He Experienced a LIFE REVIEW — What He Learned CHANGED Everything with William J. Peters

Alex Ferrari 0:00
Tell me what your life was like before you died.

William J. Peters 0:08
I was living a pretty standard life for a suburban kid in San Francisco area, basically, and skiing on the Squaw Valley mountain, really well known ski resort outside Lake Tahoe. And it took a very bad fall and fractured my spine and on impact. And then what I remember is that everything went dark right away, but I still had an observing self. You know, it wasn't an ego. I don't think it was just observing consciousness. Things were dark, but I was just watching this. I wasn't the least bit worried. And then I started moving away from my body, I could see my body on the ski slopes. Things started to lighten up. At that point. I had the, you know, the light came back on, if you will. I could see the ski area, Lake Tahoe. Then, you know, Colorado, Rockies, continental US. And I was moving quickly away, enamored by the whole experience, you know, no pain, like I said. And then as I was taken up in the in the beauty of it all, I was watching a life review that was of my life up to the first 17 years of my life, that was being played back to me, really in the background. I mean, I was kind of, you know, there's multiple things happening, but I was enjoying looking at the Galaxy just at peace, really enthralled. And then I noticed this whole life review was going on, and I was my attention focused on that, and I was like, wow, there's this is my whole life in detail and focusing on how my actions in particular influenced other people. So it was a real lesson in karma, not a pleasant lesson either. Because the things that really stuck out was the times when I was unkind or selfish or mean or what have you, and I learned that everything matters. And so in that, as I was going through that, at some point, once again, all this thing stuff happened in simultaneously, I then found myself in this tunnel of sorts, and in the distance, I could see a light. And the first the light didn't mean a whole lot to me. But then as I got closer to the lot it got, you know, not that much closer, I was still pretty far. I realized, oh boy, I'm dying. And then I then I had a whole nother download of realizations, which is, I've been here before, and I was and not just once or twice, like, I think, hundreds, maybe 1000s of times. So it's very familiar to me. And I was, then I felt emotion arise within me that expressed, I don't want to die. I didn't complete what I came to this incarnation to do. I don't want to die. At that point, I was pleading with God, if you will, because I grew up Catholic. As I looked at the light, it was clear to me, that's where the power was, and it was, it was a lovely, persuasive, if you will, alluring, pulsating light, and I was just seeing a piece of it. By no way would I claim that I saw the whole I could just say, Oh my gosh. I'm just getting a sense for this light, and this thing's enormous. And so finally, I'm in the light, and I'm stopped in the light, and I'm more blissed out and comfortable in a certain way, but I'm still agitated in another way, like, I want to go back. You got I can't, I can't leave this life. I've already done 17 years. I don't want to go back and do another childhood. It's like, you know, I was kind of really working it in my mind, and it's in some really specific details about what I did and did not want. So I don't know how I was up there pleading, but it wasn't that long then I felt a gentle push on my being, if you will. And I started heading back. At first, I just thought I was being pushed out of the light. And then I realized, wait a minute, that light, God, if you will, said, make something of your life. And it was a very solemn, direct, clear message. And I got it, it kind of shook me up, like, make something of my life. And then I started moving back, kind of moving back towards at that point, I didn't know what I was moving towards, except I had a sense of, oh, I am going back. I turned my vision away from the light and started looking back to where I thought was Earth. I could see nothing. I mean, I was just gazing into a beautiful galaxy. There was no earth in sight. But I realized I was being pulled along in some way, guided. There was a more of an energetic feeling of gravitational pull. And I just went with it. Somebody realized, oh, there's some force guiding this. So eventually I could see planet Earth. And then, you know, ski area, then I landed in my body. And I remember I landed in my body, I felt the coldness of the snow that because I was covered in snow on my back, and if I had no feeling in my body. And then I screamed one last time. I don't know if it was, must have been an internal scream. I think I know now as I think about it was an internal scream, don't let me be paralyzed. God, don't let me be paralyzed. And then I felt feeling come back into my body from the extremities, first, like from my feet and toes and fingers, and they just got to move back into the center of my body. I can't remember was that way or the other way anyway, but it was like moving across my body, like you're under a warm shower, that type of sensation after that, I came, got back my body, and then I opened my eyes. I was covered in snow. My friend John came up to me, said, Wow, that was a Wipeout. And I forgot about the experience for a decade. I didn't even know I had it until I actually had. A second near death experience in 20 I must have been 13 years after, yeah, I was 1992 I was 30 years old, yeah, and that was just an ICU experience, blood imbalance, idiopathic thrombocytopenia, yeah, kind of a hemophiliac condition. And I went into the ER, and they immediately did a blood test, put a fall alert on me, and next thing I know, I wake up and I'm on top of a ceiling somewhere. I know it's an ICU. Once again, I am this observing consciousness, whatever, with no connection to any, to me or to anyone. I'm just roaming around the ceiling of the ICU Kaiser Oakland hospital, and no identity until the nurses are talking about the various patients, and they mentioned this guy in bed three, who's 30 years old, super healthy, no known history. You know, we don't know what he's doing here. What you know, the doctor's coming in a little bit later to check them out, the expert from the medical center. And I'm just watching this, I think at some point I just roll, move my move myself, because I can move myself, my conscious. I look over at that body, I go, Oh my gosh, that's me. But that didn't really catch my attention very long either. I guess kind of remember saying, okay, that's me. But then I went around roving and that because I was much more curious about being on the 10th floor of the in the ICU. I just remember moving down the halls and just kind of checking things out. And that was it. The doctor came in. That's one other thing. This was interesting. So when the doctor came in, the hematologist, he approached me, or he approached my physical body. He tapped on my hand and said, Mr. Peters, Mr. Peters. And I remember that getting my attention, but I didn't feel it. I was above my body, and I was looking down at the top of his head and at my body, and then I had this question, well, do I answer him? Do I not answer him? What if I do answer him? What will happen? And I thought to myself, well, I'll just answer him and see what happens. And so I just said, yeah. So I was very slow, yes. I started filling in my body energetically. It was a similar experience to being on that ski slope, you know, where all of a sudden, the energy moved across my body, and then I opened my eyes, and then my whole perception, my perception feel, changed in the sense that now I was looking up at the doctor from as opposed to looking on top of his him from on top and seeing his crown. And that was that. And then we had a conversation. So those are the two early experiences of that really awakened me to these experiences of being out of body, having a sense of self and consciousness that exists independent of the physical body, and a whole host of other phenomena you've heard already. So now, when I went to work in hospice, I started having these experiences, and that is, someone is dying, and I would pop out of my body and I would be with them. So it was what I call my gateway experience, into my own shared death experience. I'm at the bedside of this gentleman, Ron, we'll call him, and the book is referred to as Ron, and he's dying, but he's unresponsive, so he's been what we call, you know, unresponsive, semi comatose state. So but I was always reading to him stories. He loved these Jack London adventure stories, and so I would read to him these stories on a regular basis. And on this afternoon, I was reading to him, and once again, to be really clear, he was just almost like sleeping on the bed, and looked to be at peace. And I found myself suspended above my body, looking down at my body. I was still reading. I didn't stop reading, and I could see myself reading. And I looked over at Ron in his bed, and he was prone. No changes. But then I look to my right, and there's Ron, and Ron's got a big face. Now it's not Ron's full body. He's got his big face. His eyes are open, he's smiling, he's that he's blissed out, as if to say to me, Hey, check this out, William. Check this out. So I feel like he kind of invited me there in a certain way. I can't explain how that happens. This is kind of one of the shared death phenomena, where it's called the CO experienced out of body. After I had my first near death experience, I went on to college the following, you know, four years or such. And so between my junior and senior years in college, I went to Europe, as so many college students do in those days, it was so economical, especially the way we traveled was like, you know, we ever had a let's go Europe. And so I remember being in Greece with two of my buddies I was traveling with, and we wanted to go up beyond the Iron Curtain. Wanted to go to Budapest and East Berlin, but the quickest way on the map was to go through what was Yugoslavia, but that was beyond the Iron Curtain, and there was no information on Yugoslavia. It was like, it was just like a blank on the map. So no one was really going there, even though, as we know, Dubrovnik is one of the most beautiful tourist areas in the world, we just decided to take a bus ride up to Dubrovnik because we knew Dubrovnik was cool. But I woke up. On an overnight bus ride. And you know how that is, when you're waking up, you have that you're kind of, there's a it's a liminal state. You know, sometimes I have a lot of visions, and just a lot of good stuff happens psychically just as I'm waking up. And as I woke up, I pulled back the window, the drapes on the windows, I was really groggy, and I looked out and I saw we were on a plaza, and I know this is Bosnia. Now I did the I know where it was. Was in Bosnia somewhere. So a Muslim culture. As I looked out, all I could see was women, the dark eyes of women with their burqas on and their hands like this. These were young women, most of them had babies on their backs. And I was just blown away. I started weeping as I looked out that window. And in that moment, I realized something. Now, I should say I was suffering from chronic pain from the back injury, so I was looking kind of normal, but I was hiding the fact that I was in intense back pain, and wasn't willing to slow down my life. So the looking in the eyes of these women, I made a commitment to myself that people like this, these people had something to teach me, like I needed to learn. And I don't know where that came from, but I made a commitment to myself that I'm going to work with underprivileged people who are living close to the edge in poverty. And one evening, so I was working with Center for Working children, working with very, very people on the edges. It was, there was a civil war going on. There were refugees all in our town from coming down from the war torn areas of the highlands. And we would go as a group try to get out to the beach. We were about 50 minutes inland on a car ride during the summertime there every now and then, and on this Sunday afternoon, we're driving back from the beach, and we're on the pavement. You know, well, when those were driving on this two lane road, must seven, eight o'clock at night, and we see, see something on the road, and as we're approaching it, we finally realize that's a human body. And you know the we had a couple Peruvian people in the car, and they said, Don't stop. Don't stop. If the police come, they'll blame you for it. Take you to jail. And I said, No, we're stopping. And so I got out of the car and I walked over to the body. Could see that it was a peasant in Spanish at campesino, a man of the of the field, a man of the land. This was an agrarian worker, and he was in his Sunday best too, because they work six days a week and but he so it seemed like he'd been perhaps struck by a car, but I turned him over, his face down, I turned him over, and I realized that he did not have alcohol in his breath. So this wasn't a belligerent you know, this wasn't recklessness here. So I was kind of trying to figure out, Is he safe or not? And at that time, I took his pulse and realized he had a very slight pulse, but he wasn't breathing. So I started mouth to mouth with him right there, and then the car pulled up. We had a wagon here. And so as we were doing that, all of a sudden, I felt just with the first breath after that. All of a sudden, my world got really tunnel vision. We call this the change in the time, space continuum. All of a sudden, my vision got narrow, my sensory field got really big, and I started feeling presences. Like, all of a sudden I felt like there's something here. I wasn't registering it. And it was very sublime. And I got the sense that you're doing the right thing, like, all of a sudden I got this sense of guidance. Like, yes, do this. There was clarity, there was focus, there was guidance. I can't say that I felt specific beings or angels. No, I couldn't say that it. Could say that there was presences around undifferentiated that I was feeling. We took him to the hospital, and I felt like I was in this altered state during this entire experience, we finally dropped him off at the hospital, and they said they would take care of him, and I said, I come back the next day. They said you could give blood the next day. And I felt this incredible connection with this campesino, and it was just weird. And I the connection, I believe, came because of this deep spiritual experience that we had shared together in a certain way, he completely unconscious. They did tell me that he had severe brain damage, and they would not be coming. If he did come back, he would not be normal. And then he died a couple days later. And then I came, when I realized that he had died, I came in the morning Two days later, and they said he died, you know, earlier this morning. And then when I heard that, I went out into the courtyard and the hospital, there's a clear blue day, but it was just clear and warm as summertime. And then again, those presences came back, and I got this sense of this real guidance, of like, Thank you, you did well, or you you just did what you were supposed to do. It was doesn't like anything. It was just like, Thank you for caring, and that felt like as good as I felt in my life, really.