Divine Encounters Episode 079 | Near-Death Experience Story
Mark Hodges spent his career in the Air Force and as a software manager, and then, he says, years of illness and repeated surgeries brought him to the edge. In this Divine Encounters episode he tells Alex Ferrari what he says happened when his body stopped on the operating table: a glide out of the body, a ride through a wormhole, and whole lifetimes in other dimensions that he says were connected to this one.
Key Takeaways
- Mark says he served in the Air Force and worked for the NSA as an intelligence analyst, and now feels that this background prepared him to make sense of what he later experienced.
- He says that during his fifth of 13 surgeries something stopped in his body and he glided out through his head, filled with warmth and love.
- He describes being pulled back through an electrical outlet in the operating room, then shot through a wormhole at faster than light speed.
- Mark says he lived what felt like years in another life, in a different San Diego, and that it was connected to the life he lives now.
- He describes a greater force he calls the infinite one, and says “we all share that higher self.”
- He says he glimpsed a place we are all going, felt rather than seen, and that “it’s already here all around us right now.”
- His takeaway: “the ultimate purpose in life is to learn the lessons we came here to learn.”
| Guest | Mark Hodges |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 079 |
| Background | Air Force, NSA intelligence analyst, then a software development manager at a major bank |
| What Mark says happened | His body stopped during surgery and he left it |
| Where he says he went | A wormhole, a different San Diego, and a distant place he describes as heaven |
| Who he met | No named beings; he describes a greater force he calls the infinite one |
| Time away | Seconds on the table, he says, but years and centuries in his experience |
| The message | Love and gratitude matter most, and each life has lessons to learn |
Who Is Mark Hodges?
Mark served in the Air Force, where he worked for the NSA. Today, he says, they would call his job intelligence analyst. He completed four tours of duty across the whole Pacific Rim, and his work centered on communications technologies and anything having to do with electromagnetic waves.
He believes that background primed him to understand the paranormal things that later happened in his life. He feels he was groomed his whole life to put the pieces together and tell others how he sees the way things work in the universe, though he says he still has questions.
After leaving the Air Force, Mark became a software development manager at a major bank. He retired in 2014, not by choice. He had become very sick in 2008, and he says he somehow got through until he had enough vested time to stop working.
Years of Surgeries
Mark says he had 13 surgeries in all, and that for the last two he was in a coma. About twelve years ago, he had a major surgery in which doctors placed a surgical mesh inside him. He says it caused him years of difficulty, and he is still not right because of it.
By his account, the five years before the experience he describes were filled with pain and misery. He was, in his words, at the end of his rope. If you are struggling, you are not alone. In the US you can call or text 988 any time.
Gliding Out of the Body
Mark was in surgery number five of 13, in Tampa, Florida, when, he says, something in his body stopped. He used to think it was his breathing, but an anesthesiologist thought his heart may have stopped. Either way, he says, he came out of his body through his head, backward.
He compares it to sitting in a pool with your feet against the wall and then pushing off. He glided back at an upward angle, mixed with “the biggest feeling of warmth and love.” It was, he says, the biggest high you could ever imagine, a feeling that everything was going to be all right.
He looked down at his body for a while. He tried to tell the operating team to stop trying to save him. He was done, he says, and did not want to go back to a body that had been in so much pain. They could not hear him, which was frustrating.
Through an Outlet and a Wormhole
Eventually, Mark says, something like a tractor beam pulled him back, into one of the electrical outlets in the operating room. From that, he believes our soul or spirit body is associated with alternating current. He calls that very important, though he does not say more.
Once he was inside the prongs of the outlet, he shot through a long wormhole, like in a Star Trek movie or the film Contact. “I was going faster than light,” he says. He remembers colors he had never seen sparkling everywhere. It was like the best amusement park ride, a little terrifying yet safe.
When the wormhole stopped, he says, everything he had passed caught up with him, and he was standing in a bathroom. He knew he was dead on an operating table in Tampa. But the bathroom was in San Diego, California. “It was a different San Diego.” He says he knew things when he was out of his body, though he cannot explain how.
Another Life in a Mirror
In the bathroom, he looked in the mirror. At first he thought he was a fly on the wall, watching someone else’s life. Then he realized he was controlling the body in the mirror. He touched his face. He was looking at a 16 year old kid.
He says he lived that life for a couple of years, from 16 to 18. He figured out a lot, though when you come back to this brain, many details go by the wayside. What mattered most to him was that the life was connected to this one. What he experienced in that life mattered to this life, and the other way around.
He says it was hard to say how long he was actually dead on the table. It could have been seconds. But in the experience, it went on for years and centuries. He knows that sounds crazy, he says, but it is exactly what he experienced. For a plain-language overview of this idea, see our glossary entries on parallel realities and reincarnation.
Time Across Dimensions
Mark offers one more thought about time. A second here feels fast to us, but in many other dimensions, he says, a second is a long time. Some people think there is no time outside this dimension. He does not. He thinks there is time in dimensions outside of this one.
He also says our brains are designed the way they are for a reason. When you are out of your body, or between lives, he says, there is a sense of no time or space, which is why it is hard to say how long he was gone.
The Infinite One and a Shared Higher Self
One thing he says he knew for sure was that there is a greater force. He calls it the infinite one. You could call it God or source, he says, and we are all a part of it. He adds that “God is all of us put together.”
On the idea of higher selves, Mark says he believes there is not an individual higher self for each of us. “We all share that higher self.” He describes our selves living at the same time in other galaxies and places, in different bodies and atmospheres. If you are curious, our entry on the higher self is a good place to start.
Mark also says he knew why he had come here. He says he told his parents at age two that he had to deliver an important message to all of humanity, and learn all the languages on Earth.
A Place We Are All Going
Just before returning, Mark says he got to see a place where we are all going. He calls it heaven, though he did not see it with eyes. It was a feeling, and he was at some distance from it. He says it holds a new type of love we are going to learn about.
He does not remember how he came back. He remembers waking in the recovery room, having been under general anesthesia.
Christmas Eve and a Second Experience
Mark also describes a second experience. He was visiting friends north of Nashville in 2017 when, on Christmas Eve, he was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Nashville. The mesh, he says, had become infected and entangled with his insides. After an exploratory surgery, he says he woke in terrible pain, then developed a complication, and the doctors put him into a coma.
He says he woke inside the coma, because he was not given enough medication, and found himself in a dark void, a dark hallway. At the end of it was a tunnel. The last thing he remembered was being in excruciating pain on the hospital floor.
This is why, he says, when he talks about astral projection nowadays, he says it is really nothing. “We’re not traveling anywhere.” We are already everywhere, he says. We travel through what we call black holes, which he considers more like gateways or portals through time and space. For another way into this idea, see our entry on astral projection.
What he experienced last, he says, was where we are all going. It is amazing, he says, and “it’s already here all around us right now.” He calls it heaven on earth. We cannot experience it, he says, until we vibrate at that frequency.
A Thousand Years of Lives
Mark says that in this second experience he was gone for about a thousand years of time. He was able to experience lives far ahead, he says, and he still dreams every day of places he has been. He remembers the reasons for the lives more than the lives themselves. The details are mundane, he says, but the lessons are not. “You just can’t imagine how connected we all are.”
He says it is mind boggling to sit in a restaurant with your wife and know that everyone around you is connected to you.
Coming Back to This Life
When he returned, his mind was racing. It took about a month, he says, for everything to calm down so he could cope in this life.
The first thing he realized was that he had wasted so much time. Watching TV, arguing with people, all of the negative stuff, he says, is a waste. “I’ve wasted so much time in my life.” His advice is to take a bad day and “try to turn that bad day into something positive.” He says love is really all that matters here.
In the last eight months, he says, he has come to see that we do not have to master forgiveness or love so much as the vibration they generate. “Being grateful is a higher vibration than love.” He says we should be grateful for everything we have, and learn to love every soul in our heart.
Mark’s Experience Beside Other Near-Death Accounts
Leaving the body, rushing through a tunnel, feeling overwhelming love and sensing a place of unity are themes people often report. Mark’s account also reaches into less common territory: electrical outlets, a second life in a different version of a city, and the idea of a shared higher self. We offer it as his experience, in his words, and make no medical claims.
To place his story in context, start with our complete guide to near-death experiences and the glossary entry for near-death experience.
Turning a Bad Day
Mark’s advice is practical. Next time you are having a bad day, he says, try turning it into something positive. Start tiny. Name one thing you are grateful for before you go to sleep tonight.
Questions to Sit With
- Mark says he wasted a lot of time on things that did not matter. What is one you could set down this week?
- He suggests that gratitude may be a higher vibration than love. What would it change to start with gratitude?
- If your lives were all connected, as he describes, how might that change the way you treat the people around you?
Write down three things you are grateful for tonight, and read them aloud.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Mark says each life is connected to others, and what happens in one matters to the rest.
- He says a greater force, which he calls the infinite one, is made of all of us.
- He says heaven is already here all around us.
- He says gratitude is a high vibration.
- He says the ultimate purpose of life is to learn the lessons we came here to learn.
Please enjoy my conversation with Mark Hodges.
Guest Links: Connect With Mark Hodges
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Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Mark Hodges?
Mark Hodges is a near-death experiencer who served in the Air Force, worked for the NSA as an intelligence analyst and later became a software development manager. He tells his story on Divine Encounters with host Alex Ferrari.
What happened to Mark Hodges during surgery?
Mark says that during his fifth of 13 surgeries, something in his body stopped and he came out of his body through his head. He says he felt warmth and love and tried to tell the team not to save him.
What was the wormhole Mark describes?
He says he was pulled into an electrical outlet in the operating room and then shot through a wormhole like those in science fiction films, at faster than light speed, with colors he had never seen.
What was the different San Diego?
Mark says he arrived in a bathroom in what he knew was San Diego, but a different one from ours. He says he looked in the mirror and saw a 16 year old.
How long was Mark gone?
He says it might have been seconds on the operating table, but in his experience it went on for years and centuries. He says there is a different sense of time out of the body.
What does Mark mean by the infinite one?
He says it is his name for the greater force, which you could also call God or source. He says we are all part of it and that God is all of us put together.
What does Mark say about the higher self?
He says he believes we all share one higher self, rather than each having an individual one, and that our selves live at the same time in many places.
What did Mark learn about heaven?
He says he glimpsed a place we are all going. He felt it rather than saw it. He also says it is already here all around us, and we experience it when we vibrate at that frequency.
How did Mark change after his experience?
He says he realized he had wasted time on negativity and arguing. He says it took about a month to calm down, and he now emphasizes gratitude and love.
What is the ultimate purpose of life, according to Mark?
He says it is to learn the lessons we came here to learn.
Is a near-death experience medical evidence?
Next Level Soul shares near-death experiences as lived experiences in the person’s own words. Researchers continue to study and debate what they mean. Nothing here is medical advice or a medical claim.
Keep Exploring
- The complete guide to near-death experiences
- What the higher self is
- What parallel realities are
- Ginette Biro on parallel lives in the afterlife
- Mariko Frederick on hidden realms and life between lives
- Sal Adatsi on infinite worlds in the multiverse
- Larrick Ebanks on countless worlds and realities
- Rev. Honi Borden on dimensions and past lives
- 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.
Mark Hodge 0:08
I had a military career before my professional career in civilian life, I was in the Air Force, but I worked for the NSA. They would call my job now, nowadays they would say I'm a or my job was a, what's now called an intelligence analyst, and then I did that for four tours of duty, did the whole Pacific Rim, and you could say I was involved in communications technologies, anything having to do with electromagnetic waves, really primed me to understand all the paranormal stuff that was happening and would happen in my life. From there on, I realized that I had been groomed my whole life to understand that part of all this so I could put the pieces together to tell you, tell you all how I see things, how they work in the universe, at least some of it, still have questions on how a lot of it works. So after I got out of the Air Force, I became a software development manager for a major bank and retired in 2014 really not by choice. I just became really sick in 2008 and somehow managed to survive retirement until I had enough vested time in the company. I was able to not work anymore at that time. So I was in surgery number five of 13, and my last two surgeries I had, I was in a coma. Okay, so the first surgery happened about a decade ago, about 12 years ago now, I had surgery. They opened me all the way up from my like my sternum area, all the way down past my belly button, and they had to, they put this mesh inside me. You've seen all the commercials and TV about all the lawsuits and all that stuff. Well, I'm one of those victims. But of course, my company that made my mesh wasn't part of those major class action suits, so maybe one day I'll see some kind of compensation, but they put my life through hell for over a decade. Now, I'm still not right because of it. When they took it out, they didn't replace it with any more mesh. They just and I say, Well, what happens now? And the surgeon goes, I don't know. And here we are, five years later, that was 2017 so when I at some point, something stopped working in my body. I used to think it was breathing, but I had a there was an anesthesiologist didn't think so she thought maybe it was my heart stopped. So something happened, and it stopped me from stopped my bodily functions, from doing whatever, and I came out of my body. That's that moment I came out through my head, backwards. It feels kind of like you're in a pool, and you got your legs, your feet up against the wall, is the side of a pool, and then you push off. And that gliding back motion is kind of how I felt when I came out and mixed with the biggest kind of high you could ever imagine, like people call it love. It's just the biggest feeling of warmth and love and everything's gonna be all right, kind of feeling like so I did this kind of slid back, glided back, kind of at an upward angle from my body. And I was looking down at myself for a while, and I was trying to tell them I didn't want to go back to that body, like, stop trying to save me, you know, because I had been in so much pain and misery for the five years before that, I was done. I was at the end of my rope. At that point. I just didn't want to go along anymore. And so after a little while, you know, they couldn't hear me. That was really frustrating for me. But eventually I got, like a tractor beam would suck you back. I got sucked back into one of the outlets, electrical outlets, in the operating room of the hospital. And because of that, I now know that our soul or spirit, body, whatever you want to label it, it runs on alternating current, or there is alternating current associated with our sword. I can tell you that it's very important. And so anyway, I, once I got inside one of those prongs in the outlet, I went, I shot really fast, like through this long tunnel lash wormhole. It was more like a wormhole, like in a Star Trek movie or something, or like in contact when you see her going through all those wormholes. It was, it looked exactly like that, except the difference is, I was going faster than light. I know that's doesn't seem possible, but I was in it, and I was going faster than light, and I just remember just seeing colors that I've never seen before sparkling everywhere. And it's just kind of like going on a ride in an amusement park, the best ride you've ever been on for the first time, kind of terrified, but yet, you know everything was going to be okay. And then at some point, I don't know, I don't know how long that was in our time, when the tunnel stopped, when the wormhole stopped, everything just went all the light, and everything that I had been passing sort of all caught up with me, and boom, like that. And when that, when that happened, I was in a bathroom, and I knew that I was dead on the operating table in Tampa, Florida. But where I was in this bathroom was San Diego, California, but not this San Diego. It was a different San Diego. And I don't know how to tell you how I knew that. It's just something you I knew things when you're out of your body. I can see why our brains are designed the way they're designed. Because when you're out of your body or. Were in between lives. I guess you could call it. There is kind of no time or space. So it's hard to say how long I was actually dead on the operating table for. It could have been seconds, maybe. But in this time, it went on for years and years and centuries. I know it sounds like I'm a crazy person, but this is exactly what I experienced. And so in this bathroom, I looked in the mirror. I was looking in the mirror when I stopped in this wormhole. And I at first I thought I was kind of like a fly on the wall. I was experiencing somebody else. I was observing somebody else's life, because I knew I was dead on the offering table. So I was like, okay, so I don't know what this is, but let's roll, roll with it, this kind of thing. And eventually I realized that I was controlling the body of the face looking in the mirror. I'm like, How is this possible? And, you know, and then I started touching myself, and I was like, How is this possible? Because I was looking at a kid in a mirror. I was like, 16 years old in that one. Imagine, I was trying to figure this out. And so that, that was the first life I was able to experience, and I was able to experience that life for a couple years, from like when I was 16 till I was 18. In that life, while I was experiencing this, I figured out I understood a lot of things. It took a while. I'm not even sure how long it took. So when you come back to this brain, a lot of this, the details of all this kind of go by the wayside. But the most important thing for me to know about that experience was that this life was connected to this life, the one I'm talking to you right now, and the things that I was experiencing in that life mattered to this life, and vice versa. So a second here seems kind of fast to us, but in many other dimensions, a second is a long time. That's exactly what I experienced. Some people think there's no time outside of this dimension, but I don't think so. I think there are time in dimensions, outside of dimensions, that's another whole story. One thing I knew for sure is that there is this greater force. I call it the infinite one. Now you know you could call it God or source, you and me are part of this source, a part of this infinite one. We all make it up. And when somebody says we we have higher selves, I even believe. I've heard others say this too. I believe that we all share that higher self. There is not an individual higher self, you know, they're in other galaxies, other places. I don't even know how to describe it, like different bodies, different atmospheres, different all kinds of things are happening. They were living at the same time. I knew why I came here, but I didn't really know that till I was two years old, or I didn't remember until I was two, because I told my parents why I came here, because I had to deliver a message all of humanity one day, an important message. And I had to learn all the languages on earth. Well, there was a point when I got to right before I came back into this body. And I don't know how long it was from that point until the time I woke up in the recovery room, because I was back into general anesthesia at that point. So I don't remember that. What I remember what I was experiencing at the before I came back was I got to see a place where we're all going call it heaven, but it wasn't seen with eyes. It was feeling. It was a feeling I got and I was at a distance from it. I can tell you, this place has a lot there's a new type of love we're going to learn about this 2017 I was just visiting some friends in Nashville, or north of Nashville, that year, on Christmas Eve, I was taken by ambulance down to Nashville to the hospital, and so basically, this mesh got infected inside me. They didn't know it at that time, but the mesh got all entangled with my insides, and they had to open me up again. So they did the first surgery. It was kind of like an exploratory surgery, because they didn't know exactly what was wrong. And so the next thing I did was I woke up and a lot of pain. Every time I hit the button on that pain pump, nothing happened. I was just I kept getting in worse pain and worse pain. And then finally I developed this thing called, what they called a fistula, which is a fancy term for a tunnel, a tunnel developed inside of me, which wasn't good. I didn't know that they were going to put me in a comatose state. So at some point after that second surgery, they just took all the mesh out of me during that surgery, and they put me in a coma. So I woke up in this coma because they didn't give me enough medication, or whatever. They were giving me fentanyl, which is toxic to most people. Fentanyl doesn't even work on me at all. I had two central lines in my neck, I didn't know. So when I woke up, the first thing I saw was I was in this dark void, like or a dark hallway, and at the very end of this black, kind of like tunnel, I was like, where am I? You know what? What's going on here? Because last thing I knew, I was in excruciating pain, and I was on my hospital floor, and they just started shooting stuff in my ID. That's the last thing I remember until this moment. That's why, when I talk about astral projection and stuff nowadays, it's really nothing. We're not traveling anywhere. We're already everywhere, because basically everything has a black hole. And that's how we travel. We travel through black holes. That's how it works. And black hole is kind of a misnomer. It's really more like a gateway or a portal. That's what they are. The portal time, if you will, time and space. But what I experienced was that that's the last thing I experienced, was where we're all going, and that's that was part of my message to bring back to you all, was to tell you there's something so amazing. I don't have words for it, but it's an amazing and it's already here. It's already here all around us right now. And call it heaven on earth. It's everywhere, and we can't experience it until we are vibrating at that frequency. Put it that way, and that is part of what I'm learning about. I don't even remember coming back to my body at all. I just remember waking up in the recovery room. At some point after that experience, I had feeling that next place we're all going to, and we're talking about, like, 1000 year span of time that I was gone from here. I know that sounds crazy, but I was able to experience lives like that far ahead, and got details about every life a lot, but I'm still remembering every day I have dreams about places I've been at. So what I remember the most was the reason for the lives more than the lives themselves. The details, those are kind of mundane details, but the lessons of why I was in these other lives is more important. You just can't imagine how connected we all are. It's mind boggling when you go to a restaurant with your wife or something and you see all the people around you, they are all connected to you. And when I the hospital from that surgery, and my mind was just going a million miles a second, and it took me about a month for everything just to calm down to where I could cope here in this life because of all the things I experienced, the first thing I realized when I got back to this body was I've wasted so much time in my life. I'm talking about, like, even watching TV or arguing with people. That's not important at all, all the negative stuff. It's just it's a waste of time. Like, next time even your viewers are having a bad day or something, try to turn that bad day into something positive, because energy doesn't die. We just go change it to a positive energy. That's really the secret to this life. Mastering this life is love is really all that matters here. That's why, and it's not really the forgiveness. Learning to love and forgive, just in the last eight months, I've learned that it's not those things that we have to master, it's the vibration that those things generate. Like being grateful. Being grateful is a higher vibration than love. That's being grateful for everything you have, for every soul we have to learn how to love every soul in our heart. I mean, think about how difficult that is. God is all of us put together, everything, everything and every all of us everything. That there is God. It's I call it the infinite one. God is always beginning in the end. But there our minds want to don't believe that. We think there has to be a beginning to that living a fulfilled life. We all seem to have little different takes on that living a fulfilled life. I haven't lived it yet, even though I've had a full life. I mean, I've experienced things that most people will never experienced in their life, like these lifetimes. So I always try to think about that the ultimate purpose in life is to learn the lessons we came here to learn.
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