Divine Encounters Episode 103 | Near-Death Experience Story
Karen Lorre says she was working as a model and living on a sailboat when a spinnaker flight went wrong and she sank deep into the ocean off Hawaii, where she felt herself drift into a golden light and heard a voice ask whether she wanted to live or die. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari about that moment, an earlier childhood accident, a life review years later, and what she learned about mood, love and the heart.
Key Takeaways
- Karen says she was knocked out as a child after hitting a tree, and remembers floating above her body as her pediatrician said she must be woken every hour.
- She says a spinnaker whipped her onto the ocean, and she sank like a rock, disoriented and out of air.
- She describes a beautiful golden light, a feeling of total acceptance, and a voice asking, “Do you want to live or die?”
- She says she thought of her mother, chose to live, and felt pushed to the surface as if she had rockets on her feet.
- She says the voice asked a second time, she answered the same way, and she was somehow on a life vest being pulled to the boat.
- She describes a life review years later that showed her how her moods shaped what happened to her.
- She says appreciation, attention on the heart and love as a gentle power are the center of what she teaches.
| Guest | Karen Lorre |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 103 |
| What Karen says happened | Knocked off a spinnaker into the ocean off Hawaii, unable to breathe for about 10 minutes |
| Where she says she went | Deep underwater, into a golden light, then back to the surface |
| Who she met | Loved ones she sensed as energy; a voice |
| The question | Do you want to live or die? |
| Why she returned | She thought of her mother |
| The message | Love is the bridge to all you want |
A Big Wheel and a Sycamore Tree
Alex asks his usual first question, and Karen starts with childhood. Her neighborhood was full of kids, almost every house had several. One day she was on a big wheel while the older kids rode bikes around the block, and she was pedaling hard to keep up. A sidewalk rose in front of her, daunting to her little body. She hit the far side, the big wheel went flying, and she remembers the flight. She went toward a sycamore tree.
She did not remember anything for about 22 hours, she says. She woke at noon the next day. For decades she did not remember what happened in between. That changed one day when, as an adult, she was relaxed and the memory came back.
Floating Above and a Belief She Absorbed
Karen says that as a child she was above her body, watching. She could see her little body on the couch. She could hear her pediatrician, Dr. Bouch, who had come to the house, say that someone had to wake her every hour or she would die. Her small self, she says, took that in as a belief: “you’ve got to wake her up every hour or she will die.”
She connects that to a condition she lived with later, called narcolepsy, in which she woke through the night and fell asleep in the day. When the memory returned, she says she saw it all and realized her child self had believed she had to wake every hour to live. She says she did some fast healing, slept through that night, and over time no longer needed the medication. She also says her doctor showed no curiosity when she told him. Karen shares this as her own experience, not as medical advice. She believes many people carry conditions that began when someone said something and a child believed it.
A Modeling Job on a Big Boat
Years later Karen had sailed to Hawaii and was living on a 44-foot boat. She took a modeling job on a much bigger boat, about 76 feet. The shoot involved spinnaker flying: a huge sail attached at the top of the mast, with a little seat where you ride out over the water. It was gusting, maybe 30 to 40 knots, inconsistent.
She had never done it before. One man went first and was bounced around, and he weighed about 280 pounds. Karen weighed perhaps 100. She did not have the ballast to keep the spinnaker in the right position. It went up, whipped, and threw her onto her back on the ocean. The air was knocked out of her.
They were off Oahu, beyond the point where the water gets very deep. She says she went down like a rock. She probably got a concussion. She was completely disoriented, could not breathe, and could not tell which way the surface was. She had no energy left. She says it was just so hard, and she started to give up.
The Golden Light and a Voice
Then, she says, she felt herself go into a beautiful golden light. She could sense something like an energy of people she knew, though she did not know who they were. They felt welcoming. She could not make out faces; it was more like an etching made of energy. It felt like people who loved her. It felt like total acceptance. It was so attractive, and she was deeply interested in it.
Then she heard a voice: “Do you want to live or die?” She thought of her mother and how devastated she would be. She thought, I want to live. Within a second, she says, she was removed from that energy and pushed toward the surface “like I had rockets on my feet.”
If you are curious about how people describe this kind of light and what often comes with it, our complete guide to near-death experiences offers a plain-language overview.
A Second Question and a Life Vest
At the surface she still could not breathe, because the air had been knocked out of her. A man on the boat threw a life vest, but the waves were big, maybe ten feet, and the vest was perhaps thirty or forty feet away. She had no air and could not swim to it. She started to slip back under, and again she felt that beautiful love and welcoming. Again she heard the voice ask whether she wanted to live or die. Again she thought of her mom and said she wanted to live.
The next thing she knew, she says, she was on the life vest. She does not know how she got there. A crew member pulled her in and then, on the rope ladder, put her over his shoulder and climbed. They had to pump her stomach and give her mouth to mouth before she breathed. She estimates she was out for around ten minutes, unable to breathe for nine or ten.
The next day her back was black and blue. She might have broken a bone, maybe the clavicle, she says. What stays with her is what she felt out there: all the pain in her body went away, and “it felt like I was home.” Looking back, she says, it felt like her spirit, though she did not know she had one back then.
A Life Review Sixteen Years Ago
Karen says she remembered the drowning only about sixteen years before the interview, during a real spiritual awakening. She was at home, nothing in particular was going on, and her life passed before her eyes. She saw experiences she had not thought about in years, and the drowning was one of them. She says it felt like a life review.
What was interesting, she says, is what she saw. Every time she had been having fun, she saw all the good that followed. Every time she was not having fun, like that modeling job on a boat with people she was not comfortable with, she saw how things she did not want came to her. It was “a review of how much of my mood is dictating my life,” on both sides, good mood and bad.
That, she says, was the spiritual awakening. Every time she was in a good mood, good things happened. Every time in a bad mood, bad things happened. It was so obvious.
Hard Chapters and Choosing Joy
Karen is open about difficult parts of her story. For a few years after the drowning she did a lot of drinking and drugs, she says, and she stopped a couple of years later. She had a great deal of pain in her body. She had a lot of depression. She also names trauma in her youth involving adults who should have been safe, and says that in hindsight something was going on that she did not yet understand.
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What changed things, she says, was seeing so clearly that she had more control of her life than she realized. She was exhilarated by the idea that “we’re all in the driver’s seat more than we know.” She does not say outside events do not matter. But she believes we have much more power, through our good feelings, to create more goodness. So she began doing more of what she loved: acrobatics, flying the trapeze, gymnastics, the beach, being out in the ocean, scuba diving.
She has also had psychic experiences since she was three or four, she says, and they have grown over the years. It does not make her feel special; it feels like a desire and an interest.
Sailing as a First Meditation
Karen says sailing was probably her first meditation. Her mind had felt wound tight, like the rubber band inside an old golf ball, and out at sea it unwound. There was no other boat, no light pollution, hardly any music, nothing she was required to do and nothing about time or what people think.
These days she has a simple practice, which she shares as what works for her. She first writes out something she appreciates, so she already has a good feeling and is centered on her heart. Then, while meditating, she keeps her attention on her heart, because “the heart is a pilot of the brain.” The heart knows things, she says.
She believes that in that receptive place, divine energy that knows you and knows what you want pours into you like a waterfall. She says she has experienced unusual things she did not do on purpose, such as levitating and bending spoons. We share this as Karen’s account. For short definitions, see our glossary entries on meditation and gratitude practice.
Love Is the Bridge
Karen ends with a long, joyful list of who she believes we are at our core: love, infinite power, total understanding, total acceptance, infinite wisdom, funny, playful, caring, innovative, creative. It is our true nature, she says, when we are not blocking it.
“Love is the bridge to all you want,” she says. She quotes Rumi that love is freedom and power, a gentle power, and she adds, “There’s nothing that is not love.” At Next Level Soul we share these accounts as lived experiences in the person’s own words. What they mean is still debated, and nothing here is a medical claim.
Questions to Sit With
- Karen says her childhood self absorbed a belief from something she overheard. What sentence did you absorb as a child that you still live by?
- She saw how her moods shaped her days. Where might a small shift in mood change what you attract this week?
- What do you love doing that you have stopped making room for?
This week, before you meditate or begin your day, write down one thing you appreciate. Then place your attention on your heart for one minute.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Karen says she was given a choice twice, and chose life both times because of love for her mother.
- She says the afterlife felt like total acceptance and like home.
- She says her mood shaped her life, and that we are in the driver’s seat more than we know.
- She says the heart is a pilot of the brain, and appreciation opens the way.
- She says love is a gentle power, and there is nothing that is not love.
Please enjoy my conversation with Karen Lorre.
Guest Links: Connect With Karen Lorre
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Karen Lorre?
Karen Lorre is a speaker who says she was knocked off a spinnaker into the ocean off Hawaii and felt herself enter a golden light. She tells her story to Alex Ferrari in this Divine Encounters episode.
What happened to Karen in Hawaii?
She says a spinnaker whipped her onto her back in the ocean during a modeling job, and she went down deep, disoriented and unable to breathe. She says she felt herself enter a golden light and heard a voice.
What did the voice ask Karen?
She says the voice asked whether she wanted to live or die. She thought of her mother and chose to live. It asked again at the surface, and she answered the same way.
How long was Karen unable to breathe?
She says she was out for around ten minutes, unable to breathe for about nine or ten minutes, and that the crew pumped her stomach and gave her mouth to mouth.
What did the other side feel like to Karen?
She says it felt like total acceptance, love and home, and that all the pain in her body went away.
What was Karen’s childhood accident?
She says that as a child she crashed her big wheel into a sycamore tree and did not remember anything for about 22 hours. She later remembered floating above her body while her pediatrician spoke.
What did Karen learn in her life review?
She says she saw how much her mood shaped her life: good moods brought good things and bad moods brought things she did not want.
What does Karen say about narcolepsy?
She says she traced a belief from childhood to her narcolepsy, that she had to wake every hour to live, and after remembering it she no longer needed her medication. She shares this as her experience, not as medical advice.
What is Karen’s meditation practice?
She says she writes out something she appreciates first, then keeps her attention on her heart, which she calls a pilot of the brain.
What is Karen’s main message?
She says love is the bridge to all you want, a gentle power, and that there is nothing that is not love.
Does Next Level Soul say a near-death experience is real?
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
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- A woman who drowned at age two describes the afterlife
- A life review that changed everything
- The mindset that helped a man survive death, cancer and depression
- 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.
Karen Lorre 0:08
My neighbor kids, all the kids. We had a whole bunch of kids in our neighborhood. It was like a everybody, every family, but every house almost had, you know, multiple kids. So I was on a big wheel, and they were on bikes. They were most of them were older, and we were going around the block, and I was trying to keep up, and I was, you know, pedaling really hard, and then there was a tree, and there was the sidewalk came up, and it looked daunting, you know, to my little low body there. And so I'm trying, and I'm thinking, Oh, I hope I can make it over that hill. And I hit the concrete of the far side, and my big wheel went flying, and I went towards and I remember the flight. I like the flight, but I went towards the tree that was a sycamore tree, and I didn't remember anything for 22 hours, I think, and then it was noon when I woke up the next day. I didn't remember this, but I did remember it, and it helped me cure one of my diseases called narcolepsy, which was where you wake up all the time at night, and then you're exhausted, falling asleep during the day. What happened was, Dr Bouch. He was my pediatrician. He came to the house, and I was above. I was watching above, although I didn't remember this until I 10 or 15 years ago, but I was watching above. I was floating above, and I could see my little body on the couch, and I could hear Dr Bouch, and he was saying, you've got to wake her up every hour or she will die. And I saw my little body believe I better wake up every hour or I will die. And that's narcolepsy. And when I saw it, whenever it was years ago, I was very relaxed. And then that memory came back to me, and I saw the whole thing, and I realized that my little self had believed that in order to live, I have to wake up every hour. And I healed it. I did some fast healing, actually. And then that night was the first time I slept through the night. And then it started to get better and better in my sleep. I don't need any of the narcolepsy medicines anymore. The doctor, I told him I had cured it, and he didn't have any curiosity. He's a good guy too. I really liked him, but once I said I didn't need the medicine anymore, that was the first one, and I believe that that's where actually a lot of diseases for many people come from situations where somebody says something, and you believe it as a kid, and then you live it out as you keep going. I was doing a modeling job. I had sailed to Hawaii, so I was living on a boat, but then they were doing a modeling job with me on a different boat, a big boat. And our boat was like 44 foot. This one was like 76 foot. And we were doing a modeling I was doing a modeling job, and it was a spinnaker flying. Spinnakers are the really beautiful, big, huge wind sailboats that are out at the front of the boat, usually. And what they do for Spinnaker flying, it's attached at the top of the mast, and then the Spinnaker, the two ends of the Spinnaker, come down, and they put a little seat in and you you go flying, and it was gusting. It was about 30 to 40 knots, you know, kind of inconsistent gusts. And I didn't, I'd never been Spinnaker flying, so they said, you know, just one guy went up first, and he was being bounced around, and he was probably 280 pounds, and I was probably 100 and so I get on the Spinnaker, and I didn't have the ballast, you know, I'm holding on, but I didn't have any ballast to keep the spinnaker in the proper sail position. So it went up, and then it whipped and then it whipped me onto my back, onto the ocean, and it was painful, it was and then so the air got knocked out of me, and it was way past Hawaii's a volcano Island, just on Oahu. And the volcano, you know, is under the water for a while, but after the volcano, it's just two miles deep, or a mile and a half, or something like that. It's pretty deep. And so I went down like a rock. I probably got a concussion. I got completely disoriented, couldn't breathe, I didn't know where I was. I got down so deep that I couldn't tell where the surface was. I couldn't tell if it was that way or that way or that way I was. I was so disoriented, and I didn't have any energy. I hadn't been able to breathe, obviously, underwater. And although I think babies can breathe underwater, so maybe I should have been able to breathe underwater, I just didn't know how to do it. Then started to give up. You know, it was so hard. It was just so hard, and I was so disoriented, and I started to give up. And I felt myself go into this light. It was this beautiful golden light, and I felt like I could see, almost like an energy, of people I knew, but I didn't know who they were. I knew they were there, and it seemed very welcoming, but I couldn't it wasn't like I could make out their faces or anything like that. It was more like a like an etching, but an etching with maybe from energy or something like that. And it felt like there were people there that loved me, and it felt like total acceptance. And it felt like like love. It felt beautiful, and it was so attractive, and I was so interested in it. And then I heard a voice that said, Do you want to live or die? I thought of my mom, and I thought how my mom would be devastated, you know, if I died. And so I thought, I want to live, and within a second, I was removed from that energy, and I was being pushed towards the surface. I didn't is like I had rockets on my feet. It was that kind of a feeling. I still couldn't breathe, and I finally get up to this, to the thing, and I can't get a breath because the air had been knocked out of me. So I didn't have any ability to breathe still. And. There's a guy from the boat, and he was throwing a life vest. But the waves are big, you know, and it's very kind of tumultuous, good 10 feet maybe. So I can't, I don't have any air. I can't swim to the life vest. It's maybe 30 feet away, 40 feet away. I'd gone pretty far from the boat. And so then I started to slip back down into the water, and I started to feel that beautiful love again, that total acceptance, that welcoming feeling. And again, I heard the voice, do you want to live or do you want to die? And I again, thought of my mom, and I said, I want to live. And I don't know. The next thing that happened was I was on the lifesaver. I don't know how I got there. I just got there, and I just somehow got there. And it was, it was far, I don't, still hadn't breathed. He's pulling me in. And then he was on the rope ladder. And then he put me over his shoulder and climbed up the rope ladder. They had to pump my stomach, you know, just like, make me throw up. And then they had to give me mouth to mouth before I breathed. So I was probably out for like, 10 minutes, so that that was my thing. I was black and blue the next day, all up and down my spine, my whole my whole back, my spine. I might have even have a broken bone somewhere, and I don't know where I broke it on my clavicle, and maybe it was there. I don't know. I wasn't able to breathe. I wasn't able to breathe for nine or 10 minutes. It felt like it was my spirit. Now, when I look back on it, it felt like it was my spirit. But I didn't know I had a spirit back then, I just felt like all the pain in my body went away. I just felt completely like it felt like I was home. I remembered it 16 years ago. I knew I'd had the accident, and I knew I'd had some problems, but I didn't really like 16 years ago I had a real spiritual awakening. And my life, I was in my house, nothing was going on, but my life passed before my eyes, and I literally saw all these experiences in my life that I had never, you know, thought about and they all started coming in, and that was one of them. And I saw the whole thing, and I just was it just all came back. It felt like a life review. And what I was seeing was this is what was so interesting. Every single time I was having fun, I saw all this good stuff that happened every single time that I was not having fun and like that modeling job I didn't feel comfortable to begin with, on that boat with the people as I would see where I was not having fun. I would see how things I didn't want happen to me. So it was a really clear understanding of how much my mood impacted my life. That's what it was. It was a review of how much of my mood is dictating my life, and both sides of it, you know, the good mood or the bad mood. And it was a that's what gave me the spiritual awakening, in a lot of ways, because it was like, Oh my God, every time I'm in a good mood, good things happen. Every time in a bad mood, bad things happen. It was so obvious. I did a lot of drinking and drugs. I was trying to do something. I didn't I got I ended up stopping that just a couple years later, but for a few years, I really I couldn't think about any of that. It just seemed it didn't make sense to me, and I didn't understand it. So I just kept, um, there was a pain in my body that was so extreme from that thing. And then I've always had some psychic stuff, or at least since I was three or four, I've always had psychic experiences where I've known things, and those just have been increasing and increasing and increasing. It's just that, I think for me, it was, I was passionate about it. I was very interested in it. Some people aren't as interested, and some people don't believe it when they are psychic, and it doesn't feel like I have, I'm special, or anything like that. It just feels like they've had this desire, and then I've had experiences that sort of became very obvious again about being psychic, that there was something that was going on that I didn't I didn't know how I was doing it, but I was doing it. I also had trauma. I went to a church where the minister was a pedophile when I didn't go to the church, but my friends invited me to go to the youth group, and they said, You love this minister. He's great. He's great with youth. And then they sent me. When I was in seventh or eighth grade, they sent me to the school psychologist who was a pedophile. And so I don't know what was going on. I grew up in Long Beach, but there was something going on. It was so clear to me that I was more in control of my life than I realized. That's where the life change happened. I just I saw it. I saw it so clearly, and I got exhilarated by the feeling that, oh, we're all in the driver's seat more than we know. Of course, there's other things that are happening around us, but we have much more power with accessing our, you know, our good feelings, to create more goodness. That's kind of how it happened for me. So it got me, it got me very excited, because I thought, oh, I can start to do this. I knew I had things in my life. I had a lot of depression, but I had things in my life that really made me happy, like doing acrobatics or flying the trapeze, or any of those things that I like to do, gymnastics, all those things. So I started to do that more, going to the beach, being out in the ocean, you know, scuba diving. I just started to do as many of those things as I could that I like. I really believe we have the ability. You really have had your own experiences. Some people don't have that desire. You know, I showed up to, I think sailing was my first meditation, actually, because my mind felt like it had been encapsulated in a, you know, those golf balls you take off the, the olden times you take off the the golf ball, and it's all these, it's this long rubber band that just goes it goes out. That's what sailing because there was no other boat. There was nothing. There was no light pollution, there was no music. I mean, we had the music of a tape, but not very many tapes, you know. So it was not like that. I just had books my partner and and a few tapes, this a long time ago. My mind literally felt like it was like an opened golf ball, and that it was just like, I think that was my very first experience of learning how to meditate, because it was so peaceful. There was nothing you had to do except for, you know, live, but there was nothing you know, there was not a lot. There was nothing you were required to do. There was nothing about time. There was nothing about what do people think? So it was, I think the first experience of meditation. There's so many ways to meditate, and every person will have what works for them. But one of the things I found that helps me is I write out something I'm appreciative about first, so I have that good feeling, and I'm already, like centered on my heart. And then when I'm meditating, I keep my attention on my heart, because my the heart is a pilot of the brain. The heart knows things. The heart is really brilliant. And so I just keep my attention on the heart. And then I saw things that I was going to go and experience, and I saw it in detail, and I've seen that, and I didn't do it on purpose. I don't even know how I did it. It's just that it happened. I've levitated, I've bent spoons, all these weird things from that power of meditation and that power of being receptive, you're in that place where whatever that energy, that divine energy, that knows you and knows what you want, is that energy just pours into you, and it creates this beautiful waterfall of all that you want. And so I love that. So I like writing out the appreciation first, and I like putting my attention on my heart, having communion with my spirit and with others all day, every day. So I'm always happy. I'm in the flow. You don't have to stress about anything. Everything is flow. Chill out. Have fun. It's going to be easy. You know, everything will flow to you easily if you're happy, love, infinite power, total understanding, total acceptance, infinite wisdom. Funny, playful, caring, thoughtful, innovative, creative, genius, invincible. It's who we are. It's our true nature when we're not blocking it. It's the path. Love is the bridge to all you want. As Ruby Rumi says love is freedom, love is power, but it's a gentle power, but it's much powerful than not gentle power. Love is it's everything. There's nothing that is not love.
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