Early that Sunday morning, somewhere around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., I became fully aware that my heart was doing something far beyond anything I had experienced before. My vision had become kaleidoscopic, but I was still able to call 911. I told the operator I was having a cardiac arrest, asked her to send paramedics with a defibrillator, and explained that I wanted to get downstairs to unlock the door so my dogs would be safe and the responders would not have to break in.

Against the operator’s instructions, I started down the stairs. At the top of the staircase, I felt an intense, catastrophic sensation in the center of my chest, like being hit with a nail gun. Then I fell. My staircase went straight down into a hard wall before turning and dropping farther. When I came to at the bottom, my head was hanging unnaturally to the side and I immediately knew I had badly injured my neck. I could not move my left arm normally. Believing I had dislocated or severely damaged my cervical spine, I did something extreme: I slammed the back of my neck against the hardwood floor repeatedly in an attempt to force it back into alignment before help arrived. The pain was the worst I have ever felt in my life. After that, I was gone again.

At some point during this sequence, I found myself in a place of complete blackness. I was aware, and my only thoughts were of getting back to the woman I loved at that time and to my dogs. Then I became aware again during CPR on the floor of my house. I remember paramedics working on me, aspirating, the removal of a breathing tube, and intense pain in my neck. I died again on the way to the hospital.

At that point I became aware that I was outside my body, above the ambulance, fully conscious and calm, knowing that my body was inside and that it was dead. From there, I moved into what I can only describe as a tunnel or wormhole-like passage filled with extraordinary light and color unlike anything in ordinary life. During that transit, I had the sense of being shown an immense sweep of human history. One specific image that remained with me was seeing the pyramids being built by organized human labor using ropes, animals, and coordinated effort.

After that I arrived in a place I immediately understood as a kind of great council in the sky. I was in the presence of many beings or souls, though I did not see faces in the normal way. I experienced being fully known and fully loved at the same time. I also heard what I can only call celestial music. It seemed as though each soul contributed its own tone, and together those tones formed harmonies beyond anything I have ever heard on earth.

After this, the experience became quieter and more personal. I found myself at the edge of woods beside the woman I loved, even though she was still alive on earth at the time. We appeared as light bodies and communicated without speech. In front of us was an enormous meadow full of flowers, with a breeze moving through it and extraordinary light woven through everything. Across the field I saw a castle with seven spires, and I understood it as home.

Eventually I became aware that I was above my body again in the hospital room and wanted to return. When I did, I re-entered my body without violence. The room had gone quiet because the medical team had already stopped trying to revive me after failed attempts and were waiting for a physician to certify my death. Only a nurse and a doctor remained in the room cleaning up. When I spoke, I startled them badly. My first words were, “So I guess I died.” They told me I had already begun mottling and warned me that I could still have serious organ or brain damage. I told them I would be going home in a few days.

Three days later I received a pacemaker-defibrillator implant. I recovered much faster than expected and went home five days after the event. I had suffered cardiac arrest, an ischemic stroke, and a fall that left me with serious neck injuries, yet I survived an approximately thirty-minute period during which I had not been successfully revived and a doctor had been called to certify my death.

That is the experience I am reporting here as accurately and plainly as I can.