Divine Encounters Episode 102 | Near-Death Experience Story
Scarlett Heinbuch says she was a single mom and graduate student with no plans for anything extraordinary when she offered to sit with a stranger in a coma, and found herself out of her body, in a place of love, meeting a spirit she says she had always known. In this Divine Encounters episode she tells Alex Ferrari about that shared experience, a vision of blue beings, and the message of love she carries.
Key Takeaways
- Scarlett says she was a single mother of two sons with disabilities, studying for a PhD and certified in Reiki to help her children.
- She says a few words to a grieving mother, “I don’t think you should give up hope,” came out of her mouth before she knew why.
- She describes asking a comatose man’s permission before working with him, and feeling a puff of air she took as a yes.
- She says that on the twelfth day she left her body, was fully conscious in another realm, and met his spirit hovering out of his body in an embrace of love.
- She describes a night vision of four tall blue beings in blue scrubs with a lead doctor, and says the man’s kidney function began returning the next day.
- She says the man woke with no conscious memory of the meeting but a deep spiritual recall of her.
- Her message: consciousness continues, and a glimpse of that kind of love is a gift.
| Guest | Scarlett Heinbuch |
| Episode | Divine Encounters 102 |
| Her life at the time | Single mom, two sons with disabilities, PhD student and teacher, certified in Reiki |
| What Scarlett says happened | While holding the hand of a comatose man, she left her body and met his spirit |
| Where she says she went | Another realm of love, peace and indescribable knowing |
| Who she met | The spirit of a stranger named David, whom she says she knew forever |
| Time frame | Twelve days of hospital visits, about 20 years before the interview |
| The message | Consciousness continues, and love is the heart of it |
A Single Mom With a Full Plate
Alex starts with his usual question, and Scarlett lays out a very full life. She was a single mother with two sons who have disabilities. She was in a PhD program in Public Policy and Administration, having earned a master’s in public health to help her children. She also got certified in Reiki for the same reason. She did not want to be a nurse, she says. She just wanted skills to help her boys.
She was also teaching a class on American family relationships at the college where she was studying, and she was broke. Growing up in an alcoholic home, she says, does not exempt you from things and can raise your own risk. At the time she felt she was drinking too much, so she had taken herself to some 12-step recovery meetings, though she had stopped going because she was a busy grad student. This was about 20 years before the interview, she says.
A Meeting, a Mother and a Sentence
She went back to one of those meetings that night to support a friend who was picking up a coin for twenty years. The room was full of people she had not seen in a long time, and they were standing around crying. She learned that a man in the group had become desperately ill. His mother had flown in from San Francisco after four weeks, having been called to come say goodbye. She had just come back from the hospital to thank everyone for the community they had given her son while he was in town for a contract job.
Something about the mother touched Scarlett, even though she did not know her son. She knew, as a parent, how hard it is to lose a child at any age. At the end of the meeting she went up to say she was sorry. Instead, she heard herself say, “I don’t think you should give up hope.”
To this day, she says, she wonders why that came out of her mouth. Her head kicked in right away with, what are you saying? The mother had already signed the funeral papers. But spirit was in charge at that moment, Scarlett says. She asked if the mother would like her to pray, maybe do some Reiki with him, making clear that she could not promise a thing. She said she was not afraid of people passing and that showing up would be a way of extending fellowship.
The mother said her son was Jewish. Scarlett said she understood and would not be disrespectful: this was not a religious thing, just a spiritual matter. The mother said she would get permission, assuming he was still with them the next day.
A Stranger on Life Support
Scarlett says the man, whose name she learned is David, had a very rare form of vasculitis. According to her account, his systems had shut down, he was on life support, and he had not regained consciousness from a paralytic coma lasting going on four weeks. She says his heart was out of rhythm and his kidneys had been destroyed. She says she was told later that any one of those things could have taken him, and that the combination was not survivable. We share this as her account and not as medical information.
When she walked into the room, she saw a complete stranger covered in tubes, who looked so vulnerable. It opened her heart, she says. Her own mother had always taught her that when someone is in a coma, you talk to them as if they are awake and never assume they cannot hear. So she did. She introduced herself and told him why she was there. She said that a lot of people loved him. If he had unfinished business and wanted to stick around, she would try to help; if he wanted to go, she would help him do that too, and he should know that he was loved and that everything would be okay.
Asking Permission
She asked his permission to work with him. Some people say you do not need to ask permission to do healing, but she disagrees: everybody has a spiritual journey, and people should not have healing foisted on them. She stood and waited, she says, and felt a puff of air. She took that as him letting her know it was okay.
She held his hand, careful not to dislodge any of the lines or the pulse monitor, while an ICU nurse kept an eye from a chair outside the door. She said what she calls an affirmative prayer, then did a Reiki treatment. He did not respond. She felt love and connection, and also sensed shame and pain from him, and she thought he was not in a good place.
Then she said something she still cannot fully explain: “If you decide you want to stick around, I’ll make you a promise.” She said she would come back and keep working with him as long as he wanted, and she would return the next day if he was still there. She was shocked he was still alive that day. As she held his hand, she says, she could not take hers away. It felt fused to his for a moment, and she realized spirit was reaching back. For a short definition of the practice she used, see our glossary entry on Reiki.
Twelve Days, Then a Meeting on the Other Side
She came back for twelve days. Then, she says, as she took his hand to say the closing prayer, she was no longer in her body. She was in another realm, but fully conscious, not asleep, in a place of love, peace, safety and indescribable knowing. She describes it as “billions of little dots of liquid love light,” adding that it is not wet, and that she does not have the words.
Her hand was holding the hand of his spirit. He was hovering out of his body, she says, and that is where they met. Her heart was totally open and she knew him. She says: I’ve always known this man. She knew everything about him, and he knew everything about her, and they were embraced in love while he was, as she puts it, in his near-death experience, hovering and ready to go.
She did not know what choice he would make. But this love was so big that it had no selfishness in it. If he went into the light, she says, that would have been joyful for her, because it is what his spirit would want. She describes “not a selfish bit in this kind of love.”
This is the kind of event many call a shared death experience, and it is also something people sometimes describe in terms of a soulmate connection. Scarlett uses the word beloved for the spirit she met.
Back in the Room, Between Two Worlds
Then she was flung back into her body at the side of his bed. He was still unconscious, still bloated, still clinging to life. She asked herself how she could have just met a soulmate who was a stranger in this life. There was no way to process the feelings, she says. It felt like being in two worlds at once.
And her human self had a different perspective than her spirit. Her spirit might be lofty, she says, but her human self had met this soulmate and did not want him to go. She wanted to know him. But it was not her choice, so she kept working with him over the next twelve days.
Four Blue Beings and a Holographic Tray
During that time, David began to improve, but she says doctors had told them his kidneys would never come back, aside from perhaps a tiny bit of function because of scarring. Then one night, falling asleep, Scarlett says she felt as if she were in his room, looking down at him on the cot. She saw four tall beings who looked blue in color. They seemed like a medical team in blue scrubs, but their skin was blue too.
She saw one she calls the lead doctor, with a holographic tray in front of them holding blue kidneys. She watched the kidneys descend into his body. She wondered whether she was dreaming, or witnessing an etheric kidney transplant. The lead doctor looked up, nodded, and seemed to see her hovering in the corner.
The next morning she woke early, wondering whether it was just a weird dream. At the hospital she found that his kidneys were starting to ramp up and function significantly, she says. A nephrologist examined them, and she says staff at the Catholic hospital in Richmond began calling him miracle boy. By the end of twelve days, she says, his kidneys had returned to full functioning, with no medical explanation she was given, given the level of damage that she says was documented. She also used aromatherapy and music to keep his brain stimulated. We share this as Scarlett’s recollection, not as a medical claim or a promise.
Waking Up and Knowing Her
When David regained consciousness, they met for the first time in this life. It was awkward, Scarlett says, because he woke up knowing everything about her. He knew he was going to marry her, and he knew he was wildly in love, which is what he says. He did not know her name until she reminded him. He had no conscious memory of the meeting on the other side, but he had what she calls the aftereffects and the spiritual recall, which she says is not unusual for someone in a deep coma with heavy medication.
He did not tell her any of that at the time. He was also in the middle of a divorce, and she says she could not make sense of any of it. He got better and flew west to see his mother near Thanksgiving. After he returned, he got sick again from the medications, and she says he was back in the hospital with double pneumonia. She did some conscious healing work with his lungs. That is when he asked if he could tell her he loved her. She said yes, I love you too, and that she did not know what they were supposed to do with any of it.
A Glimpse of Love
She admits she did not know if he would live, and she was upset about that. A friend gave her advice that she has not forgotten. “You got to have a glimpse of love,” he said, and “that’s more than a lot of people ever get in a whole lifetime.” Don’t be selfish, he told her. It is not up to you. Accept what you got.
She says that with that kind of love and a shared near-death experience, it is hard to lose somebody, and hard to face our own mortality. Her answer is the same message she hears from others who have been there: a message of love, that consciousness exists and continues for eternity. If this is your first time reading about experiences like this, our complete guide to near-death experiences is a gentle place to begin.
The Universal Message
Scarlett asks listeners to think about how small we are: one being on a small planet, in one galaxy, in a cosmos of trillions or more galaxies that is still expanding. She hopes people will listen not to her words but to the spiritual truth in their hearts.
In her words, it is “a message of hope, but it’s a message of healing, and it’s a message of love.” Above all she wants people to have a little faith “that their lives mattered, their spirits are incredibly important.” As always, we share this as her experience, in her own words, and we do not make medical claims. What it all means is still debated, and you are invited to hold it gently.
Questions to Sit With
- Scarlett says a sentence came out of her mouth before her head caught up. When has a spontaneous kind word turned out to matter?
- She asked permission before offering help. How might asking first change the way you support the people you love?
- If you were given only a glimpse of a love that big, how would you want to live with it?
This week, offer a quiet gesture of presence to someone who is having a hard time. Ask first, and be willing to simply be there.
Spiritual Takeaways
- Scarlett says the love she felt had no selfishness in it.
- She says asking permission respects each person’s spiritual journey.
- She describes feeling the spirit of a stranger as someone she had always known.
- She says consciousness exists and continues for eternity.
- She says a glimpse of love, even for two minutes, is more than many people ever get.
Please enjoy my conversation with Scarlett Heinbuch.
Guest Links: Connect With Scarlett Heinbuch
Listen to the Episode
- Watch this episode ad-free on Next Level Soul TV
- Download the MP3
- More episodes: Divine Encounters
- Listen to Divine Encounters on Apple Podcasts
- Listen to Divine Encounters on Spotify
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Scarlett Heinbuch?
Scarlett Heinbuch is a speaker who says she was a single mom and graduate student when she had a shared near-death experience while visiting a comatose man in a hospital. She tells her story to Alex Ferrari in this Divine Encounters episode.
What is a shared near-death experience?
It describes a person who is not near death themselves, but who feels they take part in someone else’s experience. Scarlett says she left her body while holding a comatose man’s hand and met his spirit.
Why did Scarlett offer to visit a stranger?
She says she met his grieving mother at a recovery meeting, and heard herself say she should not give up hope. She says spirit was in charge in that moment, and she offered prayer and Reiki.
Why did Scarlett ask the man’s permission?
She says everybody has a spiritual journey and people do not want healing foisted on them. She waited and felt a puff of air, which she took as a yes.
What did Scarlett experience on the other side?
She says she was fully conscious in a realm of love, peace and indescribable knowing, and met the spirit of the man hovering out of his body. She says it felt like an embrace with someone she had always known.
Who were the blue beings?
Scarlett says she saw four tall beings in blue scrubs with blue skin, one of whom she calls the lead doctor, and a holographic tray with blue kidneys. She says she does not know what she saw, only what she perceived.
Did David remember meeting her?
She says he had no conscious memory of the meeting on the other side, but woke up knowing everything about her and in love, which is what he says.
What did Scarlett’s friend tell her about love?
He told her she got to have a glimpse of love, and that it is more than many people ever get in a lifetime. He told her not to be selfish and to accept what she got.
What is Scarlett’s message?
She says it is a message of hope, healing and love, that our lives mattered, our spirits are incredibly important, and we will live on.
Does Scarlett make medical claims?
She describes what she saw and what staff told her. We share her account as her experience only. It is not medical advice, and it does not promise any outcome.
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
- What a shared death experience is
- What a soulmate is
- A dying father and a shared death experience
- A man who sat with the dying and describes a shared death experience
- A hospice nurse on what happens before we die
- A man meets an ancient soul family after dying at sea
- Past lives and soul contracts
- 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.
Scarlett L. Heinbuch 0:08
I'm a single mom. I have two sons with disabilities. I'm in a PhD program in Public Policy and Administration, having gotten my master's in public health to help my kids, and I'd also gotten certified in Reiki to help my children. So again, that was a healing thing. I didn't want to be a nurse. I just wanted to have some skills to help my help my boys. Growing up in an alcoholic home doesn't exempt you from things, and also increases your risk too. One of the things that I had done at that time was I felt I was drinking too much, and then we're talking 20 years ago now, when this happened, it'll be 20 years this fall, so I thought I was drinking too much, so I had taken myself to some, you know, 12 step recovery meetings and but I'd stop going because I was a busy grad student. I was also teaching at the college where I was getting my graduate work done, and it was American family relationships class, which was very interesting. And so I was having all kinds of things, but I was broke, so I had gone to this meeting, and I'd heard about this man who had gotten desperately, desperately ill that everybody knew, but I did not. And his mother had been called to come in from San Francisco after going into the fourth week to come to Richmond, because her son was she'd gotten the call to come say goodbye. So I got a call to go to that meeting that night, and I like stopped for a friend of mine who was picking up a coin to celebrate 20 years for her. So I said I'd go and I see people I haven't seen in a long time, and they're all standing around crying because his mother just gotten back from the hospital. Come to this meeting to thank everybody for all they had done to help her son and give him good community while he had been here, because he had just come out from the west coast to do a contract job, but now he was dying, and we went on, had the meeting, and people are just really upset, but something about her really touched my heart, and even though I didn't know her son, I just knew as a parent how hard it is to lose a child and At any age. At the end of the meeting, I went up to her, and I was going to say, Hey, I'm really sorry about this, but instead I said, I don't think you should give up hope. And to this day, it's one of those moments where, why did that come out of my mouth? Because my head immediately kicked in with what are you saying? She's already told you that she signed the funeral papers. They told her he's not going to survive, and she's here to say goodbye or already did, and but spirit was in charge at that moment, so I asked her for permission if she would like to go pray, maybe do some Reiki with him, telling her, I certainly can't promise a thing, but if you want me to do maybe go Hold his hand. I've had some experiences with the other side. I'm not afraid if people are going to pass, and I would consider it, you know, a way of extending fellowship to go show up and just be there with him, if she would like that. Then she said, Well, he's Jewish. And I said, Well, I understand. I'm not going to be disrespectful to anyone. This is not a religious thing. This is just, you know, a spiritual matter. And she said she would get permission, and, you know, assuming he's still even with us the next day. So I left the meeting wondering why I'd even offered this. Because he was desperately ill, and again, when I say desperately ill, he had a very rare form of vasculitis, which meant that all of his systems have shut down. He was on life support. He had not regained consciousness from the paralytic coma he'd been in for going on four weeks. His heart was out of rhythm, and his kidneys had been destroyed from the granulomas from the vascular, vascular illness he had. So his brain injury, the likelihood of him surviving was at that point almost impossible, and if he survived it, it didn't look good. And later, we learned any one of those things could have taken him out, but the combinations we've been told was not survivable. When I walked into the room to see him, and he had, you know, all the tubes in his nose and throat and neck and everywhere, and he wasn't producing anything. And it was awful, but seeing on the ventilator and just seeing this complete stranger who looked so vulnerable, and it was just really opened my heart. And mom had always said, you know, when someone's in a coma, talk to them like they're awake, and never assume that they can't hear you. So that's what I did. I went up and introduced myself to him as bad because he didn't know me, and I told him my name and why I was there, and I'd met his mother and his friends, and that a lot of people loved him, and if he had some unfinished business and wanted to stick around, I was here to try to help him if he could and wanted to, and if he didn't, I was here to help him just go, if he wanted to go, and just know that he was loved and everything would be okay. So I did ask his permission to work with him. And a lot of people are saying, oh, you know you don't have to ask permission to do healing. Well, yeah, you do, because everybody has a spiritual journey, and people don't want healing foisted on them if they don't want it. And I stood there and waited, and I felt a puff of air, and then I thought, Okay, well, he's letting me know it's okay to work with him. So I took his hand, and again, he had all the IV lines and the pulse oximeter, all this stuff. Some very careful to not dislodge anything, and the nurse in the ICU had put her chair right outside the door give you a close eye. So I said what I call affirmative prayer, which is just affirming his his healing in a very positive way. So I did that. I did the Reiki treatment. He didn't respond. And I thought, well, I guess this is it. And I took his hand again to say goodbye and close up with the prayer. But I did feel, I felt a lot of love and connection with him in the spiritual way and but I didn't know him, and I just said, you know, if you're going to go, it's okay. But I could feel his feelings. I could feel some shame and pain. And I was like, Oh, it was sad. It was like, He's not in a good place. So I said, I don't even know why I'm telling you this, but I am. If you decide you want to stick around, I'll make you a promise, and I'll come back and I will continue to work with you as long as you want me to. And I said, if you're here tomorrow, I will come back, because I didn't know if he would be I was kind of shocked he was still alive that day. What was unusual was I was holding his hand. He had no grip because of the coma, and I couldn't take my hand away. It was like it was fused to his for a moment. And that's when I realized the spirit was reaching back. So I came back, and I came back for 12 days. I went in to do the healing session, as I've been doing, and I took his hand to say the prayer. And that's when I no longer was in my body. I was out of my body in another realm, but this time I was conscious. I wasn't asleep. I was in another realm, in that place of love and peace and safety and indescribable knowing and awareness. I describe it as like having billions of little dots of liquid love light. It's not wet, but I don't know any terms and to describe it any other way. And my hand was holding the hand of the spirit of this man. And there his body, he was hovering out of his body that was in the coma. And that's where we met. There he was. And it was like, my heart totally open, and I knew him. It was like, Oh, I love this man. I've always known this man, always forever, and he's the person of he's the spirit I've always loved forever, and I have in this awareness, and I knew everything about him, and he knew everything about me, and we were just embraced in this love together while he's in his near death experience, hovering out of his body ready to go, and I don't know what decision he's going to make, but this love was so huge that there wasn't selfish at all if he was going to go into the light, into that tunnel, because again, he was hovering. If he was going to go, that's would be joyful for me, because that's what his spirit would want, and that would be giving him such incredible peace. There's not a selfish bit in this kind of love. It's so unbelievable, but that's where we were embraced, in this heavenly love that's the best way, this forever love, this forever time with this spirit that I know is my beloved. Next thing I know, I'm flocked back in my body. I'm standing at the side of his bed. He's still unconscious. He's still desperately ill. He's still clinging to life. God knows how, literally, God knows how. And I'm looking at him now, still bloated, still unconscious, still this, and I'm like, How have I just met this soulmate who is dying that I don't even know, who's a stranger in this life? And yet I felt this incredible bond of love with this being. I don't even know what to do with any of this it. There's no way you can process the feelings, the emotions, the one and understand things. And I could not wrap my head around this at all. It was so confusing. And it was like being in two worlds at one time, experiencing that love while I'm conscious like that, and then to meet this way, and then, then as a human being, I was like, Oh, but I don't normally want him to go. My spirit might be all that lofty, but my human self is like, I've met this, this soulmate. I want to meet. I want to know him. I want to have this experience. But it's not my choice. So I continue to work with him over the next 12 days. And in in that time, we had another unusual experience, and this is where I see things when I'm falling asleep. And while he was in his room, his kid, he was improving, he started to improve, and obviously he was living and he continued to hang on and get a little bit better. But they said his kidneys would never, never come back. You know, ever, you know, they might regain a tiny bit of function, but that's that's it because of the scarring. Well, one night, you know, falling asleep, I feel like I'm in his room, and I look down and I see him on in the cot in the ICU, and I see four beings that look to me to be blue in color. They're very tall. They look like a medical team, and they're like in blue scrubs, but their skin is blue. Everything's blue, and they're at each side of the cot, and I see one that I call the lead doctor, because that's what looked like to me. And the lead doctor is has like a holographic tray in front of them with like, blue kidneys on it. And I see these kidneys being descended. Into his body. This is what I'm perceiving it as, right? And so they go into his body. And I'm like, What is going on here? Are they giving him an etheric kidney transplant? Am I dreaming? And except that the lead doctor looks up and see and nods and like he can see me hovering there in the corner of the room. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, he's aware of my presence. So then I kind of fell asleep after that, wondering what in the heck happened. I woke up super early the next morning, at 630 again, just like I saw these beings. Was that a weird dream? Except I get to the hospital and the man, the stranger's name is David, and David's kidneys starting to regain and ramp up and function significantly. So I'm like, I don't know what's going on here, but I do my Reiki work, and I had used aromatherapy music to help with the brain, keep the brain stimulated. The nephrologist who who was examining his kidneys, came in, and the doctors and nurses, at that point, and he was in a Catholic hospital in Richmond started calling him miracle boy, because his kidneys began to ramp up and exponentially each day increase, so that by the end of 12 days, his kidneys had returned to 100% full functioning. No medical explanation of how that happened, because it was not possible, given the level of damage that was all documented. So at the end of that period, he regains consciousness, he wakes up, and we get to meet for the first time in life. And you talk about awkward, because he woke up and he knew everything about me. He knew he was going to marry me, he knew he was wildly in love. This is what he says, And he knew all of this, even though he didn't even know me. He never met me, and until, you know I told him, reminded him my name. He didn't even know my name. He just knew he knew me on every level. So he didn't have the conscious memory of the meeting on the other side, but he had the after effects in the spiritual memory, which is not unusual for someone in a deep coma with heavy medication affecting recall, but he had the spiritual recall. So he didn't tell me any of that at the time, of course, but he in the middle of a divorce. I didn't know anything about him at the time, and I just was like, I don't see how any of this, you know, I don't understand any of this. So he got better. He flew out to the West Coast to go see his mother ever Thanksgiving, or right before Thanksgiving, and his extended family out there, he came back, and then he got sick again from the medications they treated like cancer, and he had too much of the immunosuppressant. And so he was back in the hospital again, again with double pneumonia and nearly dying again. So at that point, I went to go see him and did some conscious healing work with him on his lungs. And that's when he said, You know, I'm gonna just, can I tell you I love you? And I was like, Well, yes, I love you too. I don't know what we're supposed to do with any of this. And honestly, I didn't even know who's gonna live. And I was upset about that, because I wanted him to live. But I had a friend who I had been talking to, and he said, you know, you got to have a glimpse of love. If you even got it for two minutes, that's more than a lot of people ever get in a whole lifetime. So don't be selfish. Accept what you get. It's not up to you, it's up to God or your Creator, your choice, but you got a glimpse of love, and maybe that's all you get. Maybe that's supposed to be enough, because what I glimpsed in conjunction with another being. When you have that kind of love and a shared near death experience, it is hard to lose somebody in life. It's hard to face our own mortality. But for those who us, who have we know what is on the other side, and we're all giving that collective voice, you hear the same thing we're saying the same things. Our experiences might differ in certain ways, but the universal truth is we're all giving a message of love that our consciousness exists and continues to exist for eternity. And to think of about it this way, we are just one being on this very small planet in one galaxy, in a cosmos of trillions or more galaxies, that's expanding that we cannot even comprehend. And I hope that people are hearing what I'm saying, well, listen not to the words, but to the spiritual truth in their hearts, because that's what I'm trying to give. It is a message of hope, but it's a message of healing, and it's a message of love and to have a little faith that they that their lives mattered, their spirits are incredibly important, and that they will live on.
Our Sponsors
- Next Level Soul TV: exclusive spiritual films, series, audiobooks, courses and events. Get the app.
- Earthing.com: discover the science-based healing powers of earthing and grounding.
If you enjoyed today’s episode, watch and subscribe to Divine Encounters on YouTube.
