I was eighteen years of age, decent, tough and innocent to the ways of the world. I was in the city one night and encountered a gang of twenty or more knife-wielding thugs who wished me serious harm. I fought them off as best I could but with the odds being so overwhelming, I had to run. I fell to the ground. I had no chance to get back up because they were all over me. There were so many kicks coming at me that getting into a fetal position took some doing. They kicked me and danced on me continuously. Numerous times they tried to break me from my fetal protection. Then I felt the knives going into my back. They felt like cold icicles, then more kicks and more dancing on my body. I felt someone kneeling on my back. Then I felt knives going into my head and my neck. At this point, I felt I was doomed. I cried out to Jesus for help. At the same time, I heard a voice saying, ‘Come on, the f**ker’s dead’.
Next thing I know, I am floating away from my body. I am looking down at a lot of silhouettes gathered around what I believe to be me. As I am rising away at an angle, I am wondering what is happening. After about five seconds of rising upwards, I stop. Suddenly, I find myself immersed inside a light. I found myself immersed in this all-encompassing light where time has no meaning. Space has no meaning. I have a feeling of oneness with the Universe. The pull of this light is so captivating and overwhelming that I have no choice but to completely surrender to it. It reminded me of shimmering liquid mercury. My natural instincts tell me to look left and right. I manage to look two degrees in both directions before I am instantly drawn back to the center. The attraction I feel towards this light fills me with total awe. The unconditional love, peace and happiness it exudes are infinite. Whilst still in the light, my whole life’s history begins to unfold in front of me at a speed that is mind boggling. Somehow, I know, this was my life. Then in some way, I know I am going to leave this wondrous place. Realizing this, I try to focus on the light but I am too late.
My next memory is that of women screaming. I am lying in a gutter with fifteen stab wounds to my body. I felt at that moment, that I was ejected from Heaven. It took me months to assimilate this experience. I was reluctant to mention it to anyone for fear of sounding foolish. I was told at some point that I had an out of body experience. It was made to seem like a common occurrence.
Over time, I brought the subject up with various work colleagues. I learned from certain individuals who were involved in motor car accidents that they had experienced portions of their lives’ histories flashing through their minds as they were trying to avoid the crash. After a time, I deduced that while these drivers were in the midst of crashing, their minds were searching through their memory to find a way to stop the crash from happening. These crashes were unavoidable because there was only one, maybe two, seconds to escape them. I was able to relate this experience to my own life flashing before me, but I was still at a loss with the rest of the experience.
Eventually I put it all together. My interpretation of this traumatic experience is as follows. As I rose from my body, the thugs that attacked me were still there in silhouette form. In a coherent way, I was thinking, ‘What’s going on? Did this really happen, or did my mind create an illusion to make me feel safe? I think therefore I am? Who knows?’ I believe that my mind brought me to my earliest memory, that being of me in the womb. At some point from conception, I am enveloped in electric organic energy. I believe this to be the light source. I am in a state of ecstasy. Is this because I won the sperm race? I don’t think so. It is because I am receiving everything my world has to offer: nourishment. In this cocoon-world there is no sense of time: who needs it? There is no spatial awareness, who needs it? A complete oneness with the universe, I am the universe. While I am experiencing this portion of my memory in the womb, I am in a state of rapture. I am in a state of rapture because when my mind is searching my memory for a way out of my crisis, it is shooting through my memories at a phenomenal speed. In doing so, the original pure happiness that I experienced in the womb is multiplied by the maximum speed of my mind. On reflection, my whole life’s memory that began in the womb probably took less than one minute. When my memory brings me to events outside of the womb, the light that still surrounds me diminishes into the background.
Again, I am looking at the unfolding of my life’s history at a phenomenal speed. I know it is my life. I try to slow it down but it is impossible. Somehow I know that this is all coming to an end and I know I have to leave, probably because the memory is ending. I panic and try to get back to the beginning but it is also impossible. When normality eventually comes back into my life, I feel an inner happiness and oneness with everything that stays with me always. This experience sent me on a knowledge quest. I am still on that quest. For me the ‘Ultimate Reality’ is love, and love is the fruit of understanding. I have come across some extraordinary claims concerning these light experiences. For example, people shooting through tunnels towards a light source, arriving at destinations where they meet people whom they know, but never having encountered in real life. I’ve also heard of people that were hypnotized, and while under hypnosis recalled histories that they never experienced. Is it possible that the fetus can access the mother’s memories through the umbilical cord? In conclusion, I believe my interpretation of events should be used as a template for further inquiries.