Divine Encounters Episode 017 | Near-Death Experience Story
Dannion Brinkley was a 25-year-old Marine who, by his own description, thought he was the center of the universe when lightning came down a telephone line in 1975. In this Divine Encounters episode he tells Alex Ferrari what he says happened next: a tunnel, a radiant being, a 360 degree review of his life, and a message he has carried into decades of hospice work.
Key Takeaways
- Dannion says lightning traveled down a landline telephone in 1975, and that he lifted out of his body and felt no pain.
- He describes seeing the world as vibrant and not truly solid, with everything carrying “a certain resonance and a frequency.”
- He recalls floating above the paramedics, hearing that he was gone, then being pulled down a spiraling tunnel toward a bright light.
- He says a radiant being approached and that a sense of safety and calm rushed over him.
- He describes a panoramic life review in which he became every person he had affected, and says it is intent that matters.
- He says he was taken to crystal cities and shown events by twelve beings, and says he has described them in his book Saved by the Light.
- His message: we are great, powerful and mighty spiritual beings, and you do not have to die to touch your spirituality.
| Guest | Dannion Brinkley |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 017 |
| Age at the time | 25, in 1975 |
| What Dannion says happened | Lightning came down a landline telephone and struck him |
| Time away | He says he was dead for 28 minutes |
| Where he says he went | Above his body, down a tunnel, to a bright light and crystal cities |
| Who he met | A radiant being, then twelve beings and a thirteenth |
| The message | We are spiritual beings with dignity, direction and purpose |
Who Is Dannion Brinkley?
Dannion says that in 1975 he was 25 years old and sure of himself in all the wrong ways. He was a Marine who worked in various programs. He was not religious, not spiritual in any way. In his own words, “I thought I was the center of the universe.”
He is blunt about the person he was. He says he was a fighter who could back up his words, and that this meant taking some hard lessons later on. That honesty is part of what makes his account so direct. He is not describing a saint who was rescued. He is describing someone who says he had a lot to learn.
Lightning on the Telephone Line
One evening he was sitting down and holding a telephone to his ear. This was the days of landlines, he reminds Alex. Lightning came down the line and hit him in the side of the head. It went down his spine. He says it welded the nails or the heels of his shoes to the nails in the floor, and that if he had not been grounded that way, he would have exploded.
He was thrown into the air and slammed back down, breaking the frame of the chair. He says he was burning and could not see, and that the pain was beyond anything he had imagined. He tried to get into a defensive position, the way a fighter would, but could not move. He later had photographs taken eight days after, which show bruising down his spine. Every vertebra, he says, had a big bruise where the force had twisted him in the air.
He tells this part plainly and without drama. It is background to what he says came next.
Lifting Out of the Body
Then, all of a sudden, Dannion says he lifted up out of his body. He was not in any pain. It did not matter where he was, he says, because he was not down there anymore.
He looked around and saw that everything was vibrant. You would think the world is solid, he says, but “nothing is really solid.” He compares it to the matrix, with everything holding “a certain resonance and a frequency.” Somehow, he says, he knew this place better than he had ever known that 25-year-old punk.
He watched the scene below. The man on the other end of the phone was a Navy corpsman who lived close by and came straight over. Dannion’s girlfriend had just taken a CPR course and was pounding on his chest. When a paramedic arrived, someone ran next door to call for more help. Meanwhile Dannion floated around, looking at everything, feeling so disconnected from it.
He offers a thought for Alex and for listeners. This will happen to everyone, he says, and “you’ll be so happy when your time comes” that you will not know what to do with yourself. The biggest thing people do, in his view, is grieve at losing you. But that only slows you down. It holds you, because you stay connected to them rather than letting them celebrate your life.
Following the Ambulance
He watched himself loaded into the ambulance. He figured he had better go along, because it was “a new and interesting reality.” He cannot explain how he floated above the paramedic who worked on him, or how he had visual range, but he did.
Then he heard the paramedic say that he was gone. Dannion thought, gone where? Here he was, and there was the body. That is when he noticed a spiraling tunnel over his left shoulder, moving whether he was moving or not. He felt himself pulled down it.
He came to a place of bright, brilliant, beautiful light. Everybody, he says, has an inner knowing that they have been there before. And, he adds, when people feel fear near the end of life, it is often someone they trust and know who comes to help them. If you want more on how others describe this passage, our complete guide to near-death experiences is a good place to start.
The Radiant Being
At the end of the tunnel, Dannion went to look at his body or his hand, and his hand was not there. As he focused, it appeared, but not like a glove. “I had a shimmering essence to it,” he says. Then it faded back into the shimmer.
He saw a being coming toward him, which is the only word he has for it, a radiant being. He understands why people think of wings, he says, because of the movement around the body as it approached.
As he focused on the being, “a sense of safety and calm rushed over me.” He explains it like this. When you are four years old and you cut your knee and run to your mother, and she picks you up and sets you on the washing machine and says she will fix it, that is the feeling. No matter how old you are, it is that loving, compassionate sense of safety.
The Panoramic Life Review
The most important part, he says, is the life review. In most near-death experiences, he says, you will see your life pass before you in a 360 degree panorama. You miss nothing. Then you watch it from a second-person point of view, “as if you were your own best friend.” That lets you see how similar you are to others, how funny you are, and how unserious you are.
Then, he says, you literally become every person you have ever met, and you feel the direct results of how you treated them. After that, there is a question. Dannion uses the word God for want of a better one, and says the divine essence asks: if God could not come today, and God sent you in your place, “what difference did you and God make?”
He draws a clear conclusion. You are responsible. You chose to come here, and you were chosen. And “it is your intent that matters”, not what you do, but why you do it. For Dannion that review was not comfortable. He says he was the most ignorant, hideous brute, and that he took a lot of punishment for his actions. But he says “nobody is going to get away with anything,” and that the universe is fair and just. The glossary entry on life review explains how others describe this part of the experience.
Crystal Cities, Twelve Beings and a Thirteenth
After the review, he says, the being took him to what he calls crystal cities. He has no other term for it. He compares it to driving into Denver one night about 2 a.m., when the houses lit up on the sides of the mountains radiated through the fog. That was the image he puts to it. He was looking at the architecture when twelve beings appeared.
He notes that twelve shows up in many religious traditions, and that he can see why it feels significant. A thirteenth being stood to his right. Each of the beings showed him a series of events. Dannion calls these his boxes of knowledge and says they describe probable possibilities, shaped by the intent we bring to what we do.
He says he wrote about this in his book Saved by the Light, which he says came out in 1994 and became an international bestseller. In this conversation he does not go into the contents of those visions, and he is wary of anyone treating them as predictions. His point is that what happens in this life depends on the intent each of us uses. And when you focus on being a physical being instead of a spiritual one, he says, you notice the little things: the smile, the pat on the back, the reassurance that it is going to be okay.
Recovery, More Close Calls and a Lifetime at the Bedside
Dannion says he was dead for 28 minutes after the lightning. He says he was completely paralyzed for six days, partially paralyzed for seven months, and that it took two years to learn to walk and feed himself. He says he has had one death experience and four near-death experiences in all, and “I have been dead three times.”
He describes later health crises, including open heart surgery, brain surgery, and a cardiac arrest from which he says he was resuscitated after about seven minutes, followed by a second. These are his own accounts of his medical history, and we share them as he told them.
The experience pointed him toward the bedside. He says he has been a hospice volunteer for 42 years and has spent the last 37 years with veterans at the VA. He says he has been with many people at the end of their lives. For more on that kind of presence, see the glossary entry on death doulas.
His Message: You Do Not Have to Die to Touch Your Spirituality
Dannion keeps returning to one idea. “You were that before you got here and you will be that when you leave here,” he says, speaking of being great, powerful and mighty spiritual beings with dignity, direction and purpose. He believes the only thing that can really go wrong in your life is letting something affect your dignity, and with it your direction and purpose.
He says people are scared to death of something that will never happen. His life’s mission, as he describes it, is to create centers that let people access those levels of consciousness while they are still here. “You don’t have to die, to touch your spirituality,” he says, and he talks about techniques for gaining control of yourself instead of being controlled.
On grief, he is gentle but direct. He thinks most grieving is structured on guilt and a feeling of abandonment: they died and left you. He suggests looking at it differently. He is working on a book called Certainty, because if something is certain and inevitable, he says, you should be an expert on it. As he puts it: “if you’re breathing you’re leaving.”
Where Dannion’s Story Meets Other Reports
The features Dannion describes, floating above the body, watching resuscitation, a tunnel, a bright light and a life review, are among the most commonly reported in near-death accounts. A well-known 2001 study in The Lancet, led by Pim van Lommel, followed cardiac arrest survivors and found that 62 of 344, about 18 percent, reported such an experience. What these reports mean is still debated, and we make no medical claims. We share them as lived experiences in the guest’s own words.
Questions to Sit With
- Dannion says that in his life review it was intent that mattered. When you look at what you did this week, what was your intent?
- If you saw yourself through the eyes of your own best friend, what would you want to forgive?
- Dannion says grief can hold us in place. Where might you be holding on to someone in a way that keeps you stuck?
Pick one small act of kindness today, like a smile or a pat on the back, and notice your intent behind it. Nothing more than that.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Dannion says we are great, powerful and mighty spiritual beings with dignity, direction and purpose.
- He says it is intent that matters, not only what we do.
- He says nobody gets away with anything, and that the universe is fair.
- He says you do not have to die to touch your spirituality.
- He describes a sense of safety, like a child running to a mother, in the presence of the radiant being.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dannion Brinkley.
Guest Links: Connect With Dannion Brinkley
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Dannion Brinkley?
Dannion Brinkley is a near-death experiencer, a former Marine and the author of Saved by the Light. He has been a hospice volunteer for 42 years and has spent the last 37 years with veterans at the VA, according to his own account.
What happened to Dannion Brinkley in 1975?
Dannion says lightning came down the landline telephone he was holding and struck him in the side of the head. He says he left his body and was dead for 28 minutes.
What did Dannion see when he left his body?
He says he saw the room, his girlfriend performing CPR, a Navy corpsman who lived nearby and the paramedics. He floated above them and followed the ambulance.
What was the radiant being?
Dannion describes a radiant being that came toward him at the end of the tunnel. He says a sense of safety and calm rushed over him, like a child running to a mother. He does not give the being a name.
What is the panoramic life review?
Dannion says you see your life pass before you in a 360 degree panorama, then watch it as though you were your own best friend, then become every person you have met and feel the results of your actions.
What question does Dannion say the divine essence asks?
He says it asks what difference you made if God could not come today and sent you instead.
What are the crystal cities?
Dannion uses crystal cities as his only term for a place of architecture lit up like houses on a mountainside in fog. He says twelve beings, and a thirteenth, showed him series of events there.
What does Dannion do now?
He says he has volunteered in hospice for 42 years, spent 37 years with veterans at the VA, and is working on a book called Certainty.
What is Dannion’s message about death?
He says people fear something that will never happen, that we are spiritual beings, and that you do not have to die to touch your spirituality.
Is a near-death experience proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences as personal accounts in the person’s 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
- What a life review is, in plain language
- What a death doula does
- Elizabeth Krohn on being struck by lightning and two weeks in heaven
- Sharon Milliman on a heavenly tour after a lightning strike
- Julie McFadden, a hospice nurse on the moments before we die
- William J. Peters on what a life review taught him
- Bill Letson, a fire captain, on astral realms and beings of light
- 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.
Dannion Brinkley 0:08
Well, in 1975, I was 25 years old. I thought I was the toughest, most narcissistic, ego maniacal, bad boy, nine States Marine Corps working for various programs. You know, not religious, not any of that I thought I was the center of the universe. And what evening I was sitting down is Mr. Somebody, and I was holding the telephone to my ear. And that was when you had landlines back in the day, and lightning came down the phone line and hit me in the side of the head. It went down my spine, it welded the nails or the heels of my bass weejuns to the nails in the floor. If it hadn't been grounded by well enough, welded those nails, I would have exploded, it threw me in the air, slam me back down breaking the bread that frame and I was burning and on fire and I could not see and the pain Alex was so incredible when you experienced not knowing what happened I did couldn't ever imagine like, so I was trying to get to a position as a defensive position as a fighter and a combat God. And I could not move. I could not move and I could see where I was and my god pain every nerve and and was burned. I mean, I have pictures of what I look like eight days after that, you can see what the spine, my bruises down my spine, every vertebrae had a big bruise on it, where it just twisted me in the air. Then all of a sudden, I lift up out of my body, I could see I wasn't in any pain. And it did not matter where I was, I was not down there anymore. And I'm looking around and seeing that everything is vibrant, you would think it was solid, but nothing is really solid. It's like the matrix exists not all those numbers. And everything has a certain resonance and a frequency. And I was looking at all of that. And somehow I knew this place better than I had known that 25 year old punk where I was now. And I watch them. The guy on the other end of the phone was a corpsman in the Navy, he came straight over, he lived really close. And my girlfriend was just to take a CPR course. And so she was pounding on me. And then TM got there and they worked on me say call the paramedics went next door call the paramedics, I'm just floating around. I'm looking at everything. I'm so disconnected from it, you know, and this is going to happen to every party, Alex, you'll be so happy when your time comes that you won't know what to do with yourself. And the biggest thing that people do is grieve about losing you. But that only slows you down. It only holds you because you stay connected to them instead of them celebrating your life. So I watched him load me in the ambulance. And I figured I better go with me. Okay, because it was a new and interesting reality. So I better go with me. So I cannot figure out how I was floating above the paramedic working on me. And I had visual range. I don't know how that possibly worked. But I did. And then the guy said, He's gone, he's gone. And I thought well gone, where I mean, the paramedics here, the low down there, where's anybody gone, and then over my left shoulder, this spiraling tunnel, and it was moving, whether I was moving or not, and I could feel myself being pulled down it. And I moved down this tunnel and I come to this place of bright, brilliant, beautiful light, you know, everybody will have an inner knowing, Alex, that they've been there before. And that they know this place, there is no fear. And a lot of times when people have fear at the end of life, someone that they trust and know comes to give them. What people don't understand is all of this led me to become a hospice volunteer. I've been a hospice volunteer for 42 years, and I have more than $34,000 at the bedside. And I've been with 2010 people going from this world to the next. And I've been with 348 people taking their last breath. And I spent the last 37 years in the VA dying with veterans. So all of this was so impressive to me of what I saw and what I witnessed and what I went through that it transformed my life. You know, it just transformed it because we are great, powerful and mighty spiritual beings with dignity, direction and purpose. You were that before you got here and you will be that when you leave here, you take on the Suncoast socials. ecological identities to achieve certain goals, both you're chosen to come here, and then you choose to come here. So I get down to the end of this tunnel in this bright, brilliant, beautiful life. And this is another one of the issues I have, I looked down to see my hand or I was going to look at my body, because I'm steady, I'm in this place, there's not all that just going on with that dead guy. And I'm looking at my hand and my hand was not there. And then as I focused, my hand appeared, and I could see my hand, it's not like Michael Jackson with the glove on, but I had a shimmering essence to it. And then I saw a being this and that's the only thing I could describe these things as being a radiant being, I can understand why people think wings, because of the movement around that body as it was moving toward me. And my hand disappeared back into that shimmer and soberness. As I focused before I left and focused on the being coming toward me, when the spinning game tend to be a sense of safety and calm rushed over me. And always say it like this, you know, when you cut your knee, and you're four years old, and you run to your mother, and Scott blurred, and she picks you up and set you on the washing machine, and she's fix it, you know, what that feeling is the feeling no matter how old you are, that's the feeling that you get that loving, compassionate sense of safety. And then I had what I think is the single most important thing about the near death experience other than it does happen, which confirms without any question that no one dies, it will not happen. And how do I know that I have been dead three times. I've had one death except experience. And I've had four near death experiences. Dead struck by lightning dead for 28 minutes, completely paralyzed for six days, partially paralyzed for seven months, two years to learn to walk and feed myself, pass it out, taking steps breaking my nose, blood, pulling my shoulder out of socket, trying to push the button on a door to get to open the door, and I just black out and hang there for three hours into my dad comes by pulls my shoulder out, enjoy it breaks my collarbone. And I'm still hanging there, well back into tunnel. So this being the most important thing that everybody has to understand is the panoramic life. Maybe you and this is concurrent in most near death experiences, you will see your life pass before you in a 360 degree panorama, you have missed nothing, then you'll watch it from a second person point of view as if you were your own best friend. So you can see how similar you are, how funny you are, and how unserious you are. Okay, then you literally become every person that you've ever encountered, and you feel the direct results of your interaction between you and that person. And then there is a question, and I'm going to use the term God, because there's no word God is the German word, but there is no word for it. Then this divine essence ask you a question. If God couldn't come today, and God sent you in the life you distribute, what difference did you and God make? What does that tell you? You are responsible, you chose to come here, you were chosen and you chose, and you're going to be every person. So it is your intent that matters, not what you do, but why you're doing. And then that reflection, because I basically didn't have a lot of really good things after three, that you know, I mean, I had to be the most ignorant, hideous, brute to worst part about it out because I could fight, I can back those words up.
Speaker 1 8:53
So I had to take a lot of punishment for my actions, but I am responsible, nobody is going to get away with anything. And the universe is fair, and just in the story. And once that was over, this being took me to what I call crystal cities, you know, I have no other term for how I would describe it, because I remember driving into Denver, one night about 2am. And the houses were lit up on the sides of the mountains. And they because of the fog, they radiate it out. And that was the image that I put to that. And I got into this Crystal City and I was looking at the architecture of it. And then these beings these 12 beings appeared, you know, and I go through all the religious context of the 12 disciples, the 12, gauge, the 12, pearls, the 12, tribes, all that. So 12 is gotta be a significant position. And if you're a Tesla, three, six, and nine are the variable numbers of how the universe operates and frequencies and harmonics. So it all kind of makes sense to me now. But each of these beings showed me above because then what would happen Alex is that beam would radiate. And there was a 13th being to my right. And that 13 B it would designate not in order, but designate a being to show me what became now is known as the prophecies of Daniel. I always call that section nostre Danya. Until just some jackass from South Carolina, I know too much about me to be impressed. I don't deal with any of that. But what happened was, I saw a series of events, each one of them showed me series of events. So here we are, 45 years later. And I would say that we were in what I call box 12. Remember, I wrote a book called save by the light in 1993. And it was published in 1994, became a International New York Times bestseller, and in the boxes of knowledge, which is what I call these prophets that prophesy attic visions, it describes the probable possibilities of what happens in this life determines in the intent that each of us use in the reasoning for why we're doing what we're doing. And when you start focusing on being a physical being, as opposed to a spiritual being, you're going to see the little things, the little acts of kindness, the smile, the pat on the back, it's gonna be okay, people have to understand, when you're a great, powerful and mighty spiritual being with dignity, direction and purpose, the only thing that can ever go wrong in your life is you allow something to affect your dignity, which gives your direction and your purpose. Well, anybody who's ever read, saved by the light, or have ever watched my life for 45 years, knows I know what I'm supposed to be doing. And I have given my whole life to death. I am an expert in palliative and end of life care. And I know exactly how to help a person go from this world to the next, based on that they're a spiritual being. So when you find out what your mission is, and you see that as a spiritual big, which the nature of box 12 is to keep you from being able to do that, and what people have to really understand now is they're scared to death of something that will never happen. Well, I laugh all the time, because in my other near death experiences, the damage done to me from being struck by lightning, I've had to have open heart surgery, brain surgery. And then after this last open heart surgery, because I had an aneurysm under my aortic valve, they only gave me a maximum of 10 days. And she said that the scar tissue and damage on the inside of me was unbelievable, and that no one would ever be able to go back in there no matter what, five days later, on a Sunday morning, at 2am. I went into cardiac arrest and they had to resuscitate me about seven minutes I was resuscitated and I went into cardiac arrest again. Okay, now that was two and a half years ago. And so when someone goes to tell me that they think that the about life after death and that you live in, in a Dead universe, if you take drugs or pharmaceuticals or anything, you look to a doctor, then you live in a Dead universe. It's there are there's a living universe, well, I live in the Living Universe, I celebrate this. So my life's mission is that this to create the centers, the ability to access those levels of consciousness while you're still here, the OB, the spiritual nature of yourself, the techniques by which it is you gain control of you, instead of being controlled. And in that moment, you don't have to die, to touch your spirituality. And once that place is put into position, and there is that way so that a person who has who's really grieving, which I think is a horrible thing, I think that separation and loneliness, but most grieving is structured on guilt based on abandonment. They died and left you and you may add about instead of looking at that I'm writing a poet are working on a book called certainty. Because if there is something that's guaranteed and inevitable, you need to be an expert on it and if you're breathing you're leaving.
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