I look forward to the glorious experience of returning home when my work here is finished, but I’m not in any hurry. I still have a lot to do here on earth before it’s time to leave this body to continue my education and development on the Other Side.
Heaven Reached Out to Me Twice, but I Didn’t Stay
Nancy Clark, CT
Ohio
True stories can entertain people with their associated drama, especially when those stories deal with life after death. Who doesn’t want to know what lies beyond the beyond? A natural curiosity abounds. We are drawn to these stories hoping that one day we will each transcend this earthly realm and find the reassurance that our faith in an afterlife was correct after all or that our cynicism and disbelief were in error.
Without directly experiencing this heavenly realm for ourselves, we are left to read and listen to the stories of those who have gone before us. That is why I am putting to paper my own journey to heaven with the hope that it will inspire others to think deeply about their own mortality and more importantly, that by sharing my experience with others, it will help to build a bridge in understanding that our mortal and eternal lives have meaning and purpose.
I do not wish to entertain you with my story. I do wish to simply share what happened to me. I do not wish to preach to anyone either or try to convince you that I have all the answers to life’s most difficult questions. I don’t and neither does anyone else. What was ultimate truth for ME may not be your truth. I ask only that you give me respect for my personal interpretation of my own experience. After all, I was there! Therefore, I am my own expert on my own experiences. No one else can be that expert on someone else’s experiences, no matter how learned that individual may be.
Where do I begin? I guess from the beginning. In the early 60s I died while giving birth to my son, and I had a near-death experience. I witnessed the medical staff in the hospital trying to revive me, but I had no interest in what they were doing to my body lying motionless on the delivery table below. By then my spirit self had lifted out of my physical body and had entered a dark void. The darkness did not frighten me because I was experiencing the rapture of a love that was very pure radiating from a light source streaming down toward me. I felt ecstatic at seeing this Light, and I felt drawn to it like a magnet. “Yes, yes! I want to go with the Light wherever the Light would take me,” I thought. Bliss was the only feeling saturating my spirit body as the Light’s love was streaming toward me. How could I want anything more than this? Never! Never!
The nurse kept pounding on my chest below on the delivery table shouting, “Come back, Nancy; come back!” I absolutely did not want to come back to my physical body. The Light was calling me upwards toward itself with a love that shatters one’s imagination.
Over and over again, the nurse kept pounding on my chest shouting, “Come back, Nancy; you have a son.” I listened to her incessant voice, and I felt no desire to return. She was interfering with my bliss and the journey with the Light that I so wanted to continue to follow. I made a very painful and reluctant decision to return back to my physical body for the sole reason of stopping the nurse’s incessant nagging!
I woke up in the morgue! Yes, that’s right, the morgue. I was lying on a cold metal gurney with a sheet covering my entire body. I gently pulled the sheet down over my head and witnessed a second body lying on another metal gurney in the room with a sheet covering its body. I blacked out at that point, but apparently someone discovered that I was alive before any further “disposal” of my body took place.
Years later I had another heavenly experience—this time deeper, richer, and more extensive than my first near-death experience. What I shall describe from this point on is the most sacred and transformative experience of my entire life. I believe my first near-death experience I just described “opened me” in some deeper, more sensitive manner to prepare me for this second experience. This time, however, I did not have to die first or suffer from any serious illness or physical trauma in order to have this most sacred experience. The Light apparently wanted to come to me again with a purpose, and this time I was ready to receive the Light without interference from anyone or anything.
Near-death experience researchers call this type of transcendent experience a near-death-like experience or a spiritually transformative experience which means that an average, healthy, and fully conscious human being can have the identical experience as someone who was close to death at the time of their transcendent experience. There are many triggers to this type of mystical experience; coming close to death is only one of them.
If this sounds bizarre to you, it is only because the general public has very little information about these identical experiences as near-death experiences. But in fact, throughout history, there have been reports of saints, mystics, prophets, and others who had this type of transcendent experience without coming close to death. The historical literature is filled with these accounts.
My particular experience is often compared to the Apostle Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. A Heavenly Light appeared before Paul and commanded him to begin a life of spiritual service. Upon seeing this Heavenly Light, Paul was forever transformed and began his ministry without reservation, not fearing what others would think or what they would do to him. It is this supernatural power of the Heavenly Light that raises the individual’s own personal power to transcend all obstacles in one’s path because the truth of that encounter with the Holy One supersedes any perceived limitations, doubts, or fear. What ultimately becomes the “mission” of the one who has touched the hem of the Beloved is loving service to something greater than oneself. This is precisely what happened to me.
Remember this please: when the Divine wants to intervene in our lives, it is done in a supernatural way so powerful, so truthful that our finite minds cannot dismiss it as a hallucination, wishful thinking, or something similar. No, the experience is REAL, more REAL than our physical reality we presently inhabit. Unless one has had this experience, one cannot understand this. But for the one who has had it, no words can adequately explain it.
I was taken up to the heavenly realm on January 29, 1979. This is my true story, and I have not deviated once from this account nor have I embellished it in any way. It is the same factual story I told in 1979 to friends, family, and researchers during my speaking engagements, more fully in my book, Hear His Voice: The True Story of a Modern Day Mystical Encounter with God, and to anyone who will listen. Only the words will change in describing the experience, but the content remains intact.
While delivering a eulogy for a dear friend, the Light that I once saw during my near-death experience appeared before my spirit self as I stood at the podium. My physical body and physical consciousness were to all present and performing the task of speaking the eulogy. But another aspect of my consciousness, that part I call my soul, had lifted out of my physical body and had entered into the otherworldly dimension with the Light.
As hard as I try to convey the image of the Light to others, I cannot do it justice. Words are inadequate. Brilliant, luminous, all-embracing, pick an adjective and it is pale in comparison to the wholly mystical illumination I perceived. My physical eyes did not see this Light; it was my soul’s eyes that beheld the majesty of the