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A Journey Through the Most Profound NDEs from Dr. Jeffrey Long’s Research
For over 25 years, radiation oncologist Dr. Jeffrey Long has been collecting and scientifically studying near-death experiences through the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF), now the largest database of NDEs in the world with over 5,000 documented cases. His groundbreaking research, detailed in the New York Times bestseller Evidence of the Afterlife, has revealed remarkable consistency across cultures, religions, and demographics-suggesting that these experiences offer genuine glimpses into the nature of consciousness beyond physical death.
From NDERF’s exceptional experiences archive, we’ve selected 25 of the most profound and transformative accounts. These stories challenge our understanding of reality, reveal the interconnectedness of all existence, and offer hope that consciousness continues beyond the physical body. Each account is linked to its original source on NDERF.org for those who wish to read the complete experience.
Stories of Cosmic Education
1. Vicki W – The Cosmic Classroom
During an NDE from septicemia and encephalitis, Vicki participated in what she describes as a heavenly workshop. She was invited to join a group of students tasked with creating a new plant-not necessarily meant for Earth. They were given a mission to design a plant for a specific environment and a bird that would feed from its nectar. “A beam of light took the successful plant and it appeared in a forest in an image that was projected directly to our brains.”
This remarkable account suggests that creation itself may be a collaborative, educational process in which consciousness participates at the deepest levels.
2. Sandi T – Visiting Life on Other Worlds
Among the most profound NDEs ever shared with NDERF, Sandi experienced multiple near-death events between ages 3-7 as a result of severe abuse. During these experiences, she was shown life on non-earthly planets in unprecedented detail-three different races of beings, one of which could see her and raised their hands in greeting.
She was taken from place to place across the cosmos, seeing “wonders everywhere.” Most remarkably, she skimmed the surface of a sun, “playing in the shifting energy and heard its jubilant joy at giving life to so many wonderful things.” Her account provides the most detailed discussion of extraterrestrial life in any NDE ever documented.
3. Bristol O – Hearing the Song of Planets
Read Bristol’s full experience
After severe blood loss from a ruptured ovarian cyst, Bristol had an extraordinary NDE offering profound insights. From her perspective as a spirit, planets appeared small and people on their surfaces resembled dust motes. But here’s what makes this account exceptional: “I could hear planets before I could see them. I could hear shouts and singing and talking and laughing and crying and moaning and singing” emanating from them as great noise.
This suggests that inhabited worlds create a kind of collective vibration or sound-the combined energy of all living consciousness on each planet.
Stories of Divine Encounter
4. Sheila S – Jesus Speaks About Kindness
During cardiac arrests, Sheila had one of the longest and most detailed encounters with Jesus ever documented by NDERF. His primary message was simple but profound: “Kindness was so important. Treat each other kindly. We are all connected and He wants us to treat each other like royalty.”
Jesus showed her how he cries for humanity-not because of our mistakes, but because of how we criticize ourselves. “As we’re looking at the mirror, we’re finding bad things about ourselves that we don’t like. Then we criticize ourselves. This makes Him cry worse than ever because He sees us as absolutely perfect, absolute perfection.”
5. Nick K – Meeting the Son of God
In this exceptional spiritual transformative experience (STE), Nick encountered Jesus with startling clarity. “He had these piercing, loving eyes and was perfection personified. It was at that moment I knew he could read my thoughts and we were communicating without words.” The encounter was so profound it transformed his understanding of divine communication and unconditional love.
6. Alfred A – Jesus in a Boat
After a suicide attempt with narcotics, Alfred found himself in darkness when a boat approached with a man holding a lantern. “I immediately knew him. It was Jesus!” Jesus came ashore and “looked at me with indescribably shiny, loving eyes and gave me a hug. I was immediately surrounded in brightness. Immediately, all my worries and burdens fell away from me. It was simply wonderful being bathed in bliss and love!”
7. Matthew Mc – The Voice in the Light
Read Matthew’s full experience
During loss of consciousness from vasovagal dysfunction, Matthew experienced a cylinder of light appearing above him. He felt a loving presence and heard: “Matt, you have lived a hard life and there would be no shame in giving up now. But if you fight through, I have a plan.” The choice was his, and he chose to stay for his children.
Stories of Universal Wisdom
8. Tyler G – Fragments of the Infinite
After ingesting a substance that caused a seizure, Tyler looked toward the Light and understood its true nature: “It wasn’t just brightness. It was Intelligence. It was Compassion. It was Eternity… In that moment, I understood something essential: We are not our names. We are not our mistakes. We are fragments of the Infinite, temporarily clothed in skin and bound by gravity and time.”
9. Brent S – The Nature of Beliefs
This STE includes some of the most profound spiritual wisdom ever shared with NDERF. Brent met Jesus, God, and “Mother” and learned that “the way we perceive beliefs in the world is backward. We tend to take ownership of our beliefs, as if we alone were the authors… However, in the space I was in, I saw the beliefs almost like independent life forces that are responsible for creating the bodily experience of humanity.”
10. Anne W – The Universe Within
During an apparent heart attack while homeless, Anne had an exceptional NDE revealing profound truth: “I was the UNIVERSE in expression, and the Universe was within me… I was shown through energy that I was ONE with ALL THAT IS, ALL THAT EVER WAS and ALL THAT WILL EVER BE. ALL THAT EXISTED was within me… EVERYTHING WAS CONNECTED. I WAS EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE; omnipresent, omniscience!”
11. Galadriel K – Thoughts Carry Energy
Read Galadriel’s full experience
At age 10, Galadriel had a remarkably detailed transcendent experience. The final lesson was profound: “My thoughts and intentions carry energy. Energy that impacts the fabric of reality around me, on people, on the Earth, on my future etc. Each person has free will to choose what energy they want to exist as, and that energy gets mixed with everyone’s energy and thus the fabric of our reality is woven together.”
12. Blaženko K – The Eternal Now
Read Blaženko’s full experience
From Croatia, Blaženko experienced absolutely remarkable STEs with profound spiritual wisdom. “I strongly felt the particularity of that exact place and moment in the context of the whole Universe and its history. Eternal Now. Paradoxically, even though I was witnessing the mind-boggling ‘size’ of time itself, I clearly saw that in fact there is no time. Or, more precisely, that nothing is ‘passing’. It exists, but it’s ‘standing still’; not coming, not going.”
Stories of Life Reviews and Interconnection
13. Riley H – Every Soul That Left a Mark
After a jet ski accident, Riley had a comprehensive life review: “Every single person I had ever loved appeared before me. I remembered what they smelled like. What they sounded like. Faces from my childhood. Loved ones I had forgotten. People who had passed years ago. Every soul that left a mark on mine came flooding back.”
14. Jonathan S – The Focus on How We Help Others
Read Jonathan’s full experience
During an NDE from undiagnosed severe sepsis, Jonathan’s life review focused not on moral transgressions but on something deeper: “What it focused on, in my case, was interactions with people. We looked at whether I used my gifts and talents to help people and how I made them feel during those interactions. I was shown how we are all connected – everywhere, everyone, everything, and how we are meant to be helping each other progress through our human existences. I was shown that our human lives are a collective movement, not an individual achievement.”
15. Johnny F – Nothing Was Wrong
From Sweden, Johnny experienced a life review that showed every moment from his 57 years “in an instant… from my perspective and also from the other person’s perspective. It was excruciating at times.” Despondent, he said, “I had failed.” But the light figure responded with warmth: “Nothing was wrong. Everything was perfect. As it should be… It was about learning. That love and its consequences mean everything.”
16. Harry T – The Web of Connection
During a pulmonary embolus, Harry saw life reviews as interconnected lights: “The bits of light closest to me were my parents, family who all passed before – and connected to them were people who had influenced me and whom I had influenced… and the people whom they had interacted with, but unknown to me, but connected to me by my interaction with everyone I had known and met in my life.”
Stories of Childhood NDEs
17. Anelia G – NDE at Age One
One of the best documented NDEs occurring so early in life. At just over one year old, Anelia had an NDE from a head injury. Everything happened simultaneously rather than linearly. “I had a clear understanding of who I was on a fundamental level… the spirit me… I wasn’t a human form nor did I have an age. I just was.” She saw her entire Earth life “as a split second and a tiny fraction of what I was supposed to live.”
18. Mache G – Memories Before Speech
At age four, during cardiac arrest from severe illness, Mache had an NDE with verified memories from earliest childhood: “I began browsing through time. I saw events from my short life. I later detailed things that occurred before I could even talk. These were events I should not be able to remember but I do and in great detail.” Time wrapped in on itself-there was no past, present, or future, “everything happened now and all at one time.”
19. Dianne B – The Baby Who Remembered
Dianne had an NDE at age 2-3 months with remarkably detailed out-of-body observations that were confirmed 56 years later. She had “a panoramic vision of the room” including specific details about wallpaper with ships, olive drab curtains, and the exact placement of furniture-details she couldn’t have seen from her crib and which her mother confirmed decades later.
Stories of Choosing to Return
20. Jene B – Meeting Her Unborn Son
During delivery complications from spinal anesthetic, Jene was “immersed in the most incredible feeling of love and peace that I have never felt before or since.” She felt God’s presence and heard clearly: “Do you want to stay or do you want to go?” During the NDE, she met her unborn son and made the conscious choice to return to life with him.
21. Sharon Q – The Non-Negotiable Choice
After a crushing injury, Sharon was shown what she needed to address in her life, including her alcohol addiction. “This was non-negotiable and I knew why. I wholeheartedly agreed, too.” She was then offered a remarkable choice: return immediately to her current life and reenter her body, or be born as an infant into another family to have her lifetime start over.
22. Wendy Z – Unable to Cross the Boundary
In this exceptional shared death experience dream with her grandfather at the moment of his death, Wendy found herself in a tunnel with him and his guide. “I realize I can no longer join them. I can’t cross this point. I don’t see a door, but I feel the tunnel ahead of us ‘open.’ My grandfather goes first, his guide goes next and I feel the tunnel ‘close’. I’m suddenly very aware of how lonely and cold I am.”
Stories of Profound Love
23. Star E – The Glory of God’s Presence
After a criminal attack, Star experienced pure divine love: “A pure, brilliant light engulfed me and I no longer had a physical body… I was in the center of a vast nothingness, but the nothingness was not empty. It was completely filled with the presence of the living God… I was in the middle of the Glory. Then the Lord wrapped me in His Love and held me to His breast. I was filled to every fiber of my being with His peace that passes all understanding.”
24. Maureen K – The Energy of Angels
Read Maureen’s full experience
After a suicide attempt, Maureen experienced God as waves of music-“the rapture that beautiful music evokes as waves is the nearest I may come to describing how breathtaking God appears and how melodiously God resonates.” She felt no fear, pain, judgment, blame, or shame. “Profound Love and Peace permeated every being everywhere. What I know to be the energy of Angels greeted me with the tenderest warmest energy.”
25. Graça P – The Wave of Love
From Portugal, after cardio-pulmonary arrest from an allergic reaction, Graça experienced waves of love: “When the wave touched me, I felt it gave out love. It was a love so great that even if I added the love of my parents, my husband, my son, all the family and that which I felt for them, it could not be compared to this love more than a grain of sand to the desert.”
The Consistent Message Across All Experiences
What emerges from these 25 extraordinary accounts-and the thousands more documented by Dr. Jeffrey Long at NDERF-is a remarkably consistent message that transcends culture, religion, age, and circumstance:
- Consciousness continues beyond physical death – We are not our bodies, but eternal beings temporarily in physical form
- We are all interconnected – Every action, thought, and intention affects the whole
- Love is the fundamental force of the universe – Unconditional love permeates all of reality
- Our purpose is to learn and grow – Life is an educational experience, not a test to pass or fail
- There is no judgment, only understanding – The “life review” is about learning, not condemnation
- We have more power than we realize – Our thoughts and intentions shape reality itself
- We are never alone – Spiritual beings, guides, and the Divine are always present
Exploring Further
These accounts represent just a fraction of the profound experiences documented by Dr. Long and his team. To explore more:
- Visit NDERF.org to read over 5,000 near-death experiences
- Explore the exceptional experiences archive for the most remarkable accounts
- Read Dr. Long’s books: Evidence of the Afterlife and God and the Afterlife
- Share your own experience through NDERF’s submission form
As Dr. Long’s research demonstrates with scientific rigor, these experiences offer more than just hope-they provide compelling evidence that consciousness transcends the physical body, that love is the organizing principle of the universe, and that we are all part of an infinitely greater reality than we can perceive with our physical senses alone.
The implications for how we live our lives, treat each other, and understand our place in the cosmos are profound. These aren’t just stories about death-they’re revelations about the true nature of life itself.
All experiences cited in this article are from the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF.org), founded and operated by Dr. Jeffrey Long, MD. We encourage readers to visit NDERF directly to read the complete accounts and explore the thousands of additional experiences in their database.
For more explorations of consciousness, spirituality, and the nature of reality, continue reading at Back to Planet Ki.
