted that. And I went back.
When you have your experience of dying you get this interconnectivity. You feel like...
you're connected to EVERYTHING, so that sense of oneness is really profound.
When you come back into your physical body again you feel that sense of separation, so there's...
...something about being in body that makes us feel like we're... independent of the rest of the world.
It's really soothing, eye opening and it's very calming. It's a calming feeling that it permeates
through you to know... that everything is as it should be in a sense, right? Everything's working
towards a goal, and that goal is well beyond what we may ever know, but it's still doing it.