Divine Encounters Episode 125 | Near-Death Experience Story
Dianne Sherman was a divorced mother and a model of 17 years, praying for guidance in her early 30s, when she says she left her body during knee surgery in 1981. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari about the blackness she feared, the iridescent white she says felt like coming home, the hooded monk who told her it was not her time, and why she no longer fears death.
Key Takeaways
- Dianne says she was in her early 30s, divorced, with a six year old daughter, when she prayed for guidance and, three days later, hurt her knee in an accident in Mexico.
- She says she was under anesthesia much longer than planned during knee surgery in 1981, and woke to hear people calling her name.
- She describes standing at the foot of her bed, looking at herself, and feeling no connection to the body being worked on.
- Dianne says she was pushed into a blackness she had feared since childhood, until one small glimmer of light grew into an iridescent white that felt like it was there for her.
- She describes two rows of monks and a hooded figure who spoke inside her and told her it was not her time.
- She says she chose to return because of her daughter, and does not know if she was sent or sent herself.
- Her message: there is nothing to fear, and death can be celebrated the way birth is.
| Guest | Dianne Sherman |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 125 |
| Age at the time | Early 30s (the surgery was in 1981) |
| What Dianne says happened | She left her body during knee surgery, after being under anesthesia far longer than planned |
| Where she says she went | Up to the corner of the room, then into blackness, then an iridescent white |
| Who she met | Two rows of monks in brown robes and a hooded figure with no face |
| What she was told | It was not her time, and she had a child |
| The message | There is nothing to fear; death is a next level of being |
A Life at a Standstill
Dianne says she had come to a standstill. She was divorced, raising a six year old daughter, and had been a model for 17 years. That career was coming to an end, and she did not know what the next step was. In her words, she was hitting the wall emotionally.
She talks about the markers we expect at certain stages of life, the places we think we should be by a certain age. She was not there. She felt badly that she had not had a successful marriage. Both of her parents had died by then, so there was no one to ask whether this was the next logical step.
So she did what a good Catholic girl does, as she puts it. She went to church and prayed. Help. I need guidance. What am I doing, and where am I going?
An Answer, Three Days Later
Three days after that prayer, Dianne says, she had an accident in Mexico with her ex-husband and dislocated her knee, with a lot of damage. The repair called for a big patella surgery. As a working model she could not have a large scar, so she waited.
When the day finally came, she was sitting on a gurney in the hallway outside the surgical suite, freezing and racked with cold. Part of it, she is sure, was nerves. A kind nurse offered a heated blanket and Dianne accepted gratefully. It calmed her, though she still felt unsettled.
Then, in the surgical suite, they put another blanket on her and she was out. She had not even had the anesthesia yet. She calls that a kind of precursor to what was coming.
Longer on the Table Than Planned
This was 1981. Dianne notes that they did not have MRIs, and arthroscopic surgery was fairly new. She was thin from her work, and she says there was much more damage to repair than anyone knew. She was on the table almost two hours longer than expected, and that meant that much longer under anesthesia. She believes it was too much for her system. She also describes herself as a sensitive, someone who has always been one.
She next remembers waking up in recovery, groggy and disoriented, hearing a commotion. She did not want to pay attention to it, because she felt she was in her own experience. Then she heard people calling, “Dianne, wake up.” She thought how odd it was that someone shared her first name. A few minutes later she heard the full name: Dianne Sherman, wake up.
Standing at the Foot of the Bed
Her first thought was that they had the wrong patient. Maybe they had done the wrong surgery. She says she waved to them, trying to get attention without being intrusive, because clearly something serious was happening. Nobody noticed her. She figured they could not hear her and were focused on saving this other person’s life.
Then she was standing at the bottom of the bed, looking up at a woman while the staff worked on her. She looked down at herself and realized, it is me. She says she had no connection to the person in the bed. It was neutral. It was nothing.
The strange thing, she says, was that it was not frightening. She was simply the observer, and she does not think she had ever been the observer that way in her whole life. She even describes herself as very analytical, and she was not questioning any of it.
She describes floating up into the corner of the room and watching, with no real fascination except that something was happening. You can read how others describe this common first step in our glossary entry on the near-death experience.
The Blackness She Feared
From the corner of the ceiling she felt extricated, and then pushed. She says that every time she tells it she can feel her body pushing against it. She was being pushed into an abject blackness.
This mattered to her. As a kid, Dianne was terrified of the dark. Now she was in absolute blackness with no reference to anything, and it was terrifying. She was being pushed deeper and deeper. She remembers thinking, if I can just find one tiny glimmer of light to hold on to, I will be okay.
She stared and stretched her vision, and as far out as it could go, she saw one tiny glimmer. She says she glommed onto it for dear life.
An Iridescent White That Felt Like Home
The glimmer grew bigger and closer. Dianne was fascinated, and the fear started to abate. She felt hope, relief, a little sense of control, a sense that there was something more than blackness. Soon it surrounded her.
She describes a color of white she had never seen, a substance like being in clouds but not exactly. The white had all the colors of the rainbow in it. In her words, “it’s iridescent and it’s loving and it’s protective and it’s supportive and it’s here for me.” She notes that it was the first time she had said that, and “I just got that it’s here for me” struck her as a divine sense, since before the experience she had not felt that people were there for her.
She calls it coming home. A sense of belonging, of all rightness within yourself, of everything she had ever hoped for in work, family or marriage. The ultimate goal, she says, was coming home to self.
Even floating felt normal. She had an odd sense of humor in that moment, thinking, I’m floating, and it did not feel unnormal. It felt so right.
Two Rows of Monks
As she came through the white, cloud-like area, Dianne saw two rows of monks in brown robes with the hoods up. She says that after listening to so many near-death experiences, she realized that people have figures in their experiences that are analogous to their own background. She went to Catholic school for 12 years. The monks were the safest part of her religion, always sweet to her, while the priests were kind of scary. So the monks felt okay.
She stresses that nothing scary happened in the whole experience except the dark, her own childhood fear. In retrospect, she says, it was a very gentle experience.
Our complete guide to near-death experiences looks at how the figures people meet often mirror what is familiar to them.
The Figure Who Spoke Inside Her
At the end of the rows, the last monk stepped forward. Dianne calls him he because of the masculine qualities she felt: in charge, knowing what to do, caretaking, observing, with powerful energy. Under the hood there was no face. It was a blackness with little sparks of color dancing, like something from a sci-fi film. But again, she says, it felt normal and natural, not scary.
He spoke inside of her, not out loud. He said, “It’s not your time, you must go back.”
Dianne argued. You can’t send me back, she said. I’ve just found home, I’ve just found feeling cherished. You can’t bring me this far and send me back. He said it again, and then he said, you have a child. Yes, she answered. He said, well, you must go back.
Thinking of Her Daughter
She thought of her six year old daughter, whom she loved and adored. I want to stay, she thought. I love my daughter, but I want to stay. The figure kept repeating himself. Dianne started thinking about who would care for her little girl if she did stay. Her parents were gone. Her sister was not emotionally healthy enough to raise a child. Her ex-husband was her ex-husband for a reason. She had no one she could trust to love, support and watch over her daughter the way she wanted.
In that thought, she says, she was back in her body. To this day she does not know whether they sent her or she sent herself, and she says she will not know until she is on the other side.
Nothing to Be Afraid Of
Dianne says that when you cross over there is a kind of help bringing you back to your essence, who you are as a soul, and to remember the brilliance of you. She tells people there is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing scary, demeaning or hurtful. In her words, “there’s nothing but love and joy on the other side.”
She does not want people to be fearful of something so beautiful. “I think we should be celebrating death just like we celebrate birth,” she says. It is on the same par. It is going to the next level of your beingness.
She calls it “an adventure, the most divine feeling you could ever imagine.” It is connection, satisfaction, comfort, and the preciousness of loving and being loved.
Placing Dianne’s Story Beside Common Themes
Researchers have looked at these reports for decades. In 1983, psychiatrist Bruce Greyson published the 16-item NDE Scale, which asks about features like leaving the body, a tunnel or darkness, a bright light and a sense of peace. Dianne’s account touches many of them: watching from above, a dark passage, a light that grew, a feeling of belonging, a message about returning.
What stands out is how she handles fear. She names her childhood fear of the dark as the one difficult part, and describes holding on to a single glimmer. For related themes, try our glossary entry on the afterlife. At Next Level Soul we share accounts as experiences, in the person’s own words.
Questions to Sit With
- Dianne prayed for guidance and says she had no one to ask. Who, or what, do you turn to when you feel at a standstill?
- She says her deepest childhood fear became the doorway to something beautiful. Is there a fear you have wondered about approaching differently?
- She says she chose to return out of love for her daughter. What is the love in your life that keeps you here, and how are you showing it?
This week, light a candle or sit quietly for five minutes and ask for guidance on one small question. Write down whatever comes, without judging it.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Dianne says there is nothing but love and joy on the other side.
- She describes coming home to self as the ultimate goal.
- She says the figures we meet may mirror what feels safe to us.
- She describes a fear from childhood as the passage to comfort.
- She says death can be celebrated like birth, as the next level of being.
Please enjoy my conversation with Dianne Sherman.
Guest Links: Connect With Dianne Sherman
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Dianne Sherman?
Dianne Sherman is a former model and the guest on this Divine Encounters episode. She says she had a near-death experience during knee surgery in 1981, when she was in her early 30s.
What happened to Dianne Sherman during surgery?
Dianne says she was on the table almost two hours longer than planned, then woke in recovery hearing her name called. She says she then found herself standing at the foot of her bed, looking at her own body.
Why was Dianne afraid of the dark in her experience?
Dianne says she was terrified of the dark as a child. She describes being pushed into complete blackness, and says finding one tiny glimmer of light helped her through it.
What did the white light feel like to Dianne?
Dianne describes an iridescent white with all the colors of the rainbow in it. She says it felt loving, protective and supportive, and that she felt it was there for her.
Who were the monks Dianne saw?
Dianne says she saw two rows of monks in brown robes with hoods up. She says that, after 12 years of Catholic school, the monks felt like the safest part of her religion.
What did the hooded figure tell Dianne?
Dianne says the figure spoke inside her, not out loud. He told her it was not her time and that she must go back, reminding her that she had a child.
Why did Dianne return?
Dianne says she thought about her six year old daughter and about who would care for her. She says that thought brought her back to her body.
Does Dianne know who sent her back?
Dianne says she does not know whether they sent her or she sent herself, and that she will not know until she is on the other side.
What does Dianne say about fearing death?
Dianne says there is nothing to be afraid of, that there is nothing but love and joy on the other side, and that death can be celebrated the way birth is.
Did the figure in Dianne’s story have a face?
Dianne says the hood was up and there was no face, only a blackness with little sparks of color, and that it felt natural and not scary.
Is this a medical claim?
No. Next Level Soul shares these stories as lived experiences in the guest’s own words. Nothing here is medical advice, and researchers continue to debate what such experiences mean.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What a near-death experience is
- The afterlife in plain language
- Karen Thomas on dying on the operating table
- Wendy Rose Williams on dying during surgery
- Sheila Gillette on a divine meeting after childbirth
- Lee Papa on a choice between leaving her son and returning
- Nanci Danison on a doctor who died in surgery
- 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.
Dianne Sherman 0:08
Well, I'd sort of come to a standstill in my life. I was divorced, I had a six year old daughter, I had been a model for 17 years, and I'd kind of come to the end of that. I didn't know what the next step was, and that was concerning. So, I was kind of hitting the wall emotionally, you know. You get to certain stages in your life where there are markers for you, where you think you know you need to be in certain places, and I wasn't there, and feeling badly that I'd not had a successful marriage, and whatnot. And, like the good Catholic girl that I was, I went to church and prayed that, you know, help. I need some guidance. What am I doing? Where am I going? I knew there were all kinds of feelings inside of me, but I had no idea of what I was supposed to do with those, so I just needed guidance. Now, both of my parents were dead at that point. I was in my early 30s, and I just didn't have anybody to go to to say, "Hey, this is maybe the next logical step. So, here I am praying like crazy, and three days later I'd had an accident in Mexico with my ex-husband and dislocated my knee, did all kinds of damage, but could not have the big patella surgery because I was a working model, having that big scar was not okay. So I waited, and it was finally time to have that, and that morning I'm sitting on the gurney in the hallway, waiting to go into the surgical suite, and I'm just freezing, I'm racking with cold, and part of it, I'm sure, was nerves and whatnot, and this lovely nurse came by me and said, you know, would you like a heated blanket, and I said, sure, I would love that, that would be great, and she gave me a heated blanket, and that seemed to calm things down, and I'm still a little, you know, unsettled, and whatnot. The next thing I know, I'm in the surgical suite, and they put another blanket on me, and I'm out. I haven't even had the anesthesia yet, and I'm out, which was kind of a precursor, in a way, of what was coming at that time as a working model, I was really thin, and they had so much more damage to do to repair than they knew, because they didn't have MRIs and all that stuff in 1981 you know. We didn't even.. well, arthroscopic surgery was fairly new at that point, but it was still, you know, they knew what they were doing, so I'm on the table like almost two hours longer than I'm supposed to be, and that meant that much longer under anesthesia, and I guess because of my weight distribution and all of that with the anesthesia, it was too much for my system, so I'm, I'm a sensitive, I always have been, so the next thing I know I'm waking up in recovery, and I'm hearing all this commotion, and I don't want to pay attention to it, because I'm in my own experience right here, you know, I'm trying to groggy and disoriented and whatnot, and but I hear all this commotion, and I'm hearing them say, Dianne, wake up, Dianne, wake up, and I'm thinking to myself, How weird is that, that we had the same first name, and a few minutes later I'm hearing them say, Dianne Sherman, wake up, Dianne Sherman, wake up. At which point I'm thinking, oh my god, did they get the wrong patient? Did they do the wrong surgery? What is happening? And I'm waving to them, trying to get their attention without being intrusive, because clearly whatever they're doing is serious, and they're not paying any attention to me, Alex. I'm thinking to myself, maybe they can't hear me, and maybe they're just so focused on saving this person's life that you know it's okay. The next thing I know, I'm standing at the bottom of her bed, looking up at her, while they're working on her, and I'm looking down at myself. I see me, I'm looking down at me, and I'm looking up at her, and I realize it's me, and I have no connection to the me in the bed that they're working on.
Dianne Sherman 3:47
It was as if somebody had said pass the soul, you know, it was just neutral. There was nothing, and the weird thing was it wasn't scary or off-putting, or it was just I was notating what was happening, you know. I was in that, that frame of reference where you're just the observer. I was the observer. I don't know that I'd ever been the observer that way in my whole life. So, it was next thing I know, I am floating up, I'm in the corner of the surgical room or the post op, and I'm now looking over everything that's going on, and in watching it, there's no real fascination, except that something's happening, and I'm not even questioning it, and I'm very analytical. I'm not, I'm not going to fear, I'm not going to anything. I'm just watching it, and from there I'm feeling extricated out of the corner of the ceiling of that room, and now I'm being pushed, and every time I say that, I can build my body push against it. I'm being pushed into this abject blackness, and as a kid I was terrified of the dark, and so being in that absolute blackness, where I couldn't see, could I had no reference to anything, it was terrifying, and I'm being pushed forward more and more into it, and I'm thinking to myself, okay. If I can just find one little glimmer of light, one little tiny glimmer of light that I can hold on to, I'm going to be okay. And so I'm just like staring and stretching myself to find something, and all of a sudden, as far out as my vision could go, I'm seeing one little tiny glimmer, and I'm just like glommed onto that to hold on to for dear life, and it starts getting bigger and closer, and I'm like fascinated by this, and as it's getting closer, the fear, of course, is starting to abate, and I'm just watching this, and just hopeful, and you know, all the feelings of relief, you know, there's something happening where I feel a little sense of control, or a little sense of there's something more than this blackness, and now it's surrounding me, it's everywhere around me, and I'm fascinated by it, because it's nothing I've ever seen before, it's a color of white I've never seen, and a substance, it's like being in clouds, but not, not exactly that, the white has all the colors of the rainbow in it, you know, it's iridescent and it's loving and it's protective and it's supportive and it's here for me, and it's first time I've said that, I just got that it's here for me, that was such a divine sense for me, because I think where I had been before this experience was in a place where I didn't feel people were there for me, so to have this be here for me was, wow, coming home, really coming home to that sense of belonging, that sense of all rightness within yourself, that that sense of everything you've ever hoped for in your life, whether it was the work of the family or the marriage or the this or the that, this was the ultimate goal, was that sense of coming home to self, and I felt that in this, in this moment, and as this white is totally surrounding me, I'm now floating in it. I have an odd sense of humor, but at the moment I got the fact that I was floating, I had the awareness that I was thinking I'm floating, and it was like it didn't feel unnormal. That's what was so interesting. It felt so right and normal to be floating. So, as I'm coming through this white, diaphanous cloud-like area, there are two rows of monks in front of me, dressed in the brown monks' robes, with the hoods up, and I know, having listened to so many near-death experiences, I realized that people have experiences that are analogous to them in some way, and the monks were kind of like the safest part of my religion, you know, and being in Catholic school for 12 years, I went through lots of missions and whatnot. Yes, and the monks were always sweet to me, which the priests were kind of scary. So these monks felt okay for me, you know.
Dianne Sherman 7:52
There was nothing scary going on in this whole experience, except being in the dark, and that was my own childhood fear. It really, in retrospect, was a very gentle experience, so now I'm coming to the end of these two rows of monks, and the one on the end steps forward, and he speaks to me, and I say he because he had all those wonderful male qualities, you know, sort of that masculine being in charge, and and knowing what to do, and caretaking, and observing, and you know, just he had the energy, had the powerful energy, and he looked at me, and I say, "Look, the hood was up, but there was no face, it was a blackness, and it was almost like little sparks of colored things dancing in this hood, and it almost looked like a picture out of some kind of sci-fi film, where you see things moving, and when, but it seemed again normal, natural, not scary. And he, he spoke to me, and when I say spoke, he spoke inside of me. He didn't verbally say anything out loud, and he spoke to me, and he said, "It's not your time, you must go back. And I said, you can't send me back. I've just found home. I've just found feeling cherished. You can't send me back. And he said, it's not your time, you must go back. And I said, you can't bring me this far and send me back. You can't. And he said, you have a child. And I said, yes, I do. He said, Well, you must go back. It's not your time. You have a child. And I started thinking about my daughter, my six year old daughter, who I loved and adored. And I thought, I want to stay. I love my daughter, but I want to stay. And so he kept repeating, and I started thinking about who would take care of her if I stayed. My parents were both gone. My sister was not emotionally healthy enough to raise my daughter, my ex-husband was my ex-husband for a reason. I didn't have anybody that I could entrust her to, to be loved and cared for, and watched over and supported the way I wanted her to be, and in that thought form back in my body. So, to this day, I don't know if they. You sent me or I sent me back, and I won't know until I'm on the other side. When you cross over, there's that kind of help to bring you back to, you know, your essence, who you are as a soul, and to remember the brilliance of you. And so I tell them, there's nothing to be afraid of. There's absolutely nothing going to go on that's scary, that's demeaning, that's hurtful, that's there's nothing but love and joy on the other side, and I don't want people to be fearful of something that's so beautiful. I think we should be celebrating death just like we celebrate birth. It's the same, it's on the same par. It's going to the next level of your beingness. How can that be detrimental in any way. How can that be scary? It's not. It's an adventure, the most divine feeling you could ever imagine. It's connection, it's satisfaction, it's comfort, it's preciousness to love and be loved.
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