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Before the bomb went off this is what I remember..
Iraq, January 2006, the heat inside the armored vehicle and
the palm trees lining the road from Baghdad
and then the blast an improvised explosive device
instantly everything went completely black.
there's no hurry everybody's fine,take your time. When I came to
I didn't remember anything about the blast itself. I learned what had
happened from the doctors and
from the footage like this of me and my cameraman Dug Boat
being wheeled out of a baghdad hospital but I remembered one thing.
the minute after the explosion a
memory I described to my wife Lee and we put it in our book in an instant.
The words that are best described what it was like
I was bathed in a calming white light, it was soft
not glaring, It was peaceful enveloping. I was floating somehow I could see my body
below me
as I hovered slowly, peacefully and completely
without pain.
There was no conscious feeling of urgency that I had to go back somewhere.
I don't even think I knew I had been attacked or hurt. The white light just felt
good
like soft welcoming arms.
That minute that experience still confounds and intrigues me
but it also inspired me setting me on a journey to find out what really happened
and to speak with others who stepped over the line and came back
like I will do here tonight. I recently spoke to one woman
who also had an out of body experience.
All of a sudden it just came over me and
I was in it I was in that
light and I came to this
beautiful area.
My eyes worked differently and everything worked differently.
It's not human so it's difficult to express it humanly but
the room was beautiful. It was a very illuminated
light with just a mild like tinge
pink collar. Mary Jo Rapini never imagined death would be so
beautiful
when she worked as a nurse her patients would describe it to her.
You've said that those patients that you were there with who said they too had
now seen heaven, or god or a tunnel
and you turned your back on them. Well
I was present with them but the sense I turned my back is when
I would leave the room I would tell the resident
"I think you better get a morphine level on them
because I think they're hallucinating/" So you thought those other stories from
people that
they thought they'd gone to heaven that they're just hallucinating?
Had I seen them now
those patients who were telling me
they were seeing angels I would have embraced that
and said, "Really? let's talk about it. tell me"
because they were telling me what God looked like
as they were going. And a few years ago mary jo
almost died herself while lifting weights at the gym
she felt a pop.
A blood vessel in her brain had suddenly burst.
All of a sudden I couldn't see I started getting
black fill my eyes except for two holes out of the sides of my eyes and
it sounded like I was underwater. Surgery to stop the bleeding was immediate yet
it was during the recovery she believes she left this world
for another. I was terrified to die
but after I submitted to God and said you know you will be done
I had such peace with it
much different than what I would have thought.
I noticed there was this strange light.
It's not like any other light you've ever seen
it's not like a studio light or ceiling light
and when I saw it I thought, "What is that?
Is that the tunnel?"
I entered this room God held me
and I never saw God's face but I felt him
through my skin.
The first thing he said was, "You can't stay."
and just like that Mary Jo says she was pulled back
into this world. What do you say to people that are still doubters about this?
I say that you relieve my guilt that
I have in a way I embraced the doubters
because feel a lot of guilt about
how I used to ook at it and somehow
when people doubt the story I can say,
See they're in medicine to and they doubted and
that's why I was the way I was. There's a lot of skepticism within
the medical world. Yes. That this is the explanation for what you saw
or felt. They just believe this as some kind of
blood, electricity, neurons
other things that can cause this. Right.. well then I would ask them
who programmed that in? We're you ever above your body? Did you see yourself at all?
Well, when I was going up I knew my body was back there like I
caught a glimpse of it.
Just very briefly? Yeah I didn't really care about it.
I had no desire to go...I wasn't afraid at
all. I saw mine that's really as far as I got in mine. Were you
attached to it? Attached to it? Yeah.
No, I felt like I had become a stranger.
I think I had...I don't know..
I thought either I'd gone into a dream
or there was something firing around my head or I was somehow on
on a trip you know that was going outside
the body. Right now on your average day how often do you see
yourself from a distance you're trapped inside of you
so you can't see yourself except I guess in a mirror but at
this moment I just
for a small period of time I was watching
myself below me
and then I changed direction and woke up again.
You changed direction? Yeah, I was only unconscious for one
minute.
So, we came back from whatever that was
Why? We don't know but for Mary Jo
the memories of what it was like there will never leave her.
I had such a sense of knowingness there. Everything
so much made sense I dropped any judgment I was so
open and you know unlike a dream that is
never clear this was so clear!
Scientists who say it's a dream or
I beg to differ it's not that.
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