Divine Encounters Episode 062 | Near-Death Experience Story
Kimberly Clark Sharp was walking out of a Kansas City DMV in 1970 when, she says, she collapsed, and what followed was a meeting with a light she calls God and a choice she did not want to make. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari what she remembers, what her father and her hospital records told her afterward, and how being sent back to serve shaped the rest of her life.
Key Takeaways
- Kimberly says she collapsed outside the DMV in 1970 and that about an hour and a half passed between the DMV and the emergency room.
- She describes a woman’s voice saying “I’m not getting a pulse” while she felt calm, and says she let go before the fog arrived.
- She says God appeared as a light brighter than a million suns, made of nothing but love, and that it felt personal.
- She describes communicating in the form of math and music, even though she says she cannot add, subtract or sing.
- She says she begged to stay, was shown glimpses of the life she would live if she returned, and agreed to go back and serve.
- Her simple advice on purpose: breathe first, then be nice to everybody, because life reviews happen eventually.
| Guest | Kimberly Clark Sharp |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 062 |
| Year | 1970 |
| What Kimberly says happened | She collapsed outside the DMV and was without a pulse, according to those around her |
| Where she says she went | A warm fog, then a light she calls God, then a glimpse of her heaven |
| Who she met | A presence of love and light with no gender or face |
| The message | Go back and serve; be nice to everybody |
| Time away | About an hour and a half from the DMV to the emergency room, by her account |
Kimberly Clark Sharp Before the Collapse
Alex opens with a simple question: what was life like before you died? Kimberly answers with a scene, not a résumé. She was a girl from Kansas, in 1970, doing something ordinary. She had gone to the DMV to renew her driver’s license and get an automobile license, because she wanted to buy a car.
She is candid that she had a hard life in some ways, and just as candid that she was loved, getting an education and feeling safe and secure. Nothing in her telling suggests someone looking for a spiritual event. She was thinking about parking.
That detail comes back later, and it is part of why her story feels so human. She says she flunked the parallel parking portion of the test. She could not get closer to the curb than three feet, maybe six.
Collapsing Outside the DMV
As she stepped out of the building, Kimberly says, she collapsed. Her father tried to catch her. As she puts it, dead weight is heavier than a live weight, so he broke her fall but could not stop her from reaching the ground.
A uniformed nurse happened to be passing by. According to what Kimberly was later told, she ran over and could not find a pulse or see any breathing. Kimberly points out how early this was. In 1970, she says, the 911 emergency response system barely existed, so someone made two separate phone calls: one to St Luke’s Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, the closest emergency room, and one to a volunteer fire department.
The firefighters arrived first. Kimberly is careful to say she is repeating her father’s memory here, since she has none of her own. She says the crew had a new portable ventilator, and that her father watched them remove its packaging. In her telling, the device was set the wrong way at first. They noticed and fixed it, but she says the sudden rush of air was more than her body could handle, and she describes herself as inflated like a really bad balloon.
Her father, she says, was then told, “I’m sorry. There’s nothing more we can do.” She is not describing this for drama. She is laying out what other people saw, because she was somewhere else.
A Stranger Steps Out of the Crowd
At that point, Kimberly says, a man came out of what was by then a crowd, moved everyone aside and started what she calls citizen CPR. He did mouth to mouth and chest compressions. She adds a modern note for listeners: today, if you see someone collapse who was breathing, you can press on the chest to the tune of the song Staying Alive and skip the mouth to mouth.
She says her father remembers the man eventually giving up, and swearing a bit. Then the memory picks up again with an ambulance arriving, and with the crowd cheering. By then she was breathing on her own, though unconscious. She was placed in the back of the ambulance, her father climbed in, and off they went.
Kimberly later pulled her medical records, before writing her book After the Light, because she did not want a journalist reading them before she had. The admitting notes asked the question marks out loud: cause of collapse, simple faint, cardiac? The problem, she says, was the ventilator mix-up. Reading that, she thought, I’m a snafu. “Death by snafu,” she calls it, with a laugh. She estimates about an hour and a half passed from the DMV to the emergency room, and her admitting body temperature, she says, was 86 degrees.
Letting Go and the Warm Fog
Here the story turns to what Kimberly remembers. She heard a woman’s voice to her left saying, “I’m not getting a pulse.” Kimberly turned toward the voice, though she says she could not actually see her, and answered, in effect, “of course, you’re getting a pulse. Otherwise I wouldn’t be talking.”
She thought she was being patient. The woman ignored her. Kimberly laughs about it now and wonders whether she was having a near-death snit.
Then, she says, she let go. She does not fully understand why, but she calls it key. Without traveling anywhere, she found herself in an environment of warm fog. It was wonderful. She knew she was not alone, though she could not see through the fog to find out who else was there.
She felt comfortable, calm and anticipatory. Her metaphor, and she reminds Alex that everything is a metaphor, is being at the gate at the airport with a boarding pass in hand, just waiting for her row to be called.
The Light She Calls God
Her row was called, she says, in a big way. What she calls God showed up. She is quick to say she does not mean the word in any religious sense. It is three little letters in a big word, she says, and she means the Supreme Being or Creator, without a gender or a face.
It came as a light. She has never stared at one sun, she says, but this was like a million suns, “so indescribably bright.” It exploded underneath what she perceived as herself, and she is playful about the puzzle of how she saw it, since she had no body to give her eyes. It blew away all the fog. She says it was “made of nothing but love,” in an immeasurable way, and she acknowledges the usual problem with near-death experiences: the ineffability. There are no real words, she says, but she will use words anyway.
The light went out in all directions, and she understood that she was looking at linear time, and that it was eternal. At the same moment, the light was doubling endlessly back on itself, which she understood to be dimensions. For a girl from Kansas, she says with a smile, this was pretty high falutin stuff. Yet it felt anticipated and calm. She felt so loved, and it was personal.
If you would like a wider view of how people describe meeting a light, our complete guide to near-death experiences walks through the common themes.
Questions Answered in Math and Music
Kimberly says she got to ask questions. She did not use words the way she does now, but she says communication was perfect, “in the form of math and music.”
This is the part she offers to skeptics. People say that near-death experiencers just get what they are expecting. Kimberly says she cannot add, subtract, multiply or divide to this day, and she cannot sing. In church she was once asked to lip sync. Yet there she was, she says, communicating perfectly with God.
She does not remember everything she asked. She does remember asking why we are born. The response, as she recalls it, was that she wanted it. “You wanted to be born so you’re born again.” It sounds simplistic, she admits, but she understood it at the time.
She also asked about pain and suffering, and she wonders where those questions even came from, since they would not normally be hers. As she recalls, the answer was that suffering is, in the end, our way back to God, through prayer or whatever form that takes.
Told She Had to Go Back
Then she heard what she did not want to hear. She had to go back. Kimberly says she begged not to. She was with love. Why would she leave? She had a hard life, she says, but she was not miserable. She simply did not want to go.
Her return, in her telling, began with a quick bit of self-criticism. She found herself back near her body, and she says she missed it by about the same distance she had missed the curb at the DMV. After such a profound spiritual experience, she says, all she could think was that she could not even park herself.
She could see through something, perhaps legs, a man she did not recognize bent over her. The moment his lips touched hers, she says, she went back through him and into her body. As she passed through, she knew everything about him emotionally: he was scared, he felt somewhat foolish, and he loved her. It was the kind of love we call compassion, she says, a very strong form of love.
Homey Home and Her Heaven
Back in her body, Kimberly says she was fully conscious and hated it. It was dark and cold and damp and icky. She begged God to take her back. In the presence of the light, she says, she had used the words homey home, a phrase her parents later told her she used as a toddler while learning language. That was where she really wanted to be.
She admits she can whine, and she says she can wear down even God. She paraphrases the reply as something like: all right, you insist. A window opened to her right, and there was her heaven. To skeptics, she says, it looked like a Kentucky calendar photo, though she has never been to Kentucky. Endless waving grass in the distance, a white fence, small shrubs or trees. The grass was green and the sky was blue, but electrifyingly so. She says she could receive consciousness in that grass, and she loved it.
She was told that if she went through, that was her border and she would not be coming back. So a flash of light caught her attention. If she chose to live, she says, she would be in a place where mountains met water. It meant nothing to her, and it was not Kansas, so she ignored it. Another flash showed a gallery of people, strangers, who would be significant in her life. She was still headed for Kentucky. Then a third light showed her being of service. She said, cool.
“Well, who knew God was a hippie,” she says. She meant cool as an adjective. God took it as a verb and an agreement. She was back.
Mountains Meeting Water, and a Life of Trust
Kimberly had to recover, she says, because her body took a hit. Then she went looking for the place where mountains met water, and after what she calls “the ultimate god road trip,” she wound up in Seattle, Washington. Everything fit.
She says she has never applied for a job since landing there. She has been asked to do everything she has done to earn money. That does not mean there has not been work, she says. It means that when she was sent back to serve, she “wasn’t sent without any tools.” She has had guidance, often visible to her, especially in the past. Her life changed completely, and, in her words, “I stepped into trust, and I’ve never looked back.”
For more on how people describe this kind of return, see the glossary entry on near-death experience.
Breathe, Then Be Nice
People ask Kimberly how to find their purpose. Her answer is almost comically simple. “Just draw a breath and breathe it out.” Everything else, she says, falls into place. One’s first purpose should be breathing, she says, “followed by being nice to everybody.”
She ties this to the life review, which she says the conversation did not spend much time on. Life reviews happen eventually, she says, and she wants a good one. So she tries to be nice to everybody, with healthy boundaries, and she hopes everyone will be.
She does not want kindness treated as a deposit toward a reward after death. The payoff, she says, should happen before death. The reward of being nice should be in itself. If you are curious what people say about that kind of reflection, our glossary has an entry on the life review.
Questions to Sit With
- Kimberly says her first purpose is breathing, and her second is being nice. What would change if you treated those two as enough for today?
- She was thinking about parallel parking right up to the moment everything changed. What small, ordinary worry are you carrying that might look different from further away?
- She says she stepped into trust. Where in your life are you being invited to do the same?
Pick one person today and be deliberately, plainly kind to them, with no expectation of a return. Notice how it feels in your own body.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Kimberly says God appeared as a light made of nothing but love, and that it felt personal.
- She says communication there was perfect, in the form of math and music.
- She says we are born because we wanted to be, so we are born again.
- She says she was sent back to serve, and that she was given the tools she needed.
- Her advice is simple: breathe, then be nice to everybody, because the reward of kindness is kindness itself.
Please enjoy my conversation with Kimberly Clark Sharp.
Guest Links: Connect With Kimberly Clark Sharp
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Kimberly Clark Sharp?
Kimberly Clark Sharp is a near-death experiencer and author of After the Light. In this Divine Encounters episode, she tells host Alex Ferrari about collapsing outside a DMV in 1970 and what she says she experienced next.
What happened to Kimberly Clark Sharp in 1970?
She says she collapsed as she walked out of the DMV, and that those around her could not find a pulse. By her account, about an hour and a half passed between the DMV and the emergency room.
What does Kimberly say she experienced?
She says she found herself in a warm fog, and then a light she calls God appeared, brighter than a million suns and made of nothing but love. She says she asked questions and received answers in the form of math and music.
Why does Kimberly say we are born?
She says she asked why we are born, and the response was that she wanted it. She remembers it as, “You wanted to be born so you’re born again.”
What does Kimberly mean by homey home?
Kimberly says she used the words homey home in the presence of the light, and later learned from her parents it was a phrase she used as a toddler. She says it was where she really wanted to be.
What did Kimberly see when she asked to go back?
She says a window opened to her right and showed her heaven: endless waving grass, a white fence and small shrubs or trees, all electrifyingly alive. She was told that if she went through, she would not be coming back.
What was she shown about her life if she returned?
She says she saw flashes of light. One showed a place where mountains meet water, one showed a gallery of strangers who would matter in her life, and one showed her being of service. She agreed, and she was sent back.
Where did Kimberly end up living?
She says she followed the idea of mountains meeting water and wound up in Seattle, Washington, where everything fit.
What is Kimberly’s advice about purpose?
She says your first purpose is breathing, followed by being nice to everybody. She also says that the reward of being nice should be in itself, not saved for after death.
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.
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- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What is a near-death experience? (glossary)
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- Insights on why we came to Earth from thousands of near-death experiences
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- 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.
Kimberly Clark Sharp 0:03
I was walking out of the DMV, and as I stepped out, I collapsed, and my dad tried to catch me, but dead weight is heavier than a live weight, so he broke my fall, but couldn't stop me from hitting the ground. There happened to be a uniform nurse passing by. She ran over determined that I didn't have a pulse, I didn't seem to be breathing. Now, 1970 this predates barely the whole 911, emergency response system. So at that time, two phone calls were made by somebody, one to St Luke's Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, which was actually the closest er to my body, big er. And then the Shawna mission department of volunteer firefighters, and they arrived first again, according to my dad, they didn't think I was breathing either. They had new portable ventilator. My dad said they had to remove the packaging. They put it on my face, turned it on, and this particular portable ventilator had two features. One was to ventilate, which is what you want, but another to vacuum, because sometimes people get objects caught in their throat and they can't breathe, which sets up the drama of almost dying. That's why we say to our kids, you know, don't run with candy in your mouth. Or, in fact, if this happens while eating, it's actually called a cafe coronary. Well, anyway, I didn't have any objects in my throat, but when they turned on the machine, it was on vacuum mode, so whatever oxygen was left in my body, so they apparently immediately knew it was wrong, flipped the switch. Air entered my body, but I guess my lungs had come in partial contact with themselves. Our lungs are sticky suckers, and they do suck to it their own tissues. So the blast of air that came into my body could not be accommodated, apparently, by my lungs, so the air found its way, ultimately, to my skin, which is called epidural emphysema, and really hard to recover, and I was inflated like a really bad balloon, a flesh I was just full of fear. They turned to my dad and said, I'm sorry. There's nothing more we can do. At that point, a man came out of what I guess now is a crowd, and moved everyone out of the way, plucked the firefighters off me, and started what we now call citizen CPR. He did mouth to mouth and chest compressions. And I'm going to interrupt myself right now to say one does not have to do mouth to mouth anymore. If you see someone collapse who was breathing, put your hand a little below where in a woman that the breast would be and press to the tune of staying alive. And that's all so which is so ironic. And then he gave up, and apparently he was a swearing man, so had some choice things to say. But then my dad's memory ends picks up again. When ambulance arrived, cheered in the audience, which I'm calling an audience, because, again, I have no memory of that, but it was crowd, and I was breathing on my own, but unconscious. My body was thrown into the not throat, and it was placed carefully, I'm sure in the back of the ambulance, my dad jumped in off we went to the hospital. Something went haywire in the emergency room. But I hate to give away the ending of a good book, but she lived after all that, I still managed to live, by the way, I pulled my medical records when I wrote after the light, because I didn't want a journalist reading what I hadn't, and it was pretty interesting. You can't chart like that anymore, but it was my admitting notes. Were, you know, cause of collapse? Question mark, simple, faint, question mark, cardiac question mark. The problem was the snafu with the ventilator. And I read that and thought, I'm a snafu. My life is reduced to a snafu. So that's what killed me. Death by snafu. About an hour and a half passed from the time we stepped out of the DMV to the ER, and I want to clarify that I had air during that time, because that's not sustainable. I'm guessing that the air that was inflating me was just seeping back in, keeping my brain going anyway. That's the physical side of things. Now, what I remember is a woman's voice to my left, saying, I'm not getting a pulse. I'm not getting a pulse. And I turned to her and said, Not noting that I couldn't see her, but I said something to the effect, of of course, you're getting a pulse. Otherwise I wouldn't be talking. I thought I was being patient. She was ignoring me. So did I get into what like a near death snit or something? But at some point, I let go, and that's key in a way that I don't understand, but it was key. I found myself without traveling anywhere, in an environment surrounded by warm fog. It was wonderful. I knew I wasn't alone. I just couldn't. See through the fog to figure out who else was there. I also felt very comfortable and very calm and anticipatory, again, in a calm way, like my metaphor and everything's a metaphor, my metaphor is, it's like I was at the gate at the airport, boarding pass in hand, just waiting for my row to be called. It was that kind of a feeling. And then my role was called big time, because what I call God showed up. And when I say God, I don't mean that in any religious sense at all. I It's just three little letters in a big word. But I say my Creator, I don't know, but we have a consensual agreement that God means the Supreme Being, the creator, whatever. So I'm gonna say God, but without a gender or a face or anything. It was in the form of a light. Well, I've never stared at a million sons. I've never stared at one son, but it was like a million sons. It was so indescribably bright, and it exploded underneath me, what I perceived as me. I had eyeballs, something I have not settled on yet. How could I see that eyeballs? Eye? But it happens. It blew away all the foggy material, and it was made of nothing but love, just again in an immeasurable way and in an ethical way. And that's one of the problems with the Near Death Experience the ineffability, which means there are no words, and there really aren't but nonetheless, I'm going to use words. This light went out in all directions I could turn and see, and somehow understood that I was looking at linear time and it was eternal. I was beholding eternity. It figured that. And then at the same time, this light was doubling endlessly back on itself, and I somehow understood that to be dimensions. Now, for a girl from Kansas, this is pretty high falutin stuff, what was I thinking? But yet it all was so, like I said, anticipated and calm, and I was so loved, and it was personal. I got to ask questions. I didn't use words like I am now. But yeah, communication was perfect, and it was in the form of math and music. And when skeptics say, oh, near death experiencers just get what they're expecting, it's like, I can't add, subtract, multiply or divide to this day, and I can't listen to my voice. I can't sing. I mean, in church, I was asked to lip sync. I mean, it's that bad. So here I am, yet communicating perfectly with God. I asked more than I can really remember, but I do remember asking, you know, why are we born something to that effect? And the response was, you know, you wanted it. You wanted to be born so you're born again. It sounds so simplistic, but I understood it at the time. As I recall, asked about pain and suffering. There's a good question. Again, where was I getting all these questions from? It wouldn't be me normally to ask stuff like this, but it was, you know, again, basically, it's our way back to God. It's, you know, prayer or whatever. But then I heard what I didn't want to hear, which was that I had to go back, and I begged not to. I was with love. I mean, why not? Like, I had a hard life, but I didn't want to leave, but I was sent back. And then, of all things, at the DMV, I had actually had to renew a driver's license and get an automobile license because I wanted to buy a car, and I flunked though the parallel parking part of it. I couldn't get closer to the curb than three feet, six feet, maybe I mean a distance. So I'm sit back and I miss my body by the same amount of space that I recall missing the curb just what I felt moments before and after such a profound spiritual experience, all I could think of to say was, I can't even part myself. I mean, it was like so self critical right from the get go, Okay, I'm back and I'm going to criticize myself. I wasn't scared, but I could see through something, I'm guessing, legs, a man I didn't recognize, bent over me, and the moment his lips touched mine, I went back through him and into my body. And as I was going through him, I knew everything about the guy, at least emotionally, that he was actually scared, feeling somewhat of an idiot, and loved me. And it was a form of love that we call compassion, which is a very strong form of love anyway. So I figured this guy was like a magnet, kind of like my Lighthouse of love, so to speak. If I just been with the greatest love of all, I would gravitate towards it anywhere and due to this day. So I was back and hating it. I was fully conscious, but in my body again, I could see, but it was dark and cold and damp and icky. My admitting body temperature in the ER was 86 degrees, which is wonderful for a summer day or a swimming pool temperature, but not so great for our bodies. It was cold. So I beg God to take me back. And I had said, in the presence of this little. Light from the get go. I said the words homey home, which I learned from my parents later, is what I used to say when I was learning language. I don't remember saying that, but I did, apparently, go home. Homey home. Well, that's what I said in the presence of this love and light. So what I said when begging and whining to go back, was I wanted to go back to homey home. That was where I really wanted to be. And again, Alex, I didn't have a hard life. I mean, I was loved. I was well, you know, getting an education. I felt safe and secure, but I can whine, and I can even wear down God, because I was that kind of a whiner. So please take me back so then, and I'm going to paraphrase God right now, but it was basically a writer, right you insist. And this window opened to my right, or portal or something, and there was my heaven. And again, to skeptics, what I saw looked like a Kentucky calendar photo. And I've never been to Kentucky, but apparently Kentucky is my heaven, or at least at that time, because it was just endless, long, waving grass off in the distance, a white sort of fence and small growing shrubs or trees, I don't know, but the grass wasn't green. It was green and the sky wasn't blue, it was blue. Everything was just electrifyingly alive, not only in hues and colors, but I could receive consciousness in that grass, and I loved it, and I wanted to go. And I was told that if I went through that, that was my border, you know, I wouldn't be coming back. So I couldn't get out of there fast enough, like, okay. But then off to my side, there was a flash of light, which caught my attention. And I was told, if I chose to live. I would be living in this place, and no map, of course, but it was all I remembered. Was where mountains meant water meant nothing to me. It wasn't Kansas. Then I ignored it. Then another flash of light as I'm about to go through to my heaven. And it was like a gallery of people, and I was told that if I chose to live, they would be significant in my life, but they were strangers. When I cared so off, I'd go to Kentucky, and then there was another light, and I saw myself being of service, and I said Cool. Well, who knew God was a hippie. When I said cool, I meant it as an adjective. God took it as a verb and as an affirmative, an agreement that I would go back and I was back. I had to recover because my body took a hit, but again, I lived, and I went off to pursue that where mountains met water, and after many wonderful adventures in the ultimate god road trip, I swear, I wound up in Seattle, Washington, where, indeed, mountains met water, everything fit and by the way, since landing here all those many years ago was 1970 still, I've never applied for a job. I've been asked to apply for everything I've ever done in this life to earn money. And it's not that there isn't work within those doors, but when I was sent back to serve, which is what I call it, I wasn't sent without any tools. I have had guidance, often visible to me, especially in the past, all kinds of visibilities. Life changed completely, but I stepped into trust, and I've never looked back. I've had a wonderful life. People have asked me a lot, you know. So how do I find my purpose? And it's just draw a breath and breathe it out. Everything else falls into place, but one's first purpose should be breathing followed by being nice to everybody. We haven't spent a lot of time on the life review, but that's really good advice I just gave your listeners, because life reviews happen eventually, and I want a good one. So I want to be nice to everybody again with those boundaries, and I want everyone to be nice, because there is a payoff. But the payoff should happen before death. The payoff should be the reward of being nice should be unto itself, just be nice.
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