NDE While Meditating

In the early 1970's I was in the U.S. Coast Guard and stationed in a small Oregon city. I was married and had two children, one of them a toddler and one not yet walking. My wife and I were having marital difficulties. I had just become acquainted with Hinduism and Hindu meditation, which I seemed to be having good success with in becoming more spiritual and in also centering my self in life.

One Saturday my wife was being exceptionally hard to deal with and I went into the bedroom to do meditation and, hopefully, center myself. I happened to look at the clock prior to relaxing and beginning the meditation process because I had to attend to some personal business in a few minutes. I did some relaxing exercises and chanting for about five minutes and then began to meditate. The next thing I was aware of was that I was standing on a rocky flat area and there was a tunnel in front of me with a very black opening that I could not see into. All around me there was total darkness. I could only see the immediate area which, as I previous stated, was very rocky. At about this point I became aware that I was not breathing and, surprisingly, I did not panic over thins discovery but only accepted it as a statement of fact. I simply realized that I did not actually need to breathe and let it go at that. I approached the entrance to the tunnel and then became aware of!

a presence in it. I could project my mind and/or senses into the tunnel, while I remained outside, and knew there was a presence there but I could not determine what that presence was.

At this point a voice said to me, "Why are you here?" This was something I heard in my mind and not as an actual physical voice. Again the voice, more insistence this time, said, "Why are you here? You don't belong here." Now, I was aware that the presence was one, yet made up of many. After years of considerable thinking on this I still don't fully understand how that could be. I answered the presence, with my mind, and said, "I want to stay." The presence answered, "It is not yet your time, you cannot stay." Again, I said, "I want to stay." The presence, very reluctantly, said, "You may stay if you want to, but it is not your time." For just a moment I felt torn between my strong desires to stay where ever this was and the realization that the voice was correct in saying it was not my time. I reflected on if I should stay anyway and suddenly I had the thought in my mind, "What about the kids?"

Immediately, when I had this thought about the kids I woke up, in the bedroom gasping for breath and trying to orient myself. At this point I realized that I had been out of body and that when I thought, "What about the kids?" I was immediately slammed back into my body [very hard I might add] and I woke up gasping for breath. In a few seconds I had control of myself and one of the first things I did was glance at the clock to see what time it was. I saw that about 20 minutes had passed since I last looked at the clock and, allowing time for the initial pre-meditative process, I was still out of body and not breathing for at least 10 to 15 minutes.

This experience was very shocking to me to say the least. For several years I told no one at all about what had happened. One day I related the experience to a Vedanta Swami and he told me that I had had an unusual meditation experience and that it was very impressive because most people can meditate all their lives and not have such an experience. Some years after that I related the experience to a New Age clairvoyant I had befriended and she turned very white and told me that I had had a near death experience that I came closer to death than I should have and still come back from it.

Frankly, I don't know what this experience should be called or why I had it. I can say that after going over it time and time again that it has answered a lot of questions for me and also raised others. It has given me the strong conviction that I existed, as a spiritual being, prior to coming into my body, and that when my body finally ceases to function I will not die with it but move on. I like to think of that moving on as "crossing over and going home to God" because I personally think that is what will happen, but I honestly can't prove that is what will happen, I only hope that it is.

Jim

March 04, 2006