Death is a topic we hate to love. What happens after we die?Is there an afterlife? Is there some kind of higher power who comes to greet us? These are the questions we ask ourselves about this mystery fate that will come to us all at some point. But some people have dipped a toe into this ocean of the unknown, experienced what it is like, and come back to the land of the living to tell their tale.
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This is the case for radio host Brooke Jones, who takes issue with the term near-death. She explains to The Other Side NDE podcast that she wasn’t near-dead - she was ‘totally’ deceased for a whole 8 minutes. Here’s her incredible ‘actual death experience’, as she describes it.
How Brooke died
Brooke starts by setting the scene: she explains she was 25 and ‘foolish’, like most 25-year-olds. Just past her 25th birthday, she experienced a drug overdose. As she points out, ‘near-death experience’ as a term was not something that people were familiar with at the time.
As a child of the 60s, she explains she ‘knew’ she was dying while it was happening:
Time seemed to stop.
Though she wasn’t someone who prayed, in that moment she grasped at the only thing she could think to do: she started praying. And then, she died.
Brooke explains that she found herself being ‘carried’ by a ‘tunnel’ that almost seemed alive: it was gentle with her, warm, and ‘breathing’. Then, she was standing in what she described as a sort of ‘fog, lit from within’.
What Brooke experienced on the other side
The radio host explains that she was confused, certainly, but not afraid. With no one in sight, she reacted just like she would have on Earth: she called out, ‘Hello?’, but received no answer. She got frustrated and demanded that somebody tell her ‘where the hell’ she was. A voice unlike any she had ever heard replied with a hilarious reproach: ‘Watch your language, try to remember where you are’.
She says it took a moment for it to sink it: she was in the presence of a greater being. Being a non-religious sort, she had no idea what to call this thing. So, she asked: the voice laughed at this, and Brooke described the way this noise wrapped around her like a hug. She asked whether this being, that she calls ‘God’ in her story, was male or female. God’s response? ‘Why does everybody ask that question?’. The voice, which was deep and rough, replied that it was neither. Then, in a very high, feminine voice, the being told Brooke it was both. Brooke was flabbergasted: it turns out, God is quite the comedian.
Where is the other side?
Brooke was told she was on the doorstep of heaven. She started asking rapidfire questions, and even for something to write everything that was happening down on. God replied that she wouldn’t need that, because the experience was being ‘written’ on her soul.
Brooke was very confused as to why she wasn’t afraid, and even found herself chortling away with God. Being someone who had always used humour to communicate, she wonders whether God presented to each visitor differently depending on their personality.
Why God started crying
Brooke explains that her visit wasn’t all jokes: when she asked why there was ‘so much hatred and violence among humans’, the laughter stopped. Bizarrely, God started to cry. Brooke says she could tell not because she could see tears, but because she felt it: the air started to feel like ‘millions of jagged shards of shattered glass’. She says that it became clear to her at that point that when humans inflict pain on each other, it makes God cry.
Brooke, who is a cancer survivor and mother, says that experiencing God’s distress is the ‘single most painful’ thing she has ever endured. She still remembers this ‘horror’ very clearly, even decades later.
How Brooke’s experience shaped her life
Brooke realised, once she came back to the land of the living, that her life had to change. She joined a bible study group, but then she heard a clergyman from the group urge believers to ensure their place in heaven with donations.
So, she rejected that path and spent time reflecting on her experience. She believes that God cares about humans treating ‘all life’ with ‘respect, compassion and decency’. She jokes that there’s no secret handshake or password: it is simple. She reckons ‘death is just a doorway to a life that awaits us after this one’. If you want to learn more about her experience, you can read her whole story in her book Why Are There Monkeys?. 100% of the proceeds go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.
Read more:
⋙ Woman who died and came back to life reveals our purpose on Earth
⋙ Dying starts 2 weeks before your heart stops, expert reveals the telltale signs to look out for
⋙ Does a dying person know that they are about to die? Let's find out
Sources used:
The Other Side NDE: Radio Host Dies For 8 Minutes; Meets The Creator And Shown The Truth About Time (NDE)
