Divine Encounters Episode 063 | Near-Death Experience Story
Lesley Lupo was working a busy day on a ranch, helping with the horses, when she says she left her body just before an accident that ended her life on Earth. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari what she watched from above, the forest she says she entered, the table of light beings who welcomed her, and why she came back with a simple message about helping others.
Key Takeaways
- Lesley says she left her body moments before a horse accident and watched everything from about 15 feet away, feeling no pain or distress.
- She describes knowing with certainty that she was dead, and feeling lighter, joyful and “twice as alive as I did when I was in the body.”
- She says three bright beings circled her as the scene changed, and she entered a forest world with no shadows where everything seemed lit from within.
- She describes a table of 11 people who welcomed her back, including a woman she says she had seen as a light being since childhood.
- She says she was shown a source of consciousness that knew her fully and adored her, and was told there are many realms.
- Her message: God is only love, we do better when we link arms and work together, and the purpose of life is to help others.
| Guest | Lesley Lupo |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 063 |
| Setting | A working ranch with guests and horses |
| What Lesley says happened | She left her body during a horse accident and watched her own body fall |
| Where she says she went | A forest with vines and a stream, then a cave behind a waterfall, then a view into other realms |
| Who she met | Three bright beings, a table of 11, a woman named Mina, and a source of consciousness |
| The message | God is only love; link arms and help others |
| Choice offered | To stay or to return to Earth |
Lesley Lupo and the Ranch Day That Started It
Alex starts where he always does, by asking what Lesley’s life was like before she died. She does not give a biography. She tells him about a day at work.
She was part of a ranch that she clearly loved, and she says she loved the horses and nature. That morning, she says, a cowboy who had come to work was still intoxicated from the night before, so she sent him home, because you do not want an accident. She jumped in to help in the wrangling department instead.
The ranch, she explains, is a place where people return. She says around 70 percent of the guests come back, so every week feels like a big family. The guests knew her. That detail matters later.
Houdini, the Saddle and the Hay Barn
At the end of the day Lesley was bringing the horses in. One horse, called Houdini, could get out of any knot or any corral, and the crew had to keep him separate. That evening, she says, he undid the latch and ran down to the hay barn with his saddle still on.
That worried her. A horse that rolls with a saddle on can hurt its back, and another horse had already gone down. She grabbed a couple of halters and told the guys she would take care of it.
When she got there the two horses were standing right next to each other, glued together, eating and ignoring her. She decided to go in between and catch them both at once. She turned and grabbed the backs of the saddles, trying to push her way through.
“All of a sudden, I left my body,” she says. If you had asked her right then what it was, she would have said it was her mind leaving. She went back about 15 feet or so and watched. She was so shocked she could not even think.
Watching From Outside Her Body
One of the horses screamed and started running. Lesley says she watched herself get spun around, with her arm caught in the saddle up to the armpit, struggling to keep her balance. The horse she was caught on was upset, she says, as if a mountain lion were behind it, and it kicked at her and tried to get her off.
Eventually the horse ran her into the concrete of the hay barn. She says the impact was devastating. She watched herself drop, still caught in the stirrup for another step or two.
What surprised her was how undramatic it felt to watch. She compares it to “watching you take off a jacket and throw it on the bed,” something you are done with. There was a certainty, she says, that this was no big deal, that you are just choosing to let go of your body in that way. She remembers thinking, “I wonder if everyone leaves their body.”
She also knew one thing without a doubt: she was dead. It was not a dream, and she was not unconscious. It was a certainty, she says, like the certainty of talking to Alex.
Peace, Joy and Senses Twice as Alive
Lesley started laughing. She felt none of the distress her body had been through. If someone had witnessed the accident, she says, they would have said she suffered horribly. She says she did not suffer at all, because she was watching it, and she felt peaceful and something like wisdom. She knew that she was okay, that the body was not, and that she was not the body at that moment.
Then she felt lighter. It was as if her cells separated and a beautiful little breeze went through. She felt so much joy, and “I felt twice as alive as I did when I was in the body.”
Her senses, she says, were completely awakened. When we look at someone, our edges blur. Hers were sharp. She could hear faint sounds, like birds and lizards scrabbling along, and she knew what each one was. The colors and smells were beautiful. It was not overload, she says. It was like really looking at everything for the first time, even a ranch she already loved. Her peripheral vision was wider than 180 degrees, and she felt electric, with her consciousness moving quickly but in step with it.
The Rescue She Watched From Above
From where she stood she could see the last two rides coming in at the bottom of the field. She felt nostalgic, because bringing the rides in was something she used to do. Then everyone saw her body and raced over.
Moving, she says, is not like walking. She would look someplace and be there. So she was suddenly right beside the cluster of people gathered around the body. One man started CPR, another jumped off his horse to help, and cowboys led the horses away. The guests stayed, because they all knew who she was, and they tried to resuscitate her.
She remembers telling them, “no, no, I’m fine. Don’t do it.” She liked where she was.
Three Bright Beings and the Forest
Lesley has heard other people describe a tunnel of light. Hers, she says, was different. She felt she was above the ground, and then everything around her started to change. The ranch faded out and another place faded in.
Three beings that looked like bright light moved around her, she says, as if to keep her from getting bumped. Then a world began to come into view: a beautiful forest with vines and a stream. That, she says, was when she completed what she calls her transition upstairs.
She was groggy at first. The first thing that hit her was that she could feel no fear. It was as if the fight, flight or freeze reflex that lives in our core animal brain was gone.
Everything had an iridescence, she says. If you compare a white ribbon with a white ribbon that shimmers, “this is earth, this is heaven.” The love she felt from everything she saw was indescribable. She asks Alex to picture a tree at sunrise or sunset with the sun behind it and every leaf lit up, then imagine the bark lit up too. There were no shadows, she says. Everything was glowing in itself.
If you would like to see how others describe arriving somewhere like this, our complete guide to near-death experiences collects the common themes.
The Table and the Light Beings She Already Knew
Lesley noticed a table with people standing around it. When she walked over, she says, they said welcome back, and it was as if she knew them.
The woman sitting to her left was someone Lesley recognized. When she was very young, she says, she would see light beings around her. She thought everyone could see them, and she got teased until she realized no one else could. Sometimes she heard chimes, or felt the air go cooler with a little breeze, and then one would appear. They almost never talked to her. What she remembers is the love.
She was a gifted student, she says, able to read and write in kindergarten, and her teachers put her in the library to read encyclopedias. She was raised Catholic, so she figured these beings were not devils. They must be angels. She had always felt happy and loved around them.
There were 11 people at the table. Only two spoke with her. Mina sat on her left and a second being sat on her right. When Lesley asked a question, she might get a word, but the whole answer would arrive at once. “An immediate download,” she says, understood immediately. In her book, she notes, the conversations go on for pages, but in the moment they were instant.
For more on how people describe guides and helpers on the other side, see the glossary entry on spirit guides.
A Choice, a Waterfall and the Source
Then they told her she had a choice. She could stay or go back to Earth. If she had decided right then, she says, she would not have come back. It was so nice.
Instead, a companion took her to a place she used to love: a big cave behind a waterfall where she used to go and meditate. On the way, she saw what she describes as an amazing light, a ball of consciousness that she came to understand was the source, the ultimate consciousness.
It was aware of her, she says, with all her little quirks and foibles, and it adored her. She remembers being taught in childhood to adore God and hoping, if you were lucky, to get a pat on the head. This was different. She felt intense love, and she felt adoration coming back toward her, from head to toe.
Then she noticed the sky. It looked like a patchwork rather than one solid color, as if she were looking through the floor of another realm. Her guide explained that there are many realms, a multitude. You can go up, turn around, come down, and go all the way to the divine and come back again.
She admits this has a catch. Upstairs, an answer would make perfect sense. Back on Earth, in a human brain, she would think, “I should have taken notes or something.”
What Lesley Brought Back
One of the biggest lessons she heard was that it is not going to be one person who changes the course of history anymore. There are too many people. “The more that we link arms and work together,” she says, the better. She is encouraged when she sees people of different religions putting down the swords and the guns and saying they all love God in different ways, and when people become more global, work for global goals, heal the earth and recognize that one person hoarding everything is not the answer.
Her view of God is plain. “To me, God is only love.” In her words, “There’s no judgment, there’s no hatred, there’s no vindictiveness.” It is the purest feeling of adoration, and the feeling of being adored in return.
She is retired but has started a new career. She is taking classes and making art again. She had a psychology degree and an art degree when she graduated, so she is going back to her art. She says she plans to keep learning and growing until she dies.
And the purpose of life? “The purpose of life is to help others,” she says. She believes the single thing that makes us happiest is helping someone even an inch and watching them be able to do it themselves. The core, she says, is helping others and “installing hope for others.”
Questions to Sit With
- Lesley says she felt no fear in the forest. What would it feel like to put down one fear, even for an afternoon?
- She says the more people link arms, the more is possible. Who could you link arms with this month?
- She describes helping someone “just even an inch.” Where in your life could an inch be enough?
Offer one person a small, specific piece of help this week, and then step back and let them take it from there. Notice how it feels to support without taking over.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Lesley says she knew she was not her body, and that she felt peaceful and wise while watching it fall.
- She describes a world with no shadows, where everything glowed from within and felt like love.
- She says the source of consciousness knew her completely and adored her.
- She says there are many realms, and that no single person will change the course of history alone.
- Her view is that God is only love, and the purpose of life is to help others.
Please enjoy my conversation with Lesley Lupo.
Guest Links: Connect With Lesley Lupo
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Lesley Lupo?
Lesley Lupo is a near-death experiencer and author who worked on a ranch with horses. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari what she says she experienced when a horse accident ended her life on Earth.
What happened to Lesley Lupo?
She says she went in between two horses to catch them, left her body, and watched from about 15 feet away as a horse spun her around, caught her arm in a stirrup and ran her into a concrete hay barn.
What did Lesley feel while watching her body?
She says she felt no distress or pain. She describes peace, a sense of wisdom, feeling lighter, and senses that were twice as alive as before.
Did anyone try to help her?
She says she watched a man begin CPR and another jump off his horse to help, while the ranch guests who knew her stayed and tried to resuscitate her.
What did the other world look like?
Lesley describes a beautiful forest with vines and a stream, an iridescence on everything, no shadows, and a sense that everything was lit from within.
Who did Lesley meet?
She says three bright beings circled her, and then she was welcomed at a table of 11 people. She says a woman there named Mina was someone she had seen as a light being since childhood.
How did communication work?
She says answers arrived as an immediate download. She might get one word, but she understood the whole answer at once.
What choice was she given?
She says she was told she could stay or return to Earth, and that if she had decided right then, she would not have come back.
What does Lesley say the purpose of life is?
She says the purpose of life is to help others, and that helping someone even an inch is what makes us happiest.
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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- 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.
Lesley Lupo 0:08
I went down. Horses are very unpredictable, and we had a cowboy who had come to work, and he was still intoxicated from the night before. So I sent him home, because you don't want an accident. So I jumped into the wrangling department. I was helping out, and at the end of the day, we were unsettling. Well, I was bringing all the horses in to be unsettled, and there was one horse we had called Houdini that could get out of any knot or any corral. We had to keep him separate, and he undid the latch, and he ran down to the hay barn with his store with his saddle on. And so I was like, Oh no, because if they roll, they can break their back because of the saddle. They'll a lot of horses go out there and start rolling. And another horse had gotten down. So I grabbed a couple halters. I told the guys, I'll go get them. And I started going down, and I saw that they were standing right next to each other, and I thought, oh, that's terrific. I'll just go in between. I'll get them both at one shot, because they are like, you know, they're like, glued into each other, eating, and they're ignoring me, and I'm trying to poke my way through. And so finally, I was at a point where I turned around and I grabbed the backs of the saddles, and I was trying to push my way through between them, and all of a sudden, I left my body. I and if it was, if you had said to me, right, then, what is this? I would have said, It's my mind. You know, is leaving because and I it was as if I went to back 15 feet or so, and I was watching what happened. And I was like, really shocked. I was so shocked, I couldn't even think, you know, it was just watching. And then all of a sudden, one of the horses screamed and started running, and I was had them turned around, and I watched what happened, and that spun me around, and my arm went into the saddle, you know where the stirrup is, up to my armpit, and I was struggling to keep my balance as these horses were running, and the one horse that I was in the saddle was upset, because it's like, if there's A mountain lion behind me, you're holding me back here lady and is kicking at me and hitting me trying to get me off, and then finally, like scraped me off by running me into the hay barn, which is concrete, and it crushed my skull. And I watched myself drop, you know, I mean, I was still stuck in the stirrup for another step or two. And then it was really interesting, because as I watched, it wasn't that difficult to watch. It was almost like watching you take off a jacket and throw it on the bed you're done with it. If there was a certainty that this is no big deal. You're just choosing to let go of your body in that way. And I remember thinking, I wonder if everyone leaves their body, because the one thing I knew was that I was dead. I knew it was not a dream. I knew it was not going to be I was unconscious. I knew that I was dead. It was very it was a certainty, like I'm talking to you. And the other thing, I started laughing, because I didn't feel anything of the distress. I mean, my body fought and screamed in pain and terror. If somebody had witnessed that, they would have said, Oh my god, she suffered horribly. And yet I didn't. I didn't suffer at all because I didn't, kind of know what was I mean, I was watching it, and I felt this peacefulness and this kind of like, I don't know if you would call it wisdom, to know that I was okay, the body wasn't, and I'm not the body at that moment, and then I started kind of like I felt lighter. It's almost like cells separated, and this beautiful little breeze was going through, and I felt very light, and I felt so much joy and all my senses, it's almost like I felt twice as alive as I did when I was in the body, because all my senses were completely awakened, like I'm looking at you. And if you notice, as you get on your peripheral vision a little further, it gets blurry. Well, it wasn't blurry, it was all sharp, and I could hear so many sounds that would have been faint, where I could hear them, I knew what they were, the birds or the lizards crawling around. You could hear them scrabbling along, and the colors, the smells and everything was beautiful. It wasn't like I was being overloaded with information, it was just like really looking at everything in a way I had never even seen it as much as I loved the ranch and loved the horses, and I loved nature. It was even more beautiful that way. And I just had to kind of try to adjust to that, because I felt like really electric, and everything was in my brain, or my consciousness was moving very quickly, but I was right in step with it. I didn't see 360 but my my peripheral vision was much wider. Was more than 180 Well, I saw down at the very bottom of the field, at the horse the pen. Horse, pen, the last two rides coming in, they were the fast rides, and I felt such nostalgia, because I used to bring the rides in. You lift up them, you bring them in. But then everyone saw me, and they raced over. And it's hard to explain how you move, because it's not like linear walking like this. It's just I look someplace and I'm there. So they were all clustered around the body, and then I was there, right next to them, and they were turning me over, and this one man started doing CPR on me, and another man jumped off his horse, and they were helping them. And the cowboys were taking the horses away, but the people had stayed, because the guests all knew who I was. You know, they the one thing about this ranch is people, like 70% of the people that go go back. So it's like a big family every week. So they all knew me, and they tried to resuscitate me and and I'm like, no, no, I'm fine. Don't do it. Don't do it because I didn't want I liked where I was and then, but everything now. I've heard some people talk about a tunnel of light where they're going up, and I felt like I was above the ground. But it's almost as that everything started changing around me, like Tucson stated, started fading out, and the upstairs faded in, and I felt like things were moving. And there were these three beings that looked like bright light that were kind of going around me, almost like to keep me from whatever I don't even know, getting bumped or something. And then finally, this other world, which is like a beautiful forest with vines and a stream in it and all that, just kind of started coming into view. And that's when I would had completed my transition upstairs. Is what I called it. I was groggy. Was as alert as I was on earth at this vibration. I guess I was very groggy when I first got there. I think the first thing that really hit me was that I could feel no fear. It's as if all that fight or flight or freeze reflex that we have in our DNA, in our very core animal brain was gone. And everything was so beautiful, all the things like the trees and the flowers and the vines and the ferns, everything was it had like an iridescence on it. So if you look at a ribbon that's white, or, then you look at a ribbon that's white with iridescence, it's like, this is earth, this is heaven. And just looking at everything, it was like I was just marveling. I was just walking around the the amount of love that you're getting from everything you're seeing was it's indescribable. And the interesting thing is, if you ever go out, like a day break or sunset, and you look at a tree and the sun's behind it, and all the leaves are lit, now you have to picture the whole tree is like that, and the bark is lit, and everything is almost like lit from within, there wasn't like shadows, like we have, like I live in a little forest, and I'm looking out the window and I see a lot of shadows. There weren't any shadows, but everything was kind of glowing in itself. And then I noticed a table, and again, there were some people standing around it. So I went over there, and they were all like, welcome back, you know, and and it's as if I knew them. And then I noticed the woman that was sitting to my left was a woman that when I was really young, I would see some of these light beings around. And I thought everyone could see them, but they couldn't. So I got teased about it, until I realized, okay, they can't see them. I was like, 564567, and they would just appear. Sometimes it's almost like I heard these chimes, and then or you'd feel like a sense of everything, kind of. Of lightning up like cooler air and and a little breeze when there was you're in the house, and then I would see one of these beings, and they would never talk to me, just once we talked, but they would the love that I felt, and I was a gifted student, so to keep me happy in school when you were teaching things like reading and writing and all that, because I could do that when I was in kindergarten. Then they put me in the library, and I would read encyclopedias, which I thought was really cool. So I was trying to figure out who these people were. And I figured they weren't devils, because I was being raised Catholic, so they must be angels. And so because they I always felt so happy and loved. I just felt so much love coming off of them. And then I noticed there were a couple of of these light beings that I had seen when I was on earth. But the only two people that talked to me on this table, there was 11 people. We sat down and we started talking, and I was feeling very groggy, and at times when it was interesting, because if I'd ask a question, like Mina was on my left and Raul was on my right, and Mina would start to answer, or I'd get one word, but the whole thing, like, was An immediate download. So like, in my book, there's times when we have conversations that go on for pages, but the whole conversation was like immediately downloaded and comprehended immediately. So then they told me I had the choice, that I could choose to stay up there, or I could go back to Earth. Now, if I had made that decision right then I would not have come back. It was so nice. And so Rahu said, Let's we went to a place. It was a place that I used to like to go to. There's a big cave up behind a waterfall, and I used to go and meditate in there and on the way there is when I saw this amazing light. I don't even know how to describe it. It was just this ball of consciousness which I came to realize was like the source or the ultimate consciousness, and it was aware of me with all my little quirks and foibles. It was aware of me and adored me. And if you remember from childhood, we are taught to adore God, and for really lucky God will like us or pat us on the head, you know? And this was like I could feel this intense love from me, and then I could also feel this adoration back coming towards me like this complete and head to toes. And then I noticed something else. When I was looking up at the sky, it was a different type of sky. It was almost like Patchwork, instead of one solid color. And I noticed it was like I was looking through the floor of another realm. And Ron, who explained that to me, he said, there's many realms. There's, you know, multitude of realms. And you can go up and you can turn around, and you can come down, and you can go into the divine, well, I called it the divine, like the you can go all the way up to the top and come back again. So and things. This is a problem, because some of the times I asked a question upstairs, and they answered me, it made perfect sense. And then when I came back to Earth, I'm like, what did they mean by that? You know, it's like my brain is back in gear in the human body. I'm like, Hmm, I should have taken notes or something. You know, one of the biggest lessons, I think that I heard was the fact that it's not going to be like one person being able to change the course of history anymore. There's too many people, but the more that we link arms and work together, which is so nice when you see people of different religions putting down the swords and the guns and saying we all love God in our different ways, and the respect that goes in to people that realize these are things that are not worth dying over, and the fact that people are becoming more global and working for global goals. And you know, healing the earth, and you know, the weather and the the they're beginning to say that there's more important things than one person hoarding it all, and that it has to be shared. To me, God is only love. There's no judgment, there's no hatred, there's no vindictiveness, like in a lot of different religions, God is the purest sense of feeling adoration and feeling how to feel adoration. I mean true adoration and feeling adored in return. It's the highest level of love and total acceptance to grow. Learning to grow. I'm going to learn and grow until I die. I'm never going to sit down. You know, I'm retired, but started a new career. I'm taking classes and making art again because I had a psych degree and I had an art degree when I graduated, so I'm going back to my art. And the purpose of life is to help others. I think the single thing that makes us happiest is we can help someone just even an inch, and you can see them be able to do it themselves and take care of themselves, and they don't have to keep coming back, you know, for an adjustment. I think the the core is, is helping others and installing hope for others.
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