Near-death experiences. “I was a failed builder. My money was running out and I was about to be evicted from my flat.” David Ditchfield was 46 years old and a heavy drinker when his life-changing accident occurred. His life in London was not going well.
In 2006, while in this bad mood, he went to Cambridgeshire to stay at his sister’s house. A friend of his had come to visit him that day, and David went to the station to see him off. As he said goodbye, his coat got stuck in the closing train doors. David, who was dragged along the platform by the movement of the train, fell onto the rails and remained there with his arm about to be severed.
He later describes having an “extraordinary and unexpected spiritual” experience before he was taken into surgery. “I had left my body. I had left the hospital and all the pain attacking my body behind and was in a peaceful place.
“At that moment, when I looked up, I saw symmetrical waves of white light slowly approaching me. They were so bright and intense, but also so pure that I could just look at them. I could feel the light they emitted slowly spreading throughout my body and healing me. ”
David explains that he has also experienced beings such as angels: “I felt like they were healing all the wounds in my body, peeling away layer by layer of my pain and getting to the core of my soul. For the first time, I felt complete, and for the first time, I realized that I had been acting all my life.”
David says the most intense part of his experience was the end. He describes the feeling of floating among stars and galaxies, the feeling of gazing into infinity, and the view of a tunnel of light:
“I could feel every molecule of my body vibrating with the loving energy emanating from this huge tunnel of white light. I knew I was looking at the source of creation. This huge white light in tunnel form was God. I was so filled with joy.”
In addition to the immediate effects of the awakening David describes, it also had lasting effects on him. He says that today he continues to be one with the energy of the universe and feel an intense sense of satisfaction.
After the accident, he regained the use of his severely injured arm and today he is no longer afraid of death. Despite having no training or experience, he composed classical symphonies and began painting scenes that he said depicted his healing experience.
His compositions were performed by local orchestras. One of his paintings is currently exhibited at the Bible Museum in Washington, USA. However, David does not consider his experience a religious one and prefers to describe himself as a spiritual person.
Doctor Steve Taylor is a psychologist who studies the connection between the intense pain people experience and their spiritual experiences.
Spiritual experiences like the ones David describes are surprisingly common, he says, leading to an increasing number of people identifying themselves as spiritual.
“When you have a near-death experience, it is so incredible and intense that your vision of reality up to that point can change forever. Dr., a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University. “This often happens to people who have a secular view of life. And then they may not be a traditionally religious person,” Taylor says.
Some popular scientific theories suggest that such experiences are caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain as a person approaches death. However, Doctor Taylor says that research in this area is inconclusive and no consistent scientific explanation has been found for them.
He also notes that these are taboo because they contradict the standard scientific view of reality. “These experiences suggest that consciousness may not necessarily be a production of the brain, and that consciousness may exist after the death of the body,” says Dr Taylor.
It was challenging for Gigi Strehler to not receive the support she needed to talk about such experiences. After coming back from near death with an intervention at the hospital in 2014, he founded a group where people who had his own experience could join.
Gigi Strehler describes herself as experiencing “a void” rather than what is called a tunnel of light: “I was in nothingness and nowhere. He was filled with a feeling of complete peace and love. I wasn’t Gigi at that moment, but I was still there. “I was aware of what was happening.”
Strehler, an actor, experienced personal changes after that experience, such as understanding quantum physics. This led him to seek an answer that would last for years and include religious traditions.
But none of the existing texts satisfied him. “My experiences have taught me that our awareness and being transcend all human-made things. Yet I believe we are incredibly interconnected.”
David Ditchfield, who had a similar experience, has a similar perspective to Strehler. He also describes himself as extremely spiritual and respectful of religious traditions, but says he is not a religious person.
Doctor Steve Taylor, who does not hide that he is very impressed by the experiences David and Gigi describe, also admits that for many people, they are “too mysterious to accept.”
“As human beings, we like to pride ourselves on being able to explain reality scientifically,” Taylor said. “But there are some things that are too strange to make sense of.”
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