The Night That Changed My View of Life and Death
After the crisis of 1981, I was going through one of the heaviest periods of my life. During the day, I tried to find solutions. I had to begin again. I wanted to remain strong for my family. But at night, I carried the tension with me. During that period, I had an experience that has never left me. It began with an explosion. I saw my body thrown several yards away by its force.
But I felt no pain. Quite the opposite. At the same moment, I experienced an incredible peace. A feeling of bliss I had never known before. I was outside my body. Weightless. Light as a feather. From above, I saw people running toward my body. Doctors too were trying to resuscitate me. I saw everything they were doing. I shouted that I was all right. That I was not down there. That I was above them.
But no one heard me. I tried to touch them. My hands passed through their bodies. They felt nothing. I continued shouting, but to them, I did not exist at that moment. Then the experience changed. I began to fly. Free as an eagle, I moved above the world. I traveled at a speed I cannot describe.
Yet there was no fear. Only freedom. Only peace. The Earth looked different from the way it does in ordinary life. The sky was an exceptionally intense blue. The grass below me was a vivid, almost fluorescent green. I saw colors for which I knew no names. Everything was purer, sharper, and more alive than what our eyes ordinarily perceive. I felt completely happy. Not the kind of happiness that arises when something goes well.
It was happiness without conditions. A profound peace in which there was no fear, pain, or worry. Never before had I felt anything like it. And never since have I been able to fully recover that feeling. Finally, I sensed that I was returning very gently to my body. As though a light feather were slowly descending and returning to its place. Then I awoke. I was crying. Not from sadness. I cried because the experience had felt so intense and so real.
Part of me did not want to lose that feeling of peace. Another part understood that I had returned to ordinary life, with all the worries waiting for me there. Was it a dream? An experience between sleep and wakefulness? Was it my consciousness creating another reality under the pressure of that difficult period? Or had I briefly touched something we cannot yet fully understand?
I do not know. I do not want to pretend to a certainty I do not possess. But I know what I experienced. This experience became deeply engraved in my memory. I will carry it with me all my life. It also gave me something I urgently needed at the time. Strength.
After the crisis, I had to learn again to believe that a fall is not necessarily the end. In my experience, I saw my body fall, but my consciousness rose. Perhaps it was neither a prediction nor a message from outside. Perhaps it was my own inner world making me feel that after destruction, space still remained. Space to begin again. Space to live.
Whatever the explanation, the peace I felt then changed the way I looked at life and death. I did not begin seeking death. Quite the opposite. I began appreciating life more intensely. When a person catches even one glimmer of light in the heart of his deepest night, that memory alone can be enough to help him rise again.