Juanita

Near Death Experience Podcast, an ongoing

exploration of spiritually transformative

experiences,

including NDEs and other phenomena,

in order to

elucidate the ineffable

and better understand our

spirituality.

All episodes are available at

ndepodcast.org. The views

expressed and opinions given by the

individual hosts and

guests are not necessarily those of NDE

Podcast, the NDERF, any

sponsors, or for that matter, anyone else.

In the end, the only opinion

that really matters

is yours.

Welcome to Near Death Experience Podcast,

the official source of audio

accounts for the Near Death Experience

Research Foundation.

I'm Chaz Hathaway,

author of Life in the Spirit World:

What Near Death Experiences May Teach

About Life on the Other Side,

and also the composer of the album

Home.

Today,

we're gonna share the experience of

Juanita, and I

wanna preface this by saying when I first

read this,

I was just a little bit skeptical,

and the only reason that I

was skeptical was because

everything fell so in line

[laughs] with, with what we

see in near death experiences. It's

... Y- and, uh, it's not

that I didn't believe it per se,

but, you know, among the red flags

that I sometimes,

um, watch for in, you know, uh,

whether somebody

might be making this up

or came up with this story in order

to, you know,

I don't know what they would be doing it

for.

Maybe so that they could write a book

and become famous or

because whatever. You know,

and people ask me a lotta times,

"How do you know if the person is

telling the truth or if they made this up?

How do you know?" And the fact is,

I don't.

I don't,

and I've kind of gotten to the point where

I don't

really question it anymore unless there

are some serious red

flags.

I pretty much take them at their word, and

so obviously you have to take every near

death experience with

a grain of salt. But in the aggregate,

I'm just left to

think, "Eh, it just, it just fits.

I don't know.

I, I, I have to believe it." I, uh, and,

and that's kind of

what I came to with this one. In fact,

there were a few little

things in there

that made me think,

"This person sounds genuine and sincere."

I, I am, uh...

I, I, I do believe that this

is a real near death experience.

Um,

and we'll talk more about

that after sharing the experience.

I just wanted to give that as a, a,

as a preface, uh, because

that was my initial thought is,

"Wait a minute.

This is really sounding like, you know,

by the book sorta

stuff." But that should be all the more

reason to believe it as

well. So

anyway, this is the experience of Juanita,

and I will

say I do believe this to be absolutely a

real

near death experience. Juanita says,

"I was shown my newborn baby boy,

felt love for him, then I blacked out.

I could hear the doctors and nurses ta-

talking in echoes, and

I felt very cold. The echoes stopped,

and the

terri-

and a terribly very unpleasant shrill but

rushing noise filled my ears.

The noise frightened me.

It was unbearable,

and I wanted it to stop.

I could not determine what

was happening to me.

I was in a dark place

and then became aware that

I was in a tunnel lined with multi fine

concentric circles, gray colored.

My body was moving rapidly down the

tunnel, feet

first. I was aware of my feet, and I

was barefoot,

but they were not solid,

more of a filmy nature.

My eyes focused on the beautiful golden

light at the end of the

tunnel where I was headed.

Before I came to the light,

I never entered the light,

what I presumed to be an angel appeared at

my side.

By this time,

the terrible noise in my ears had stopped.

He had no wings but had shoulder-length

light brown

hair and a plain white gown. I had never

seen this being before in my life.

I recall now

seeing him at the f-

at my side from the waist up

only. I do not recall if he glowed.

As I pictured him in my mind, he didn't.

We communicated by telepathy only,

not in words.

I did not ask the angel who he was. I just

surrendered to the experience,

whatever would happen next.

The angel being showed me a rapid movie of

my life as

a kid, a little kid playing, then school,

adult. Nothing remarkable. No scolding for

sins I surely had done

or any lessons mentioned I needed to

learn,

only a very quick look.

This quick look at my life didn't seem

important,

and later as I recalled the whole

experience, I wondered why I

was even shown this movie. What

was the point?

Then the angel asked me,

'Would you like to go back or

continue to the light?'

I interpreted his words 'the light' as

being heaven and

God. 'You can go there if you choose to.'

After he said that,

I thought about my difficult alcoholic

husband,

my two-and-a-half-year-old firstborn son,

Tommy,

and the wonderful little boy I had just

given birth to.

There was no hesitation. I told the angel,

"I want to go

back. My husband needs me,

and I feel so much love for

my two little boys who need me as their

mother."

Immediately,

I was aware of being back in the world,

waking up full

of energy and a most wonderful,

inexpressible feeling

of joy.

I remember trying to raise myself up off

the bed, full

of energy as I told the nurse, who

was smiling and pushing me

back down,

"I feel so good."

The nurse replied,

"You feel so good because we

are putting blood

back into you.

Look at your arm." Then I saw I was

receiving a transfusion.

"We almost lost you," she

said. The doctor verified

that they had endeavored to

resuscitate me and

were successful as I was gone for a few

minutes. The wonderful feeling soon left,

but

not the experience of being somewhere near

the next world.

This was not a dream.

It was a real experience.

That is the end of the account.

Let me read a couple of comments she makes

in the, um,

in the question and answer section.

Okay, at the-- to the question,

"At the time of your experience,

was there an

associated life-threatening event?" She

says, "Yes,

surgery, uh, childbirth, clinical death,

cessation

of breathing or heart function

or brain function." That I think is

probably a multiple-choice answer,

but then she goes on and says, "I had just

given birth to my second child,

and the doctor laid him

on my belly for me to see, a wonderful,

loving experience. Then I blacked out.

Doctor had cut the

e-ep-episi-episiotomy and told

me later that he had unknowingly cut a

vein.

They had tried finding it,

and I bled internally, and that they

almost lost me from hemorrhaging.

My husband heard the code blue alarm,

the nurses and

techs running to the room with equipment

to get my heart going

again and blood transfusions."

To the question of, "What

was your religion prior to your

experience?"

She says, "Moderate,

raised in Lutheran Church, instigated

Catholic religion and attending."

And then, "Have your

religious practices since

changed since your experience?"

She says, "Yes,

I now believe we don't sleep when we die,

but go on immediately to the next

dimensions.

I am also more aware now of angels God

sends

to help us.

I feel that there

are so many man-made beliefs in

religions--

in the religions.

I choose to keep a simple spiritual

life and stay away from the various

denominations with all their

conflicting r-rules, regulations,

and beliefs, and

often hatred of each other."

Uh, she

says, "What is your religion now? Liberal.

No longer beli-

belong to any organized religion.

I pray often, read Bible

and other inspirational books, meditate,

and endeavor to be spiritual,

having compassion towards my neighbor and

treating others as I would like to be

treated.

I concentrate my thoughts on God at least

every day." And then

to the question,

"What do you believe about the reality of

your

experience now?" She says, "Experience

was definitely

real.

I can still see in my mind what I

experienced.

I know there is a hereafter and

that I will one day

enter the tunnel again,

but next time I shall enter the light.

As I grow older, now seventy years old,

I think even more

about this experience and

that I must spread as much love to

others as possible,

as perhaps my days on Earth may or may not

be many more."

And that is the end of her account. Now,

I mentioned at

the beginning, and we'll

talk a little bit more about this in a

minute, but how, um,

the only thing that I could find to bring

me a little bit of skepticism about this,

or I hate to use that

word, skepticism, but any shadow of doubt,

any red flags, if you will, was

that everything lined up so perfectly

with what's traditionally near-death

experiences that

it was kinda like, mm,

they could have just, you know,

read Life Before Life and

then--

a-and, you know, came up with this.

But I, I don't think that's true,

and one of the things that tipped me

over the edge of absolutely believing this

is a real experience

was, um,

when she talks about how she's now seventy

years

old and about how she feels

like her job now is just to spread as much

love to others as

possible,

as perhaps my days on Earth may

or may not be many

more. If she is-- I mean,

she's not on her deathbed.

She's only seventy.

She might have another twenty

or thirty years to go, depending on how

long she's gonna live. But, uh,

but I doubt that she's,

you know, it, it--

she's probably not going to write a book

about this.

She's probably not going to go start

touring the

world and, you know,

do shows about near-death experiences

and stuff. I think if she

was gonna do that,

she would have done it long since by

now. And this, it sounds like,

happened when, when she was at

least of childbearing years because she,

she was giving birth to her

second child. And, uh, and so she had

decades, decades, uh, from the time

that she had this

experience until she wrote about it.

If, uh-- and, and I suspect

that she probably told people

throughout her life about this experience,

um, in, you know,

close personal, uh-

uh private situations but um

why would a 70 year old make up such a

story she gives the

date of the nde as november 12

she waited decades to tell people about it

no of course

63 was before near-death experience

term was coined and it started to become

an acceptable

idea in general population

excuse me

this idea of of seeing the other side

and returning

to tell about it that's kind of common

today

it still has a stigma about it it still

needs to come out of

obscurity a little bit

but uh people aren't going to

automatically throw you in the loony bin

for saying something about it back in

63 it was actually common practice

if somebody started

talking about this kind of thing to say oh

well they've got

some kind of um

psychotic episode going on and

and they need to be you know

institutionalized and and that

was fairly common

but uh

it's it very much seems to be that this

is a real

experience

that um

thing that you don't hear

and you don't hear about this very often

in near-death

experiences but it

was enough to make an entire chapter of

the book

life before life this experience

that she has of hearing this

loud annoying buzzing light in fact for i

mean not

light it allows noise um

loud annoying buzzing noise

and um it's funny when people come back

uh with different levels of near-death

experience

experiences and they say well for me i i

kind of

liked it it sounded like a nice ringing

bell and others are

like no it's it's it's not like

that it's more like like

you know this buzzing electrical you know

uh uh overpowering

sound you know and and others

are like no it's like a you know and

they and they argue about it as

if they're describing it

wrong as if others

are describing it wrong when i'm under the

impression people

are simply experiencing different sounds

and but there does seem to be something to

having some

sound some people say just this beautiful

music of the

stars kind of sound like as

if the universe itself

has a general hum and others

describe a voice um singing

uh or or a choir and and others the sound

of a bell like a you know the dinging of a

bell

that just draws on or something like

that but um

juanita describes it as

um unbearable

and uh and it frightens her honestly

but it passes and she finds herself in

blackness

or at least a dark space as she says

um

and then she becomes aware of a tunnel

with as she describes it multi-fine

concentric circles

gray colored which

is a beautiful description of the

tunnel uh a fairly common uh description

with kind of cloud

uh circles or something to that effect um

and gray is a common color for the tunnel

there are

other colors but that's a common one um

and then she's flying feet

first that seems to be very common first

it sounds odd to

anyone who you know

is picturing flying upward

toward the stars or the sun flying feet

first you're

flying upside down what you know

but this is often described this way

and and it feels more like

they're going sideways down this tunnel

feet

first and even her feet being described as

not

solid but of a filmy nature that's a

wording i've not

heard but it still fits the uh description

of

as if being made of light

or perhaps see-through

um sometimes described as translucent

or or transparent

and so forth kind of interesting

or even um

appearing as just pure energy something to

that effect

uh she says that my eyes focused on a

beautiful golden light at the end of a

tunnel of the tunnel where i

was headed that was

that whole description

is what kind of put my mind at a

in a state to uh say

we'll see you know and

and that's as far as it got because after

that going

on with the experience it's like yeah no i

think this is legit but

um

i no longer have doubt i i have every

reason to think this is

real and uh she describes

um her life um

life review in an interesting manner she

is

surprised at how unremarkable it is

she's not scolded for anything

that just rushes by

quickly it's it's almost like pointless

she's thinking about later she's

like why did they even show me

that what was the point there was nothing

remarkable about it at all

and then she's immediately asked do you

want to go back

to which she replies yes yes i need to go

back to be with my

son to help my husband her sons and

and husband and so forth

and i'm left to think perhaps that

life review being so unremarkable

is exactly

what nudged her to want to go back,

which seems weird,

except that you think about

as a spirit,

from what I've read, we are hungry

for experience, for learning, for

serving and blessing and loving. We

need it. We need it so badly. It's

like we're starving without it.

And to see an unremarkable life review,

basically looking at her life and saying,

you really haven't done anything

special,

could be an incredible motivator for a

spirit to say, I

got to go back and do all the great things

that I

have always wanted to do or that

are going to make

this life worth living. I mean,

is an unremarkable

life worth living? And on the surface,

I would say yes,

absolutely, in the sense that

what we think of as unremarkable

is often not what

spirits see as unremarkable,

because an act of kindness, a

gentle arm around the shoulder to someone

who's struggling

is incredibly remarkable.

But she only describes things as being

unremarkable or nothing

remarkable about them.

She doesn't say what things she saw

that she

saw as being unremarkable.

And it could be that

she lived a very normal life,

perhaps even a

seemingly meaningful life from a mortal

perspective,

but from a spiritual perspective,

perhaps it was not.

Perhaps it was

in spiritual terms,

she had maybe done all these wonderful

things

in mortal life,

but had not really done much to serve,

not really done much to think about other

people, not really done

much to

grow and advance herself. And

if that's the case, even

if she did have a remarkable

high school experience,

remarkable college experience in terms of

successes and things like that,

that might seem

terribly unremarkable to

a spirit. Now, all of that is just

my own thoughts.

She doesn't say anything about what

was so unremarkable

about her life.

So it may not even be fair for me to say

that, but

I just give it as a possible reason for

her to want to come back so bad.

It's because her life was so

unremarkable.

Maybe she wanted

in that time, she's like,

of course I got to go back.

I've got a husband

and children who need me.

I have a chance to serve them.

I've got to go back and do it.

And so that could be part of the reason,

which kind of

reflects a little bit on what she

describes at the end

about how

this is absolutely real,

this experience that she had.

And she says that I must spread as much

love to others as

possible as perhaps my days on earth may

or may not be

many more.

So to her,

by age 70, she feels that her purpose, her

whole being

on earth

is to

love,

spread as much love to others as possible.

So

if you would like to support the podcast,

you can do so by either purchasing

my book, Life in the Spirit World, or

purchasing my album, Home, both of

which can be found

on neardeathexperiencepodcast.org.

And I would like to mention briefly,

because it has come up as a question

to me often, the music for this show is

from that album, Home. And yes, it

is original

music that I wrote. And the piece is

called The Angel Children.

So if you're wondering where the music

came from, that's where it came from.

You can also support the podcast by going

to our Patreon page, which is

patreon.com slash ndepodcast.

And with that, thank you so much again,

you guys, for listening.