Divine Encounters Episode 022 | Near-Death Experience Story
Ishtar Howell was 13 when, he says, a car hidden behind another struck the family car, and in the moment before impact he went down into a life review that ran from that moment back to birth. In this Divine Encounters episode he tells Alex Ferrari about the night before, the light that he says showed him everything was made of love, the ambulance ride with his mother, and the quiet that stayed with him afterward.
Key Takeaways
- Ishtar says that the night before the crash he asked his mother, with no filter, “Are you going to die soon?” and she answered, “I’ll always be there if you need me.”
- He describes being completely calm at the moment of impact, and going down “as if I was going down a well in my mind.”
- He says his whole life played back from that moment to birth, with perfect clarity, and that every place of pretense or fear was seen and forgiven.
- He recalls seeing everything fill with light, and realizing that “everything was actually made up of love the whole time.”
- In the ambulance he says he floated at the top while also in his body, and felt his mother’s voice inside him when she called his name.
- He describes grief, anger and a vast silence afterward, with waves of bliss he could dip into.
- His message: a good life is lived as much in the present moment as possible, and “our purpose is a song.”
| Guest | Ishtar Howell |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 022 |
| Age at the time | 13 |
| What Ishtar says happened | A car pulled out and hit the family car as they crossed a divided highway |
| Where he says he went | Down into a deep place of consciousness, a life review and a field of light |
| Who he met | An objective aspect of himself, or of God, as he describes it |
| The loss | His mother died after the crash |
| The message | Live in the present moment and sing the song that is yours |
The Night Before
Ishtar says he is grateful that he seemed to have some preparation for what came. The night before, he was playing baseball when a particularly hot fastball broke his arm. He got an x-ray, and he knew it was broken. His complaint at the time, he says, was a boo-hoo story: he would miss half or all of the baseball season.
Before bed he was talking with his mother about normal things, and a question flew out of his mouth without his thinking about it. No filter. “Are you going to die soon?”
It shocked her a little, and it shocked him a little too, which was unusual. His mother was unflappable, he says, and in pretty good health. She let it slide off. So did he. She said no, she was going to be around for a while. “I’ll always be there if you need me.” He said all right, and went to bed.
A Message He Could Not Retrieve
The next morning Ishtar woke like a cartoon character, springing from sleep into waking, breathing quickly and heavily. His parents were just passing the door. He told them he had something important to tell them. But when he went to retrieve the message, it was not there.
He was so distraught at not being able to remember that his parents had to call him down for about five minutes. It was the second to last day of the school year, usually a good day, with no homework. He says that was the last time he saw his parents together.
He went to school, did the school day and came home. They dropped his sister off at her new workplace on the edge of town.
The Crossing
They were driving out to make a left turn across a divided highway. It seemed an uneventful crossing. There was a visible car that was nowhere near hitting them. But there was another car hidden right behind it, and it began to accelerate at the worst possible time.
Ishtar was about to speak to his mother when he saw a big gray Lincoln a few inches from her door. He did not freeze in fear, and his adrenaline did not rise. Instead he was completely calm, and the calm seemed to descend on him. He had time for two thoughts. The first was an expletive. He was absolutely certain this was the end.
The second thought took him down. “As if I was going down a well in my mind,” he says, into a very deep place of consciousness.
A Life Review From Impact Back to Birth
His life review began. Ishtar describes how “my whole life went back from that moment to birth like a tape,” with every little frame and complete clarity. He had heard about life reviews as a kid and always wondered whether they really happened. He was skeptical, he says. How could you have that much experience in that little bit of time? And yet every single moment was there. For more on how people describe this, see the glossary entry on life review.
He was also in contact with a vast, perfectly objective aspect of himself, or of God, or whatever it was. He did not have a box for it. But it was a part of consciousness he had known as a kid, he says. As he got older and more egoic, he did not always like it, because it would come in and tell him that was a bad idea. This time he was completely happy to be in touch with it.
They went through his whole life. And every place where there was pretense, fear or lying, any place where he was resisting life or running from God, from consciousness, “was completely seen and forgiven.” As they went back, each scene grew more suffused with what felt like golden light.
He was not experiencing the life only from his own point of view. He experienced it from his individual perspective, from other people’s perspective, and from a cosmic perspective that seemed to include them all at once. There was no confusion about it. It was the clearest experience he could remember.
Everything Filled With Light
When it came to an end, Ishtar says, there was no difference between that realm and what he was looking at. The shoulder of his mother, the dashboard, the man in the Lincoln, the sky: everything was filled with light, a light beyond light.
He had a complete realization that “everything was actually made up of love the whole time.” And he says, “I was the most alive I’d ever been” in that moment. It was beautiful.
Then, bam. They were hit pretty hard. He was concussed.
The Ambulance
There was a big whack, he says, but no bruise, which is still strange to him. His arm had been broken the day before, and the only thing aggravated was a broken middle finger on that arm. He wore a cast that summer, shaped in a way that suited his mood.
Rescuers used a big saw to take the doors off the car. They pulled him out and put him very carefully on a gurney, in case he had spinal injuries. Asked his name, Ishtar had no idea. All he could say was, “that’s my mom over there.”
In the ambulance, he says, the phenomenon happened. They had his neck strapped down. He was seeing through his eyes and answering the EMT as best he could, but he was also floating at the top of the ambulance, looking down on the whole scene. Both at once.
His mother called his name twice. Both times he said, I’m okay. He does not think she registered the first. The second, she did. He knew because her breathing changed, from labored to very calm, as if she were letting go. He believes she knew he was fine and that her last job was done.
He says this moment touched his soul more deeply than any of the mystical experiences before or after. Whenever life was hard later, he would remember “the strength of the parent staying in their dying body to make sure that their child was okay.” It gave him strength for difficult things and for right things that were hard.
There was something else, and he is careful about it, being skeptical by nature. When she called his name, her voice was in him. It did not come from a separate place. There was a unitive sense to it, as if she overlapped with him at the top of the ambulance. When her breathing changed, he felt her go, like a breeze. At the time, he did not take that to mean he would not see her alive again. He thought they would get patched up and life would go on. That did not happen.
This is a story about the loss of a parent, and it is told gently. If you are grieving, go at your own pace.
The Hospital, and the Silence
At the hospital, his mother was behind several rounds of blue curtains, with the din of doctors’ voices as they tried to save her. Ishtar was on a gurney, out in the open, because they wanted to check that his spine was okay. His sister was crying, thinking she might lose both her mother and her younger brother. Then his father came out and gave them the news. It hit like a medicine ball to the gut.
What followed was a blur of sadness, crying and shock. Good-hearted women from Lutheran Social Services offered hugs. He was not in the space for food. He knew they meant well.
There was a silence he could not shake. At first he thought it was shock, and he thought: this shock is pretty good. It was a vastness, not exactly inside his body but everywhere. He could dip into it like a lake and go deeper. Whenever he did, waves of bliss rose up through his body, as they had when he was much younger. He treated it as a phenomenon, with curiosity. The more he went in, the more love poured into his heart and wrapped around the people he was with.
He was also angry. He did not believe in God at the time and had no religion, and he says that if there was a guy, he had choice words for him. He punched a wall. And still there was a strange latitude in the background. He thinks having some kind of precognition that it was going to happen helped, in that he was not a stranger to precognitive experiences. You can read more in the glossary entry on precognition.
Back to School and a Hollow Return
Ishtar went back to eighth grade, and socially and academically he got a lot of what he had wanted for years. But it felt empty and hollow. He was trying to be who he was before, to resume the life he had. “It’s like trying to put on shoes that were two sizes too small,” he says. It was painful.
He wanted to live up to who his dead mother, his father and his whole family wanted him to be. He was a bit of a people-pleaser, and it was not going well internally at all.
His Message: Singing Your Song
Ishtar defines living a good life as “living as much in the present moment as you possibly can,” and even more than that, living in the timeless space. When you live from there, he says, you do not become less of an individual. You do not turn beige. People often become more eccentric. They become who they need to be.
If you can live from that place, singing the song that has been put to you, that is living. He puts it simply. In the tradition he mentions, “our purpose is a song.” The glossary entry on dharma offers a short introduction.
How Ishtar’s Story Sits Beside Other Near-Death Experiences
A life review, a sense of unconditional love and a view from outside the body are all common in near-death reports. Ishtar’s account is notable for how quickly it happened, in the moment before impact, and for the way it carries into the ambulance, where he describes being in two places at once. He also describes something sometimes called a shared experience, in which he felt his mother’s presence overlap with his own. For the wider picture, see our complete guide to near-death experiences.
We share this as a personal account in his own words, and we make no medical claims.
Questions to Sit With
- Ishtar remembers his mother’s strength in her last moments whenever life got hard. Whose steadiness do you carry with you?
- He says every place of pretense and fear was seen and forgiven. What would it be like to be fully seen that way?
- Where could you spend a little more time in the present moment this week?
Set a timer for three minutes. Sit and listen for the quiet underneath the noise, as Ishtar describes. Nothing to do but notice.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Ishtar says that everything is made of love, even when it does not look that way.
- He describes being fully seen, and fully forgiven, in his life review.
- He says a silence and a vastness stayed with him after he lost his mother.
- He says that the way a parent stays to care for a child can give strength for years.
- He says living in the present moment makes you more yourself, not less.
Please enjoy my conversation with Ishtar Howell.
Guest Links: Connect With Ishtar Howell
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ishtar Howell?
Ishtar Howell is a near-death experiencer who says that at age 13 he went through a life review in the moment before a car crash, in which his mother died.
What happened the night before the crash?
Ishtar says he broke his arm playing baseball, and that before bed he asked his mother if she was going to die soon. She said she would be around for a while and would always be there if he needed her.
What did Ishtar experience at the moment of impact?
He says he felt completely calm, went down into a deep place of consciousness, and had a full life review from the moment back to his birth, seen and forgiven.
What did he learn from the light?
Ishtar says he realized that everything was made up of love the whole time, and that he was the most alive he had ever been.
What happened in the ambulance?
He says he was in his body and also floating at the top of the ambulance. His mother called his name twice and he answered that he was okay. He felt her voice inside him and felt her go.
Did Ishtar have a life review?
Yes. He describes a life review that ran from the moment of the crash back to birth, with complete clarity and from several perspectives at once.
How did Ishtar feel afterward?
He describes shock, sadness and anger, and also a deep silence and vastness, with waves of bliss he could go into. He says going back to school felt hollow, like wearing shoes two sizes too small.
Did Ishtar have a premonition?
He says he asked his mother if she was going to die soon without thinking about it, and that he awoke the next morning with an important message he could not recall. He interprets this as a kind of preparation.
What is Ishtar’s message?
He says to live as much in the present moment as you can, and to sing the song that is yours.
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 shared death experience is
- Jeffrey Olsen on a horrific crash and the loss of his family
- Amber Kasic on her dying father and love that never dies
- Franco Romero on entering the light and memories of the future
- Jacob Cooper, who died as a child and met his angels
- Sharon Kumara on a teenage bus crash and the purpose of life
- 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.
Ishtar Howell 0:08
Well, in in my case, I'm actually very grateful that I had seemed to have some preparation for it, and that's an important part of the story to relate, in the sense that the night before, I'd actually had the night before while playing baseball, I had my arm broken by a particularly hot fastball right there. And so I was, you know, got an x ray, and I knew it was broken, and it was my Boohoo story was, I'm going to miss half of half or all of baseball season, or something like that, and while I was talking with my mom before going to bed, we just talked about normal stuff, and it just flew through my mouth. Through it flew out of my mouth without me thinking about it. No Filter. Are you going to die soon? It actually kind of shocked her, and shocked me a little bit, which, which was also unusual. My mother wasn't particularly she's quite unflappable with things like that. That would be something that would bother her, and she was in pretty good health. So, you know, you know, she kind of let it slide off, and so did I, and she said, No, I'm going to be around for a while. I'll always be there if you need me. And I was like, All right, and I just went to bed. And the next morning, I woke up like a cartoon character springing suddenly from sleep into waking and breathing really quickly and heavily. Just as my parents were passing by the door, and I asked them, I told them, like, I have something important to have to tell you. And then when I went to retrieve the message, it wasn't there. And I was like, Oh my God, but I can't remember what it is. And I was, I was so distraught that I couldn't remember this, this thing that they, like, had to call me down for about five minutes. And this was, like, the second to last day of the school year, usually a day that you really enjoyed, because, you know, no homework, and, you know, whatever. So yeah, they called me down, they went off. That was the last time I saw the two of them together, as as my parents. And then I went to school and did the school day thing, and came home, and we dropped my sister off at her new workplace, which was out of the edge of town. And just as we were driving out to make a left turn across one of those divided highways, it seemed that was, you know, an uneventful crossing of the road, because there was a visible car that was nowhere near going to hit us, but apparently there was a car hidden right behind that which, which just started to put on their old accelerator at just at the at the worst time. And as we drove, I was going to talk to my mother, and there was a big old gray Lincoln, you know, just about a few inches, probably from my mother's car door. And instead of, you know, instead of freezing in fear or having my adrenaline go up at all, I was completely calm, calm, sort of descended. And I had time for two thoughts. And the first one was, of course, oh shit. And I just figured this was the end. I was absolutely certain this was it, you know, this was, this was the end. And so the second thought was kind of taking me to this very deep place of consciousness, as if I was going down a well in my mind. And it was basically, I really thought this one was going to go more than 13 years, because the life review started to happen and fun, you know, this was actually something, you know, my whole life went back from that moment to birth like a tape with with every little frame and complete clarity. And this, which was interesting, because I had heard about those as a kid, I was always curious if that really happened. It was very skeptical. I was like, how could you have that much experience and just that um, bit of time. And sure enough, every every single moment only in the in this case, there was also a sense that I was in contact with this vast, deeply objective, perfectly objective aspect of myself, or aspect of God or whatever. I didn't have any box for that, but it was a, it was a part of consciousness that I had been familiar with as a kid, and, you know, as I got older and more of an ego, I didn't like it all the time, because it would come in and say, like, yeah, that's a bad idea. And this time, I was completely happy with being in touch with this thing, because we went through my whole life and every, every place where there was pretense or fear or lying, or some place where I was, you know, where I would nowadays, say, where I was resisting life, where I was running from God, running from consciousness, was completely seen and forgiven. And then we got to the end, and as we went back, actually, also each scene became more and more suffused with essentially what felt like a golden light. And like a lot of other people, I wasn't just experiencing the life from my individual perspective. I was experiencing it from both the individual perspective, other people's perspective, and a cosmic perspective, which seemed to encompass all of them simultaneously. There wasn't any confusion about this. There's no in fact, it was the clearest experience that I could remember for a long time. If at all, up to that point and and so when, when it finally came to an end, I was, you know, basically, there was no difference from that, that realm, or whatever it, you know, that I was experiencing there. Then everything I was looking at, I remember looking at the my mother's shoulder, the dashboard of the car, man in the Lincoln car, his car, the sky, everything was was filled with this light, you know, a kind of light that that's beyond, beyond light. And I had this complete realization that everything was actually made up of love the whole time. And I was completely, I was the most alive I'd ever been in that moment of just being done. It was, it was just, it was beautiful. And then, you know, bam, we got hit pretty hard. I got concussed, and then it was a big whack, no bruise, which, which is still strange to stay. I didn't I. I had a broken arm from the day before, but the only injury that was aggravated was I had a broken middle finger on that arm. So for part of the summer, I went around with a cast that was shaped like this, which, which was actually kind of indicated, you know, my mood. In a lot of ways, people were using the big skill saw taking the doors off of our car to get us out of there, and then pulling me out, and, you know, really skillfully putting me on the gurney and being very careful in case I had spinal injuries. You know, they did a really good job for the both of us, and they got us into an ambulance very quickly. And, you know, they're asking me my name and and I was saying, like, I have no idea what my name is, but that's my mom over there. That's all I could because I was really concussed. And then in the ambulance, I had that phenomena happen, where I, you know, they had my neck strapped down. I was seeing that through my eyes and answering the questions of the EMT as best I could, but I was also floating at the top of the ambulance, looking down on the whole scene. And it was simultaneous, you know, my mother called my name out twice, you know, asking, and I said, I'm okay twice. And the first one, I don't think she registered, but the second one, she did. And because after after that, her breathing went from this kind of labored breath, I think, really struggling to stay inside a just a broken body. We were in the ambulance together, and I had that weird of dual consciousness, dual perspective thing going where I was in my body, but also kind of at the top of the ambulance. My mother called my name twice, and and I and to both calls, I said, I'm okay. And the second one, she registered and not I knew, not only because her breathing changed and became a very calm breathing as if, as if, she was just letting go, because she knew that I was fine and that, you know, her last job was done to make sure I was okay, which actually it's, in some ways, more than all the mystical experiences before and after, in some ways, in some ways, that actually touched my soul the deepest, that singular moment interaction. Whenever I had challenging times later in life, I would remember that, and I would I would remember the strength of the parent staying in their dying body to make sure that their child was okay. And so that would give me the strength to do a lot of difficult things and a lot of right things that were hard. So, you know, that that actually touched me, practical in terms more than most things. I also felt her go, interestingly enough, when, and you know, of course, I've always been very skeptical of this too, you know, careful not to frame things in ways that maybe are not how they are. But when she called my name, there was her voice was in me. You know that there was no sound coming from a separate place reaching this separate person. There was a real unitive sense of the communication. Even I felt her as if overlapping with me to a certain degree up at the top of the ambulance. And when, when she kind of when her breathing changed, I felt her. It almost felt like like a breeze. And at the time, I didn't, you know, I wasn't thought I was this concussed 13 year old. I was not interpreting that as I'm not gonna see my mom again, alive, my body. I thought, No, we're gonna get to the ambulance maybe, and they're gonna, I'm the hospital. They're gonna patch us up. You know, well, life, life will go on, maybe. And you know that didn't happen. And you know, next thing that we're in the hospital. She's in the behind several rounds of blue curtains, the din of voices of doctors over there, and they're trying to save her. I'm out because I guess I was they knew I was all right. I'm still on a gurney because they wanted to check and make sure my spine was okay. But I'm out in the gurney. And then my sister is there, and she's crying because she's thinking that, you know, both her mother and younger brother might be kaput, and then dad came out and gave us the bad news. And you know that that hit like a like a medicine ball to the gut. And you know, it's kind of a blur of sadness and crying and shock, you know, being let out of that led out of the hospital, and the good hearted ladies from the Lutheran Social Services offering offering hugs. I really wasn't quite in the I wasn't quite in the space for food for at the time, but I know they were meant very well. There was a silence that was just always there that it couldn't shake. And at first I thought this was shock, and I would be thinking like, Man, this shock is pretty good, you know?
I'm glad for the shock. You know. Because there's this vastness that was not really in my body, but in my body, but everywhere. And when I would I could somehow, like, dip into it, like it was some kind of a substance, like a lake, I could go deeper into it. And whenever I would do that, I started to find that waves of bliss would flow up through my body like they had when I was much younger. So I was having, kind of having fun with that, treating it like a phenomena. I was very curious about this relationship between going into this big, silent thing and all this going on, and the more I would go into that, I would also this kind of love would pour into my heart and wrap around the people that I was with, or the things that I was looking at. And I didn't exactly believe in the God at the time, I didn't have any religion, but you know, said, if there is a guy, you know, fuck you, you know, you took my mom, you know, punching the wall, even when I was punching a wall, there's a this weird latitude that was, that was in the background. I kind of especially that I had some kind of precognition, that it was going to happen, that that helped a lot, in a sense that, and I was not a stranger to precognitive experience. Just there was there. I had no experience that was related to such a major thing before, but that that helped me get through it. And so I went to a school year again, eighth grade and and socially and academically, I got a lot of things that I'd wanted for years. This, of course, it was very empty and hollow. And I was trying to be the person that I was before. I was trying to resume the life that I had before. And it was like, you know, it's like trying to put on shoes that were two sizes too small. In a sense, it was painful. I wanted to be, not only for myself, because it was very goal oriented before, but for my dead mother, in a sense, from my dad, from my whole family, I wanted to live up to who they wanted me to be certain degree people please. And it just was not going very well internally at all. Well, my definition of living a good life is is basically living as much in the present moment as you possibly can. More are defined more than the present moment, living in that space that's timeless. And when you live from that timeless space, then, funnily enough, you don't become less of an individual. You know, you don't become, you know, suddenly beige and you know, having no characteristics. You often people become more eccentric. In a sense, they become who you know, specifically who they who they need to be and and so if you can then live from that place in which you're you're singing the song that's basically been been put to you that's beautiful, that, to me, is living. You know Dharma, our dharma is a song, our purpose is a song. And then you're and that's wonderful.
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