Divine Encounters Episode 060 | Near-Death Experience Story
Ingrid Honkala was almost three years old, growing up in Bogota, Colombia, when she says she fell into a cement water tank, felt a terror she could not name, and then found herself in a stillness she calls the silence behind the silence. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari what she says she experienced, from a light below the water to her mother stopping in the street, and how a child who came back angry grew into someone who sees life as a gift.
Key Takeaways
- Ingrid says she fell into a large cold water tank at about two and a half to three years old, and went from desperate terror to complete calm.
- She describes “the silence behind the silence,” so profound that she craved it for the rest of her life.
- She says she saw a light from below, then bubbles surrounded by light, and turned to see her own body and thought, “I’m not going back there.”
- She says she floated above the family maid, then above her mother on the way to work, and that her mother stopped and turned back at the moment Ingrid said, that this was her mom.
- She describes a realm of pure light that felt like coming home, and a state of nothingness and wholeness she calls pure consciousness.
- She says she came back angry, refused to eat or be touched, and felt that her parents were her equals; she says she also showed new abilities.
- Her message: challenges are challenging opportunities, and life is a game we can play with joy.
| Guest | Ingrid Honkala |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 060 |
| Age at the time | Almost three |
| Where it happened | A large cement water tank in the patio of her family’s home in Bogota, Colombia |
| What Ingrid says happened | She fell in, felt terror, then complete calm, and left her body |
| Where she says she went | Above the maid’s room, above her mother on the street, and into a realm of pure light |
| What she felt | Peace, well-being and a sense of being home; then anger at returning |
| The message | Life is a gift, challenges are opportunities, and we are more than we think |
A Very Young Child and a Quiet House
Alex asks his usual first question. Ingrid says it started when she was so young. Her parents worked and left the children in the care of a maid, a young woman who, when the parents were away, was absorbed in her radio soap operas and did not pay much attention to the children.
Ingrid says she was born a very sick child and spent almost the first three years of her life feeling unwell. She did not know what it was to feel well, because sickness was all she knew.
One early morning, she says, her parents left, and she and her oldest sister realized the maid was not paying attention. They went to play in the patio.
The Tank in the Patio
The patio had a big tank, Ingrid explains, which collected water for hand washing clothes. It held about 900 gallons. She and her sister saw a ball and decided to play catch across the tank. They grabbed stools and climbed up. Next to the tank was a surface used for scrubbing clothes, and her sister sat there, where it was safer. Ingrid went to the other side, which was a thin edge.
They were not thinking about any danger, she says. It was so much fun. Her sister threw the ball without enough force and it fell into the water and floated. Ingrid thought she could grab it. She leaned forward, touched the ball, and it rolled. She lost her balance and fell in.
She shares this with a sense of the whole picture. Her sister was three, she was two, and neither of them knew they were in any danger. Ingrid is gentle with everyone in the story, including the maid.
The Cold and the Terror
The first feeling was the cold, she says. People sometimes assume that because she is from Colombia the water would have been warm, but Bogota is high in the Andes. The water was frigid, somewhere between 30 and 40 degrees at six in the morning.
Then she felt that she could not breathe. She had never been in a pool, she says, and her family did not even have a bathtub. At almost three, she did not know that if you fall in water you cannot breathe. She went into a state of panic, a desperate attempt to breathe, and she sank. She did not know how to swim.
The Silence Behind the Silence
And then, Ingrid says, in the middle of that terror, she suddenly was calm. She did not need to get out of the tank to breathe or go anywhere. She felt wow, I feel so good.
People often ask how she can remember so much from such a young age. She explains that the experience was full of what she calls contrast, and extreme contrast is hard to forget. The house was always noisy. The last thing she heard with her ears, she says, was her heart beating like a drum in her head. Then came silence.
She calls it “the silence behind the silence.” It was so profound and calm, she says, that she craved it for the rest of her life. As she grew up, she went into closets, under the bed and into chapels, hoping to find it.
The tank was also made of cement, dark and roofed. The last thing she saw was darkness. The first thing she saw in the calm was light, coming from below. Our entry on near-death experience offers more on how people describe this transition.
Bubbles of Light and Her Own Body
Ingrid says she then saw bubbles surrounded by light. She chased them, turned around, and saw a body. In that moment she realized it was her body. But it felt familiar, as if it had happened before. There was nothing to fear. Everything was okay.
This is where another contrast hit her. She had been sick for almost three years. Now she felt incredibly well. So when she looked at the body, her reaction was, “I’m not going back there.” She turned around and left the body behind.
The Flowers That Carried Her
As she walked away, Ingrid says, flowers began blooming from nowhere. They were majestic, and they picked her up. She lost all sense of scale, as the flowers had to be big to lift her. She was carried and completely relaxed. She compares it to “going back to the womb,” where you do nothing and are simply being done for. It was bliss.
The Maid, Her Mother and a Dog
Then, Ingrid says, she appeared in the maid’s room. She was floating above, looking down at Maria, who was listening to her soap operas, completely unaware. She said, oh, that is Maria. But nothing happened.
In another blink, she appeared where her mother was walking to work. Her mother had no car, and she was close to the bus stop after about ten minutes through a big neighborhood. Floating above, Ingrid looked at her. And this is the part, she says, that blows everybody’s minds.
She thought, that is mom. Her mother stopped. She did not take another step. Ingrid says her mother had a sense that something was happening at home with one of her babies. Ingrid adds that her mother had amazing intuition, and that she listened to it, which is the part we often skip. Her mother turned around and ran.
Ingrid wondered why she was running. Then she saw a dog at the end of the road and, because she loves animals, the moment she wanted to be with the dog, she was with the dog. She saw a park, and as soon as she wished to be there, she was in the park. Time and space as we know them had disappeared, and she was having fun.
For related reading, see our entry on intuition.
A Realm of Light: I Am Home
Then, in a flash, she appeared in a realm made of pure, bright, intense, shiny light. Beyond the serenity and the well-being, she says, the feeling was: “Oh, I am home.” She compares it to arriving home after a hard day to a comfortable couch, television and a cup of coffee.
Up to that point, she says, she had not realized she was not that persona, not that body. Then she did. She began to experience herself as part of light, dissolving into the whole.
Nothingness and Wholeness
Ingrid then describes something that scares some people, which she calls nothingness. Others call it non-self, emptiness or wholeness. It is nothing that you know, she says, and at the same time you experience the whole.
She offers an image. Imagine all you knew about yourself was a tiny box in the middle of a stadium. Then you open the box and realize “I’m more than I thought I was.” Even at almost three, she says, she understood she was not the sickness she thought she was.
The only words she can use for this state are “a state of absolute presence” and pure consciousness. There was nothing you could give color, movement or sensation. Maybe, she says, bliss.
Our entries on consciousness and non-duality explore similar ideas.
What Happened at Home
Ingrid says her mother arrived at the house and, in a big house, knew exactly where to go. The inner guidance was strong, and she went straight to the back, where Ingrid’s sister was sitting still on the scrubbing surface. Ingrid explains why her sister had not called for help. The tank was out of bounds. They were not supposed to be there. Children, she says, fear getting in trouble.
Her sister had tried to get her out but could not reach her. Her mother jumped into the tank and got her out. Ingrid calls this one of life’s synchronicities. Her mother had been trained in CPR for children and worked with children, so she knew what to do.
Ingrid says she felt none of it. She was in her place of bliss, disconnected from the physical world. We share this as her account, with no medical commentary of our own.
Our entry on synchronicity may be a useful companion.
Pulled Back, and Very Angry
Then Ingrid says she felt as though she had jumped from the tallest building in the world and could do nothing to stop it. She did not want to come back. She felt as if she were being vacuumed, sucked back.
When she was back in her body, she says, she felt the pain and the cold. It was like being trapped in a little box again, after being expansive. She was very angry and did not want to be here.
That became a problem, she says. She refused to eat. She did not want to participate or play. She did not even want to be touched. It escalated over time, and she became sicker because of the accident itself.
A Three-Year-Old Who Knew More
Ingrid says she came back with an awareness she had not had before. “I am more than this.” She was not just this child. When she looked at her parents, “they’re not just my parents,” she says. She felt them as her equals, because she had experienced oneness.
She could not relate to her body or her name, and looking at other children was hard. What is happening to these people? They do not know anything. She felt a little more comfortable with adults.
She also started to show abilities she did not have before. Just before turning three, she says, she could read and write, solve math problems, assemble complex puzzles and paint. There was no knowledge at the time that could explain it to the people around her.
She shares these details as her own account.
Everything in Life Is a Gift
Over time, Ingrid says, she came to feel “that everything in life is actually a gift.” She does not call challenges problems. “I call them challenging opportunities.”
She asks herself, “how can I become the master of the wave in the ocean?” How can I see the good behind everything? That, she says, is how a life becomes amazing. “I’m playing this game called life.” And there is more than this one life, she adds. This life is the opportunity to remember that.
For the wider picture, see our complete guide to near-death experiences.
Placing Ingrid’s Story Beside Common Themes
Ingrid’s account has things many experiencers describe: calm replacing fear, seeing one’s own body, traveling instantly to people and places by thought, a feeling of home, and not wanting to return. It also has a deep childhood angle, since she recalls it all from a very young age. She explains the clarity of her memory through the extreme contrast of the moment.
We share her account as experience, in her own words, with no medical claims.
Questions to Sit With
- Ingrid describes a silence she looked for all her life. Where do you go when you need quiet?
- Her mother listened to a feeling and acted on it. When have you ignored an inner nudge, and what happened?
- What if one challenge in your life were a challenging opportunity? What would you ask it?
This week, take two minutes of silence before bed with no screen and no sound. Notice what is underneath the noise.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Ingrid says that calm can arrive in the middle of terror.
- She describes a silence so deep that she looked for it all her life.
- She says a mother’s inner guidance can cross a long distance.
- She says we are more than the box we think we live in.
- She says life is a gift and challenges are opportunities to remember who we are.
Please enjoy my conversation with Ingrid Honkala.
Guest Links: Connect With Ingrid Honkala
Listen to the Episode
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ingrid Honkala?
Ingrid Honkala is the guest of this Divine Encounters episode. She says she had a near-death experience in Bogota, Colombia, when she fell into a water tank at almost three years old.
What happened to Ingrid at age two?
She says she fell into a large cement tank of cold water while playing catch with her sister. She felt terror, then complete calm, and left her body.
How can Ingrid remember something from such a young age?
She says the experience was full of extreme contrast: terror and calm, noise and silence, darkness and light, sickness and well-being. She says that makes it hard to forget.
What is the silence behind the silence?
It is Ingrid’s name for a profound stillness she says she entered. She says she craved it for the rest of her life.
What did Ingrid see after leaving her body?
She says she saw bubbles surrounded by light, her own body, flowers that carried her, and then, by thought, the maid’s room, her mother on the street, a dog and a park.
What happened with Ingrid’s mother?
She says that when she thought, that is mom, her mother stopped in the street, sensed something was wrong at home and ran back. She says her mother was trained in CPR for children and got her out of the tank.
What was the realm of light like?
She says it was made of pure, bright, shiny light, and she thought, I am home. She describes it as nothingness, wholeness and pure consciousness.
How did Ingrid feel after coming back?
She says she was very angry, refused to eat or play, and did not want to be touched. She felt her parents were her equals and could not relate to other children.
What abilities did Ingrid say she showed?
She says that around age three she could read and write, solve math problems, assemble complex puzzles and paint.
What is Ingrid’s message?
She says that everything in life is a gift, challenges are opportunities, and life is a game we can play with joy.
Is a near-death experience proof of an afterlife?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences as lived experiences told 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 consciousness means
- What is a near-death experience?
- Susan Grau on dying in a freezer as a child
- Devi Grace on crossing over at four years old
- Steven Noack on dying at four and seeing the blueprint of reality
- Jacob Cooper on dying as a child and meeting his angels
- Nicola Light on dying at five
- 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.
Ingrid Honkala 0:08
I started when I was so young, and yeah, what happened at the time is that my parents work, and they will leave us at the care of a maid, and she was this young lady that when my parents were not around, she was into her radio novellas, so the soap operas, and then she didn't pay attention to us. And one morning, very early, my parents left, and my oldest sister and I just realized she's not paying attention, and we went to play in the patio in the house. The thing about these patios, there was a big tank, and this tank, the purpose of the tank was to collect water for hand washing clothes, and this tank held about 900 gallons of water. So it was a pretty big tank. And my sister and I saw a ball and decided, let's play catchacross the tank. And then, because I said it was a pretty big tank, we just grabbed stools, we climb on the tank, and next to the tank, there was a surface for scrubbing, for washing clothes. So my sister just sat on that surface that were a little she was more safer there. And I went to the other side of the tank, which was just a thin edge. I bended my legs, and of course, at that moment, we're not thinking about any danger. This is so much fun. So she had the ball, and she threw the ball, and she didn't apply enough force, so the ball fell in the water, and it was floating. And I thought, oh, I can grab it. I lean forward, and when I touch the ball, it rolled, and I lost my balance and fell in the tank. The first feeling was the stencil. This water was frigid cold. People have the misconception that, because I'm from Colombia, I come from hot water country, but Bogota is pretty high up in the Andes. So the temperature of this water, I don't know, was between 3040 degrees six in the morning. And it was that sense of like my chest in like and I was frigid cold. And after that, it came the sense why I cannot breathe. I have never been in a pool. We didn't have a bathtub. So I did not have idea, at that point on my life, being almost three years old, that if you fall in water you cannot breathe, that you drown. And I enter into this state of panic you can imagine, like this desperate attempt I need to breathe, but I didn't know how to swim nothing, and I just sunk in the tongue. And this is just the incredible, amazing part, and is that when I am in this state of desperate terror, horror, I cannot breathe suddenly from that, I didn't know what happened, but suddenly I was calm. I didn't have the need to get out of the tongue, to breathe, to go anywhere. I was just completely calm. And he was like, wow, you feel so good. And from that, people always ask me the question, how can you remember you were so little? And throughout this conversation, I want to bring that to clarity. And one imagine the trauma that I experienced during these moments of terror and drowning after that. I bring a lot the word contrast. Why? Because there was many things that were like pretty extreme. So one thing is that I live in a house that was very noisy. It was always noise. And the last thing I heard with my like ears, like, almost like in my head, was my heart beating. Know, when you get very scared, and it was the heart was beating in my head like a drum. And when I enter into that space of peace. It was silence, and I call it the silence behind the silence, it was so profound and so calm that I craved that silence for the rest of my life. Later, I will go into closets, under the bed, in chapels, whatever I wanted that silence, and I look why I cannot find it. The other thing, the other contrast, was that this tank was completely made of cement. It was a dark space, and it had a roof. Six in the morning, last thing I saw in this space was the darkness of the space, and when I went into the state of calmness and peace and joy and serenity. The last the first thing I saw was a light. And it was a light that came from below. So it was the sense like, now there is light. It was even now a lot even more more amazing, like there is light. And then this next thing I start. To see bubbles, and these bubbles were surrounded by light. And he was like, Oh, what is happening? And it was like looking at these bubbles that I or chasing the bubbles that I turn around and I saw a body. And it's when I realized, had that clarity, the realization that is my body. But it was the sense of like, oh, this already kind of happened before. Like it was the sense of familiarity, like, this is not new. And the other thing it was just that sense of, there was nothing to fear, everything was okay. And the other contrast that came at this moment is that I was born as a very sick child, and I spent almost the first three years of my life feeling unwell. So imagine now, Alex, I'm experiencing absolute well being. I didn't even know what was to feel well, because the only thing I knew was this sickness. And now I'm like, feeling incredibly well. So when I look at the body, my reaction was like, I'm not going back there. Forget. And I turn around and I left the body behind, so see, it's like this, all these contrasts. I mean, how can I forget this? And after that, the moment I turned around and I started to walk away, I saw flowers that were blooming from nowhere, and it was majestic, and the flowers picked me up. So imagine even I lost the sense of dimension of how big these flowers had to be to pick me up. And but now I'm being picked and I'm being carried, and I just like, oh, completely relaxed, I said to people that give the analogies like going back to the womb, where you're not doing anything, you're just being done and just such a bliss. And from there, just stop playing like that. I appear in the maid's room, and I was looking at her from above, like I'm floating, and she's just like listening to the soap operas in the radio, completely unaware of what is happening. And I said, Oh, that's Maria, but nothing happened. Then from there, like that, in another blink, I appear in my mom's path. She was on her way to work. She didn't have a car, and she was close to get to her bus stop, she had to cross this, like, very big neighborhood. So it was about, if you're walking as low, like, about 10 minutes to get to your boss. And from above, I again floating. I looked at her, and this is the part that blows everybody's minds, and that validates, validates experience. At that moment, I said, Oh, that's mom. And when I said this, she stopped. She did not give another step. She did not she just stopped. And she had this knowing something is happening at home with one of my babies. And I have to say two things, my mom had an amazing intuition. The other thing is that she listened to that intuition, because that's the part that many times we don't do. And then she turned around and she started to run, and I just looked at her like, Oh, why is she running? And then, but at the moment that I'm looking at her, because I changed my angle of vision, I saw a dog, and a dog was at the end of the road, and I'm like, oh, because I love animals, the moment I have the desire to be with the dog, I am with the dog. So I looked, and now the other side there was a park, and the moment I desired to be in the park, I am in the park. Oh, now I was having so much fun. I'm like, This is great, and I'm having fun. So imagine, for me, all the sense of time and space as we know it disappear, and I started to play that game of going places, and when I was having fun, in the midst of all that, in another just like Blink, like that, and a flash, I appear in a realm that was made of pure, bright, intense, shiny light. At least this was the first time, even beyond that sense of serenity, that sense of peace, that sense of well being, the feeling was, Oh, I am home. I am home. And it was that again, that sense of familiarity like this feels so incredibly good, like I put the analogy when you've been working really hard throughout the whole day, and you get home and you have this comfortable, delicious couch with TV and a cup of coffee, imagine just like this feels so good, and this isn't incredible, because up to this point, I didn't have the realization yet that I was not that persona, that I was not that body. Although I saw the body, I didn't have that connection yet. And it's when I had this realization
I am not that and it's when I realized myself as a beginning of light, and I started to have this sense that I was kind of like dissolving like i. I'm part of this, the whole, and then it went even beyond. And it's when I bring the Word that scare many people, but I experience what I call nothingness. Some call it non self. Some call it emptiness. Some call it wholeness, because at the same time, it's like that sense of is nothing that you know, but you're like experiencing the whole and I know that analogy to bring this to clarity is like if all you knew about yourself is a little tiny box in the middle of a stadium, and now you open the box and you realize I'm more than I thought I was. And imagine I was only a three year old, but even almost three, even that little is like I'm not the sickness I thought I was, or anything like that. And and then I enter into in the state of the only thing I can say that you words I can use to describe this state is a state of absolute presence and just just pure consciousness. There was nothing. I don't even have words to say it, because there's nothing that you can describe or you can give color or movement or sensation, nothing. It was just holding it up. Maybe I could use the word bliss. And when I am in this estate, my mom finally arrived home, and this is the other amazing thing. And we live in a big house, but my mom knew exactly where to go, so that inner guidance so strong, and she directed herself to the back of the house, where there was my sister there sitting still, like in the in the scrubbing area, and people ask me why she didn't go, call them a why she didn't go call for help, and he's because we didn't supposed to be in this plane, in this tank. That was our limit. So imagine children like, I don't supposed to be doing that. She's going to get mad. See, this is what happened when we get fear. And then she I don't know if I mentioned, but she was little too. She was three. I was two, she was three. And then she tried to get me out of the tongue, but we're grateful she didn't fall too because she couldn't reach me. So when she saw my mom, she's like mom ingredients there, and I cannot get her and my mom jump into the tank. She got me out. And these are the synchronicities, the incredible things in life. I just say I meant to be here because she was trained to do CPR, she worked with children, and she was trained to do CPR for children, and then she got me out, she knew what to do, and whatever she got, I imagined that anguish at that moment, and I did not feel anything she was doing. I'm in my place of bliss at that moment, Alex, I'm completely disconnected from this reality. There was nothing I felt, nothing I experienced about this physical reality at this moment. But what I experienced was certainly like I had jumped from the tallest building in the world, and there's nothing I could do to stop this. And it was that sense of like, no, want to come back, yes. And I felt like I was being vacuum, like I was being sucked. And then I cannot have you ever jump from, I don't know, a very tall building, or down the whatever that you feel, this vacuum thing that was the feeling. And then now I knew I was back in the body because the pain, because of the coldness, because of imagine the sense of again being trapped in the little box, and that sense of expansive being was now here. And I was very angry, and I didn't want to be here. And this became a problem because I was so angry that I refused to eat, I didn't want to participate with anything. I didn't want to play. I didn't even want to be touched. And it escalated through time, and I became sicker because of the accident itself. And then what happened too, is that, imagine, I came, although I was so little, I came back with an awareness that clearly I didn't have before. And this awareness was like, the sense of like, I'm not just this I'm not this child. I am more than this. And when I was looking at my parents, I'm like, they're not just my parents. I felt them as my equal, because I had experienced that sense of oneness, and I couldn't relate with this body, and I couldn't relate with this name, and looking at other children was terrible, because I'm like, what is happening to that people? They don't know anything, and I could not even get close to any of these people. I even felt like little bit more comfortable with adults. And this is not all. I started to show abilities that I didn't have before. And what abilities are these? I'm telling you, I'm just about to be three years old, and now I can read and write. I can resolve mathematical problems. I can put together Complex. Puzzles I can paint, and the people around my mom, that was a teacher, like, what is going on. There was no knowledge at the time. There was no understanding. There was nothing they could use to understand what was happening to me. So I start feeling that everything in life is actually a gift. I don't call challenges problems. I call them challenging opportunities. And how can I become the master of the wave in the ocean? How can I see the good behind everything? And that's how a life becomes so amazing. I'm playing this game called life. And another thing there is not that only life, and this is the opportunity to remember that.
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