Atheist’s NDE: How Jose Hernandez Overcame Fear and Found Peace

Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.

Jose Hernandez 0:08
I grew up in the South Bronx, a very difficult neighborhood. Being Latino, we have these visions of what a man should be or what he should look like. And so I grew up in an environment where my father was teaching us how to survive in his mind, just so I could justify the behavior. His life was a little more complicated, because his mother is indigenous, so he was kind of like wanted always to disguise that part of him. He thought it wasn't going to help him moving forward, he had that challenge, and then the language barrier coming in from Puerto Rico to live in New York, and the language is suddenly different, and you didn't know it. So there were a lot of challenges. So I grew up in that environment, complex community, trying to figure out how to get out of the hood. I was a little lucky. I was taken into a program that was a college bound program, and I wound up going to school, studied engineering, and kind of got out of the hood, right? But I was living in a world where we were taught to be very competitive, and that was what, what men do? You compete, you climb the ladder, you know. And then there was this thing of acquisition of stuff, and this philosophy that everything belongs to me. So it was my house, my car, my wife, my kids, everything mine. And I was living that life. And I thought that was what it was expected of me. I thought I was good. I'm doing the right thing. I'm on the right track. And we were getting ready to kind of get into this deal that we were putting together in South Florida, and I decided to go and run electrical lines for a while till that came through. So that was supposed to happen in April. I went back to running electrical lines in October. What happened was a very simple thing we were it was Wednesday night. You could imagine tomorrow, Thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to that four day weekend. You got Black Friday. We got a lot of stuff going on, and the issue I'm having is that we're running late, and it's getting gonna get dark soon, but we gotta finish. I'm up on the bucket. And what we decided to do to save time was this, I had this bucket going up and down. You kind of managed from one point to the other. And anyway, wasn't the brightest idea. So nothing exotic happened. I didn't get electrocuted or anything, but the driver was looking up making sure that he didn't fry me, and he kind of bumped into a tree, and I hit the side of the bucket, and I broke all the ribs on my right side, so the whole side, just all my ribs broke. Go to hospital, of course, and they tape you up. They give you this medication. And they gave me medication that, because of the ribs and everything now broken, they wanted to give me something that had an anti inflammatory component in it. So they gave me a painkiller that had ibuprofen. I take the pill in the hospital, send me home, I go home, and I'm finding it very difficult to breathe. Let me call up. So I called him up, and I spoke with the ER guy, and he says, Ah, you're all Tiktok. You can't take a deep breath anyway. So I said, alright, you know, and being science minded myself, I said, well, they know what they're talking about, right? So I continue to take this medication, and my breathing slowly start to get worse and worse and worse and worse. And ultimately, what happens is I get past the holidays, past New Years. And this was an interesting new year's, but it was that y 2k thing where they thought everything was going to collapse and everything was going crazy, and there was like a vigil, right? Let's see what happens first, when it hits midnight, all way over there first. Anyway, I got past all that, and I just got to the point where I couldn't breathe at all. And it was January 5, and I had my wife and my son take me to the hospital, and I went in the ER, put me in a room. They decided they were going to keep me, so I said to my wife, and said, Ah, you guys go home. I'm going to be okay. There's not a worry about right? Anyway, they hooked up some IVs, and the nurse said to me, you know, Jose, if you need any help, that little button that's by your bed, and I'll come in and check on anyway, she leaves the room. And I remember looking at the clock, and it's like 1231 o'clock in the morning. And I'm saying I'm not gonna push that button. I'm a guy. I'm not gonna push the button no matter what, so don't worry about it. But the reason I'm saying that to myself is because I'm actually thinking of pushing that button because it's so hard to breathe. So I'm trying to, kind of like, make myself feel like everything's okay. I'm pretending everything's fine. I wait about 45 minutes, and I can't barely breathe, and I said, You know what? I think I better push that button. And it took about one minute for that nurse to come into that room, but that minute felt like forever, and she opened the door, and she just looked at me, and she just hit that cold blue button. Now in my mind, I'm saying that she just hit that cold blue going on a wall, and then you hear a cold, blue, cold and all of a sudden there's a bunch of people running into I can't breathe at all, so I can't get air out. I can't get air in. So the first feeling that I had, if you can believe, was shame. And I became felt ashamed simply because when they moved into that room, they just stripped me down. They took the sheet off of me, and I was trying to hang on to, and I was so ashamed that they stripped me down like that, and I was helping us, and I couldn't stop it, and they take this piece of a board and they slip it under you, and they put you on top of this board. And anyway, there's all this stuff going on, but I'm kind of like in my own space, kind of like not understanding what they're doing. They're trying to they got this thing on you, and they're squeezing and trying to compare into your lungs. And. And while they're doing all that, I'm thinking, what if this is real? I started thinking about my family, and I'm saying I'm not going to see them again. And I felt this knot in my chest like emotional and it was like I was dying thinking that I would never see them again. What was worse was that they wouldn't get a chance to see me. I wouldn't be able to say anything. I couldn't talk anywhere because I couldn't breathe. But in your head. That's not relevant. You're like, if they get here, I'll be able to talk, I'll be able to say goodbye or whatever, right? But anyway, and I also realized that it was almost two o'clock in the morning, and there's no way they're going to be able to get here in time. So I started to free fall emotion and crash, and I became incredibly fearful. Now, understanding that I grew up in the South Bronx and how I grew up, we're not allowed to show fear. We were not allowed to cry. So I am so scared here because I'm thinking, what if this is real? And then I just want somebody to hold my hand. That's what I want. Just hold my hand. I don't care who doesn't I wanted to ask someone, but then my head got in the way, right? And I'm thinking, all right, my father had died five years before, and he's gonna turn in his grave if he sees that I'm showing these people fear. And that was my thought, man. I was like, I can't show fear. They went to the point where I just my body actually stiffened. And I say, That's it. I'm not going to show fear. I still wanted somebody to hold my hand, because I felt so alone. Now, the room is full of people, but I felt so alone. And then I start thinking, I didn't believe in God. I was very science minded, very math minded. I had a conflict. My mother was Catholic, my father was indigenous. My mother said, Go find God in church. My father said, look out the window. God is everywhere, right? And God would be creator. So I'm like, God, if You're real, I promise I'm going to change. I'm going to be a better person, I'm going to be a good man, I'm going to be whatever, right? So I was almost like bargaining, and then I waited. I said, Alright, let's see if there's an intervention. Meantime, these guys are really struggling to keep me going. Can't breathe at all. My heart becomes very regular. So imagine it pumping with all these drugs to get me to breathe, and my heart is racing. And what happens is that it reaches a moment where my heart just felt like a horse was gotta be like I was going crazy, and then the next thing I know, you feel your heart to stop and then to kind of like, validate that that just happened. You hear the thing that was just go be. And the thing is that I was totally conscious and aware, and I'm saying that just didn't happen. And my response was, I became angry at God, and I said, I knew you weren't real. What was I doing? I'm just keep pulling myself. And then I looked at the door, doorway, which was right in front of me, and it was just so bright man, and there was a shadow there. And in my mind, I'm thinking like an engineer, I'm gonna get turned off like a light switch, and I'm gonna turn to nothing, just blackness. But the minute that thought goes through my mind, that shadow and it reaches out to me, it's perfectly clear. While that's happening, I hear the IB drips, and it sounds like water splashing on a tin roof. You know, when you're in the island, like rain hitting a tin roof. And then I looked at the wall and the wallpaper, I could see the green kind of like, wow, what is this? Then my focus was on the shadow. And as the shadow moved in, she kind of reached out. It felt like a feminine energy to me. She kind of reached out, and she touched me, and the minute she touched me, I became like galvanized. I felt so well. I felt so unsafe. I felt so better than ever. And I felt this breeze in the sense of peace and love. And I got this wind blowing in my head. I'm thinking. I got this long hair blowing in the wind, and we've got crazy vision, so I feel like I'm being lifted, and the next thing I know, I'm standing in the corner. This is what really changed my life, this moment when I saw myself in the bed and these guys were trying to save my life. So you got that crash team, they're doing everything they chance to say. And then I asked this question, and this is a question that changed my every day. I ask, who am I? Because I know I'm not this temper. So I asked that question, and I hear this voice my lesson. She says to me, visualize yourself as a car, except that that car has 5 million miles on it. Now you gotta say goodbye to your body. And I'm thinking, wow, I just said goodbye life. I gotta say goodbye to my body type thing, something magical happened. Looked at my body, and for the first time in my life, I had so much gratitude and love, and the thought was that body sacrificed itself for me. It gave everything it had for me, and it just didn't have anything left. And then I started having these memories, and I call them benign memories, because they weren't like, you know, we think about these dramatic moments in our life, and that's what we're going to remember. I remember holding my little girl's hand, Lucas, taking a breath of air, the sunrise, the wind, the birds singing. I remember looking at my kids eyes when they were little, how they looked at me with so much love, how they depend on your sleep, right? And what I realized at that moment was that I had that every moment of my life, my guys here, my kids and and love that moment, feel that breath, feel that warm sun on my skin, and here I am understanding the value of life, and it's truly I'm understanding that I have all these things, and they're all free. They don't come with any cost, any hopes, nothing. And I was worried about buying another car, getting a better coffee machine, getting, you know, all these crazy things. And I'm like, What was I doing? But it made me love who I had been. If. For everybody out there, this is really important. I always was never happy with what. I was never good enough, no matter what. That made my life difficult. Now look at my body and see how perfect that body had made. First time it was the second moment where I just changed. I hear the voice say to me, okay, now we gotta, we gotta go, kind of like, start walking together, and I kind of fall through this whole this black hole. I call it tunnel, and I feel like something being ripped off of me. Get to the bottom. She said, No, we got to keep going. I keep going. The same thing happens again. And when I get to the bottom of that, I find myself in a whole color all around, like three six, I think, imagine you're in the in the center of basketball, and everything around you, it's color, and it's moving, and it's alive, and it's talking to me million voices. That voice that brought me there says to me, what you felt was all the painful moments in your life being taken away from you. Can't come into this place with any negativity, anything that makes you feel bad. And I understood that I was just being kind of like purified anyway, I feel the color moving towards me, or I'm moving towards the color. The sense is that the color welcomes me the way I am. It doesn't judge me in any way. I just feel so good. So appreciate it. So like welcome and so like a part of it, and I really belong here. And finally, I get in the color, and I become the color red and blue, and I hear all these voices, and I'm not a painter, but it was telling me how to paint. You're like a blueprint. You're gonna paint like this. You thought with this. Then I come out on the other side and I see this beautiful I grew up in New York City, you know, forest and mountains, the last thing I would imagine that was gonna be what I encountered. And then these herds of animals roaming around, running free. It was so beautiful. And I got a thought, remember my kids? And I said, What's going to happen to my kids? Boys said to me, not to worry. I could see them, and their thought was flying. And then I started exploring in my mind. And as I got near a tree, what was interesting about it was I had this experience of oneness. What I mean was that if I got near a tree, I became that tree. I could feel taking nutrients from the ground. It was living, being like me. I got near a bird, the same thing, if I got near a leaf, the same thing, even the air atmosphere, I got to experience all these things, even a rock. And it taught me that everything was interconnected as I'm kind of like integrating that I see these mountains in front of me, and I see the snow cap, and it was so galvanizing that I wanted to go up there and see I was like, so I started heading up in that direction. Get up there, and I go over it, and I can see a mountain top and snow. It was like being in an airplane just flying over a mountain top. It was so beautiful and so peaceful. And then I look to my right, and I see the sun. And the sun, I don't know if it's steady or rising, but I'm looking at it as if I'm looking to a telescope, and I can see the solar flares coming out of it, and it's so beautiful. And I can feel that warm breeze, and I'm saying to myself, Oh, this is where the warm breeze is coming from. And I look to my left, there's a cold a U shaped beach, and I see a man, and he's holding six children in a line on his right hand, and one on the left, they're about knee deep in the water. For some reason I said, let me go down there and check that out. So I go down, it's hard to gage time and distance. There is really no time the way we understand it here. So I felt like I had been there for a day and a half right. Now I'm only dead for five minutes in this world. Anyway, as I get close, I'm about 10 or 15 feet away, maybe a man turns around and he looks at my father, and I looked at my dad, and I said, Man, I'm gonna do when I'm dead what I couldn't do when I was my father. I care and all that stuff. Now my dad had this real image of being a man. Was like, we can't hug, we don't say we love each other. We don't have that kind of relationship. We don't even hold hands. We were little, you know, that was what your mother was. So I grew up bitter and angry, and when he died, it was so difficult for me, everything that I'm feeling right now, that chance was done. I lost that moment, but now here I was, and now the moment was here. I looked at my dad, and we're talking, but not like I'm talking to you. I was so proud of you when you graduated. I was so proud of you when you went to college. I was so proud of you. I loved you, all these things that I thought were not there, and then I hugged my father, helped the first time. And what happened when I hugged my dad is I became him, just like what happened with the trees and everything else. And I lived his life in an instant, and I knew what he had been about. I always find a contrast between that, because when I was alive, I didn't want to die. Now I'm here, he's asking me, I go back. And I'm like, No man, I don't want to go back. And we have this debate. Then I feel like this tug right here, right like it's really coming from my back. The next day, I'm back in my body, open my eyes, and the doctors wouldn't see when I opened my eyes, kind of just jumped back right now. And then I was back with my father. And then two things happened right away. I felt this isolation, because I felt like I was inside this body, and I felt like I was separate from everything. When I was over there, I was part of everything. Now I just feel a separation. I'm back on this body, everything not connected to me anymore, and I crashed when I got better and I was able to speak. And so what I did was I went back to that whole side where I felt completely unjudged and so welcomed. I found peace and that. My go to my skate, cold, blue, that ball world. Of course, the words that you tell someone can change their life forever. So the practice is engineered to help you to understand who you are, and if you understand who you are, then I could understand what exists. I can understand who every one of you are, because we're all more alike. All do the same thing. We all need to be loved. We all want to be happy, peace and calm in our life. This is a chance where I get to touch and feel, and I could touch things in a good way, watch to feel, see to love. I mean, look at the magic the body does. This is what matters. And then what feeds this life are the memories that I make, that's what I store, that's what I take, and then what matters is that good feeling is what you hold on to.