Doctor Recalls After-Death Experience

Chief was a friend I met through Facebook, someone struggling to share his extraordinary experience of dying, then returning to life, in 2007.

“I died, I lived again, and my life was forever altered,” he wrote in his book draft. He’d asked me to read it because I had written a novel that touched on the afterlife. “The experience profoundly changed my life,” he wrote. “It changed my religion (at least my spiritual views). It even changed my politics.”

And Chief was adamant: This was not a near-death experience. Rather, he called it an After Death Experience. He said he should know, “because I am an M.D., and I was totally, completely and authoritatively pronounced clinically dead.”

That was after he was brought to the lake’s surface.

Heart Attack at 60 Feet Below

“My death technically started 60 feet under water while scuba diving,” he wrote. “Lab tests later confirmed I had suffered a heart attack, a complete cardiac arrest, with the loss of any heart rhythm, no pulse, no breathing – the definition of clinically dead.” In the middle of nowhere at a remote lake diving spot.

I’m the one sharing this story because Chief never got to finish his book. He crossed over to the afterlife for good in 2021. But before that he had been determined to tell others what happened 14 years earlier and how he lost his fear of death.

He also hoped that his experience would help ease the heartache and grief of those left behind when a loved one dies. “The veil between Heaven and Earth is very thin,” he wrote. And our loved ones are never far away. He wants people to know that.

Going Back to That Day

“My actual death (in 2007) was the climax of ignoring a classic impending heart attack scenario. Denial and Ego are the operative words.” He was diving at a Colorado lake to gain additional technical skills for a more complicated dive. He was stressed, cranky, with too many days straight on call, not enough sleep and hours of driving to get to the dive spot.

With Denial firmly in place, he rationalized away the mounting symptoms: His left shoulder hurt, he surmised, because of an old rotator cuff injury. The chest pain was probably heartburn. The growing tightness in his chest, a too-tight wetsuit. The shortness of breath, which increased as he dove into the water, a regulator problem.

At 60 feet, struggling to breathe, he was desperate to return to the surface. What he wouldn’t know till later: He was already in full-blown heart attack mode. “I can remember breaking the surface, spitting out the regulator, unzipping my wetsuit, taking a deep breath and still experiencing a sense of smothering. I now experienced a crushing sensation in my chest.I felt a hand on my neck and remembered the person yelling, ‘He has no carotid pulse.’” He was gone.

What is Death Like?

“Your first question is no doubt, ‘What was death like?’” Chief writes. “The simple answer: Bliss. Total joy.

“For me, I was suddenly suspended, floating, within an inky darkness that seemed composed of a palpable, tremendous energy and intelligence. The energy within the surrounding blackness seemed warm and tangible. I had no fear, only a sense of complete well-being and calm, and I was aware that a healing of my mind and body was taking place.

“I implicitly knew, with an absolute certainty, that all would be well. There was no sense of fear or disorientation. Instead, I experienced a growing excitement and anticipation of what lay before me. I absolutely knew I had died; but I had no sense of dread.”

Emergency medical personnel and volunteers at the dive site furiously worked to revive him, Chief explained that he was away from his body, immersed in the deepest truths about God, the Universe and Love. He was embraced by an intelligent and loving energy that guided his experience.

“Insights and answers were embedded and programmed within me. I was made aware that I would recognize them in the future as I sensed a resonance. I became aware that I also was glowing. Light filled me. I had become light.”

Enlightened Re-entry

And then, he knew it was time to return.

“I passed through a familiar wall of warmth and love and then was falling. The sense of universal, unconditional, sustaining love seemed to wane. There was a brief instant of blackness. Then suddenly, overwhelming sensations of pain in my chest, noise, restraint, chaos. I knew I had died and was witnessing my resuscitation. Then, I had an awareness on my right side of a presence, a beautiful glowing aura. I reached toward it. A hand touched mine, and suddenly, instantly, I was transported back to that perfect realm of peace and love. I knew then, with total comprehension, what had happened.

“Suddenly everything snapped into complete clarity. It was like watching an instant replay. I was suspended above the group, watching my resuscitation. CPR was started and continued without interruption. My wet suit was peeled off. My body was lifeless. I had no vital signs. I was dark blue. No, actually purple. I could feel and hear the cracking of my sternum and ribs during the chest compressions.”

One EMT in particular supervised the life-saving interventions as Chief lay on a plywood sheet that kept him in the right position for CPR. “He never gave up.”

Once he was past the immediate crisis, Chief was transported from the lake by truck up a bumpy gravel road to a spot on the main road where an ambulance was waiting. The ambulance transported him to a helicopter rendezvous point, where he was whisked away to a hospital.

He may have looked the same on the outside, but inside he was a changed man.

Learn more about the author at her website, https://mydeadtruelove.com

Read more from Kim Pierce: Exploring Contact Through a Medium – Open to Hope