Divine Encounters Episode 033 | Near-Death Experience Story
This Divine Encounters compilation brings together four guests, John J. Davis, Vincent Tolman, Nanci L. Danison and Betty Eadie, each answering the same opening question from Alex Ferrari: what was your life like before you died? One says he stood in an orientation center beside a spirit guide. One says he watched his own rescue from above. One says she asked the biggest questions she could think of and received answers. One says she ran into the arms of Jesus. The episode explores what their stories share, and where they differ.
Key Takeaways
- John J. Davis says he died during surgery at 21, met a spirit guide named Alan, and was told, “You must tell them there is no death.”
- Vincent Tolman says that after a bad reaction to a supplement he was without a pulse for at least 45 minutes, while he watched events from above and perceived the thoughts of people in the building.
- Vincent says the most important thing he took away is that the Creator loves you “exactly how you are right now.”
- Nanci L. Danison says she received knowings, full downloads of understanding, and asked big questions about God, purpose, heaven, hell and religion.
- Nanci says an environment she was in appeared simply because she thought of it, which she says taught her that “it’s all thoughts projected into physical matter.”
- Betty Eadie says she met Jesus, ran to him and complained about her hard life, and he told her, “But you chose it.”
- All four describe a sense of love, a return to this life with a purpose to share, and a view of Earth as a place for growth.
| Guests | John J. Davis, Vincent Tolman, Nanci L. Danison and Betty Eadie |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 033 (compilation of four guests) |
| John J. Davis | Age 21, surgery after a moped accident, seven minutes away, an orientation center and a figure he understood to be Jesus |
| Vincent Tolman | A Saturday in January, a reaction to a supplement, at least 45 minutes without a pulse, and a view from above |
| Nanci L. Danison | A pre-surgery mammogram room, a sudden collapse, downloads of knowledge and a council that asked her to choose |
| Betty Eadie | Age 31, a hysterectomy, a visit home, three men in brown robes and Jesus |
| Where they say they went | Marble halls, a view above a restaurant, a light, a mossy tunnel, a dark loving void |
| The shared thread | Love, purpose and the idea that Earth is a place of learning |
One Question, Four Answers
Alex opens each of these four conversations the same way: tell me what your life was like before you died. The answers could not be more different. A young man who is thinking about college. A world traveler who feels successful but not happy. A health lawyer who likes to analyze the facts. A mother of seven who has been told since childhood that she is a sinner.
What follows are four accounts told in the guests’ own words. We share them as experiences, as each person describes them, and we make no medical claims. If you are new to this topic, our complete guide to near-death experiences is a gentle place to begin.
John J. Davis: An Orientation Center of White Marble
John was raised Catholic. His father loved church, and the family went two or three days a week plus Sundays. At 21 he was weighing whether to go to college, and spirituality was the last thing on his mind. The part that never made sense to him was the fear of God he was taught to have.
He says he crashed a moped into a tree and tore the tendons off his right hand. He had never had surgery. He says that as the anesthesia began, he had an allergic reaction that stopped his heart. At the very second he died, he says, he opened his eyes again, standing in the most beautiful building he had ever seen: a corridor of white marble columns about 30 feet high, with marble tables and benches running as far as he could see.
To his left, he says, were tunnels that looked cut from solid marble, one for each table. A voice in his left ear said, “My name is Alan. I’m your spirit guide.” John says Alan explained everything, taking him to the outside of each place and then the inside. The building, he was told, was an orientation center. The tunnels connect people on Earth to the other side. Our glossary has a short entry on spirit guides.
John says he skipped the floating and the tunnel toward a white light that many accounts describe, and was taken to the other side of that light. He watched a man in his 80s or 90s come through, a hand held to his chest, and sit with a counselor who held his hands while they spoke. The man’s appearance changed to that of a man in his 30s. John says counselors are there because our memory of home gets washed away when we come into a lifetime.
In the gardens beyond, John says, a figure in a white tunic with a golden sash appeared, so bright that he could not see his face. He understood this was Jesus, and he was told, “You must tell them there is no death.” He woke in the hospital, and his surgeon told him they had lost him for seven minutes. It felt, he says, like an hour or more. His message to the grieving: they are not really gone. “Tell them that this is real.”
Vincent Tolman: Chasing Happiness, Then a Saturday in January
Vincent describes what he calls the ideal single life. He traveled the world and lived in many places. He worked construction and picked up projects wherever he could find a contract. For about three and a half years he also worked in major TV and film, moving up from stand-in to a second assistant director. By the world’s standards he felt successful, but he says he did not feel happy. Happiness was always on the horizon, and he was always chasing it.
Alex mentions that he and a friend had taken a toxic amount of a supplement. Vincent says it was a Saturday, January 18. They each took a little bottle cap of it, planning to go to an auto expo and then work out. As they walked out to the car, they both felt it hit fast, like drunkenness, and he felt a cold spreading through his chest and thighs. They drove two blocks to a Dairy Queen to get something to eat. His friend was almost asleep as they pulled in, and Vincent helped him put the car in park. Vincent made it to a single-use bathroom, locked the door, and passed out on the floor.
His friend collapsed in a booth, the manager called 911, and his friend was taken to a hospital, where, Vincent says, he was treated and released the next day with no lasting effects. Nobody knew there was a second man in the bathroom. Vincent says it was about an hour between the phone calls, at least 45 minutes by the most conservative estimate. Nothing in his account is a suggestion about how to treat or avoid anything. It is simply what he says happened.
Vincent Tolman: Watching From Above
As he describes it, the room spun backwards as he walked in, and then he felt plunged into a cool, electrified fluid that was not wet. All of the soreness from his workouts was instantly gone. He found himself surrounded by darkness, and then a fogginess in front of him grew clearer. It was the restaurant, seen from above as if the roof were not there.
He says he could perceive the thoughts and feelings of everyone in the building: the cook, the assistant manager, the manager and two customers eating breakfast. He watched his friend taken away, and he knew without knowing that his friend would be fine, and that the man in the bathroom was in serious trouble.
Vincent says a three-man ambulance crew arrived, two veterans and a rookie on his first week. They tried basic resuscitation and could not get a response. He says the body had begun to stiffen in the legs. They bagged it and took their time, and spent 45 minutes to an hour on paperwork and statements.
The rookie, sitting alone with the body bag, kept feeling that he wanted to make a difference for this one. Vincent says he unzipped the bag, searched for a pulse and then, touching the inside of the thigh, Vincent felt a shock, and saw the rookie jump. The rookie began giving oxygen and attached a defibrillator. The two veterans, talking about the big football game, scolded him. He ignored them. After a second shock there was one heartbeat, and the veterans went quiet. The third shock gave a faint but steady beat. Vincent estimates it may have been an hour and a half to two hours in all, and says he was still brain dead for three more days, which is when he says he had his experience.
His takeaway is about love. Take the best love you can imagine as a human being, he says, multiply it by eons, and “that’s still just an eyelash to God’s love.” The Creator, he says, loves you exactly how you are right now, not who you want to be or think you should be.
Nanci L. Danison: Light, Bliss and Knowings
Nanci’s first experience came right before a surgery to remove three lumps in her right breast, lumps that turned out not to be cancer. During a mammogram-guided procedure, she says, the radiologist and technician stepped out to get films developed. As best they can reconstruct, she says, she had an anaphylactic reaction to the local anesthetic, combined with very low blood sugar. She felt herself slowly going out of her body, and then she popped out, stood in front of it and thought: wow, I did not know you could do this.
She saw blackness, but it was comforting, not frightening. She saw a pinpoint of light and thought, “I’m supposed to go into the light.” She did not think she had died. She simply knew what to do. She spent a long time alone in the light, feeling wave after wave of bliss, unconditional love and acceptance, as if it went through her and flowed back to its source.
There she began to receive what she calls downloads, or knowings. Alex says it sounds like the Matrix, and Nanci agrees. A knowing, she explains, is different from knowing in human life. It arrives with every piece of data on a topic, along with the feeling that you have lived it yourself. You do not have to learn it. It is just there.
Nanci L. Danison: A Mossy Tunnel, Five Lights and a Life Review
As a health lawyer, Nanci says, she analyzed her situation the way a physician would, and found that she could see in 360 degrees, even through the back of her head. She expected a glorious tunnel, as many experiencers describe. She says she got a dirt floor and stone walls with moss, like an old railroad trestle, and she could smell the moss and feel the damp. She decided she had been fooled and tested it by thinking of a word, and the environment appeared. After doing it three times she received information about manifesting. “It’s all thoughts projected into physical matter.” Our glossary has an entry on manifestation.
She saw five beautiful lights and thought she was supposed to choose the right one. A voice not her own said, “it doesn’t matter, just pick one.” The lights became five glowing beings she recognized as her dearest friends from all eternity, none of whom she had known in any lifetime. She says she was home.
Her life review, she says, went further than most. She did not only see her own perspective but entered the people in each event, felt their emotions and heard their thoughts, and saw the ripple effects of what she had said. She does not call what she saw alternative timelines, only projections of what might have happened. But what interested her more was downloads of hundreds, maybe thousands, of other lifetimes across the universe. She was astonished she could ever have thought she was just a little human being. Read our glossary entry on the life review to see how other guests describe this stage.
Nanci L. Danison: Anger, Religion and a Promise
Not knowing how long she had, Nanci asked the big questions: What is God? What am I? What is the purpose of life? What does God expect? Where is heaven, and where is hell? And what is the one true religion? She says she received answers as knowings.
Afterward she was angry. She was surprised that you can be angry there. She felt betrayed that her parents, her church and her Catholic school had never told her this. Why teach an intricate religion when none of it was true? What calmed her, she says, was being shown a kind of documentary of how religions developed, and seeing that they were good faith attempts by souls that knew there was more but could not figure out what it was, projecting human ideas onto God.
Coming back, she says, she felt as if she were speaking through a megaphone from deep inside the body. She told the radiologist, “I passed out.” Later she says she died again and met a council that monitored her mission. They said, “You’re not working your mission. We won’t hold it against you.” She could come home or go back. If she went back, they said, she would suffer for the rest of Nancy’s life. She says she felt she did not want to fail, wanted to tell people, wanted to see what happened, and felt rotten for leaving Nancy so many times. She went back, and she says she made her a promise: “I will not leave her again until she’s ready.”
Betty Eadie: From Boarding School to the Hospital Ceiling
Betty tells Alex that at about four years old, at a boarding school, she was told that because she was Native American and part Irish she was a heathen and a sinner who would go to hell. What she learned, she says, was fear. She felt it all her life. She carried low self esteem and low self worth, which she says come with child abuse. If you are struggling, you are not alone. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.
She married young and had seven children. She wanted a family she could be with forever. She took her children to churches and then took them out again, because they were told to get on their knees and beg forgiveness. At 31 she had a hysterectomy, her first surgery. She says she hemorrhaged, and nurses told her she was fine and bedded her down for the night. She woke feeling sick and too weak to call for help, and then she was out of her body, up at the ceiling, looking down at herself.
Three men in brown robes with golden belts appeared by the bed. She says she knew them, and that she felt comfortable with them. They told her she had died prematurely but everything would be okay. Worried about her family, she went through the window and found herself at home. Her husband was reading a newspaper and the kids were running about. He had promised to put them to bed early, and he did. She could see into each of their lives and knew they would be fine. It was okay to leave them.
She went back to the bed and started spiraling down into a tunnel, into a black place she compares to a forest at night in Washington State. She has claustrophobia, yet she felt no fear. “I felt like I was being bathed in love.” She says she would have stayed forever if she had not known what lay beyond.
Betty Eadie: “But You Chose It”
A pinpoint of light grew brighter, moved like a searchlight and focused on her. It drew her out of the dark. The light widened and she saw the outline of a figure, and she knew it was Jesus. She knew she had always known him. She says there was no thinking. She simply responded, like running to embrace a parent after death, and he opened his arms.
Then she scolded him. Why did you send me to her? Why did you send me down there to be an Indian and an Irish person criticized and condemned for everything? She says she raved. He chuckled, amused. And he said, “But you chose it.” Every spirit there is at a different level of growth, she says he told her, and each is on Earth to be tested. She had chosen the family that would give her the greatest challenges. She said she would not do that now. He said she probably would not have to.
He did not speak in words, she says. He spoke to her heart. The first thing is “learn to love one another.” Then put God first and live free of fear, so you can be the person you mapped out for yourself. She says there are few if any coincidences, and we are co-creators. If you are going down the wrong path, “stop and turn around.” Next year, she says, it will be 50 years since her experience. We praise God, she says, “with our essence, our very being, when we love.”
What the Four Stories Share
Taken together, the four accounts rhyme. Each guest describes leaving the body and arriving somewhere that felt more real than ordinary life. Each describes love that is difficult to put into words. Each says they came back with something to do. John says it was not for him, it was to share. Vincent says the Creator’s love is unconditional. Nanci says she was given a mission and a choice. Betty says she was told to love.
There are also differences. John skipped the tunnel entirely, Nanci got a mossy trestle instead of a glorious tunnel, and Betty went down a dark spiral into love. Vincent never mentions a tunnel at all. Their religious backgrounds differ too. Two were raised Catholic, one was told she was a sinner at a boarding school, and Vincent does not describe his religious upbringing. Researchers have studied accounts like these for decades. Bruce Greyson published the 16-item NDE Scale in 1983 as a way to describe the experience, and a 2001 Lancet study led by Pim van Lommel reported that 62 of 344 cardiac arrest survivors, about 18 percent, said they had one. What it all means remains debated.
If you want to go deeper, our glossary has a short entry on the near-death experience.
Taking It Down to Earth
You do not have to agree with every detail to find something useful here. Several guests point to the same practical ideas: love is what we take with us, the people we have lost are not gone, and we are on Earth to grow. Betty’s advice is one anyone can try. If you notice you are going the wrong way, stop and turn around. It is that simple, she says.
Questions to Sit With
- John says his experience was meant to be shared. What are you holding that you could share with someone this week?
- Vincent says the Creator loves you exactly how you are right now. What would change if you believed that today?
- Betty says we chose our challenges for growth. Where in your life might that idea soften something?
Pick one belief you inherited about God, death or yourself and ask honestly whether it came from love or from fear. Write down what you find.
Spiritual Takeaways
- John says there is no death, and the people we lose are in another place.
- Vincent says the love of the Creator is unconditional and meets you exactly as you are.
- Nanci says thought shapes experience, and that our religions are human attempts to explain what is beyond.
- Betty says to learn to love one another and to live free of fear.
- All four describe returning with something to share.
Please enjoy my conversation with John J. Davis, Vincent Tolman, Nanci L. Danison and Betty Eadie.
Guest Links: Connect With four near-death experiencers
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the guests in this Divine Encounters compilation?
The guests are John J. Davis, Vincent Tolman, Nanci L. Danison and Betty Eadie. Each answers Alex Ferrari’s opening question: what was your life like before you died?
What does John J. Davis say he experienced?
He says that when his heart stopped during surgery at 21, he found himself in a white marble orientation center. He says he met a spirit guide named Alan and a figure he understood to be Jesus, who told him there is no death.
What does Vincent Tolman say he experienced?
He says that after a reaction to a supplement he was without a pulse for at least 45 minutes. He says he watched from above and perceived the thoughts of everyone in the building, and later learned how a rookie medic revived him.
What does Nanci L. Danison say she learned?
She says she received knowings about the nature of God, purpose and religion, and that she learned that thoughts can manifest an environment. She says she also saw hundreds of other lifetimes.
What was Nanci’s life review like?
She says she did not only see her own view but entered the people in each event, felt their emotions and saw the ripple effects of what she had said and done.
What does Betty Eadie say Jesus told her?
She says she asked why he had sent her to a hard life, and he said, “But you chose it.” She says he told her to learn to love one another and to live free of fear.
Why were these four stories paired together?
The episode presents them in sequence to show what they share, including love, a sense of purpose and the idea that Earth is a place of growth, and where they differ.
Did all four see a tunnel?
No. John says he skipped the tunnel, Vincent does not describe one, Nanci describes a mossy trestle, and Betty describes spiraling down into a dark space filled with love.
What do the guests say about religion?
John struggles with Christian dogma, Nanci felt betrayed that her upbringing never told her what she learned, and Betty says she was taught fear. All speak of a God of love.
Is a near-death experience proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences as lived experiences told in the guests’ own words. Researchers continue to study and debate what they mean. Nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- John J. Davis in his full episode on touring heaven with Jesus
- Vincent Tolman in his full episode on being clinically dead for 45 minutes
- Nanci L. Danison in her full episode on what she was shown about religion
- Betty Eadie in her full episode on church and the Bible
- A short explanation of the life review
- What spirit guides are, in plain language
- What manifestation means
- Browse more free masterclasses and the Divine Encounters podcast.
Follow Along with the Transcript
Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.
John J. Davis 0:08
I was raised a Catholic, and same I was so yeah, I was and my dad, he loved to go to church, and we would go to church, sometimes two or three days a week, and then on Sundays also. So I was inundated with Catholicism. And before I had my nde, I had never had any experiences of any kind other than Catholicism. I was 21 at the time, and I was considering whether or not going to college, going to school, and I the last thing on my mind was spirituality. I was I had a hard time understanding Catholicism, because the big thing that I had a hard time with was the fear of God that they put in you. You were supposed to fear God. And I never really, I never really got that. So after I had my near death experience, my entire life changed that way in terms of spirituality and my views of religion. Like I have a hard time considering myself to be a Christian, but I love Jesus, and I read the New Testament all the time, but I have a really hard time with the Christian dogma. My dad had won a sales contest, and he won two mopeds. It's kind of like, like scooters or mopeds. I call them scooters now, but we used to ride those on the weekends. So one day I was up riding, and I had an accident, and I slammed into a tree, and the way I landed, I tore the tendons off my right hand, and I had to, had to go and have surgery while I was 21 I had never been in surgery before. I didn't know what to expect. I probably been in a hospital just a handful of times, not very often, so I had no idea what was going to happen. So they gave me the IV, and they start to pump in the anesthesia, and I had some kind of an allergic reaction, and it stopped my heart and I died. The very second that I died, I opened my eyes again, and I was standing in the most beautiful building I had ever seen. And my very first thought was, oh, my God. I had no idea the hospital was big, because this the building that I was in. It was a long, long corridor building, and I couldn't see the end of it. It was so long and there were columns on the right hand side, marble, beautiful white marble columns, maybe 30 feet high, all the way down as far as you could see, and they were about five or 10 feet apart in the middle of this corridor, like building where these marble tables just regular marble rectangle or kind of square tables. And there were marble benches on every single table. And these tables went as far again, as far as you could see. And the most amazing part was what was to my left, to the left of this building, bucking were like a mark marble, all made of white, beautiful, pristine marble. There were these tunnels that looked like they were cut out of solid marble and and they Corp. They were they corresponded to each table. So there was a marble column, then a table, then these tunnels. And again, they went as far down as you can see. Each tunnel was maybe five feet apart, and it was seven or eight feet high, and it looked like it would been carved out of the out of the marble, solid 90 degree angles, like you have in a doorway. Well, I need to tell you something else that happened here. This will look this will kind of help me explain how this process worked at that point. Right then I heard a voice in my left ear, and it said, my name is Alan. I'm your spirit guide. Well, I had no idea what what that meant, so I I just went through this whole process, and what happened is my spirit guide took me to every place that I'm gonna I'm gonna describe for your audience, and he took me to the outside, first of every building, and then he took me to the inside. And I like to tell people, so they can have a kind of a visualization. This building that I was in looks like a temple in Turkey, the country Turkey, and it's called the Temple of Artemis, everything I I'm going to tell you guys, it's from what my guide was telling me. He told me everything I was seeing and what it was for. Well, this building that I was in, he told me, this is the orientation. Center, and what's what's kind of different about my experience. Have you ever you probably heard a lot of typical near death experiences where the person says that they had an accident, or they were in the hospital and they found themselves floating above their bodies, then they become aware of a tunnel, and at the end of the tunnel is a white light. Well, my experience I, for some reason, I skipped all of that, and they took me to the other side of that white light on what's on the other side of the white light. As soon as somebody walks into it, they're on there in this orientation center, and they come through these, these tunnels that were on my left, the tunnels connect people with Earth to the other side. So when their lifetime is finished on Earth, they cross through these tunnels and they end up on the other side. So somehow these tunnels are connected to Earth. And I don't know how it all works, but that's how people get to the other side. So he my dad told me to look to my left at the next tunnel. So I looked to my left and there was a gentleman coming through. He was probably in his 80s or 90s, and he had just finished his life. He had his right hand holding his chest like he was in pain, and my guide said he died from a heart attack. So he's coming through the tunnel. And at these tables that I've mentioned, there are two people sitting at each table on the other side, and my guide said they are orientation counselors, so their job is to help orientate people back to the other side. The reason they have them is oftentimes when people come into life somehow, but when we come into a lifetime, our memory gets washed about the other side, where we're from, because we're not from earth. Earth is just a place of learning and growth and developing your soul. But our real home is on the other side, where some people like to call it heaven. Some people call up the afterlife. And so these orientation counselors help people remember where they're really from. So the woman, there was a woman at the table, I was looking. She stood up, she walked over to this man, and she took her hands and hid his, and she led him back to the table, and they sat down. The entire time she was talking to him, she was holding his hands, and my guide said, Watch him. So as I was watching him, his appearance began to change from a man who was in his 80s or 90s, to a man who was in his 30s. And nobody told me why the age, why the 30s? But for whatever reason, we're in our 30s, and I don't know if it has to do with that was the age that Jesus died. I you know, I have no idea, but we're in our 30s, so that's what happens during the orientation. They just talked to him about where they're from. You finished your lifetime. Here you are back on the other side. Now, when he was done with that, he stood up and he walked to the right and he stepped down three steps. Everybody steps, everybody's they have columns between these orientation areas. So he stepped down and walked into what I call the gardens, because it was the most beautiful gardens you could ever imagine. And if you if you can imagine the most gorgeous, beautiful wildflower field you've ever seen, golden Hills flowers. I mean, just beautiful. So he took me there, and then he left. My guide left, and I was just standing there by myself, and all of a sudden, a man showed up in front of me, and I could see his hair. He had brown hair. I could see his hands. I could see that he was wearing a white robe or a white tunic with a golden sash around the waist, and he had gold colored sandals on the lace of his calves. And he was different than everybody else, because I couldn't see his face. There was so much light or energy coming from him that I couldn't make out as what it looked like. And my mind said to me, or somebody said to me, this is Jesus. And he spoke to me, and he said, You must tell them there is no death. And right after he said that, I woke up back in the hospital, and I asked, and everybody was looking down at me. You know how they look at you, and you're what happened to this guy? I said to the surgeon, I said, What just happened? It because I was trying to see if he could explain to me where I was, what was, what, what just happened to me. And that's when I found out that I died. He said, we lost you. We lost you for seven minutes. And I couldn't believe it was only seven minutes, because it seemed like it was an hour or more that I had this experience. And one thing I want to tell people that, more than anything, I want people to know that there is tremendous hope that because you lost somebody, you lost a friend, or, God forbid, you lose a child, or you lose a spouse, they're not really gone. They're just in another place that we can't get to yet, but that in the end, when your lifetime is finished, you go back, and the strangest thing is that when you get back and you're with your loved ones again, it's like no time had passed, because on the other side, there's no such thing as time like we have here. I didn't have the opportunity to have a whole life review. They just wanted to show me that people do have life reviews, that they're they're real. But each one of these places, he took me to it, it just seemed like it happened so quickly that there wasn't enough time. They just wanted to show me you have to tell people what this is. Tell them that this happens. Tell them that this is real. Tell them that you know because, because this experience, it wasn't for me. It was for me to share it.
Vincent Tolman 11:32
Prior, I had kind of lived the ideal single life. I traveled the world, lived all over the world. I actually worked construction primarily, and was able to pick up projects all over United States, even some, some projects literally everywhere, everywhere I could find a contract we could work. And so I did. I got the opportunity to live across the United States and internationally, and even worked for about three and a half years in major TV and film, just working, you know, kind of worked my way from the bottom of the ladder for as a stand in up to it became a second second and then a second ad. So, you know, it was a fun, fun turn of of life, and I felt like I was successful by the world standards, but I didn't feel happy. I didn't really have what I felt was happiness. I felt like happy was happiness was always on the horizon, and I was always chasing it. I didn't feel like I felt I had happy moments, but I didn't feel like I embodied happiness yet. And that was kind of my journey. At that time,
Alex Ferrari 12:40
You take this toxic amount of the supplement, which is fascinating in its own right. What happened?
Vincent Tolman 12:48
Well, we each took our little bottle cap, and our plan for the day was we were going to go up to an international Auto Expo and kind of walk around, and then we're going to go do a workout and kind of have our normal day, normal Saturday. It was a Saturday, Saturday, January 18, and so we, we, that was our plan. We took each took our bottle cap, we got in the car, and as we were heading out the door, getting into the car, we both felt it. It was hitting us really fast, and it felt almost like a drunkness, like literally, it felt like a drunkness, and I felt cold spreading from around my chest and my thighs like literally cold, cold. My body was becoming cold. So I said, Hey, let's go get some to eat. You know, sometimes if you get a little too much of this stuff, you can get something to eat, and it'll make you feel better. So we headed down the street, about two blocks down the streets with Dairy Queen, and we pulled up my buddy, he was almost falling asleep as we pulled up, so I was like shaking him awake as we pulled in. I remember like reaching over and helping him put the car in park, even he was to that point where he just was almost out himself. I stumbled into the restaurant, made it directly to the bathroom, which was right by the door, went in there, and it was a single use bathroom, so out of habits, locked the door, and I proceeded to just pass out, passed out right there on the floor on my back, and I began to aspirate or vomit, and breathe in my vomit. Literally died right there, there. And then, meanwhile, my buddy, he goes in, he he barely stumbles in, collapses on a booth and starts vomiting all over the booth. The manager of the restaurant come comes over and sees this. He's like, Oh my God, you know, he calls 911 and gets, gets my buddy hauled away to a hospital. My buddy ends up being totally fine. They pump his stomach, they treat him with a bunch of charcoal, and he gets released out of the hospital the very next day without any problem and no long, lasting effects. But again, meanwhile, nobody knew there was another guy me in the bathroom, and I was literally laying there dead on the on the floor. How long were you. Out for so so from the time that my buddy came in and they called 911 to get me out of the it was about an almost an hour. So they we know for at least 45 minutes, at the most conservative estimate, to because it was 45 minutes between phone calls, between the 911 phone call to my buddy to get him all the way, and then the 911 to come and get this dead body.
Alex Ferrari 15:24
What happened then, when you start to transition?
Vincent Tolman 15:27
So for me, from my perspective, what I was watching is I watched the room get very dizzy as I walked in there, into that bathroom, and it felt like the whole room started to spin backwards, like, literally, like the kind of like in the movies, how, you know, it makes it feel like the whole ground. It felt like the whole ground was shaking on me, and it was just me. Of course, I was passing out. The very next moment, I felt like I was, I was like plunged into cool electricity. And it felt very much like a fluid, almost a water, but it wasn't water, because I didn't feel wet, but I felt electrified, literally in a good way. I mean, not in the like scary, but I felt just full of this, this vitality, this energy, and instantaneously, you know, I body. I was bodybuilding pretty hard. My body was pretty sore, and was soon as I plunged into this cool feeling, 100% of pain was completely gone, and I recognized that instantaneously. But then I recognized also that I was surrounded by just nothingness, like I couldn't see anything. I could just see darkness. And out of nowhere, I started to see this like fogginess in front of me start to get clearer and clearer and brighter and clearer and brighter. And what it was is it was this scene of this restaurant, but I was looking from above, but I could see everywhere in the restaurant, as if there was no roof, like no ceiling, no roof on this restaurant. I could see everywhere in the restaurant. I could see and hear the thoughts, feelings, everything that anyone was feeling in that building. I could I could perceive, literally, the the feelings of the cook. I could perceive the the feelings and the thoughts of the assistant manager, the manager, even the the two customers that were eating breakfast, this man and this wife. I could perceive what the man was thinking about, what the wife was thinking about it was just so surreal. And I just proceeded to observe everything. I watched them haul away my friends in the ambulance. I watched them call 911, for him. I watched so I died. I must have died instantaneous, the the second that I went in there and passed out. I must have died just right then, because I watched them haul him away, and I knew. I knew without knowing. I don't know how I knew. I knew he was going to be okay, but I knew that this other guy in the bathroom, that he was he was in serious trouble, that he was gone, and this ambulance shows up. It's a three man team, so there's two veteran medics, and there's one rookie medic, and the rookie is kind of the tagalong. It's his first live week on the job, and he's supposed to primarily observe and help out and and somehow I know all this. I just know it from from the second they show up. I just know this. It's almost like he carried that as a badge on him, that he was a new guy. They're processing the scene. They attempted preliminary resuscitation attempts. They tried, you know, chest compressions. They tried a little oxygen bag where they're trying to squeeze with their hand and that they weren't able to get anything. Obviously, the body was actually starting to get a little stiff in the legs. So they, they knew this one was gone. They went ahead and bagged it. They they took their time. There was no rush. They were there for about 45 minutes to an hour, while they while they put the body in the bag. They got statements from everybody who witnessed anything they they which was about four or five people the every all the statements were signed. All the paperwork was signed. Meanwhile, the rookie is sitting in the back of that ambulance while he's waiting for the other two medics to to kind of process all the paperwork, get all the paperwork signed, as they're doing all of this. He's sitting there, back there, staring at this body bag and feeling all these these feelings that like, why can't we make a difference for this one? This is where it gets very interesting, from my perspective. He unzips the body bag. He has to undo these straps on the body just even unzip the body bag. He's trying to find a pulse. He can't find anything. He reaches under the arm area. Can't find a pulse. It's cold, it's stiff, it's gross, and he's even feeling this like this is a dead body. And he had to undo one more strap. So now we're three straps down. He goes down, and he was feeling on the inside femur area. And when he got on the inside femur area, he made contact with the actual femur bone. He was trying to feel for that femoral artery, or I always say that wrong, but the femur artery, the one that's near the femur, I felt a shock, and I felt I saw him jump right. When I felt the shock. So I think that he felt it too, and that was enough for him that there's got to be something there. There has to be something there. So he, he continued to unzip the body bag, you know, did a couple more straps. He he began forcing oxygen into the lungs. Then he also hooked up a defibrillator, and that is for the heart to shock the heart. And when he hooked that up, it makes this alarm sound right before it shocks the body. So meanwhile, the other two veteran medics, they're, they're deep in the conversation about sports. They're thinking about like the game coming up, this, this and that, because it was right before, you know, the big game in the NFL at the time. This is again, january 18 of 2003 but when the alarm bell went off the the warning alarm for the defib machine, they both, like, turned back and saw what was going on, and they started to freak out on this medic. They started yelling at him, telling him he's going to get fired. He's breaking protocol. How do you like to be fired on your first week on the job? Just really go into town on him. And he just ignored it. Completely ignored it. He let the defib hit. He let it charge and hit. It did not do any result. There was no heart. He went ahead and charged a second time and again, these medics are chewing him out to chewing him out. They he lets it go a second time after the second time. He did get a single heartbeat, one heartbeat, and then it was flatline again. And that single heartbeat was enough to like shut up. The the veteran medics, they completely stopped talking, and they they knew something odd was going on here, something very different. And so the third round of shocks happened, which he which that medica allowed a third round. On the third round, it was a steady but faint heartbeat continue continuous. So he was able to get that heart started back up after the third round of shocks. And and there's some estimates that say it's, it could easily be an hour and a half to two hours, factoring in all the paperwork, the time I was in the body bag, all of that. Yeah, so well, over an hour, easily, over an hour, cold, dead and stiff, the body came back. Now I was still brain dead. The body was still brain dead, and for three more days I was brain dead. And that's where I had my experience. I had my experience while the body was brain dead. The most important takeaway that I took away from this experience is that take the best love that you can have as a human being, the most unconditional, perfect love, and times that by eons, by trillions, and that's still just an eyelash to God's love that the Creator has. That love is so strong and so unconditional, that the Creator loves you exactly how you are right now, exactly how you are not not who you want to be, not who you think you should be, but who you're showing up as, who you who you are allowing your heart to beat as, right now, that's who God loves.
Nanci L. Danison 23:10
I had the first one right before the surgery to take out the three lumps in the right breast, the ones that turn out not to be cancer. You know, a lot of women don't understand that. Not all cancers form lumps, so you can't always feel. You know, when you've got cancer, some of them leave calcium deposits behind when the cells die, and the calcium deposits can be picked up on mammogram. So it's really, really important in our mammogram. Well, when there's no lump for the surgeon to feel, the radiologist sticks a large bore needle with a wire inside of it into the breast using that mammogram machine. After about eight squishes and two injections of the needle with the wire inside of it, the radiologist and the technician left the room to go get the last set of films developed, and I left too.
Alex Ferrari 24:02
You just, you just passed right there? What happened?
Nanci L. Danison 24:07
As best we can reconstruct, I had anaphylactic shock from the local anesthesia that had been injected into my skin combined with very, very low blood sugar. And so I'm very, very, very slowly going out of my body. And then I popped out, and I was standing in front of it, going, Wow. I didn't know you could do this. And then I saw blackness, but I wasn't afraid. It was discomforting. It was comforting darkness. And then I saw a pinpoint of light, and they said to myself, Oh, I know what this is. I'm supposed to go into the light. Did not have a thought that I died. I just recognized what I was supposed to be doing. So I went into the light, and I spent a lot of time alone in the light, feeling those wave after wave after wave of bliss, unconditional love and acceptance. Some joy. And it was like going through me and louring me back out and being sent back to where it was coming from. And while I was in the lifeguard myself, I was there for a long time, I started getting downloads. You know, computer downloads directly into my mind of everything there was to know or could ever be no on lots of different topics. A lot of them were things I'd always been curious about when I was living Nancy's life, and they were just there. I was bouncing back, back and forth between all these, what I call knowings. And knowing is different than knowing in human life. Knowings that you receive in the afterlife are complete with every single piece of data that could possibly exist about the topic, along with the sense that you have personally lived it firsthand. So it's got all the feelings, the emotions and the experience and the sensations and everything, all in one little and it's all at once. You don't have to learn it. It's just, boom, it's there. I spend time doing that
Alex Ferrari 26:04
So similar to the matrix, like you were literally downloading they were downloading you.
Nanci L. Danison 26:08
And when I saw that movie, I was like, Oh my God, you know. And it's kind of similar, because, you know, in comparison to the afterlife, human life does kind of look like that. You know, planet Earth, that they showed a matrix, I mean, doesn't really look like that, but the differences,
Alex Ferrari 26:23
It's stark. It's Stark. The differences. Okay, so at this point, have you figured out that you're you're dead?
Nanci L. Danison 26:30
Not yet. I was doing because I was health lawyer. I did a the way a physician would analyze a patient, you know, I started gathering the facts, and I did a review of systems, you know, no breathing, no heartbeat, no this, no that, and one, but I can still breathe, and I can still see, and and so then I was like looking, and I realized I could see through the back of my head. I could see 360 degrees. I didn't really have a head, but I had 360 vision. And while I was looking through the back of my head, I saw Nancy's body down in the mammography room, and I saw that she was on earth, but I knew I was in the light. And that's when I started kind of expecting, and I said to myself, nah, I couldn't have died. I always heard you go through a tunnel, you know, into the light. I'm already in the light. I go through any tunnel. Boom, I'm in the tunnel. And you know how near death experiencers get these glorious tunnels of beautiful colors and lights, and they travel through the universe, and their friends and loved ones are there to welcome them, or they've got angels. I get dirt. I get a dirt floor with stone walls with moss growing on them, and it looked to me like it was a railroad trestle from, like, maybe the 1920s because there's no there was a passage overhead, which I think was the railroad tracks, and it was very narrow passage, but I got the sense it was wide enough for, like, a lot of T Ford to go through. And I could smell the moss, I could smell the dirt, I could feel the humidity on my skin. I could hear the insects. I mean, it's absolutely, completely real, but I was a fool by it. And so I said to myself, fooled by it. What are you fooled by it? Was I fooled by Earth. And so I did a couple more experiments to see and to prove to myself that just thinking a word manifested that environment. And it's true. I learned after doing it three times, I got a download of information about manifesting. There were very, very few English words used in my whole experience. Manifesting was one of them, and it was explained to me that we souls inside human bodies manifest what the body experiences as physical reality. It's all thoughts projected into physical matter. After that, I I, you know, I realized I had died, and then that seemed to be kind of a gateway. I saw five beautiful colored lights that I knew the names of while I was there, but they would all look white to humans because we have very narrow Color Range. And as I was looking at these five lights, I'm thinking, Oh, this is a typical day. I'm supposed to go into the light. I get five of them. I'm supposed to pick the right one. And a voice not my own, comes into my head and says, it doesn't matter, just pick one, and the five lights turned into five glowing beings that I recognized as my dearest, deepest, most beloved friends and loved ones from all eternity, none of whom I'd ever known in human life or in any incarnated life, but they were my eternal friends, and I was home. Is the first, first time in answers I ever really felt home and that those were my people. So I spent some time with them, and I had a life review. And unlike the Life Review. That most near death experiencers describe when you go farther into the afterlife than 99% of nde years ago, you get a life review that includes not only seeing everything from the life that you just lived, but also you get inside the other people who were in those various events, and you get to watch it and feel their emotions, hear their thoughts, and be them participating in the same event, so that you're seeing your perspective and their perspective somebody else's perspective that's all at once. And you get to feel the ripple effect of, you know, like you said something, and here's how it impacted these people, and here's how they changed their lives and how it impacted other people. You know, way down the street, you also get answers to your questions, like all those times you ask yourself, why did so Minnesota do this? Why did I do that? You know what would have happened? Well, you get the answers to all those questions. You get to see why so and so did something because you get inside their heads and you get to hear their thinking, and then you also get to see if you'd made different choices, how they would have turned out.
Alex Ferrari 31:07
Oh, so you do get, like, alternative, you know, timelines, if you will.
Nanci L. Danison 31:12
No, they're not really alternative timelines. They're just projections of thought about what would have happened, you know, had you done something different. But while that was going on, I'm saying to myself in there, done that. So I wasn't really interested in watching that, other than to see that every single bit of sensory data that Nancy had ever taken in was all there, every sky, every sound, every thought, every hope, every dream, everything was all there. But I started getting a download of all these hundreds and hundreds, or maybe even 1000s of other lifetimes I had lived throughout the universe as all kinds of creatures and things that was a lot more interesting than Nancy's life as they were downloading, I remembered every single moment of every single one of them. And I was just flabbergasted that I could possibly have ever thought I was Nancy. I mean, that was just ridiculous, that I could conceive of an idea that I'm just this little human being. Well, I have lived these eons and eons of other lifetimes, and I remember every single moment of every single one as I was like, sampling memory Oh, you know, it's like trip down memory lane only it was Memory Lane was the entire universe.
After that, I realized I could get knowings on particular topics, like, if I focused my attention and intention to know the answer, I could get specific topics instead of just random, you know, things dropping in my head. So and I didn't know how long I was going to be there, so I thought we better ask the big questions. So I asked, what is God? What am I? What's the purpose of life? What does God expect me? Where's heaven? Where's hell, and what's the one true religion? I asked the last one because I was reared as a Catholic, and I'd always been told that was the one true religion, which I knew could possibly be true,
Alex Ferrari 33:16
As all of them do.
Nanci L. Danison 33:17
Yes, yes. So I got the answers to all those questions, download them, you know, in the form of knowings. And after getting all those knowings, I was angry. I was surprised that you can be angry after I but I was angry. I I felt betrayed. You know, I felt like everybody knew this but me, I must be stupid or in dirt if I didn't know this, everybody's got to know this. And they wouldn't tell me. My parents wouldn't tell me the truth. My Church wouldn't tell me truth. My school would Catholic school wouldn't tell me the truth. Why weren't they telling me this stuff? Did they think I was stupid? Did they think I couldn't handle it? I mean, I just I couldn't imagine why anybody would have taught me this intricate religion when there wasn't a bit of it that was true, and I had just gotten the truth directly from the source, literally the source. But I think kind of calmed me down from that I was shown like a documentary history of planet Earth and how religions developed, and how they got to be the way they were when I died, and what they were going to be like in the future, so that I could see it was a good faith attempt by souls that knew there was something more, but they couldn't figure out what it was. So they were like projecting human life and human thoughts and human speculation, what they knew about humans as a species, onto God and onto the afterlife, assuming must be the same, and so that that did kind of go. When I came back into the body enough that I could see through Nancy's eyes, I saw the radiologist and radiology technician at the back of the room, and the radiologist was drawing a little map on the envelope that the mammogram films went in. It felt like I was talking through a megaphone from way inside the body, out to the lips, and I said, I passed out. And then the doctor turned around and came over to me, and so did the red tick, and the red tech went out in the hall and yelled for a nurse to come in. And the radiologist looks at me. She goes, Do you know who you are? Do you know who I am? You know, gave me medicines to try to keep my blood pressure stable and keep my heart rate stable. I went through a whole bunch of stuff, and then I died again. This time I went back. I met the a different group of beings, but they were the council that were monitoring my mission, and they said, You're not working your mission. We won't hold it against you. You can come home, or you can go back into Nancy. If you choose to go back, you will suffer the rest of her life. And I felt a lot of different things. One was I didn't want to be a failure. And source gives you a mission. I got you do it. And I also real still felt really strongly somebody, I tell those people, and I was the somebody. And then part of me just wanted to see what was going to happen, because see I'd seen the future, and I wanted to see how much of it was going to happen. And part of me just felt rotten for leaving Nancy so many times. So I came back in the body, knowing we were going to suffer, which we have, but I made her a promise, I will not leave her again until she's ready.
Betty Eadie 36:49
When I was a child at a boarding school, I was about four years old, I was told that, because I was Native American and because I was part Irish, that I was a heathen and a sinner and that I would be going to hell, and part of their help for me was to educate me about the ways of God. What I learned instead was fear of him, frightened, and I couldn't imagine why the color of my skin and the fact that I'm Native American would Why would God select this, this type of people to put in town? And so I was fearful all my life. I was fearful of dying. I didn't particularly believe that God was the God that they were teaching, but I didn't know who God was, and it was frightening, very frightening for me, but that was just that wasn't something that led my life. I think I pushed that into the subconscious mind and just got on with living. And I had a low self esteem, low self worth, all the things that come with child abuse. And so at the age of 31 I had married young and had seven children. I was it was very frightening to me to go through that experience of life just growing up. But I wanted a family that I could be with forever, and so I married and had my own my children raise them the way that I wanted to raise them. I actually took them and put them into churches only to become disillusioned and take them out, because they were told that they were they were sinners and had to get on their knees. And they're like 789, 10 years old, you know, just babies. And when they came back and told me what they that they had to spend time on their knees begging God for forgiveness that just did it for me and religion. At the age of 31 I went into the hospital, had a hysterectomy, and it was during that time, first time I'd ever had any surgery or anything at all. I'm fairly healthy. Woman have always been healthy. Went into the hospital. I hemorrhaged during the surgery, and right shortly after and and they had staff problems, and there were a few nurses that were around, they told me that I was fine after the surgery, except for a slight hemorrhage that they had repaired, and bedded me down for the night. I awoke and I felt myself dying. Actually, you know you just feel this sick feeling and and. And I knew something was wrong, but I was too weak to call for the nurse, and the next thing I knew, I was out of my body. I went up to the up to the ceiling, and turned to look down, and I could see myself laying there. I came down for a closer look, and I wasn't frightened. I was amazed at what I saw, and shortly thereafter, three men in brown robes and golden belts appeared by the side of the bed. I knew them, that I was taking me a while to really recognize them, but I knew I was comfortable with them, and they said that I had died prematurely, but that everything would be okay. I was worried about my family. I wanted to go home and see them, and so I went out, My Spirit went out through the window, and I arrived at my home. My husband was sitting in a chair reading a newspaper. The kids were running all over the place. He had promised to put them in bed early, and he did it, but I knew that they would be fine, and I started to I could see into each one of their lives, and I knew that they would grow up and that they would be fine. It was okay to leave them. I went back to the hospital bed and started traveling down into a tunnel like a bed, just spiraling down and it was moving. I came to a dark place, very dark, very black. I love to camp, and have gone camping a lot. And when you're in the middle of the forest, especially in the state of Washington, where the trees are, oh my goodness, you know, they're so tall, when you're in the middle of them, you don't see the sky at night. It's pitch black. Well, it was pitch black in this space, but I felt no fear. And I have claustrophobia, so it was challenging for me, even in that moment, to think I have no fears. I have no I'm not frightened of this black. In fact, I felt like I was being bathed in love. It was warm and beautiful. It was, you know, I I've often said, if I didn't know what was beyond this, this blackness, I would have wanted to stay there forever. I could live eternity in that space. But it didn't last for long, and there I saw a pinpoint of light that became brighter and brighter. It was almost like a search light. Moved around a bit, not a lot, but just a little bit where I was watching it, and then it focused on me, and as a focused on me, it brought but more than that, it drew me out of that blackness, but when I came to the end of that light, and the light was brighter than ever, it just widened and it turned, there was a beam in the light, and I could see the shape and the outline that the light was so bright, I knew that this Was Jesus, and I knew that I loved him and that I had always known him, perhaps for eternity, weeks as well. And then what surprised me as I thought back about on it, when I'm going through the process, there was no thinking. It was just responding in a very natural, normal way to this beautiful man that I knew, that I had known forever. So it'd be like dying and meeting your mother or your father, and you run to them to embrace them. And that's what I did with him. And I ran to him, and as I ran to him, you opened his arms to receive me in them, and we embrace and I said, Why did you send me to her? Why did you send me down there? I never, ever, ever want to go there again. And I said, much less send me down to become an Indian and an Irish person who was criticized and and condemned for everything you think of. And I just ran and raved. I was just irritated. He chuckled. He leaned back, and he just he was amused. And I thought at the time, how could he be amused at something when I feel so irritated, even angry about and he said, But you chose it. I said, I did. He says, Yes, you did. He said, Every spirit here is a different. Level of growth. Everyone, and each one is on earth to be tested, to test with their world that they have acquired thus far. And he said, and you chose to go down to and to the family that would give you the greatest challenges. I said, Wow, I don't think I would do that now. He said, you probably wouldn't have to. And he went on and he just and as he spoke, it wasn't even words. It was like, it was more like he was speaking to my heart, because it just it resonated. And I mean, everything, every thought, every feeling, it was wonderful, beautiful. I can't even tell you of I'm resisting breaking out in tears Even now, because
The glory of this experience cannot be put into words. First off, well actually, that's kind of the third thing. The first is to learn to love one another. And that's what Jesus said to me the last I saw him. I said, how you know? How am I going to share all this? This is the most important thing. Is learn to love one another and all else will be and so putting God first, Won't God love one another and freedom from fear so you can blow your spirit and be the person that you mapped out you. It's blueprint you made yourself to be. And there are few, if any, coincidences in anyone's life. They're just not and you and we are co creators for God. Every day we get up and we create our day, every day, you know, in the native way. If you're going down a path and you see that you're going down the wrong way, stop and turn around. Stop and turn around. It's that simple. Why keep trying to go that same way? When you're offbeat or you're it's not doing it. You You know, you're, you know, don't go that way, turn around and come back or go in another direction. But, and that's what the freedom of life is all about, you'd be surprised. I mean, I have, you know, it's going to next year I will celebrate 50 years having had that experience, years I have given my life to embrace my life. Why I want others to feel like what I feel? First, the glory of God. Second, freedom to live, freedom to explore, Freedom just to, you know, to live righteously and purely as you can and not necessarily in destruction structure of any sort of religion, except for faith in God. And I remember thinking, that's how we praise God. We praise God with our essence, our very being, when we love, when we think good, when we are kind to one another. We glorify him.
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